The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  By very stern experience, in which some American lives were lost, General Eisenhower discovered that French and native military and civil officials in North Africa were unwilling to take orders save from the representative of a form of continuous government. One reason for this is that their appointments came from Vichy. But another is the legalistic type of the French official mind and that of natives who have lived and thought under French tutelage.

  GIRAUD’S DILEMMA

  This preoccupation with legalisms has already made difficulties for General Giraud because, unlike Darlan, there is a hiatus between his new authority and the formal delegation of power from an established source. If he should abolish all established forms, and break the chain completely, there is fear in Washington that his government would lose its influence at a most critical time, and that civil and military troubles would arise across the North African littoral behind the advancing lines of the United Nations.

  When General Eisenhower landed in North Africa he had two sets of orders, with the privilege of using that which seemed more likely to further his objective. One was to set up a military government and break the chain of French sovereignty. He chose the other—to leave civil government to constituted authorities. The reasons for his choice still, in great measure, exist,

  General de Gaulle in Tunisia, 1943.

  JANUARY 19, 1943

  The War in Russia

  Red Army’s Advances Are Remarkable Because of Winter’s Severe Hardships

  By HANSON W. BALDWIN

  The week-end news from Russia may eventually prove to be some of the most dramatic of the war.

  Moscow claimed that the sixteen-month siege of Leningrad had been lifted and on all fronts the Russians still held the initiative and were still driving deeply into the German lines. The claims from Moscow are now at least partly borne out by back-handed admissions from Berlin and by the greater freedom given by the Russians to American newspaper men in the coverage of the fighting.

  The Russian special communiqué describing the encirclement and gradual reduction in strength of the German garrison at Stalingrad must be coupled with the official Nazi admission that this garrison has long been engaged in repulsing attacks “from all directions.”

  And the Voronezh offensive apparently has had early and spectacular success. The reported capture of the railroad towns of Rossosh, Miilerovo and Kamensk should do much to expedite the supply of the Russian push toward Rostov, and at the same time will pose an indirect threat to Nazi-held Kharkov. Yesterday’s reported crossing of the Donets near Kamensk is, if verified, of considerable importance, for it means that the battle for Rostov, the key to the whole German southern position, is starting.

  RUSSIANS DEFY HARDSHIPS

  The Russian advances are all the more remarkable in that they are being accomplished despite the snow and ice and incredible hard-ships of the Russian Winter. The difficulties of campaigning in Russia—when the frost is so severe that ungloved hands are instantly frozen to whatever metal they’ touch—were sufficiently emphasized last Winter, which was one of the most severe in Europe’s history, but the influence of weather upon war can never be neglected.

  This Winter, according to reports from Russia, is far milder than last Winter; the snow drifts are not so deep and permit greater manoeuvrability; the frost is not so severe. But in so far as manoeuvrability is concerned, this is not all net gain, for in Southern Russia, in places where frost comes but briefly, the rutted roads may become mud; rain may substitute for snow, as it did last week when the packed snow of the steppes was drenched with a cold downpour, and the going for both armies became heavy.

  Russia excels in extremes—space, distance, heat, cold and mud or ice.

  Captain Elzéar Blaze, in his “Recollections of an Officer of Napoleon’s Army,” gives a good description of the difficulties with which both armies must contend. He wrote, in part, of Poland and of other areas of Europe, but his remarks apply with even greater validity to Russia.

  “In Poland,” he said, “the roads are not paved; the trouble has been taken of tracing them through the forests, that is all. During the Winter, and when the French Army tracked over that country in all directions we encountered oceans of mud which it was impossible to cross. The mud, of Pultusk has become unhappily celebrated; mounted men have been drowned in it with their horses; others have been seen to blow out their brains, despairing of ever getting out.

  “An officer of engineers found himself stuck in mud up to the neck and could not get out A grenadier appeared:

  “‘Comrade,’ calls out the officer, come to my aid, I am lost, I am drowning, the mud will soon choke me.’

  “‘Who are you?’

  “‘I am an officer of engineers.’

  “‘Ah, you’re one of those who solve problems; well, draw your plan.’”

  And the grenadier went on his way. The soldiers did not like the officers of grenadiers because they never saw them fighting with the bayonet. They found it difficult to understand that one could render services to the army with a pencil and compass.

  MUD’S TERRORS DESCRIBED

  Coignet and Baron Percy also speak of the terrors of “General Mud”:

  “… the roads have disappeared beneath the waters and mud, one sees only wrecked carriages and horses buried to the belly; the six-horse coaches of the Emperor, in spite of all precautions, upset in frightful bogs …

  “As to the army, it was never so wretched; the soldier, always on the march, bivouacking every night, spending entire days in mud up to the knees, without bread, without brandy, falls with fatigue and exhaustion. Many die in the ditches.”

  Today, in most of Russia, it is the snow, the cold, the frost, rather than the mud that slows the fiery pulse of battle. In January in the North Caucasus area the temperature usually averages about 23 degrees, sometimes considerably lower, but the mercury does not start a slow climb until well into February. Farther north it is much colder; the mouth of the Don River at Rostov is usually frozen from about Dec. 6 to March 21; farther north the period of frost is even longer.

  Though the snow and the cold are in one sense a handicap to military operations, the freezing of the rivers and marshes makes highways out of what normally are military obstacles; if the Russians reach the mouth of the Don, the ice may facilitate their passage.

  There is, as yet, no such rout as the Grand Army experienced a century ago. But Winter is unquestionably on the side of the Russians today as it was a century ago. And the same hardships and deprivations, the same snow and cold and mud and frost are helping to wear down the Wehrmacht of Adolf Hitler.

  JANUARY 23, 1943

  Editorial

  THE MARINES WRITE A CHAPTER

  When news comes that the Marines are leaving Guadalcanal for a well-earned rest we know that this is not because they asked to he relieved of their assignment. They have been on Guadalcanal since Aug. 7, and at no time have they asked relief from any duty or respite from any risk. They landed with no certainty that any single landing boat would reach shore. They marched into a tropical forest infested with Japanese, the world’s most experienced and savage jungle fighters. They took what is now Henderson Airfield and held it for two weeks without air support For weeks, until the Navy had considerably abated the Japanese menace at sea, they were exposed to naval shellfire. Again and again the enemy attempted landings; some of these landings were successful, and some of them, like the one at the Tenaru River, resulted in the attacking force being completely wiped out.

  The Marines were presumably as well trained as soldiers could be, short of actual battle experience. They learned the rest as they went along. They learned it the hard way during perilous days and sleepless nights. Their aviators kept the air by stretching human endurance to the breaking point. Before six weeks had gone by the Marines were not only as good as their enemies: as the ratio of casualties shows, they were better. Let no one suppose that this was gay or easy. The Marines on Guadalcanal went through
hell and came up smiling, but the joke was tough and grim. The soldiers who replace them will have something to live up to—and are already living up to it. The Marines can write Guadalcanal into their song, along with the Halls of Montezuma and the Shores of Tripoli. We hope they can find something to rhyme it with: the story will never die as long as we need Marines.

  JANUARY 24, 1943

  With Women at Work, The Factory Changes

  Mrs. Herrick describes some of the problems created by the rush of women into industry. She sees lasting gains for all concerned.

  By ELINORE M. HERRICK

  There are many deterrents—largely psychological—to the increased employment of women in industry. Many of them spring from prejudice, lack of information, fear of change. Others arise simply from inertia. It is rather like going swimming off the coast of Maine—one has always heard that the water is cold, even though invigorating, but the latter remains to be proved. Toes first, gingerly. The water is cold, but the invigorating tingle after the reluctant plunge warms the blood stream.

  I wager that every employer who has made his first plunge into the employment of women made that plunge with many misgivings, but in adding up the final score he finds that it is a success. And feels that way in spite of the laws that regulate working conditions for women, with which he is having his first experience. He may have to rearrange work schedules for men in order to meet the State standards for women. He may have to go to a stagger shift system to avoid working the women over the legal maximum. But he will find that the shorter hours mean more regular attendance and better production.

  Rest periods for women are required in most States. Employers fear this will encourage the men to loaf. Production is all that matters. Why should the women be pampered? But when they find the women returning refreshed to the job and the work going faster after the rest period, the last objector is apt to be silenced. It might even be better, they concede, to give everyone a regular rest period.

  Often the company’s first introduction to State sanitary codes may come through the employment of women. I know the men of the Todd Shipyard organization thought I had an obsession over plumbing. I poked around the shipyards, looking not at the great vessels laid up for repairs, but looking for a corner where I could install lavatories and rest rooms for the women who were shortly to come to work in the shipyard. I was far more interested in the location of drains and sewers than in the thrilling spectacle of men tearing apart and rebuilding the boats to keep the life lines open for our armed forces abroad. I wanted this machine and that tool bench moved to make a little more space for a toilet.

  The men were patient and let me poke around. Blueprints were produced to show why I could not have the desired space, but to the credit of the men, be it said, they always found some other space which I, in turn, decided could be used just as well. They were tolerant even of my insistence that the State sanitary codes were minimum standards and that we ought to have more toilets, more washing facilities, than the law required if we were to meet the really best standards of modern factory construction.

  The purchasing department, accustomed to buying wire, rope, steel, motors, heavy machinery of all kinds, had as much fun as I picking the color scheme and fabrics for the furniture in the new rest rooms. I suspect some of their helpful suggestions came from their wives—but perhaps that sounds ungenerous. The point is that they were equally interested in finding the fabric that was colorful but serviceable. Showers for the men were already an institution, but the idea of shower curtains for the women seemed a little startling, not to say unnecessary. Hand creams for the women was another innovation that seemed a trifle “fussy.” I pointed to the practice of the experienced men doing spray painting who always greased every inch of exposed skin heavily, which was also a protection against lead poisoning. So the purchasing department investigated hand creams.

  Women operating a spot welding machine at Ford’s giant bomber plant at Willow Run, Michigan.

  The necessity for feeding women properly to enable them to do the hard day’s work that is inevitable for a shipyard worker is rapidly branching out into a program for feeding all the workers. And not a diet of salads—for either sex—and with emphasis on vitamins. With food rationing on a wide scale sweeping toward us, the importance of mass feeding in factories here, just as in England, becomes a very practical necessity in keeping men and women fit for the long, hard war production battle.

  What kind of clothing should the women wear? That is another new problem for the new employer of women. You don’t have to think about what the men will wear, except in terms of safety equipment, helmets, safety shoes; gloves, goggles and the like. Women have to have those things too. Every industry has a different type of problem where women’s working clothes are concerned, I find. It is important to the women’s approach to her job to have requirements for practical, workmanlike clothing, however. Fancy clothes, dangling jewelry, shoulder “bobs” are not conducive to wholehearted attention to the work at hand.

  In shops where delicate, dainty precision work is done amid clean surroundings, Lilly Dache can design a fetching bonnet to keep the hair from catching in the machinery. Molyneux can do a dashing uniform in gay colors and light fabrics. But in a greasy machine shop—and they all have some grease—or in a shipyard where most of the women’s work like the men’s must be out-of-doors no matter what the weather, the problem is different. There warmth, dark colors, grease resistant non-inflammable fabrics are all important. Despite all the most conscientious planning in the world, you will find the women workers have their own ideas. We did, when after much long-distance telephoning and frantic pleas to the manufacturer of the best so-called safety shoe for women factory workers, the shoes finally arrived on the day the first class graduated from the training school. The women flatly refused to wear them. Why?

  “The soles aren’t heavy enough, oxfordcut low shoes aren’t safe enough; we want them over the ankles too. And we want steel toes like the men,” they cried. So the long-suffering purchasing department sent the shoes that had been flown from the Middle West back to the manufacturers and we started searching the city for men’s heavy, bulky safety shoes in the smallest sizes made for men. And we wondered whether they would ruin the women’s feet, with their higher arches and their long use of relatively high heels.

  A prominent orthopedic surgeon was consulted, a supply of arch pads bought, the girls were warned to wear an extra pair of wool socks over their usual hose to help cushion their feet. But the women were right, only it had never occurred to us who were planning that they would be willing to wear those un-shapely, hulking men’s shoes. The thing we learned was that the women really cared about doing the job safely even at the expense of attractiveness.

  Insistence upon the women wearing all the necessary safety equipment plus the women’s own fear of injury in the new and unfamiliar terrain of a shipyard has spurred the drive for safety among the men. The men who had become accustomed to the environment and had persuaded themselves that “no hammer will drop on my head” have begun to wear their helmets more faithfully and with less resistance. The safety engineers are having an easier time in that respect at least.

  Employment of women has made new problems for the engineers. Jobs that required heavy lifting were no problem when only men were involved. Now the relationship of supplies to the height of the machine to make a long lift unnecessary has to be studied. But it pays in the long run, whether for men or women, to let brains supplant brawn. And so, if new engineering ideas are developed to lessen lifting hazards of heavy work for women, the men will be the gainers in the long run.

  Selecting the women presented new problems. We asked the foremen what kind of women, what physique, what previous experience would be needed, in their judgment, for a woman on a particular type of machine or job. Many foremen have changed their minds. They would have scoffed at the idea of a college degree as being useful in the machine shop in the operation of a turret lathe. The men
who were working these machines had not been to college. But one of the most skillful workers in the machine shop today is a woman who has not one but several college degrees. Another was the head mistress of a fashionable girls’ school.

  The clamor was for big, husky women—accent on young. Yet slender, deft-handed women of all ages are among our best welders and shipfitters. A Danish woman welder of 53 can match the record of the best man, we have found. Our emphasis has now been placed on the physical condition of the woman rather than her age. And this is leading us to a more careful preemployment physical examination, which, starting with women, is influencing also the standards for selecting men.

  New standards of physical examination, new records of first-aid service have to be kept, in order that we may be sure the women are not being harmed by these new and unfamiliar and strenuous tasks. There is a new emphasis on toxic poisoning, because this is often disastrous to the woman of child-bearing age. This will undoubtedly bring many a company to study the health problems of men with a new understanding of their importance to morale, to effective production and to lessened absenteeism among the men. In the States which have sound legislation on workmen’s compensation and occupational diseases employers are already accustomed to methods of mitigating occupational hazards. But in other States, where this type of legislation is less advanced, the employment of women will serve to turn attention to this type of planning.

  The new employer of women looks at the statistics of absenteeism among women, which over the country are concededly higher than among men. He visualizes the women as being out sick a lot of the time or at home taking care of ailing children. But the employer who has considered this problem and has planned a careful pre-employment interview will find that the picture is not as dark as the statistics seem to indicate. To his surprise the women are not out sick a great deal, and they aren’t at home taking care of ailing children.