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

by The New York Times

BARI, Italy, Dec. 3 (Delayed)—This city experienced its first air attack of the war today. What was probably the first bomb to fall knocked me flat.

  The last thing that I remembered was walking toward the docks before the sirens sounded. The next thing I knew was my asking a British army lieutenant “Where am I?” He replied: “In a truck en route to the hospital.” This conversation was punctuated by heavy anti-aircraft fire and the bursting of bombs.

  [A German communiqué issued yesterday said that strong formations of German aircraft had attacked Bari on the night of Dec. 3. According to “definitely established figures,” the German communiqué said, four cargo vessels totaling 31,000 tons, among them a large tanker, were sunk. Nine other vessels were hit, the Germans claimed. Two German planes were said to have been lost.]

  The attack lasted for an hour and eyewitnesses told many tales of heroism. One of them concerned members of the Merchant Marine who volunteered to load stacks of Allied 500-pound bombs on trucks so that they could be removed from the danger zone. A British naval commander and a lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve took a volunteer crew aboard an abandoned Italian tug and towed to safety a tanker laden with hundreds of thousands of gallons of high-octane gasoline.

  USE OF GLIDER BOMB LIKELY

  The possibility that the Germans’ radio-directed rocket, or glider, bomb had been employed in the attack on Bari was seen here yesterday in the reports indicating that the city’s defenses had been caught napping by the suddenness of the attack.

  The Germans’ use of the rocket bomb, which is released as a glider directed toward its target by a parent aircraft, was first disclosed by Prime Minister Churchill on Sept. 21. Mr. Churchill declared, however, that the new weapon was being used principally against nautical targets.

  Some circles have believed that the Italian battleship Roma was sunk by some sort of glider bomb, since a modern battleship, properly protected, should not have been sunk so easily as she appears to have been.

  American ships ablaze after a Nazi attack on the Adriatic port of Bari, Italy. First reports estimated, 1000 casualties and five U.S. vessels lost.

  DECEMBER 7, 1943

  BIG THREE CHARTS TRIPLE BLOWS TO HUMBLE REICH

  ATTACK PLANS SET

  Dates Fixed for Land Drives From the East, West and South

  IRAN TO BE FREED

  Allied Leaders Say ‘No Power on Earth’ Can Balk Our Victory

  By C. L. SULZBERGER

  By Cable to The New York Times.

  CAIRO, Egypt, Dec. 6—Final concord on a campaign to destroy the German military power by land, sea and air and to erect an enduring peace in which all nations, both great and small, shall participate, was agreed upon in the momentous Teheran meeting between President Roosevelt, Premier Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill.

  Simultaneously, the three leaders, as a sign of their faith in each other and as proof of the validity of their intentions toward little nations, guaranteed the post-war independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran.

  These Allied agreements were announced to the world today in two joint declarations signed in order by President Roosevelt [the only titular Chief of State among the three], Premier Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill. They were issued in Teheran Dec. 1 after a long final sitting of the leaders and their innermost circles of advisers in the magnificent Soviet Embassy where President Roosevelt lived as a guest.

  3-PRONGED ATTACK PLEDGED

  Their military promises can be summed up accordingly: the three powers will work together throughout the war; their military staffs have concerted plans for the destruction of German forces; these staffs have reached a “complete agreement as to the scope and timing of operations which will be undertaken from the east, west and south.”

  Guarantees satisfactory to the three chiefs now exist that the final victory will rest with the United Nations. “No power on earth can prevent our destroying the German armies by land, their U-boats by sea and their war-plants from the air,” says one of the joint declarations. “Our attacks will be relentless and increasing.”

  SEAL DOOM OF HITLER

  Thus in four days of deliberation in the romantic Iranian capital the “Big Three” laid the second half of the plans for ending the global war and establishing lasting peace for the benefit of all in its ruins. The Asiatic talks in North Africa between Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek already had laid the program for accelerating the defeat of Japan and for building up a new Asia.

  Now European talks of exactly the same length have rounded off the final plans for smashing Hitler which obviously must precede the destruction of Japan in the over-all scheme of the Allied grand strategy planners. Britain and America have clearly coordinated their ultimate schedule for the invasion of Europe from several points from the west and south with a program for new Russian offensives against the Reich.

  It may be assumed that once the fulfillment of these plans comes about and Moscow’s long pleas for a second front are entirely answered that the Soviet Union might conceivably alter its present neutral attitude toward Japan. This certainly was discussed at Teheran but the outcome of these discussions is not known.

  It would seem a fair assumption from a complete survey of both the present wartime and future post-war problems indicated in the latest declarations that the three powers must now have agreed on specific terms within the framework of unconditional surrender on which Germany can and must eventually sue for surrender. In this sense, the Teheran meeting may have proved to hold the same historical significance against Germany as the Quebec conference held against Italy.

  LASTING PEACE FORESEEN

  Concrete guarantees of world peace, prefaced by the flat promise the powers will work together, insure their efficacy. The peace envisioned will be enduring, will eliminate the dangers of war and will be based on a popular desire for good-will. And its mechanism will be the responsibility of the United States, Britain, Russia and all the United Nations.

  Cooperation and active participation by both large and small nations will be encouraged to eliminate tyranny, slavery, oppression and intolerance in a democratic world based on the architectural plan of the Atlantic Charter.

  In conclusion, the friendly conferences summed up:

  “We look with confidence to the day when all peoples of the world may live free lives untouched by tyranny and according to their varying desires and their own consciences.

  “We came here with hope and determination. We leave here friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose.”

  That spirit of friendly peacetime cooperation was revealed in their pledge to Iran, which was based on the broad principles of the Atlantic Charter.

  Iran [the only nation jointly and severally occupied by the “Big Three”] is of vital importance to the present and future welfare of the United States, Britain and Russia. Lying athwart the lifelines of Britain’s eastern empire, Iran also controls many of the most important mid-Asian air bases in which the United States is so interested and blocks any access to the Indian Ocean toward which the Soviet Union might gradually be tending in the traditional seareh for a permanent open seaport.

  Red Army troops already are in control of the northern portions of Iran into which they marched in August, 1941, in consort with Britain, which took over the southern section. America’s Persian Gulf Service Command, with thousands of troops, operates the present supply lines to Russia. Thus all three nations have agreed in the Teheran declaration to recall their troops when the war ends, restoring to Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi that which is his.

  The so-called Iranian problem, though little mentioned in censored press these days, thus is eliminated by the pledge of the United Nations leaders. This is urgently important, first in its obvious elimination of a possible point of friction between themselves and, secondly, as an example of the great powers’ honesty in their promises to respect the territorial claims of small lands and, furthermore, to assist them in recoveri
ng from the scourge of war.

  INVITE ALL TO JOIN PEACE

  Encouraging as such straightforward pledges may be to the conquered peoples of Europe, still greater hope can be injected into their presently heavy hearts by those other promises of freedom and happiness in a “world family of democratic nations” resolved on by the statesmen and their political staffs.

  These forthright announcements should be calculated finally to knock the stuffings out of Hitler’s frantic efforts to assemble his weird collection of satellites, puppets and shadow allies into a flimsy new order, which would fight to the death against the United Nations on Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ warning that otherwise they would be destroyed.

  It is hard to see how the desperate Governments of Finland, Rumania and Bulgaria can instill much fighting spirit into their bewildered armies now in the face of the cocky Allied assumption of their imminent defeat and the deliberate Allied planning for the future, which any European peasant can see will be for his own good.

  The Teheran Conference of the Big Three in 1943. Russia’s Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

  Regarding the post-war future of Europe, nothing specific was said, Iran being the only absolutely concrete subject published in the statements. However, within the general lines of the declaration the obvious entire question of eastern Europe, including Finland, Poland and the Balkans must have been reviewed.

  Both the Polish question and the Balkans were discussed at the previous Moscow conference of Foreign Ministers and one result of those talks, it would seem, was an obvious alteration of the line of Allied propaganda toward Yugoslavia, showing an increasing tendency to support the Partisan movement there.

  POLAND REMAINS QUESTION

  Poland, however, remains a question. Moscow always has been adamant that part of Finland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia rightfully belong to the U.S.S.R. It is this correspondent’s guess that there has been absolutely no alteration of that view, which means ultimate agreement to it by Washington and London, especially in view of what was clearly a Soviet concession in agreeing to the postwar evacuation of northern Iran.

  The Iranian matter was agreed upon during the Foreign Ministers’ conference at Moscow and Premier Stalin stuck by his guns in signing the Teheran declaration. Moscow is clearly sticking by a consistent and steady policy she has had since the earlier days of the war, in which it has been constantly announced that the U.S.S.R. has no territorial ambitions. It was within this framework, one can assume, that Britain and America promised to give China Manchuria after the defeat of Japan, since Russia has never proclaimed an interest in that rich territory since giving over to the Japanese her share of the Chinese Eastern Railway.

  However, the question of Manchuria was not discussed at the Moscow meeting and it may be assumed the first time it could have been brought up between the “Big Three” powers was at Teheran.

  On the assumption that Moscow’s policy remains the same as it has been consistently since the last territorial acquisition before the German attack—and there is every indication this is a safe ground on which to work—one may draw the following conclusions:

  1. That the U.S.S.R has no desires to expand at Turkey’s expense and that on the one hand the Caucasian frontier with Turkish possession of Kars and Ardahan will remain unchanged and on the other hand there is no territorial menace to Turkish possession of the Straits and Dardanelles, despite German propaganda to the contrary.

  2. That Moscow, while not admitting in any sense her policy of seeking gain, will seek expansion to her pre-1939 borders in Eastern Europe. She has always openly stated the need of a small portion of Finland in order to protect Leningrad as well as certain strategic Baltic bases. She also desires a portion of East Poland, roughly according to the Curzon line. From Rumania she desires North Bukovina and Bessarabia and possibly a small strip across the Danube delta controlling the mouth of that river. She may also desire some bases in Bulgaria, although the latter is quite uncertain.

  Moscow continually insists that all territory mentioned above, saving speculation regarding the area south of the Danube, was once and for a long time Russian and the U.S.S.R. has every right to have it back.

  Beyond that in Europe it is evident that Moscow wants closest ties with eastern lands, based on the formula of the imminent Czecho-Russian treaty. But aside from preventing the formation of any “cordon sanitaire” under the guise of an Eastern European Federation led by the Poles and inspired from the west, Russia apparently wishes no other territorial gains.

  This correspondent can only say on the basis of the above statements that these are the impressions of the Anglo-American delegates to the Teheran conferences, and there is every reason to believe they are the most accurate statements of fact available at present.

  DECEMBER 7, 1943

  Only 3 Anglo-U. S. Writers in Teheran During Parley

  By Cable to The New York Times.

  CAIRO, Egypt, Dec. 6—The only three Anglo-American newspaper men in Teheran, Iran, during the tri-power talks there were John Wallis, regular Reuter correspondent in Iran; Edward Angly of The Chicago Sun and Lloyd Stratton of The Associated Press.

  All the correspondents in Cairo were under military orders not to leave the town, although many of them had tips ahead of the time as to where the second phase of the conference would take place and some of them actually had their air transport arranged.

  Mr. Wallis is permanently stationed in Teheran. Two Americans were en route to Moscow, but were waiting for a plane when the talks started. They were ordered back to Cairo to conform with instructions given to the correspondents here, but these instructions were rescinded by President Roosevelt’s son-inlaw, Maj. John Boettigre.

  The only time they glimpsed the principals was once when they were photographed. For the rest the reporters were forced to depend on observers for information, as were those reporters remaining in Cairo.

  DECEMBER 7, 1943

  The 3-Power Declaration

  TEHERAN, Iran, Dec. 1 (UP)—The text of a declaration by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin:

  A DECLARATION OF THE THREE POWERS We, the President of the United States of America, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the Premier of the Soviet Union, have met in these four days past in this the capital of our ally, Teheran, and have shaped and confirmed our common policy.

  We express our determination that our nations shall work together in the war and in the peace that will follow.

  As to the war, our military staffs have joined in our round-table discussions and we have concerted our plans for the destruction of the German forces. We have reached complete agreement as to the scope and timing of operations which will be undertaken from the east, west and south. The common understanding which we have here reached guarantees that victory will be ours.

  And as to the peace, we are sure that our concord will make it an enduring peace. We recognize fully the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the nations to make a peace which will command good will from the overwhelming masses of the peoples of the world and banish the scourge and terror of war for many generations.

  With our diplomatic advisers we have surveyed the problems of the future. We shall seek the cooperation and active participation of all nations, large and small, whose peoples in heart and in mind are dedicated, as are our own peoples, to the elimination of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance. We will welcome them as they may choose to come into the world family of democratic nations.

  No power on earth can prevent our destroying the German armies by land, their U-boats by sea, and their war plants from the air. Our attacks will be relentless and increasing.

  Emerging from these friendly conferences we look with confidence to the day when all the peoples of the world may live free lives untouched by tyranny and according to their varying desires and their own consciences.

  We came h
ere with hope and determination. We leave here friends in fact, in spirit, and in purpose.

  Signed at Teheran, Dec. 1, 1943.

  Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill.

  DECEMBER 9, 1943

  Tito’s Influence Growing

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  CAIRO, Egypt, Dec. 8—Unofficial contact of a political nature has now been established between the Allied authorities and the new temporary government headed by Marshal Tito in Partisan Yugoslavia. It is possible the confused Yugoslav situation may be somewhat crystallized as the result of conversations now taking place.

  Some contact, direct or indirect, presumably will be established for the purpose of the talks between Partisan spokesman and the emigre regime of King Peter II. King Peter’s Government is out of the picture as far as Partisans go. Thus the Allied task in maintaining proper relations is somewhat difficult, for their formal diplomatic exchanges are with King Peter’s Government, although the bulk of material aid to Yugoslav Patriots now goes to Marshal Tito.

  Meanwhile, there is every indication that the most important diplomatic and political crisis since that country was overrun by the Axis is now brewing. King Peter’s Ambassadors to Washington, London, Ankara and Moscow have been summoned here for consultation.

  Dr. Berislav Anjelinovitch, Minister of Posts and Telegraph in the present exiled Government, handed in his resignation to Prime Minister Bozidar Pouritch today. His resignation emphasized that the Government should be enlarged.

  A delegation of Yugoslav soldiers being organized into a Free Army that is slowly forming in the Middle East informed Yugoslav political leaders that they would be happy to fight for the King, but not for Mikhailovitch. All these soldiers were once in the Italian Army, being almost entirely made up of Slovenes from the Trieste region and Istria.