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

by The New York Times

  AUGUST 3, 1944

  Hitler Assassin A Cripple, Bitter Over War Wounds

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  ROME, Aug. 2—Col. Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who recently was executed for his attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, was seriously wounded on April 8, 1943, by a shell of the First British Armored Division at Nezzouna, Tunisia, it was disclosed today. He lost an eye and an arm. He had gone to Africa from the Stalingrad front, so he had seen two serious defeats and had reason to be embittered against Hitler.

  He was then Chief of Staff of the Tenth Panzer Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. von Broich. Both men were cavalry officers of the old school and had no love for the Nazi regime. When next heard from von Stauffenberg was a colonel on the staff of the German High Command, where he had immediate access to the Fuehrer. Disillusioned, crippled and resentful, he was the ideal choice for the assassin.

  AUGUST 5, 1944

  OUR SPEARHEADS CUT UP GERMANS IN BRITTANY

  Columns 75 Miles From Brest and 38 Miles From St. Nazaire

  DRIVE AT FURIOUS PACE

  Germans Report Withdrawal Between Vire and Caen After Fierce Fighting

  By The Associated Press.

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Aug. 5—United States tank columns, dashing across Brittany to sever the peninsula, raced to within thirty-eight miles of St. Nazaire today, and other armored forces were within seventy-five miles of the great port of Brest, while comrades guarding their flank swept eastward unopposed across the plains in a new drive toward Paris.

  Two columns were approaching the German U-boat base at St. Nazaire, and also the Loire River port of Nantes. One of the columns was thirty-eight miles from St. Nazaire in the vicinity of Derval; another, forty miles from Nantes, was west of Chateaubriant.

  [The Vichy radio, in a broadcast heard Saturday by the Ministry of Information in London, said an American armored spearhead was only eighteen miles from Nantes, according to The Associated Press.] An Associated Press battlefield dispatch said the American advance southeastward had engulfed Fougeres, twenty-three miles southeast of Avranches and twenty-seven miles northeast of Rennes.

  MOVE ON ST. MALO

  Two other American forces were moving on St. Malo port on the northern coast of the Brittany Peninsula, one moving up on each side of the St. Malo estuary. Each column gained six miles yesterday and was only seven miles from the port city.

  Tank spearheads thundered through the ripped-open defenses of Brittany so fast that they were a good twenty-four hours ahead of all official reports, and they were followed by speeding columns of trucks bearing the infantry.

  The Germans, admitting setbacks wholesale, said the Americans had reached a point sixty miles west of Brittany’s capital of Rennes, which fell only yesterday, and were within seventy-five miles of Brest, the second port of France.

  Front line reports said forces driving for St. Nazaire had passed Pipriac and that the columns advancing in the Chateaubriant area had swept beyond Bainde-Bretagne.

  Pontivy and Loudeac were reported to have been passed by the forces rushing for Brest.

  STRIKE OUT TOWARD PARIS

  But the surprising development of the day came when American forces, moving to guard the left flank of this great force pouring down from Normandy, ranged out southeast of Avranches feeling for a German western flank that was not there.

  The Americans apparently had two choices, both possibly disastrous for the Germans: To head directly eastward toward Paris, or to strike northeastward and cut behind the Germans who have been containing the British and Canadian forces along the Orne River.

  AUGUST 5, 1944

  ALLIES IN FLORENCE; FOE WRECKS BRIDGES

  By The Associated Press.

  ROME, Aug. 4—Allied troops hammered through the last German defenses before the great Tuscan art center of Florence today and sent patrols stabbing into the heart of the historic city as far as the Arno River, beyond which the Germans had withdrawn after destroying five of six bridges spanning the wide stream.

  The only bridge spared by the Germans was the historic Ponte Vecchio—“old bridge”—which they blocked effectively by demolishing houses at both ends. The bridge, regarded as a priceless example of Tuscan building, is lined on either side with craftsmen’s shops and is familiar to thousands of tourists from all over the world.

  Incensed at the destruction of the bridges of the city after the Germans had declared it open, Allied headquarters issued an official statement saying:

  “The enemy has taken advantage of the situation, knowing full well that our undisputed air power could not be used to destroy the bridges in Florence behind him (while the Germans still were on the south bank of the Arno) without damage to architectural buildings of the city.

  “He has thus enjoyed unlimited use of bridges over the Arno and has seen fit, when outfought south of the city, to destroy bridges of military value, to deny us use of bridges which up to now he has enjoyed.”

  ACT OF ‘SADISTIC IMAGINATION’

  The statement added that military bridges could be quickly thrown across the Arno inside Florence and that the destruction would not hold up the Allied advance for long or have any bearing on future operations.

  The Allied statement threw but little light on the military situation inside Florence—not saying whether enemy troops had withdrawn entirely from the northern part of the city—but continued at length on German vandalism.

  It called the “wanton destruction” of bridges “just another example of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s order to his troops to carry out demolitions with sadistic imagination.”

  “No doubt those responsible for allowing Rome’s bridges to remain intact have been reprimanded by the Germans and even stronger measures were taken to insure that the bridges in Florence should not fall into Allied hands and so be preserved for posterity,” the statement said.

  After yesterday’s concerted advance by British, New Zealand and South African troops south and southwest of Florence, South African units crashed into the outskirts early today and sent patrols probing to the river bank. There was no indication they encountered resistance within the city.

  German guns were reported flashing, however, from heights behind the city which comprise the first defenses of the enemy’s so-called Gothic Line. Prior to the Eighth Army’s entry into the city, Allied artillery had shelled crossings of the Arno just west of Florence.

  FLORENCE’S HISTORIC BRIDGES

  Historic bridges at Florence that dispatches indicate were destroyed by the Germans included the Ponte alle Grazie or Rubaconte, built in 1237 and modernized in 1874; the Ponte Santa Trinita, erected in 1252 and rebuilt in 1567–70; the Ponte alla Carraia, built 1218–20, destroyed by a flood in 1333, restored in 1337, partly rebuilt in 1559 and widened in 1867.

  The two other spans of the five apparently wrecked were the Ponte in Ferro, built in 1836–37, and Ponte Sospeso, which stand at each end of the town bordering the Arno.

  AUGUST 6, 1944

  PARTISANS CLAIM MUCH OF WARSAW

  By SYDNEY GRUSON

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Aug. 5—Detailed operational reports reaching the Polish Government today said a large part of Warsaw was in the hands of General Bor’s underground forces, but as the Germans threw tanks and planes against the uprising grave concern was expressed in London that it must fail for lack of arms if the Russian assault on the city was delayed many more days.

  Reports from the Russian front indicated that a halt had been made in the frontal attack on Warsaw while Red Army columns were reaching for Warka, thirty-five miles south, in a bypassing maneuver.

  Polish underground forces were reported to have seized the East and Vilna railway stations (1) and Mars-zalkowska Street (2), the chief north-west thoroughfare, and to be attacking the main station. Their capture of the central post office, power station and gas works (3) had previously been announced. They were said to con
trol almost all the western and central stations of the city despite German counter-attacks and bombings.

  Apparently in full control of Warsaw’s southern and central districts, the underground army, General Bor indicated in dispatches to his government, nevertheless had failed to hold the Kierbedz and Poniatowski Bridges, the only arteries across the Vistula River by which the Germans can keep supplies moving to the forces facing the Russians east of the Polish capital.

  German efforts in the Warsaw fighting apparently were being concentrated on keeping control of the bridges and the city’s most important thoroughfare, the Jerusalem Alley, which runs east-west and connects with the Poniatowski Bridge.

  RAF DROPS WEAPONS

  The underground army has been supplied mainly with British arms dropped by the Royal Air Force, but because of the method involved supplies have been necessarily minor compared with the Poles’ needs. These have been augmented by what the Poles saved from their 1939 defeat and by what they have stolen and bought from the Germans. There is no indication that the Russians have given them arms, since they are opposed to the Polish London Government, which is acknowledged by the underground.

  The Poles, it was said here tonight, timed their rising in the expectation of an imminent Russian assault on Warsaw. Bloody consequences for the Poles are foreseen here if the uprising fails.

  AUGUST 6, 1944

  ‘Amphibious Miracle of Our Time’

  Gen. Alexander Vandegrift tells how, in two years since he led the Marines to victory in the Battle of Guadalcanal, we have evolved a landing technique that cannot he stopped.

  JUST two years ago—a scant, incredible two years ago—we embarked on the first American ground offensive of the war. We undertook on a shoestring, so to speak, an amphibious operation against an enemy who, on the record, was the world’s amphibious master of the day. Guadalcanal was a gamble, and no one knew it better than those of us who went in. But the gamble at Guadalcanal has swelled into the sure thing at Normandy and Guam. From our door-die beginning we have developed a great amphibious machine the power of which has amazed the warring world.

  At Guadalcanal we concentrated our total effort on the single objective and still were outnumbered and outgunned by the enemy on land, in the surrounding sea and in the air. We moved in for the fight not with fear but with abundant anxiety. Less than two years later we threw overwhelming forces against both of our enemies almost simultaneously in amphibious attacks on opposite sides of the earth, and we moved in for both fights with utter confidence. There can remain no doubt anywhere, least of all in Germany and Japan, as to who now calls the amphibious tune and wields the weapons of decisive might. Normandy and Saipan have brought the realization home where it hurts most and with graphic effect. Japanese war lords who not long ago were strutting in the glory of their Pacific conquests have been ousted from power. The Fuehrer who assured his armies they would never have to fight on two fronts now faces insurrection of ominous scope among his own disillusioned armed forces.

  Little did the enemy realize on Aug. 7, 1942, that the day of the turning point had come. Even as our men poured ashore to confront the surprised garrisons on Tulagi and Guadalcanal, the Japanese High Command expressed genuine confidence that we could be dislodged. Let us contrast what we threw against them then with what we can throw against them now, and we shall see why.

  The Japanese commanders knew our covering fleet was relatively meager, but they did not know it was so sparse that after the battles off Guadalcanal in November, 1942, Admiral Halsey had only one aircraft carrier (which had been hit), one battleship, one cruiser and some destroyers. The Japanese knew that we lacked sufficient carrier-based and land-based planes to hold a continuous cover over our ground operations, and in the early stages they made vicious use of that advantage. But at Normandy and in the latest Pacific operations our naval and air forces have maintained complete domination over the battle areas and have been seriously challenged at sea only once in twenty months—at Saipan.

  At Saipan, as Secretary Forrestal has pointed out, a great supporting fleet boldly stood guard off the island for more than one month, daring the enemy navy to attempt to interfere. Even though the fleet was 1,200 miles from its nearest base and 3,250 miles from Pearl Harbor, carrier-based aircraft held an ironclad umbrella over the invasion throughout the month of hostilities. Obviously the number of aircraft carriers taking part was large. It has been announced that we have at least one hundred carriers operating in the Pacific. And in November, 1942. Admiral Halsey was defending Guadalcanal with one damaged carrier.

  Our amphibious troops at Guadalcanal were well trained, as well trained as any assault troops of this war. The Marine Corps has traditionally been the land arm of the Navy, and so we had studied the techniques of ship-to-shore attack and had equipped and trained our men for just such a task before this nation went to war. However, the number of men thus trained was not large and while our equipment was the best at that time, it was rudimentary in many ways compared with what we have now.

  Wooden ramp boats and tank lighters were the major means of carrying men and equipment to the beaches. Tanks were few. Heavy equipment came in slowly. There were times, after we moved inland, when we could have used more supplies and ammunition than we had at hand.

  In the past two months we have smitten the Axis with thousands of superbly trained amphibious troops in four big offensives which, in terms of coordinated pressure, were practically concurrent—Normandy, Saipan, New Guinea and Guam. In no instance has a force been put ashore which was not wholly adequate in size for the job. This of course, takes into account the fact that the French invasion was a combined British-Canadian-American strike.

  In the two years since Guadalcanal an amazing variety of special landing craft has been developed to meet the needs of transporting men and material in these massive sea-borne invasions. Tracked landing vehicles now carry waves of assault troops over offshore reef formations on which the Japanese had depended to make long stretches of their island coastlines safe. The garrison on Saipan might well have expected us to avoid the southwestern coast of the island because of the treacherous reefs which fenced it in. But our forces went ashore there and while the securing of the beachhead was far from easy, it was firmly done before the defenders could mass the strength necessary for a major attempt to break our grip.

  Tracked vehicles—amphibious tanks and tractors, armed and unarmed, bearing both men and material—have become increasingly important in our ship-to-shore pushes, especially in the Pacific. Large amphibious craft which can carry men and machines from the embarking point over sea directly to the objective have come into wide use. Landing Craft Infantry and Landing Craft Tanks are two of many types of such vessels. Their shallow draft enables them to push their snouts so close to the beach that their disgorged men can wade and vehicles can roll from ship to shore. When the terrain permits, it is usually desirable to send tanks ashore as early in the landing as possible. From these large craft a surprisingly comfortable number of tanks can be put to work on enemy emplacements in a surprisingly brief period of time.

  Those of us who watched the pre-invasion shelling and bombing of Guadalcanal thought we were seeing a deluxe show of fireworks, but actually we were seeing only a sample of the mighty bombardments to come. The relentless seventeen-day softening-up recently applied to Guam was beyond compare in the books of amphibious attack. We had ships and planes and shells and bombs for the job in such quantities as the Japanese never believed possible a few months ago.

  There are many who seem to think it the duty of a pre-invasion bombardment to knock out all defending personnel, guns and emplacements so completely that the invading troops need only walk in and run up the flag. I will say that never once in the Pacific war to date has a pre-landing bombardment failed to do all that the Marine commanders expected it to do. But we have never yet taken the objective without a ground fight when there were troops there to defend it.

  Bombardments will
take out the large gun positions; but, no matter how long or intense, they will not take out all machine-gun positions and mortars. They cannot. It is the same in a wholly ground operation. You have heard of artillery being lined up hub to hub and fired until the enemy lines seemed pulverized, as at El Alamein, St Lô and numerous times in Russia. Yet when the infantry went forward they were invariably met by machine-gun fire. They found part of their enemy had survived and had come out of their holes, shaken but very much alive, ready to man their guns.

  The amphibious successes of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France may or may not be the whole of seaborne operations necessary to the reduction of the Reich. But of this we can be sure: if or when further amphibious operations take place, the enemy will be as incapable of stemming the flood of Allied power as he was on the beaches of Normandy.

  There can be no doubt that amphibious operations in the Pacific will continue until the day of final Japanese collapse.

  In each succeeding ship-to-shore operation to date we have thrown more physical weight against the enemy’s fortifications than before. There is no reason to believe this will not continue to be the rule.

  If he is unable to stop us now what can he expect to do as our ever-increasing power drives his fleets from the seas, his armies from the land and his planes from the skies? His dilemma is complete: he dares not stand up and fight us toe to toe, but the longer he waits the stronger we become.

  Japan’s war lords expected to win the war in the Pacific by amphibious supremacy; Hitler’s gang believed that Allied troops never could return by sea to the soil of western Europe. Today—two swift years after Guadalcanal—sea-borne Allied forces are striking straight for the heart of Germany and the vitals of Japan. This is the amphibious miracle of our time.