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

by The New York Times

Although the meeting took place in Africa, it is unwise to believe that the Mediterranean is the only war theatre that will figure largely in the war news in the next six months. Every front was reviewed and discussed in the conferences and plans were made for new operations, and above all for maintenance of the precious initiative.

  JANUARY 31, 1943

  Hitler and Goering Warn Europe Faces ‘Red Peril’

  LONDON, Jan. 30—Adolf Hitler failed to appear today at a gloomy party celebrating the tenth anniversary of his accession to power, and British bombs twice upset the broadcast explanations of Reich Marshal Hermann Goering and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as to why the German Armies were meeting reverses in Russia.

  Herr Hitler was reported off somewhere “with his soldiers.” His proclamation, read by Dr. Goebbels, warned the German people that they faced enslavement to bolshevism unless they fought on to the end.

  Marshal Goering, whose speech suffered an hour of confused delay, talked for ninety minutes on the perfidy of the Russians, of their long war preparations, “camouflaged” by their inept 1939–40 Winter war against Finland, and of Stalingrad, which he distorted into a token of ultimate German victory.

  [A British broadcast heard in New York by the Columbia Broadcasting System said Marshal Goering was interrupted several times by a ghost voice heckling him on the same wavelength, saying: “You surely don’t believe that.”]

  Dr. Goebbels read the Hitler proclamation several hours after the Goering speech, and introduced it with a talk of his own in which he said, “capitulation has never existed in our vocabulary and it never will. If they think we have no reserves left, they will soon see them.”

  Marshal Goering sought to explain why Germany attacked Russia, and in the opinion of observers his speech was contradictory in this respect.

  “It required all the hardships of last Winter to realize that Russia’s war against Finland [1939–40] was perhaps the cleverest, greatest camouflage in world history,” he said. “We had seen a small but gallant nation fight heroically for many months against this vast empire and we thought, ‘What danger can possibly come from that empire in the East?’”

  Later, after making this reference to the “camouflaged” Russian war against Finland before Germany attacked Russia the following year, he said:

  “While the Russians had few armies fighting Finland with obsolete arms, they spent the last decade and a half building up the most powerful armaments which ever had been made by any nation.”

  Still later he said, “The strength of the Russians was known, but the Fuehrer’s intuition warned him we must attack all the same.”

  He recounted the hardships encountered in the Russian campaign a year ago—when “the Fuehrer, with his display of toughness, held the whole German front himself.”

  He kept emphasizing Russia’s strength and the need of German unity to combat it.

  “Russia hardly had pencils for the people in general,” he said. “The whole industry worked with a single aim and Russia placed emphasis only on the four branches of her arms—namely, tanks, antitank guns, airplanes and anti-aircraft defense.

  A still image from a film captured from the Nazi government showing Hermann Goering (center) and Adolf Hitler with advisers in 1943.

  “It is not easy to fight Russia. Our enemy is hard, his leadership barbaric, and disobedience means death.”

  He kept stressing, too, what he said was the danger to all Europe of a Russian victory. This was seen as an appeal to Axis allies to stand firm and also an attempt to recruit neutral States against Russia. Marshal Goering also said: “This is a fight of philosophies and races. Though some may say it is imagination, we believe in it: Our Nordic, Germanic race is the bearer of the highest culture and the highest values, and the German Reich is the first representative of the Nordic-Germanic conception.”

  JANUARY 31, 1943

  OFFENSIVE STRATEGY LAID DOWN AT CASABLANCA

  By HANSON W. BALDWIN

  The grand strategy of the United Nations for the year 1943 was undoubtedly beaten out on the anvil of discussion during the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting at Casablanca. Just as the June meeting of the two leaders in Washington and the subsequent visits of General George C. Marshall and other high-ranking American Army officers to London in July preceded the launching of the African offensive, so the meeting in Casablanca heralds additional offensive operations on the part of the United Nations.

  But more than that, it produced a plan, perhaps a plan limited in scope and time and one still to be modified and implemented, but a plan.

  It could truthfully be said before the Casablanca meeting that the United Nations had no strategic plan in the sense of a program of operations agreed to and accepted by all and intended to chart our future movements. Our strategy in the past has been painfully and obviously opportunistic. It was a hand-to-mouth strategy; events were shaping it; we were not masters of our fate.

  PLANS LONG IN THE MAKING

  This is not to say that there were not any war plans. Obviously, plans had been worked out in detail long before the war covering nearly all possible contingencies; equally obviously, these plans have been revised, brought up to date, expanded and modified since we entered the war. There is no question that the planners of the Army, the Navy and the Combined Chiefs of Staff had considered and worked out in detail every possible plan from a landing on the coast of Norway to an attack upon Japan from the air.

  It is also probable that some tentative agreement had been reached on the highest echelons between our own military representatives and those of Britain as to which of these plans should be adopted. This was not necessarily true, however, for it is rare to find perfect agreement among the representatives of different powers in a coalition war.

  But whether there was agreement on the military level or not, such agreement meant nothing unless implemented by the political heads of at least the great Anglo-American powers. And it is al-, most certain that there was not final agreement to move into North Africa on the parts of these political heads until last July, although plans for such an expedition—indeed, for any one of many different expeditions—had been made at least in general outline much earlier. The same situation has existed in recent months. The Casablanca meeting shows more graphically than ever that Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt are running this war, in so far as the Anglo-Saxon powers are concerned, with Stalin very clearly the dominant figure in Russia and with Chiang Kaishek important in China. It was necessary to have a meeting of the Churchill and Roosevelt minds—and if possible of the Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek minds—before one of any number of different plans could be decided upon.

  Stalin and Chiang were not in Casablanca in person and, so far as is known, were not even represented. This was not because of the lack of an invitation. The Russians were almost certainly invited to come. The Chinese, because the discussion primarily concerned the European phase of the war, may not have been but it is probable that they were.

  That Stalin could not in person accept the invitation is understandable. He is truly Commander in Chief; from day to day the tactical and strategical moves of the Russian Army are directed by him, and the conference came at a time when that army was in the midst of winning its greatest victory. And in a real sense no one can represent Stalin—or Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

  LIAISON EXISTS

  Their absence, though disappointing because a true global strategy could not well be completely evolved without them, is not as serious as some critics would make it appear. For, despite the lack of a Supreme War Council of all the United Nations powers, the mechanism for liaison among Russia, China and the United States exists in Washington in the form of diplomatic representatives, military missions, etc. And the representatives of Russia and other United Nations powers either have offices in the same building with the Combined Chiefs of Staff or have ready access to that committee or some of its subordinate groups. These facts, coupled with the joint letter sent t
o Mr. Stalin by the President and Mr. Churchill, make it clear that Russia and China were rather fully informed of the deliberations and results of the Casablanca conference.

  Moreover, that conference had really only one major task—to map the course of action the United States and the British Empire should follow in the months of 1943. Russia’s course is quite clear; so is China’s. Both are engaged in a bitter struggle to rid their own soil of invaders.

  THE CHOICE OF ACTION

  There has been a certain choice open to Britain and the United States. Should we concentrate our efforts upon a major assault upon Germany through the air? Should we strike northward from Africa across the Mediterranean? Should we invade the coast of Western France or that of Norway? What should we do in the Pacific and in Asia and against the submarine?

  The rains in Tunisia end shortly, and with their end will undoubtedly come an intensive effort to root out the Axis from their last foothold in Africa. What should we do then?

  There were many plans, but it is almost certain that no one, or several, of the plans had been implemented until the Casablanca conference. Until the President and Mr. Churchill met, we had no defined strategical program. Today, we have a program. What it is, future events will soon show. For the present only speculation is possible.

  The principal issue at the Casablanca meeting involved a decision as to what sector should be chosen as the first point of the attack on Hitler’s European fortress. The Churchillian conception of strategy always has centered about the Mediterranean; the British Prime Minister and many other Englishmen who remember the bloody business of Dunkirk and Dieppe have apparently favored a blow toward the outer segments of the enemy’s position—not toward the well-defended heart. Others, including some American opinion, have envisaged the coast of France or Norway as the best point of attack; some have favored multiple attacks, with that one exploited to the full which promised—after the actual landings were made—the greatest hope of success.

  Prime Minister Churchill is said to have repeated after the Casablanca conference the remark he made after the North African landings, that he was the President’s “ardent lieutenant.” Yet Mr. Churchill’s influence is written large on present strategy, and whether or not he is the dominant partner in the Churchill-Roosevelt combination, his influence will continue to be of major importance in shaping things to come.

  REACHING THE DECISION

  If after cleaning up North Africa, we attack northward across the Mediterranean—toward the Balkans, or Italy—the program probably will have been largely Churchillian in concept and support. If we attack the western coast of France or Norway, it might be said to be Rooseveltian. Actually there is no such sharp cleavage in strategical opinion as these oversimplifications seem to imply, but the main decision that had to be made at Casablanca, and one that has been made, was the decision as to where Germany should be attacked.

  All other decisions, though important, were unquestionably subordinate to this. The question of command in North Africa and in the European theatre (reports still persist that General Marshall, American Chief of Staff, is to assume command of the whole European theatre) was undoubtedly decided. An attempt was made, with only minor success, to reconcile French differences. Means, methods and organization for meeting the submarine menace were probably discussed. The role of China and the next step in the Pacific were doubtless on the agenda.

  The results were legion, and we shall see their effects upon all phases of the war in the months to come. For it is only by a face-to-face meeting such as that at Casablanca that the two men primarily responsible for molding the course of the future can turn the military plans of their subordinates into decisions—decisions which will soon become strategical realities.

  1938 to 1942

  German soldiers at the Austrian border after the Anschluss, the occupation and annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, on March 12 1938.

  Adolf Hitler at a victory parade in Warsaw after the German invasion of Poland, October 1939.

  The march in remembrance of 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Munich, Germany, November 9, 1938. Top Nazi Party members include, from left, Friedrich Weber, Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler and Ulrich Graf, The ceremony was a precursor to Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks on Jews, which began that night.

  Jewish residents of Warsaw, Poland, lining up for water near a sign stating “Infected Area” in January, 1940. The occupying German army used these signs as one of their steps to establishing the Warsaw Ghetto.

  Adolf Hitler delivers an address at the Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art), Munich, Berlin, 1939

  Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto in Kutno, Poland, which was established shortly after the German invasion. The majority of its inhabitants were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp in early 1942.

  Rotterdam, the Netherlands, after heavy German bombardments, which killed 850 people, during the Nazi blitzkrieg (lightning war) across the Low Countries, 1940.

  Belgian citizens erected makeshift roadblocks in an effort to slow the progress of German troops during the Nazi invasion, May 1940.

  Belgian soldiers captured by German troops after the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries, 1940.

  German troops passing though Belgium on their way to France, May 1940.

  Ruins of a French city, 1940.

  German soldiers during the invasion of France in Yonne, 1940.

  Vehicles near Dunkirk after the British retreat, June 1940.

  General Field Marshal von Bock (center) and German soldiers in Place de la Concorde, 1940.

  Place de le Concorde during the announcement of the French government’s willingness for armistice, 1940.

  German forces advance on Paris, 1940.

  English soldiers taken prisoner by the German army at Dunkirk, June, 1940.

  A group of U.S. B-17 Flying Fortress bombers practicing above England, ca 1942.

  Poster with a quote from newly elected British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s first speech to the House of Commons, May 1940.

  A London street during the Battle of Britain.

  A nurse with young evacuees from Plymouth in the garden of the Chaim Weizmann Home at Tapley Park, North Devon, England.

  Auxiliary Territorial Service women recovering shells from the mud flats at the Royal Artillery Experimental Unit, Shoeburyness, Essex, 1942.

  Rubble in London after the Blitz in the winter of 1940-1941.

  German soldiers attack a bunker on the Eastern Front in Russia, 1941, during Operation Barbarossa.

  London fireboats battle flames on the Thames after a German air raid during the Battle of Britain, September 1940.

  The Hungarian army guarding the Danube, March 1941.

  SA (or Sturmabteilungen) officers at a Christmas party given by Adolf Hitler at the Lowenbraukeller, Munich, Germany, December 18, 1941.

  German soldiers during the battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), July 1942.

  General Sikorski of Poland, pointing to the map, with his staff in Britain, November 1942.

  A military airfield near Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941.

  U.S. Marines in basic training, Parris Island, South Carolina, 1941.

  World War II poster.

  American propaganda poster by Office for Emergency Management, War Production Board, 1942.

  Crew of a Japanese aircraft-carrier send off a plane to bomb Pearl Harbor, December, 1941.

  The American battleship USS West Virginia was severely damaged by aerial torpedoes in the Pearl Harbor attack.

  President Roosevelt with cavalry officers on a tour of an Army Camp in 1942.

  An M-4 tank line, Fort Knox, Kentucky, 1942.

  Soldiers training in M-3 tanks, Fort Knox, Kentucky, 1942.

  American propaganda poster put out by the Office of Defense Transportation, 1943.

  Women assembling bomber at the Douglas Aircraft Company factory, Long Beach, California, 1942.

  US troops land
ing during the Aleutian Islands Campaign, early 1940s.

  Chinese soldiers in combat training at a military academy near the Yellow River, Tungkwan, China, 1941.

  Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator, 1940.

  Troops aboard ship arriving in North Africa, 1942.

  American soldiers check for breaks in field telephone wires after a battle against Axis forces in the El Guettar Valley, Tunisia.

  Chapter 14

  “WAR ON ALL FRONTS”

  February–May 1943

  On February 7 The Times carried an editorial titled “War on All Fronts.” It was a play on words. Alongside the “gratifying victories” in Russia and the South Pacific, there were areas still in crisis where arguments went on between allies about the distribution of American resources and reinforcements. The war for resources, continued The Times, could not be solved overnight but required hard thinking about priorities. Moreover, the resources themselves were vulnerable in transit.