The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 161
Today, according to every indication, the underground is completely disrupted and possibly destroyed.
A major result of this is that, with fear of reprisal removed, the townsfolk and peasants dare to support the National forces openly. They now come forward with intelligence concerning movements of rebel forces and inform on Communist agents.
The military authorities estimate that another two weeks will see the end of the Peloponnesian campaign and the beginning of civil recontruction. Already all the main roads, over which one could not go in safety a month ago, are deemed safe for civilian traffic. In many villages, gendarmes have relieved Greek Army units.
The fighting still goes on, mostly among the barren peaks of the Parnon and Taygetos ranges. But according to reports received from those areas rebel forces are virtually beaten. A spell of unprecedentedly cold winter weather has further worked against the guerrillas.
When the Army’s Peloponnesian operations began, the rebel fighting force of men well armed and equipped numbered about 3,860, according to Army estimates. Subsequently more than 1,000 men had been added to the rebel strength.
The Army asserts that it has put out of action about 4,500 guerrillas in the campaign. During the first week of March, the bodies of 211 rebels killed in action were recovered on various fields of conflict, and 593 guerrillas either gave themselves up or were captured.
According to the statements of rebels captured within the last couple of days, it have been not only cold and hunger that has impelled them to abandon the struggle, but also disillusionment that has come, they say, from recent reports that Communist party policy was favoring the separation of Greek Macedonia from Greece and its incorporation into the Slav Macedonian Organization, the NOF.
MARCH 11, 1949
U.S. Crews on Berlin Lift To Fly On Regular Basis
By The Associated Press.
BERLIN, March 10—The United States Air Force today announced plans for personnel replacements that would facilitate carrying on the airlift to Soviet-blockaded Berlin for years, if necessary.
United States taxpayers are paying almost $500,000 a day to maintain the United States end of the U.S.-British operation, which began last June 26.
The Air Force announced in Wiesbaden today that, beginning May 1, replacements of airlift personnel from the Great Falls, Mont., training school would be placed on a regular instead of temporary duty status.
U.S. C-47 cargo plane approaching Tempelhof Airport in Berlin with food and other relief supplies, 1948.
Airmen who bring families with them overseas will serve three years on the lift. Those without families in Germany will serve two years. Under the present system the men flying in the food, fuel and essential supplies from Western Germany to Berlin are rotated to their home bases in the United States every six months.
The airlift is moving about 7,000 tons of supplies to Berlin daily in good weather.
MAY 4, 1949
HANGCHOW FALLS TO COMMUNISTS
Loss of Port Completes Red Entrapment of Nationalist Forces in Huge Triangle
SHANGHAI, May 4 (AP)—The Shanghai garrison command today admitted the loss of Hangchow, Nationalist escape port 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. [Communist control of Hangchow seals off Shanghai by land from the rest of China and closes the trap on Nationalist forces remaining in the Nanking-Shanghai Hangchow triangle. Their only exit now is by sea.] The garrison command communiqué said the Chekiang Provincial Peace Preservation Corps had evacuated Hangchow at noon yesterday after completing a delaying action. This force was all that was left for the defense of Hangchow.
MAY 5, 1949
U.S. AIRLIFT PILOTS ‘JUMPING FOR JOY’
By SYDNEY GRUSON
Special to The New York Times.
BERLIN, May 4—The boys who held Berlin for the West during 320 days of the Russian blockade were “jumping up and down for joy” tonight
That was the way Private Louis N. Wagner of Freehold, N.J., described the reaction of United States airlift fliers to the news that the blockade was ending.
Private Wagner was on duty in the Operations Room at Tempelhof Airfield when the flash of the Russian agreement came through. Minutes later, he said, “the airways were buzzing with the news” as the flash was repeated over the radios of planes still lugging coal, flour and other supplies to the besieged city.
The tower at Tempelhof, busy enough bringing in planes at the now familiar rate of one every three minutes, was flooded with calls from fliers seeking confirmation. On the 320th day of the blockade they along with their British buddies had brought another 8,900 short tons of supplies into Berlin.
It was a job they were prepared to continue indefinitely. But they were not sorry that the end of it was now possible.
“We’ve shown them we can do it,” said a husky flight engineer sergeant. “They’ll think twice about trying us out on this one again.”
The news spread through the city with the effect of an electric shock. It bounced off skeptics into delighted groups of Berliners who have scarcely considered any other subject since the first announcement was made that Russo-American negotiations to end the blockade were under way.
Under the impact of the official announcement most Berliners on the streets tonight momentarily forgot their fears of what might come out of the Foreign Ministers’ meeting to dwell delightedly on the prospects of renewed normal contact between Western Germany and the food-producing Eastern zone.
“What can we be expected to think of after living for ten months under blockade conditions?” said a policeman walking his beat. “We want life to be a little easier. We want more light, more gas and perhaps, most important of all, an end to dehydrated potatoes.”To a girl secretary the news meant “prices will come down. I can buy some clothes again.”
To a GI on guard at Headquarters Company barracks it meant “better times, better chow and a chance to get out of here on leave.”
To Wilhelm Zapf, radio salesman, it meant “business will boom again, people will have money.”
For thousands of Berliners it will mean a chance to go back to work to earn a decent wage and to settle back in the stride of recovery that the imposition of blockade so abruptly shattered last June.
Russian border crossing barrier was opened to allow access to Berlin after the end of the blockade, 1949.
MAY 5, 1949
TEN NATIONS ADOPT STATUTE OF EUROPE
By BENJAMIN WELLES
Special to The New York Times.
LONDON, May 4—Nine Foreign Ministers and the Belgian Ambassador reached full agreement here today on a Statute of the Council of Europe, which will now carry into effect the long-cherished ideal of a democratic European Parliament.
A three-hour session was held this morning in St. James’s Palace by the representatives of Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. They completed the review of the draft Statute, which had been laboriously hammered out during the past months by a diplomatic working party here. The draft was turned over to a technical drafting committee at midday and the Foreign Ministers and the Belgian envoy, acting for Premier-Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, re-assembled in a special session at night and gave it their final approval. M. Spaak was unable to come to London because of illness.
The signing is to take place tomorrow afternoon. The ceremony will be attended by leading officials of the British Government headed by Foreign Minister Bevin and the Foreign Ministers and diplomats of the participating nations.
Although no communiqué was issued, it is understood the British Government has finally decided that its delegation to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe (the Parliament) will include representatives of the opposition parties. The Conservative and Liberal parties will be allowed to name representatives from the House of Commons and the House of Lords and thus, it is remarked, Winston Churchill might attend meetings of the Parliament of Europe as a member of Britain’s delegation.<
br />
Strasbourg, France, has been definitely chosen as the seat of the Council of Europe, although the Scandinavian representatives had proposed that a site be chosen in the Netherlands. It is also learned that the Secretary General of the Council, who has yet to be selected, will be a Frenchman.
The Foreign Ministers are reported to have agreed that Greece and Turkey should be invited to join the Council of Europe before its first meeting in July or August. However, no decision was taken as to whether a future West German Government would be invited to associate itself with the organization.
Chief debate in the morning session arose over rival Swedish and British proposals as to voting procedure in the Consultative Assembly. Sweden proposed that Assembly resolutions be adopted only by unanimous vote, while Britain suggested a two-thirds majority. The issue was compromised by a decision that full resolutions would require a unanimous vote and expressions of the Assembly’s “wish” would go through by two-thirds vote.
Another discussion took place over a wording in the Preamble of the Statute. The Dutch delegation urged that the term “Christian” democratic countries of Western Europe be used, but in the face of considerable opposition the Dutch agreed to the substitution of the word “spiritual.”
SEPTEMBER 24, 1949
ATOM BLAST IN RUSSIA DISCLOSED
TRUMAN AGAIN ASKS U. N. CONTROL
By ANTHONY LEVIERO
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23—President Truman announced this morning that an atomic explosion had occurred in Russia within recent weeks. This statement implied that the absolute dominance of the United States in atomic weapons had virtually ended.
“We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.,” President Truman said.
These words stood out in red-letter vividness in a brief undramatic statement in which the Chief Executive said that the United States always had taken into account the probability that other nations would develop “this new force.”
He pleaded once again for adoption of the system of international control of atomic energy promulgated by the United States and supported by the large majority of countries now assembled in the United Nations General Assembly at Flushing Meadow.
MCMAHON REVEALS NEWS
Mr. Truman announced the discovery to the Cabinet, assembled in the White House at 11 A. M. for the usual Friday meeting.
White House correspondents had their usual conference with Charles G. Ross, the President’s secretary, at 10:30 A. M. It was routine, but as they filed out his secretary, Miss Myrtle Bergheim, advised them not to go away. A moment before 11 A. M. Miss Bergheim entered the press room and said:
“Press!”
The news men filed into Mr. Ross’ office. He said he wished the door closed, and a secret service man took his post there. Then Mr. Ross said that he would pass out an announcement and that nobody was to leave the room until everyone present had a copy. Then he began passing around the President’s mimeographed statement.
One of the first reporters to scan his copy exclaimed, “Russia has the atomic bomb!” There was a wild rush through the door and to the telephones in the nearby press room. One of the news men who sprinted out was the correspondent of Tass, the official Soviet news agency.
ACHESON MENTIONS WEAPON
President Truman did not say that Russia had an atomic bomb. Only Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who was at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, went so far as to say he assumed that a “weapon” had caused the explosion. Other Cabinet members and lower officials neither privately nor publicly would go behind Mr. Truman’s phrase—“atomic explosion occurred”—to indicate precisely what had caused it.
Mr. Truman’s use of that phrase was studied and premeditated, it was learned, and led certain officials to suggest that Russia might have been getting to the point of testing a bomb that might be neither so practicable nor so effective as that of the United States.
There was also some doubt that Russia had been able to begin stockpiling numbers of the so-called absolute weapon, as the United States has been doing since the explosion over Hiroshima.
Nevertheless it was obvious that the force and the magnitude of the explosion had been comparable to the deadly effect of the United States atomic bombs, else its positive detection and evaluation by this country would not have been possible.
The Russian development, consequently, was bound to have a profound effect, ultimately, on international relations, and particularly on the balance of power between the democracies and Russia and her satellites. It appeared to have reduced this country’s absolute dominance in atomic weapons to a relative superiority that would gradually diminish.
1943 to 1946
The Casablanca Conference, January 1943. From the left, French General Henri Giraud, U.S. President Roosevelt, French General Charles de Gaulle and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Mary Saverick stitching harnesses for the Pioneer Parachute Company Mills in Manchester, Connecticut, 1943.
General Douglas MacArthur, 1943.
American war propaganda poster from 1943.
A field hospital run by the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division in Italy, 1944.
A squadron of Stukas (German dive bombers) over the Russian front, April 1943.
A soldier from the 92nd Division, one of two all-Black Infantry Divisions, exploding anti-tank mines at Viareggio, Italy, 1944.
Axis prisoners at a temporary holding camp for POWs in Tunisia during the North African campaign, May 1943.
An American Sherman tank passing through a town in Southern Italy, 1944.
Sergeant William H. Bass of Memphis, Tennessee gives food to two Italian girls, 1944.
American soldiers await the signal to begin the D-Day invasion, England, June 1944.
Troops of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landing at Juno Beach on the outskirts of Bernieres-sur-Mer on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
A D-Day planning session in February, 1944. From the left, U.S. General Omar Bradley, Admiral Bertram H. Ramsay, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur Tedder, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, Royal Air Force Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and U.S. General Walter Bedell.
American troops boarding an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) in Weymouth, England on June 5, 1944, in preparation for the invasion of France.
The ruins of the town of Monte Cassino, southeast of Rome, 1944.
American troops of the 7th Navy Beach Battalion training in Britain before their deployment at Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings, 1944.
Allied troops landing in Normandy, France, 1944.
Allied soldiers viewing their position in Normandy with two French policeman policemen, June 1944.
Allied soldiers under the Arc de Triomphe during the French liberation celebrations at the end of World War II, August 1944.
Ruins of the city Dresden after the Allied bombings in February, 1945.
U.S. Army vehicles driving through the ruins of Saint-Lo in Normandy, 1944. The town was almost totally destroyed by 2,000 Allied bombers when they attacked German troops stationed there during Operation Overlord.
From left, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and commander of the 21st Army Group, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in Normandy, June 12, 1944, six days after the D-Day landings.
A young Holocaust survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after the liberation of the camp by U.S. Army Forces, Germany, April 15, 1945.
An American solder of the 42nd Rainbow Division reacting to the conditions of the Dachau concentration camp, April 1945.
A group of inmates after liberation of Dachau concentration camp by the 42nd Rainbow Division and the 45th Thunderbird Division, Germany, May 2, 1945.
An American Sherman M4 tank in the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of World War II.
U
.S. Army soldiers near the Cologne cathedral, 1945. The last tank battle took place March 6, 1945 and it took another five weeks to take the city.
The funeral procession of President Roosevelt moving from Union Station to The White House, April 14, 1945.
The ruins of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industry Promotion Building, known as the Atomic-Bomb Dome, in September 1945.
Crowds gather in Times Square to celebrate the end of the war in Europe, New York, May 7, 1945.
Soldiers and sailors on the decks of the USS Missouri watch the Japanese surrender which was signed on board, September 2, 1945.
American Marines raising the United States flag at Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945.