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

by The New York Times

  Mr. Peng said the recent Government victories over the Communists in Manchuria and Shantung contributed to the confidence at the session. He announced that the consensus was that the Communists were not as strong militarily as their propaganda made them appear and that resolute Government action would insure victory over the Reds.

  JULY 5, 1947

  CZECHS, IN DILEMMA, SEEK MOSCOW CUE

  By The Associated Press.

  PRAGUE July 4—Czechoslovak leaders hurriedly scheduled a trip to Moscow tonight, undoubtedly in the hope of conferring with the Russians about the serious economic situation created here by Soviet rejection of the French plan for implementing the Marshall proposals for aiding Europe.

  Premier Klement Gottwald, a Communist, and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk decided on the Moscow trip after day-long discussion in Parliamentary circles of the new complications arising from the recent three-power conference in Paris.

  They arranged to ride as far as Warsaw with Premier Josef Cyrankiewicz of Poland and nine of his Ministers, who had signed a treaty forging the last link in a Slav network of cultural and trade pacts. These could conceivably form the basis of a separate eastern European economy. Many persons here feel that Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov’s refusal in Paris on Wednesday to go along with British and French ideas on the Marshall plan may have been the first phase of an outright division of Europe into two camps, at least economically.

  CZECH POSITION NOT CLEAR

  The Czechs—the hurried trip by their leaders to Moscow underscores this—are unable to foresee which camp they will join or whether it will be possible to straddle.

  There has been no official announcement here whether the British-French note inviting Czech participation in a twenty-four-nation economic parley in Paris on July 12 has been received. It appeared certain that no answer would be forthcoming until Messrs. Gottwald and Masaryk returned. Prague’s Communist daily newspaper described the new Paris bid as “an invitation to participate in a Western bloc.” If this turns out to be the view of the Government, it will be hard for it to accept the invitation, especially in the light of Mr. Molotov’s statement that the sovereignty of countries participating in a program under the Marshall suggestions would be sacrificed to the Western powers.

  However, Czechoslovakia’s economy urgently needs in the West markets, raw materials and financial credits. She has credit now only with Britain, Canada and Argentina.

  TRADE LINKS ARE STRONG

  Trade alliances and other ties with her Eastern Slav neighbors are strong, but none of these countries has foreign credit, cash markets or substantial exportable goods.

  While the treaties signed today are regarded in most of eastern Europe as a pan-Slav alliance, Czechoslovakia takes a different view. The Czechs are trying hard to maintain cordial ties with both the East and the West.

  JANUARY 31, 1948

  GANDHI IS KILLED BY A HINDU; INDIA SHAKEN, WORLD MOURNS; 15 DIE IN RIOTING IN BOMBAY

  DOMINION IS BEWILDERED

  Nehru Appeals to the Nation to Keep Peace—U.S. Consul Assisted in Capture

  By ROBERT TRUMBULL

  Special to The New York Times.

  NEW DELHI, India, Jan. 30— Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed by an assassin’s bullet today. The assassin was a Hindu who fired three shots from a pistol at a range of three feet.

  The 78-year-old Gandhi, who was the one person who held discordant elements together and kept some sort of unity in this turbulent land, was shot down at 5:15 P.M. as he was proceeding through the Birla House gardens to the pergola from which he was to deliver his daily prayer meeting message.

  The assassin was immediately seized.

  He later identified himself as Nathuran Vinayak Godse, 36, a Hindu of the Mahratta tribes in Poona. This has been a center of resistance to Gandhi’s ideology.

  Mr. Gandhi died twenty-five minutes later. His death left all India stunned and bewildered as to the direction that this newly independent. nation would take without its “Mahatma” (Great Teacher).

  The loss of Mr. Gandhi brings this country of 300,000,000 abruptly to a crossroads. Mingled with the sadness in this capital tonight was an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty, for now the strongest influence for peace in India that this generation has known is gone. [Communal riots quickly swept Bombay when news of Mr. Gandhi’s death was received. The Associated Press reported that fifteen persons were killed and more than fifty injured before an uneasy peace was established.]

  APPEAL MADE BY NEHRU

  Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in a voice choked with emotion, appealed in a radio address tonight for a sane approach to the future. He asked that India’s path be turned away from violence in memory of the great peace-maker who had departed,

  Mr. Gandhi’s body will be cremated in the orthodox Hindu fashion according to his often expressed wishes. His body will be carried from his New Delhi residence on a simple wooden cot covered with a sheet at 11:30 tomorrow morning. The funeral procession will wind through every principal street of the two cities of New and Old Delhi and reach the burning ghats on the bank of the sacred Jumna River at about 4 P.M. There the remains of the greatest Indian since Gautama Buddha will be wrapped in a sheet, laid on a pyre of wood and burned. His ashes will be scattered on the Jumna’s waters, eventually to mingle with the Ganges where the two holy rivers meet at the temple city of Allahabad.

  These simple ceremonies were announced tonight by Pandit Nehru in respect to Mr. Gandhi’s wishes, although many of the leaders desired that his body be embalmed and exhibited in state. India will see the last of Mr. Gandhi as it saw him when he lived—a humble and unassuming Hindu.

  NEWS SPREADS QUICKLY

  News of the assassination of Mr. Gandhi—only a few days after he had finished a five-day fast to bring about communal friendship—spread quickly through New Delhi. Immediately there was spontaneous movement of thousands to Birla House, home of G. D. Birla, the millionaire industrialist, where Mr. Gandhi and his six secretaries had been guests since he came to New Delhi in the midst of the disturbances in India’s capital.

  While walking through the gardens to this evening’s prayer meeting Mr. Gandhi had just reached the top of a short flight of brick steps, his slender brown arms around the shoulders of his granddaughters, Manu, 17, and Ava, 20,

  Someone spoke to him and he turned from his granddaughters and gave the appealing Hindu salute—palms, together and the points of the fingers brought to the chin as in a Christian attitude of prayer.

  At once a youngish Indian stepped from the crowd—which had opened to form a pathway for Mr. Gandhi’s walk to the pergola—and fired the fatal shots from a European-made pistol. One bullet struck Mr. Gandhi in the chest and two in the abdomen on the right side. He seemed to lean forward and then crumpled to the ground. His two granddaughters fell beside him in tears.

  CROWD IS STUNNED

  A crowd of about 500, according to witnesses, was stunned. There was no outcry or excitement for a second or two. Then the onlookers began to push the assassin more as if in bewilderment than in anger.

  Members of the ashram of Mohandas Gandhi gather around his body as it lies in the stateroom in Birla House shortly after his assassination, India, 1948.

  The assassin was seized by Tom Reiner of Lancaster, Mass., a vice consul attached to the American Embassy and a recent arrival in India. He was attending Mr. Gandhi’s prayer meeting out of curiosity, as most visitors to New Delhi do at least once.

  Mr. Reiner grasped the assailant by the shoulders and shoved him toward several police guards. Only then did the crowd begin to grasp what had happened and a forest of fists belabored the assassin as he was dragged toward the pergola where Mr. Gandhi was to have prayed. He left a trail of blood.

  Mr. Gandhi was picked up by attendants and carried rapidly back to the unpretentious bedroom where he had passed most of his working and sleeping hours. As he was taken through the door Hindu onlookers who could see him began to wail and beat
their breasts.

  Less than half an hour later a member of Mr. Gandhi’s entourage came out of the room and said to those about the door:

  “Bapu (father) is finished.”

  MARCH 20, 1948

  GREEK, U.S. CHIEFS SPEED ATTACK PLAN

  ATHENS, March 19 (AP)—Senior Greek and United States Army officers have mapped plans for stepped-up Greek operations against the Communist-led guerrillas, it was learned tonight.

  The Greek Government has ordered the evacuation of all children from northern Greece, the main battleground in the civil war.

  The military plans were developed during the past forty-eight hours. Greek commanders of the First, Second and Third Corps and division heads met with the Greek Chief of Staff, Lieut. Gen. Demitrios Yantzis. United States military observers from Larissa, Trikkala, Yanina, Salonika, Kavalla and other points in northern Greece held discussions with Lieut. Gen. James A. Van Fleet, chief of the military section of the American Aid Mission. The American and Greek viewpoints then were coordinated.

  The Government acted under powers of the new civilian mobilization measure in ordering the evacuation of children. The Welfare Ministry sent telegrams to officials of northern Greece telling them to use all available facilities to carry the movement out immediately.

  Gen. Markos Vafiades’ guerrillas have been taking children from villages in their hands and sending them northward to countries in the Soviet sphere of influence.

  The Greek General Staff has agreed to assist in the evacuation of the children. Some observers suggested the area was being cleared for large-scale military operations.

  Gen. Alexander Tsingounis, commander of the Second Division with headquarters in Larissa, has been appointed commander of the Government forces in the Peloponnesus, succeeding Gen. Christos Mandas. The military situation in the Peloponnesus has deteriorated. Recently two National Guard companies were ambushed and wiped out west of Tripolis. The General Staff said forty-five guerrillas were killed during recent fighting in a southwestern region of the Peloponnesus.

  MARCH 21, 1948

  JEWS AND ARABS PLAN FOR A FULL-SCALE WAR

  By DANA ADAMS SCHMIDT

  Special to The New York Times.

  JERUSALEM, March 20—Even though the United States has officially abandoned partition and the whole question of Palestine’s future will probably have to be reconsidered by the United Nations Assembly, Jews and Arabs are going right ahead with plans for a battle for Palestine. For the Jews declare they will proclaim a sovereign Jewish state, regardless. and the Arabs say they will destroy it, regardless.

  The feeling is that the future of Palestine will be decided not by the diplomats at Lake Success but by the relative strengths of Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

  Both sides are looking to May 15 as the critical date. Then British efforts to hold Jews and Arabs apart, however ineffective they may have been, are expected to end and both sides may launch operations without interference.

  The Arabs are in a hurry. They must try to get in decisive blows as soon as possible after May 15, which, if the present British schedule is adhered to, will mark the end of the blockade of the coast and the beginning of a heavy influx of Jewish arms and men.

  For both, the problem is more one of arms than men—especially heavy arms. Here the Jews hold the advantage because they have perhaps ten times as many men as the Arabs who fought in the last war and who know how to use mechanized equipment, heavy machine guns, artillery, mines, barbed wire or aircraft.

  POSITIONS UNCHANGED

  A spokesman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine said the other day that “if the United States arms embargo is lifted we can take care of ourselves without international forces.” Even if the embargo remained he was hopeful, considering large quantities of equipment already stored in Mediterranean ports ready for shipment to Palestine.

  It is a striking fact that all the shooting, bombing and bloodshed since Nov. 30 has caused death or injury to some 5,000 persons and incalculable material loss, but has left the positions of Jews and Arabs practically unchanged.

  But after the British leave, considerable movement may be expected. Responsible Arab leaders indicate their strategy will continue to be directed mainly against Jewish communications. Once the Jews lose the protection of British convoys and road patrols, the Arabs believe it will not be difficult to isolate and eventually starve out or reduce more remote sections of the Jewish community.

  Arab objectives will be to isolate the 100,000 Jews living in Jerusalem, the twenty-five little settlements below Gaza on the edge of the Negev Desert and some 15,000 Jews in colonies in northern Galilee, which extends like a finger between Lebanon and Syria.

  In many cases the Arabs are convinced that shooting will scarcely be necessary, that it will be sufficient to blockade roads in Arab territory over which Jews must pass, as on the route from Jerusalem to the coast. The coastal plain of Sharon from Haifa to Tel Aviv, it is conceded, will be a tougher proposition. Arab sources nonetheless speak of driving spearheads into the coastal plain. One might be launched from Tulkarm at the west-ernmost extremity of the so-called “triangle of terror” where Fawzi el-Kawukji has set up headquarters.

  A Jewish militia during secret training in Palestine, 1948.

  ARAB STRENGTH

  A great deal less is known about Arab forces than about Jewish. Far less highly organized than the Jews, they are thought to have thus far raised a national guard of some 30,000 men among 1,200,000 Palestinian Arabs, primarily for defensive purposes. For offensive, they have Fawzi Bey’s lightly armed volunteer “liberation army” of 6,000 to 7,000 Arabs, most of whom come from Syria and Iraq.

  This volunteer force may well be doubled by May 15. Its armament is also likely to improve—possibly French 75’s from Syria, Lebanon aircraft from Egypt, and more automatic weapons through orders placed by the Syrian Government in Czechoslovakia, if King Abdullah and his mechanized Arab Legion can be induced to cooperate. Arab armored cars (other than those already filched from the British) and light tanks may put in an appearance.

  A Jewish Agency official told this correspondent, “We are preparing psychologically for defeat at the beginning.”

  The Jews are now mobilizing their manpower, combing out the community for slackers, and transforming Haganah from an underground force to a fighting machine. The Jewish Agency has stated that Haganah, drawn from the population of 700,000 Jews, has 85,000 men. Among these 30,000 are on full-time duty and 20,000 are ready for combat.

  MARCH 21, 1948

  MARSHALL INSISTS ON URGENT ACTION TO CHECK TYRANNY

  He Says Experience Proves That Democracies, Once Alert, Can Defeat Dictatorships

  By GLADWIN HILL

  Special to The New York Times.

  LOS ANGELES, March 20—Underscoring for a third time President Truman’s message of Wednesday on the seriousness of the international situation, George C. Marshall, Secretary of State, said today that “urgent and resolute action by the United States is necessary if we are to safeguard our own security and protect the civilization of which we are a part.”

  Acknowledging that “the initial advantage lies with the dictators” because of their machinery for quick action, the Secretary, on a note of confidence, declared:

  “Experience has proved that the democracies, once aroused to concerted action, possess the material and spiritual strength to overcome the initial advantage of the dictator.”

  But, he warned, “a late awakening to danger, failure to act promptly, add immeasurably to the costs of ultimate success.”

  Mr. Marshall spoke favorably of the legislative progress of the European Recovery Program, observing:

  “The present indications are that the House of Representatives intends to move rapidly to a decision.”

  “We know here and abroad,” he said “that the Soviet Union and the Communist parties of Europe will go to extreme lengths to defeat the recovery and the revival of a strong, democratic and independent Europ
e.

  “Despite their aggressive opposition, we and the Western nations of Europe are determined that recovery shall be achieved, that tyranny of government shall be checked, and that the people who wish to govern themselves shall remain free to do so.”

  In an apparent rejoinder to the numerous proposals for extension of United States economic aid beyond the bounds of ERP, the Secretary took cognizance of “situations” in other parts of the world.

  “The critical problem for us,” he said, “is just where and how we should exert our influence. In Europe, in the Middle East, in Indonesia, in China? What about Latin America and our direct responsibilities in Japan and Korea?

  “Very important decisions must be made by this government as to exactly what we should do to meet these various situations.”

  Remarking that the problem was parallel to that with which he had “labored” as Chief of Staff, Mr. Marshall continued:

  “We must keep in mind that, rich and powerful as we are, we cannot afford to disperse our efforts to a degree which not only might seriously weaken us but would render all our efforts ineffective.

  “Every region has its claims and, its proponents and it is therefore necessary to reach a firm decision on the general strategy to be employed, economic or otherwise, having in mind the entire situation.”

  “The unity of our people at this time,” the Secretary summarized, “is of the greatest importance. The President has made his appeal. The Senate has pointed the way. Let every American do his part to demonstrate in this great crisis that we are truly a great people, citizens of the world.”