The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 150
CABINET POSTPONES MEETING
Leftist newspapers this morning were very critical of General de Gaulle’s refusal to receive the delegation, and rumors spread of possible resignations among his Ministers. These rumors increased when it was learned that the regular Cabinet meeting scheduled for today would be postponed “to enable General de Gaulle to prepare his broadcast address.”
It was recalled that the President of the Provisional Government had said on several occasions that he was prepared to go should his task be deliberately complicated.
Various Leftist groups met during the day. The Central Council of French Renaissance, consisting of members of the National Resistance Council and of the departmental liberation committees, passed a resolution condemning the Government’s election plan as “not conforming with true proportional representation.”
The National Committee of the General Labor Confederation protested against what it described as General de Gaulle’s “authoritarian” refusal to receive the delegation and recalled the extent of the confederation’s participation in the resistance movement.
After Gen. Charles de Gaulle had seen Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist party, for three-quarters of an hour this evening the political storm that raged all day seemed ended. M. Blum was pledged to secrecy regarding the nature of the conversation, but it is understood that his part was that of a peacemaker.
SURPRISES HELD POSSIBLE
General de Gaulle also received Dr. Pierre Maze, secretary general of the Radical party. He received no Communist.
With the national elections scarcely more than six weeks off, more storms of this nature may be expected and surprises are always possible.
Late tonight representatives of the five groups that had asked General de Gaulle to receive a deputation—the League of the Rights of Man, the Radical party, the Communist party, the Socialist party and the General Labor Confederation—met again and decided to send to the President of Provisional Government a memorandum in which they would outline criticism of his election plan, which he declined to discuss in conference with them.
The seventy-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the Third Republic was marked by a parade of citizens organized by the Leftist parties. The paraders marched round a monument in the Place de la Republique, the base of which was heaped with flowers.
SEPTEMBER 9, 1945
REMAKING OF GERMANY IS PROVING SLOW WORK
By GLADWIN HILL
By Wireless to The New York Times
BERLIN, Sept. 8—While the eyes of the world have been turned during the past month on the war’s finale in the East, the great practical experiment in international collaboration growing out of the war, the four-power occupation of Germany has been making laborious but tangible progress. The most significant progress has been made not with the Germans but among the Allies themselves in feeling out a technique of international management. Each day has brought forth new hitches and in advertent frictions in the joint effort, but each day also has brought broadening tolerance and patience to a remarkable degree.
The approaching winter, with its problems of food, fuel and shelter, is the prime concern at present of the occupation authorities and of all Germany. General Eisenhower has announced flatly that it will be “inescapable” to import food from the United States to feed the Germans, since our policy of just retribution to the Germans does not extend to killing them off by starvation or by the gunfire which unquestionably would be necessary if widespread starvation set in. With Germany’s main coal fields producing only 15 per cent of normal and most of that earmarked for the Army and public utilities, the fuel problem is not so easily solved and large numbers of Germans are going to suffer from exposure this winter.
PROGRESS REPORT
In less urgent fields of rehabilitation Germany has made marked progress in the last few weeks. Eight thousand miles of railroad now are operating in the British zone and around 6,500 in the American zone. The latter is about 78 per cent of the normal trackage. Traffic amounts to 15 per cent of pre-war. The Rhine, one of Germany’s most important transport arteries, is scheduled to he cleared northward from the Ruhr to the coast this month and also upstream for an indefinite distance.
The Military Government reports that German civil administration in the American zone is about one-third recreated. Democratic elections of certain officials at the city and county level are planned for this winter.
Bucket brigades of mostly women working to clear rubble in Berlin, September 1945.
In Berlin, where the Russians reopened the schools before we arrived, 225,000 pupils—out of a 3,000,000 population—now are attending classes, 70,000 of them in the American sector.
In the rest of the American zone revival of education is being pursued more slowly on a local basis. Half of the 5,000,000 textbooks, which will be needed when the schools are reopened generally, have been printed.
Americans licensed the first private book publisher, a Heidelberg anti-Nazi who is going to print pocket classics, including Emerson and Poe. One hundred and fifty thousand copies of a new American literary review in Germany are being distributed in the American and British zones.
A number of American movies of the “Young Tom Edison” vintage with German dialogue are now being shown in the American zone.
Displaced persons, initially the Allies’ greatest problem, have been reduced by repatriations from 6,000,000 to a “hard core” of 1,748,000. About half those remaining are Poles. Other main groups are Russians, Italians and Hungarians. Most of them are settled in orderly camps managed by UNRRA.
OUSTED NAZIS
Denazification is being pursued. Seventy-four Mayors in the Munich area were ousted recently along with 4,300 city employees, and Bavaria’s purge total was due to reach around 100,000 by the end of August. In Franconia 5,363 Nazis have been ousted. In Wiesbaden thirty-eight members of the police department and twenty-six banking and insurance officials were dismissed. The Bremen Burgomeister was fired for disobeying the Military Government.
The Allies’ major punitive effort, the international war criminal trials at Nuremberg of Goering and other members of the Hitler gang and the military leaders who for the first time in history will be called to account for promoting a war, has been put off to mid-October for the stated reason of the difficulty of arranging the court facilities. British trials of the Belsen concentration camp officials are scheduled to start in a few days at Luneberg.
The Allied Control Council, composed of General Eisenhower, Marshal Montgomery, Marshal Zhukoff, General Koenig and their assistants, which meets every ten days, has held its fourth meeting. While the sessions have been milestones in international harmony, they have not yet yielded much in tangible legislation because the council is just emerging from the organizational stage.
JOB FOR THE COUNCIL
The council’s primary task is establishment of central German administrations of finance, transport, communications, industry and foreign trade as authorized in the Potsdam agreement. This will be a major step toward restoring Germany to a workable basis of self-support. After that is likely to come the matter of establishing a centralized administration in food and agriculture which was not specified in the Potsdam agreement but which American officials believe was not precluded and is desirable.
More and more American officials are coming to the view that we have been spending too much time juggling theories when we were confronted by conditions, and that we could use a little more Russian decisiveness. This is valuable because even within American councils there is a lot of bewilderment and disagreement about the practical application of broad directives. Even hard-peace exponents are realizing that many principles originally laid down on paper are in some applications merely unworkable rather than hard—that, to take a simple example, regardless of your desire to decentralize, you cannot run the railroads in a big country on a county basis, and that in carrying too far our basic policy of recreating Germany from the bottom up by local units w
e sometimes are hamstringing ourselves as much as the Germans.
THEORY VS. PRACTICE
When the Russians drew attention by installing twelve German subordinate officials in their zonal administrative sections while Americans still were working at local and county levels, a number of American officers opined that we might better be doing the same thing. The Russians are working on the principle that outward forms don’t mean so much when you have police power. Thus while the Americans were working out the fine points of a long-range program to provide Germans with non-Nazi movies, the Russians blandly authorized German movie houses to reopen, with the implicit warning for every German exhibitor that if he peddled any nazism he might turn up missing.
What it boils down to is that an authoritarian Government of the Russian sort is more suited to a lot of immediate problems of an occupation than a democratic regime, and in coping with immediate problems of a chaotic Germany Americans have been learning something from the Russians.
SEPTEMBER 12, 1945
CHINA REDS OFFER DIVISION OF POWER
But Firmness of Both Sides at Chungking Parley Causes Hope Of Accord to Wane
By TILLMAN DURDIN
By Wireless to The New York Times.
CHUNGKING, China, Sept. 11—Talks for the settlement of Communist-Kuomintang differences are continuing here between Central Government representatives and the Communist leaders, Mao Tze-Tung, Gen. Chou En-lai and Wang Jo-fei.
Progress is reported to have been limited and there is less optimism over the outcome of the discussions although the spokesmen of both sides still maintain they are hopeful of agreement.
The Communists are said to be still holding out for extensive reforms in the Central Government and the formation of a coalition government of all parties before the Communists yield any degree of control over their armies.
The Communists are reported to be prepared to concede Kuomintang domination of the Yangtze valley but want predominance in the governments of the provinces in which their influence is greatest, such as Shantung, Hopei, Shanghai, Chahar and Shensi. The Central Government representatives are said to object to the Communists’ retaining any special area of influence as well as separate military forces on the grounds that this would not create real national unity.
The Communists fear eventual liquidation if their military and political strength is too widely dispersed.
CHINESE MARCH INTO HANKOW
CHUNGKING, Sept. 11 (AP)—The Chinese High Command announced today that troops had entered Hankow on the Yangtze; Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi Province; Kaifeng, capital of Hunan; Hingho, on the CharharSui-yuan border, and Suikai on the Luichow peninsula in South China.
Other forces assigned to occupation of northern Indo-China have entered Hanoi, an official announcement said.
An OWI correspondent reported that Hankow was economically dead after repeated air raids and Japanese looting. Only in the former French concession was business being transacted, he said.
Chinese who have flocked into the ruined city since the surrender were reported to have mobbed Japanese trucks that were making off with the last remaining supplies of soap, sugar, salt and other commodities.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1945
ARABS PUBLISH DEMANDS
Want Sales of Land To Jews in Palestine Barred
By Wireless to The New York Times.
CAIRO, Egypt, Sept. 9—Demands by the economic commission of the Arab League, including the prohibition of further sales of Arab lands to Palestine Jews, were disclosed here today, with proposed legislation, to take immediate effect, against further alleged illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine and a request for tariff protection of Arab products.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1945
INDIAN PARTY WARNS THE UNITED NATIONS
POONA, India, Sept 15 (AP)—The Indian Congress party working committee informed the United Nations today that the people of India would not be bound by any international commitments made by India’s “present unrepresentative and irresponsible Government.”
The committee adopted a resolution, which said: “It appears to be the policy of the British Government to obstruct and delay formation of a people’s national government of India.”
Conceding that “it may take some time” for such a national government to function, the resolution said that in the intervening period “the present unrepresentative and irresponsible Government may enter into various kinds of commitments on behalf of the Indian people, which may create shackles preventing growth and development.”
SEPTEMBER 16, 1945
IS HITLER DEAD OR ALIVE?
Nobody Knows for Sure, and the Basis For a Disturbing Legend Has Been Laid
By HARRY COLLINS
By Wireless to The New York Times.
LONDON, Sept. 15—The sigh of relief that echoed around the world with the report that the charred body of Adolf Hitler had been found by the Russians in the Berlin Chancellery may have been breathed too soon. The name of the man who hypnotized and blighted Europe for a decade is again in the headlines.
Is Hitler alive? The welter of speculation grows with each new “clue” and “disclosure.” The answer is simple—his conquerors do not know.
The Russians have never accepted as proved that the body they found in the Chancellery grounds was Hitler’s. The Chancellery is in the Russian-controlled section of Berlin, and with great thoroughness the Soviet authorities have pursued their investigation independently. Although the result of the Russian sleuthing is secret, it would seem the mystery is no nearer solution.
BRITISH VIEW
British Army authorities have declared that the latest rumor that Hitler was seen in Hamburg is “completely unfounded.” They also deny that British security police are searching for him. Yet it is known that British intelligence is far from convinced that Hitler is dead.
A Foreign Office spokesman pointed out that the omission of Hitler’s name from the war criminals’ list did not indicate that the British Government felt certain he was beyond earthly justice.
If Hitler could be brought to trial and dispassionately judged for his crime against humanity, there would be no Hitler legend to inspire the hard core of fanatical youth whose sole complaint against the Nazi regime is that it failed to win the world for Germany.
For years to come there will be Germans ready to obey to the death the “Fueher’s” commands. Any bogus message purporting to come from their leader, issued from an underground cell, could be one technique for stirring up trouble. Already Nazi underground radio broadcasts picked up in Sweden have said that Hitler is alive and in Germany. “Hitler will return” is the constant theme of these broadcasts.
It is not overstating matters to say that one of the greatest single factors in the regeneration of German youth is the solution of the Hitler mystery.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1945
RUSSIANS FIRE B-29 BY ‘ERROR’ IN KOREA
By The United Press.
TOKYO, Sept. 16—Four Russian fighter planes shot down an American B-29 which was on a mercy mission over Korea on Aug. 29, it was disclosed today. The incident brought a “strong and vigorous” protest from Gen. Douglas MacArthur to the Soviet High Command.
Red Army officials promptly replied, regretting the “mistake.”
None of the thirteen Americans aboard the Superfortress was injured, although six bailed out into the sea after a burst from the Russian guns had set afire one of the bomber’s four engines. One airman reported that he was strafed by a Russian plane after he had hit the sea.
The incident occurred at 2:30 P.M. off the west coast of Korea. The B-29, loaded with food and medical supplies to be dropped at an Allied war prisoner camp in Konan, just inside Soviet-occupied Korea, was “boxed in” by four Yak fighter planes over the near-by Hammung airfield.
The Soviet planes indicated by “buzzing” the field and lowering their landing gear that the B-29 was to land there at once. Lieut. Joseph Queen of Ashland, Ky., refused to land the B-29 bec
ause the field was too small, and headed out to sea, intending to return to his Saipan base “until things got straightened out with the Russians.”
“About ten miles off the west coast of Korea the Yaks started making passes,” Lieutenant Queen told a United Press correspondent. “First they fired across our bow.
“Our guns were loaded and ready to talk, but I told the crew to hold fire.
“Then the Yaks made another pass and hit the No. 1 engine. It burst into flames and a few minutes later I gave the order to bail out. Six of the men jumped, but I got the fire under control and told the rest of the men to stay in the plane for a crash landing.”
Lieutenant Queen made a crash landing on the Hammung field. He and the crew removed all instruments and spent the night on the field with the Russians.
“The Russians told us they saw he American markings, but weren’t sure because sometimes the Germans used American markings and they thought the Japs might, too,” the pilot said.
The next morning Lieutenant Queen went to the prisoner camp. The six men who had bailed out were there. The plane’s radio operator, Douglas Arthur of Millersburg, Pa., who jumped, said that the men were in the sea a half hour to four hours before a Korean fishing boat picked them up.
Arthur said that it was he who was strafed.
“The Korean fishermen took us to a village where the head man prepared a big feast,” he continued. “The dancing girls were just about to appear when two Russian captains and a major showed up. We asked to be taken to the prison camp. They were nice about that and took us there.”