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

by The New York Times

  When you listen to accounts of survivors, when you look into their eyes dimmed with terror and humiliation, you see a second desert zone—in the hearts of people devastated by two years of arbitrary tyranny.

  I know a battalion consisting mainly of men from the Kursk region. Officers and men eagerly awaited news. News came. Eleven learned that their relatives had been hanged or shot, nine learned that their families had been carried off to Germany. Thirty-two learned that their homes had been burned down What force can hold a battalion like this when it is marching westward?

  A German officer, Ziegfried Manzke, a war prisoner, said to me, “To continue this war is senseless.” Yes, war had sense for the Germans when they set out on a grand robber campaign. War then meant bacon for the German soldier, oil for the German officer. Now war has lost its meaning for them. But it is full of meaning for us—we are teaching them to stop making raids on others’ property every quarter of a century. Let their children reflect what a pound of bacon and a ton of oil cost.

  The military successes of the last few weeks are a spur to the Russians. But we are not intoxicated by them. We are aware of Germany’s strength and are waiting for large-scale military action on the part of our Allies. Much can now be saved—swift coordinated blows may save a large part of Europe which otherwise would be converted into a “desert zone.”

  I would advise our friends to listen to the voice of Germans themselves. Take Lieut. Arnold Klassen, who says, “It’s all up now. In the fall British and Americans will invade Germany. Germany was to have gained decisive results in Russia this summer. But nothing came of it. That means the end is disaster when winter comes. Yet my people were so near the realization of their century-old dreams!”

  Let us leave Lieutenant Klassen to sigh over the “century-old dreams” of bandits, but let us realize that within his words is to be found Germany’s mortal fear.

  Chapter 17

  “THREE MEN OF DESTINY”

  October–December 1943

  By late autumn of 1943 it was evident that the Western Allies were at last preparing to open up a major front in Western Europe. Speculation spread in The Times and elsewhere that George Marshall, Army chief of staff, would be posted to Europe to lead the final campaign to destroy Hitler’s Reich. “Soldier without Frills,” The Times called him, a modest, hardworking, sensible commander, but one who had yet to head up a field command.

  The “Big Three” Allied leaders quietly planned two major summits to discuss the future military and political course of the war. While the meetings were being prepared, the campaigns continued, stuck—often quite literally—in the mud and sand of Italy, Ukraine and the Pacific. In the Soviet Union, the Red Army drove on through the harsh winter rains and snow to seize Kiev on November 7. By the end of the year Soviet troops had marched more than a hundred miles closer to the Polish frontier. Conditions in the Mediterranean theater were just as grim. “The front-line soldier I knew,” wrote the famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle in late 1943, “lived for months like an animal,” but one haunted by the “cruel, fierce world of death.” American troops were short of news from home, but anxious when it arrived. With an eye toward issues of morale, The Times published an article on “What to Write to Soldiers Overseas,” which concluded that regular hometown news and a good deal of affection were needed most. For soldiers whose wife or girlfriend wrote to say that she had met someone else, there were informal “‘Dear John’ Clubs” where the jilted men could drown their sorrows.

  Conditions in the Pacific were, if anything, worse. Dogged Japanese resistance on small islands a long way from the mainland dimmed prospects of reaching the Japanese heartland. On November 1 American and New Zealand troops invaded the island of Bougainville. On November 20, some 35,000 Marines and soldiers tried to capture the atoll of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in Operation Galvanic. The battle was fierce and for once American casualties were high compared with Japanese—1,140 Japanese against 4,700 Americans. The battle, one correspondent recorded, was “infinite and indescribable carnage,” with bodies and broken vehicles strewn across the narrow stretches of sand and coral.

  Against this backdrop, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill traveled first to Cairo, where they met with the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek to discuss the war in Asia, then, on November 20, to the Iranian capital of Teheran, where they met Stalin and his military staff. The “Three Men of Destiny,” as The Times called them, without exaggeration. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin discussed the course of the war and its political consequences, which assumed increasing importance as the prospect of victory began to seem more likely. Stalin at last got a commitment from his Anglo-American Allies to launch a major invasion of Western Europe, relieving considerable pressure on the Red Army. Cyrus Sulzberger, reporting a few days after the final communiqué was issued (only two correspondents were allowed at the conference), noted in The Times that “Moscow’s long pleas for a second front are entirely answered.” Churchill had been less enthusiastic than Roosevelt about the prospect of invading Western Europe, but there was nothing he could do to stop the commitment.

  By December The Times could report that the invasion plan in Britain was taking shape. Speculation about Marshall as the top field commander was shown in the end to have been just that. He remained in Washington, viewed as indispensable to the overall American war effort, and Eisenhower was transferred from the Mediterranean to take charge of the invasion, code-named in secret Operation Overlord. Facing him was his old enemy from North Africa, Field Marshal Rommel, who in December was put in charge of organizing the defense of the French coast.

  OCTOBER 3, 1943

  Marshall: Soldier Without Frills

  By SIDNEY SHALETT

  Washington.

  GEN. GEORGE CATLETT MARSHALL is moving toward the climax of his career. As one looks at the man and his record—a record of slow but steady progress—one senses clearly the reasons for his rise to eminence.

  Not long ago occurred an incident which gives a sharp clue to the man’s character and methods. General Marshall was returning from Algiers. He took a look at the partly empty transport plane which was carrying him and a couple of other high-ranking generals and their aides back to the United States, and observed that it was a “crime” for those seats to be empty when there were so many wounded men who could be saved a trip back home on a slow boat.

  In three minutes a young staff officer (the general had no aide de camp) was on his way to an Algerian hospital with orders to pick up some wounded enlisted men who would be able to travel sitting up. He came back with a couple of privates—one with his arm in a sling and the other with his head swathed in bandages. They got in and sat down. Just before the transport took off the general, who still has the powerful shoulders which helped make him an All-Southern football tackle in 1900, hopped into the plane, went over to the soldiers and, putting out his hand, said: “I’m General Marshall. Glad to have you with us.”

  At the next base he heard of an injured second lieutenant who had been awaiting transportation home, so he loaded him into the plane, too. The somewhat awed patients all went to Walter Reed Hospital on their arrival in Washington. Three days later General Marshall, whose mind at the time was full of long-range plans for dislodging the Italians and Germans from Sicily and points north, took time off to call in a staff officer and have him check with the hospital on the condition of the two privates and the shavetail.

  The tall, muscular soldier, who will be 63 years old next Dec. 31, is like that. He can be tough as the skin of a General Sherman tank; he can roll a head for incompetence as quickly and inexorably as the bite of a guillotine, yet he is one of the most considerate men in the Army concerning the welfare of his subordinates. His mind is a ready filing system of a vast amount of technical and personal knowledge, and by consulting this filing system he makes rapid decisions concerning men and matters. Dillydallying—either mental or physical—and General Marshall just don’t mix.

/>   General Marshall also is one of the most untheatrical men in the Army. He has almost a fixation for unornamented language, and he never courts publicity. Men who work closely with him say that he has no phobias against publicity, but that (1) he does not want his work slowed up by the loss of time which would be consumed by posing for pictures, making numerous speeches or granting interviews, and (2) he does not want any monkey wrenches thrown into his delicate job by misconstruction, accidental or otherwise, of what he might say. He is reputed once to have remarked: “No publicity will do me no harm, but some publicity will do me no good.” If he wished, however, he could become a constantly publicized figure, for, in addition to his position, now one of the most important in the world, he has the background, the wit and the striking appearance necessary to capture the public fancy.

  General Marshall’s habits on his frequent inspection trips are another clue to his character. He dislikes guards of honor and formal reviews, and will have nothing to do with either except when absolutely necessary. He likes to drop in unannounced on installations as he wants to see things as they really are. If a division commander, for instance, wants to show him a rifle range, he asks if any men are shooting on it. If the answer is no, he explodes: “Hell, I’ve seen a thousand rifle ranges—what I want to see is the men using it.”

  He has a disconcerting habit of dropping in on mess halls and picking out his own mess hall for inspection so as not to be led into one that has been especially shined up for him. He has a passion for food conservation, and almost inevitably hops behind the counter to check up personally on how much food is coming back uneaten; if anything is wrong, he finds out what and sees that something is done about it. Similarly, if he learns in North Africa, for example, that a jeep motor is knocking because of slowness in delivery of certain parts, he will order an investigation of American camps all over the globe to see if those parts are generally slow in reaching the camps. And when he tells an officer he wants action on something, he doesn’t want to hear from the officer that that thing will be corrected next Tuesday; he wants to hear that it was done yesterday.

  General Marshall was born at Union-town, Pa., where his father, a Kentuckian, was a coal and coke operator. The young Marshall wanted to be a soldier as far back as he can remember, although he does not know just what influenced him. His father approved of his ambition, but, being a Southern Democrat in a period when the Civil War was still a strong issue, couldn’t get the local Congressman to send young George to West Point. So he went instead to the Virginia Military Institute, where, aside from his football prowess, he was First Captain of the Corps of Cadets. He distinguished himself during his freshman year by stoically keeping his mouth shut after a sophomore hazer ran a bayonet into his body and almost killed him. This same reticence still prevails, for none of the men who work with him (unless it be his most intimate colleagues, who won’t tell) ever heard him express himself on whether he would prefer to get out from behind his desk and into the field of action.

  He was graduated in the class of 1901 and became a second lieutenant of infantry in the United States Army in February, 1902. He served with great distinction in numerous posts in the first World War, including the important job of Chief of Operations for the First American Army.

  Something of his ability for organization and handling great bodies of men was shown in that post; he was responsible for the transfer of several hundred thousand men and their equipment from St. Mihiel to the Argonne in less than two weeks. He directed their movements by night and handled them so adroitly that the Germans were completely surprised by the presence of this large force when the Argonne offensive began.

  General George C. Marshall in the 1940s.

  He was extremely close to General Pershing, whom be served as aide de camp for a number of years. General Pershing, still one of General Marshall’s closest friends, recommended him in France for promotion to a brigadier generalship, but Marshall never rose higher during the war than his temporary rank of colonel, and, indeed, it took him nearly thirty-two years of Army life to achieve the permanent rank of colonel. In September, 1939, however, by which time he had become a brigadier general, President Roosevelt jumped him over the heads of thirty-one senior generals to become Chief of Staff. Five of the preceding fourteen Chiefs of Staff had been non-West Pointers, but General Marshall was the first V.M.I. graduate to fill the post.

  General Marshall stands 6 feet and weighs 180 pounds.

  SOLDIER WITHOUT FRILLS

  His rather stern face has strong lines, more muscular than creased. His eyes are a pronounced blue. One of his great personality talents, particularly during the prewar years when Congressmen still were backward about voting large appropriations for the Army, is his ability to get along well with all kinds of men. He impressed Congressmen by his serious but courteous manner, by his willingness to give them what information they wanted; by the way he could pour out a flood of facts and figures in response to whatever questions they may have sprung upon him, and by the fact that he has the unmistakable air of a man who is telling the truth. The respect which General Marshall won from Congress has had a great deal to do with the rapid manner in which the peacetime Army of 174,000 troops which he took over in 1939 grew to its present status of nearly 8,000,000.

  General Marshall is not the kind of man who can delegate all his responsibilities to his staff. However, he has sense enough to know he cannot personally handle thousands of details, so he has evolved a two-point system for meeting the situation: First, he selects as staff officers men who know his methods and in whom he has complete confidence, and, second, he has developed a way of having these men give him thumbnail outlines of current problems so he can grasp a situation without too much waste of time.

  When an aide reports to General Marshall on a matter the general listens, then says, “Do it,” or, “Don’t do it.” He makes his decisions with lightning quickness and rarely explains why, and he expects them to be carried out immediately.

  He has an incredible knowledge of the personal qualities of hundreds of generals, and his selections have been largely good. It is a tribute to his character that he has placed in high positions a number of men whom he does not care for personally but whom he knows to be good officers.

  General Marshall is scrupulous about not granting favors in behalf of service men or officers requested of him by acquaintances or even close friends. He gets hundreds of letters asking such favors, but he replies, in effect, that “it would not be fair to the hundreds of people I have to turn down every day for me to grant this favor to you.”

  The general has such abhorrence of any frills or excess verbiage in writing that it is not easy for any aide even to write a thank-you note for him. If anyone sends him a letter draft beginning, “Permit me to thank you,” the general will scratch it out and substitute, “I thank you.”

  Almost everything that goes in to him for his signature comes back completely blue-penciled.

  He insists on writing at least the bulk of his speeches and reports himself—and his recent 30,000-word biennial report to the Secretary of War was no exception. He once was so impressed by the clear, simple manner in which Maj. Gen. Terry Allen wrote an order during the Tunisian campaign that he sent a copy to President Roosevelt.

  General Marshall has always worked very closely with Secretary Stimson. Their traits of integrity and devotion to duty undoubtedly have brought them near together. The general has also spent a good many of his luncheon and afternoon hours with President Roosevelt. There seems to have evolved a smoothly working relationship between the White House and the general, and some observers report that the White House has rarely suggested anything that is counter to War Department policy.

  General Marshall has the happy faculty of being able to relax when he is away from his job. In Washington he has enjoyed long walks or canoeing on the Potomac with Mrs. Marshall. He also likes horseback riding and, on the rare occasions when he could get to his own home at Leesburg, V
a. he has done hard physical work in the garden. He is an inveterate reader, not restricting his reading to military subjects. He can relax and read on his long plane trips. He admires the writings of Benjamin Franklin. He enjoys Sherlock Holmes, but not the ordinary whodunit, and he likes to reread books he has enjoyed. One work he recently reread was “The Three Musketeers.”

  There are two other facts affording insight into the general’s character. One is that, while he is the holder of enough United States and foreign military decorations to fill a hat, he does not wear many. Among those always on his blouse, however, are the yellow pre-Pearl Harbor ribbon which every soldier who was in the Army before Dec. 7, 1941, is entitled to wear, and the Victory Ribbon, awarded to everyone who participated in the last war.

  The other fact is that he employs no elaborate map system. He has a big globe and a few relief maps of the theatres where American armies are currently in action, but nowhere on any of them is stuck a flag, a symbol or so much as a colored pin.

  The general doesn’t need flags and colored pins. He carries that information in his head and can tell you, right down to the last division, just what commander is leading what division behind what hill.

  OCTOBER 3, 1943

  What to Write the Soldier Overseas

  By MILTON BRACKER

  By Wireless from Allied Headquarters, North Africa.

  Do’s and don’ts for those who want to give the news from home and keep up morale at the front.

  The dourest dogfaces in Africa these days are strictly non-dues-paying members of the “Dear John” club. That the depth of their despair is matched by members of other chapters throughout Uncle Sam’s Army is entirely probable; but that does not matter. In this theatre their melancholy is supreme.