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

by The New York Times

  Workers who will be forced to change jobs, leaving unessential industries to augment labor in the essential ones, will no longer receive the same wages that they received in their original jobs as they have in the past. They must accept the wage scale of the new industry in which they are placed. The Reich Labor Organization will give weekly allowances up to 19 marks for those whose new jobs necessitate their living away from home.

  Those who have incurred special obligations, which the wage scale of their new jobs makes them unable to meet, will receive financial assistance in order to meet these obligations.

  The new impost of 50 per cent of one’s income is meant to apply to all income whether derived from wages, salary or otherwise, according to the newly issued explanation of the original “war economy” decree issued Monday. This means that in addition to having to take a reduction in wages, workers must also pay a higher tax on earnings.

  The new “Reich compulsory service law” issued today obligates manufacturers to operate their businesses as directed by the government in the best interests of the nation as decreed by the latter’s agencies.

  Berliners already are being deprived of their little luxuries on a scale unknown hitherto even under the Nazi régime. Tobacco and cigars are more expensive and unobtainable in some districts where would-be purchasers found all tobacconists “closed for stock-taking.”

  Berlin beer, never the stoutest of brews, is 20 per cent thinner.

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1939

  PLEDGE AT LONDON

  Ministry’s Declaration Sets Plans for Britain To Fight to End

  By FREDERICK T. BIRCHALL

  Special Cable to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Sept. 9—This highly significant official statement of government policy, the most important made for Great Britain since Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that this country was at war, was issued tonight:

  At their meeting this morning the War Cabinet decided to base their policy on the assumption that the war will last three years or more.

  Instructions are being issued to all government departments to insure that plans for the future shall at once be prepared on this assumption.

  In the meantime all measures for which preparation has already been made are being brought fully into active operation.

  In furtherance of the expanded defense programs already operating, the Minister of Supply will forthwith take the necessary steps to insure that productive capacity for munitions of all kinds is increased on the scale required to meet every possible issue.

  Corresponding arrangements are being made at the Admiralty and the Air Ministry.

  In the great national interest, however, the civil needs of the country will be borne in mind as well as the importance of maintaining the export trade.

  The War Cabinet are confident that this significant decision will meet with the whole-hearted support of the British people and will be welcomed by their allies and friends.

  A REPLY OF DOUBLE FORCE

  This is the British Government’s emphatic and unmistakable answer to suggestions thrown out in the day’s speech by Field Marshal Hermann Goering, published here, that in the light of German successes to date, Great Britain might be prepared to reconsider her position with regard to peace or war.

  It is also a reply to certain wishful thinkers here who have been taking at face value the well-promulgated rumors of discontent inside the German lines, of food riots and strikes of women in the German cities, which inner official circles in London appraise at their actual worthlessness.

  It is an answer, in fact, that once more carries mature men with good memories back to the somewhat analogous situation in 1914, when the wishful thinkers of that day were confidently asserting that the war would be finished in six months, until Earl Kitchener, rising in his place in the House of Lords, electrified the nation by soberly announcing that it would be, not a short, but a long war, carried on to the finish, “if not by us, then by those who come after us and take our place in the conflict.”

  In official quarters the emphasis is being laid, not so much on the assumption in the Cabinet statements that the war will last three years or more, but on the pledge that Great Britain is determined to see it through. In this there is not the slightest doubt that the government expresses the firm resolve of the nation as a whole.

  The answer to Field Marshal Goering is a quite secondary matter. His speech, which, apart from his appeal to Britain to reconsider her position, is regarded here as a curious mixture of braggadocio and reasonableness, has happened to come at a time when an unequivocal declaration of the British position was needed. Goering’s speech furnished an excuse for making it.

  Obviously, as it seems here, Field Marshal Goering was making, none too skillfully, another attempt to divide Britain and France, a manoeuvre that has cropped out frequently in recent German propaganda.

  His exaggerations of the undoubted success which has so far attended the overwhelming and wonderfully well equipped German attack on Poland and his deliberate minimizing of the powers of resistance still inherent in the still unbroken Polish Army is regarded as characteristic of the man and his party and not worth a serious effort at refutation. The real point of the Goering speech, it is felt, lies in its appeal to Prime Minister Chamberlain.

  GERMAN HOPES CALLED MISTAKEN

  Evidently the German leaders are still hoping against hope that the Franco-British resolution to fight Nazism to the bitter end is not irrevocable. They will soon learn how mistaken that hope is.

  As to the war operations thus far, the preliminary moves on the Western Front can scarcely be intelligently analyzed here, because so little that is really authoritative is known about them.

  For the moment the real center of activity is still Poland; and the situation there is not yet so desperate as the German propagandists—who yesterday were professing that Warsaw was already in their possession when it wasn’t—would have it.

  The facts to date seem to be that the Germans invaded Poland with some fifty or sixty divisions. Of this huge and marvelously equipped force, some ten divisions were completely mechanized and therefore able to move extremely fast. The German success is regarded here as largely due to this factor.

  Another factor largely in the Germans’ favor was their overwhelming superiority in the air, which enabled their planes to break up Polish counterattacks before they had time to develop and to paralyze the valuable efforts developing in the back areas.

  By using thirty of their divisions there, the Germans were able almost at the outset to seize the great Silesian area containing the richest supply of Poland’s raw materials.

  Meanwhile their mechanized divisions from Pomerania drove eastward across the Corridor, while from East Prussia ten divisions advanced southwest. The big pincers move was aimed to lop off the great manufacturing area west of Warsaw.

  But it is not over yet. Warsaw has been holding out; and Poland is likely to keep the German armies busy for some time to come, while the French press the advantages they have already gained on the Western Front.

  And meanwhile the German leaders—and the German public, if it is ever permitted to know the facts—have something to think about in the firm expression of Britain’s high resolve, just made.

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1939

  ALL OF LIFE IN BRITAIN TRANSFORMED BY WAR

  A Theatreless London Goes Black at Night and the Country, Filled With Refugees, Experiences a Rebirth

  By JAMES B. RESTON

  Wireless to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Sept. 9—The world’s largest city folds up every night now just like London, Ohio. After a week of war there is not a single play or movie in town; there is not a chink of light in Piccadilly Circus; the big restaurants are deserted, and the boys didn’t even play football in London today.

  The only establishment that seems to have gained by the government’s decision to keep theatres and sports events closed—the theory is that a single bomb might kill hu
ndreds if they were packed together—is the “pub.” There is definitely a boom in the drink business and already some persons are worried.

  “Drink in excess may be an ally of the enemy,” warns The Evening Standard darkly, and adds:

  “The open door at the public house is partly due to the closed entrance at the cinema and the locked turnstiles at Chelsea and Highbury. The cinemas are still open in Warsaw and Paris. Madrid watched Charlie Chaplin when Franco was beating at the gates of the city…. We don’t want to fiddle while Europe burns. But we will fight none the worse for an occasional glimpse of Ginger Rogers.”

  George Bernard Shaw has been firing his merry shafts at the government for this theatre decision, too. He not only wants the theatres opened but more theatres built and all actors exempted from military service. He calls the government’s decision “a masterstroke of unimaginative stupidity.” This pressure forced slight modifications yesterday, and from now on Ginger Rogers will be fighting on the Allied side—at least in a few safe areas on the outskirts of the city.

  TO IMAGINE NEW YORK–

  The best way to understand what has happened to London this week is to imagine what New York would be like under similar conditions.

  If you can possibly imagine all the youngsters from the lower East Side and Hell’s Kitchen and Brooklyn and the Bronx suddenly thrown into every corner of every safe mansion in Westchester and upper New York State and New Jersey you will have a vague idea of what the evacuation was like….

  If you can imagine those white New York ambulances rolling up to Gotham Hospital on East Seventy-sixth Street and to Bronx Maternity and Women’s Hospital on the Concourse and to every other hospital in town, rolling up and carrying away every patient who could possibly be moved you will know something about this tragic exodus….

  If you can see the people in those walk-ups on the river streets shoveling sand and dirt into burlap sacks and piling them up at their miserable windows….and see carpenters nailing boards over the windows of every store on every street in town you will know what has been going on in front of every door here all week….

  If you could watch Manhattan suddenly fill up with thousands of young boys in uniform, young lads of 20 running for trains in Grand Central Station and manning anti-aircraft guns and digging trenches in Central Park you would understand what London is doing right now….

  If you saw, like some fabulous picture on a popular science magazine cover, silver anti-aircraft balloons floating night and day above the skyscrapers….

  And if at 9:30 o’clock it got darker than you had ever seen Manhattan and every light on the Great White Way went out and every movie and every single show closed, and cars crept along dark streets in second gear with only vague blue lights showing on the ground, you would have a glimmer of an idea of what a London blackout is like….

  A STRAIN ON THE PEOPLE

  For all these things are happening in London tonight and the people in the city are grim and strained.

  From start to finish the business of buying and selling and living and dying and rearing children has changed in this first week of the war and the new routine has imposed a whole encyclopedia of new rules and duties on the average citizen.

  Under penalty of a heavy fine he must not let a thread of light escape from his windows. He must not toot the horn of his car or ring bells or blow whistles or keep pigeons or take photographs in certain areas or hold certain foreign currency.

  Even the ancient custom of going to bed is different. The average man not only goes to bed earlier, but he has several important chores to do before he goes. First he must turn off the gas at the main [a bomb may fracture the pipe and let the gas escape]. He must fill his bathtub with water for use against incendiary bombs. He must place buckets of water around the house and put his gas mask in the safest room where he can get it if there is a raid during the night.

  On top of all that he usually lays aside a warm blanket and knows exactly where his shoes and trousers are. That’s in case he has to run for the bomb-proof shelter at the end of the yard in the night.

  NOT A WAR OF HATE

  But in spite of all these inconveniences, though his family is split up and his gasoline rationed (ten gallons per month for a small car, at 32 cents a gallon) and his life is in danger, this average Briton is not fighting a war of hate. There is none of the old college spirit about this war. The people did not rush down to the palace to cheer when Prime Minister Chamberlain announced that they were at war with Germany. And one scarcely hears a word against the German people. This spirit of justice has been encouraged by the Government and over the Government-controlled radio stations.

  A Government spokesman in the House of Commons, asked this week whether the Germans were bombing the civilian population in Poland, said frankly that the evidence showed that they were restricting their attacks to military objectives. Harold Nicholson, independent member of Parliament and one of the most popular British radio speakers, went on BBC the other night and said, “let’s try to understand the German argument…let’s don’t be self-righteous.”

  Similarly Alfred Duff-Cooper wrote this week pleading for kindness to German Jews who are now refugees in this country. “It has been alleged,” he wrote, “that they are not all genuine refugees but that some have been sent in as agents…it is to be hoped that little credence will be attached to this kind of rumor.”

  What hatred there is—and there is a good deal of this kind—is personal hatred for Hitler and von Ribbentrop and Goebbels. The English, noted for their understatement, have paraded their gutter adjectives in Hitler’s name and cartoonists have drawn him in the guise of everything from a snake to a dragon.

  SEEN AS “HITLER’S WAR”

  One man expressed the feeling of the public pretty well yesterday when he wrote to The Times of London suggesting that everybody agree to call this “Hitler’s war.” So many people recently have been talking about the Fuehrer and condemning him that one restaurant off Fleet Street felt obliged to post a sign reading “Don’t mention Hitler during meals; it is bad for your digestion.”

  The past few days have confirmed the Government’s fears that there are just as many rumor-mongers in the world in 1939 as there were in 1914 and officials and newspapers are taking every possible opportunity to ridicule them into silence. The first two commandments on how to behave during a war appear to be, first, don’t get spy fever, and, second, don’t believe or spread rumors. After the first flight of German bombers near the English coast stories circulated rapidly that the bombers had penetrated far inland and Chamberlain had to issue a denial in the House of Commons.

  LIFE IN THE COUNTRY

  Life in the countryside has changed incredibly. In fact for the first time since before the Industrial Revolution, the center of the islands’ social activity is back in the small town and country village. The village tavern naturally seems to attract adults who have fled from the cities and this is the only place where any kind of dramatic performances are being given. Several years ago an organization was formed in England to present poetry readings and simple plays in the nation’s pubs and it is not at all unusual to go into a country tavern now and find a lad standing on a box reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets to an appreciative audience.

  For the children evacuated to the country, the war so far has been a wind-fall. They have had no classes and they have had a week of remarkably good weather; and while the quick young Cockneys from the East Side of London think the picturesque villages are “a bloomin’ wilderness” their school teachers report that most of them are beginning to settle down. The Ministry of Education hopes that classes can be resumed in some sections next week but it is bound to take months to find adequate accommodations for all classes and even then teachers plan to hold school in two shifts.

  As usual a new routine of life produces a few ingenious devices. The Mens Wear Council, for example, has produced already a special white jacket to be worn during blackouts and one manufacture
r has marketed a small red light which hooks on your clothes. Working hours are also being changed to meet the new early-to-bed-early-to-rise habit, some shops opening as early as 7:30 A.M. and all closing early enough to enable people to get home before the blackout.

  In other words Britain has set about the task of meeting with fine patience her new task and, while bombs have not started falling yet on English soil, the people seem to agree with a barricaded shopkeeper in Charing Cross Row who posted a sign reading “business as usual during alterations.”

  Nighttime view of Regent Street in London’s Piccadilly Circus, 1939.

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1939

  CAN CIVILIZATION SURVIVE A WORLD WAR?

  By ALLAN NEVINS

  Professor of History, Columbia University.

  In an eloquent passage written at the beginning of the first World War Romain Rolland spoke of it as “a sacrilegious conflict which shows a maddened Europe ascending its funeral pyre, and, like Hercules, destroying itself with its own hands.” We are reminded of the figure as a new conflict begins. Each nation cries aloud that it is fighting for self-preservation; but for the continent as a whole the struggle seems rather self-destructive. Nor are the neutrals across the seas spared. Sir Edward Grey said on Aug. 3, 1914, that “if we are engaged in war we shall suffer but little more than if we stand aside.” This was an overstatement, yet what nation escaped the devastating effects and repercussions of the World War?