MAY 15, 1940
NETHERLANDS’ FALL STUNS THE BRITISH
Raids on England Seen More Likely Now—Performance of Air Force Gives Hope
Special Cable to The New York Times.
LONDON, May 14—News of the virtual capitulation of the Netherlands to the German jackboot brought home to the British public today something for which the government has been preparing them since last week—serious reverses in the Low Countries.
Summarizing the situation in the Netherlands and Belgium, the British pinned swastika flags all over the map of the Netherlands and washed out that country as far as field operations are concerned. In Belgium the German advance has been less successful—but only slightly so. The Germans crashed through defenses along the Albert Canal. The Belgians were unable to hold them to the extent that had been expected. Now British and French troops are taking up another line of prepared positions to the southward and eastward. Preliminary contact probably has been made.
BIG BATTLE BELIEVED ON
British troops were rushed forward almost with the precision of a railroad timetable. There is reason to believe that a tremendous battle now is raging over Belgian territory northward from the east bank of the Meuse River at Sedan to the region of Liège—or even on the French side of that city.
If that battle is not actually in progress the British are being prepared for the news that it has started.
It is easy, here in London, to exaggerate the British difficulties without taking into full account the problems that must be harassing the Germans. Nevertheless, well informed persons here in this gloomiest moment are prepared to see the Germans crash through until once more the boom of German guns can be heard across the Channel.
There is a reverse side to this coin, but a no more cheerful one from the British point of view. The opinion of some here is that the Germans will not attack Paris and even will not move across the fortified Franco-Belgian frontier. Instead, it is argued, the Germans may dig in against counterattacks across this frontier, consolidate the Netherlands and Belgium and then use them as jumping-off places for a Blitzkrieg against Britain.
RAIDS ON ENGLAND LIKELY
By continuous air raids, coupled with the use of parachute troops, it is conjectured they might attempt to reduce this country to a jelly and then attack it.
Meanwhile the Germans and the Italians might start trouble in the Balkans to draw off the Allied troops.
Against these gloomy prognostications must be set certain elements of cheer. First, there is a feeling that the British forces in France, which apparently are working on as close a schedule as an express train, are carrying out the campaign properly. Second, and more important, is the apparent success of the Royal Air Force. Detailed figures are not available, but it can be said definitely that the British are losing fewer men and planes than the Germans while taking on anything in the way of Heinkels, Dorniers, Junkers and Messerschmitts that the skies provide. It can be said also that the advance British force has not been hampered seriously by German bombing, as was the case in both Poland and Norway. The R.A.F. got its tail up taking on the Germans and keeping them off by using the air arm as a sort of superior artillery. Whether this equality in air can be maintained remains to be seen.
MAY 16, 1940
GREAT BATTLE FLUCTUATES ON 60-MILE FRONT; NAZIS GAIN ON MEUSE, ALLIES COUNTER ATTACK; ROOSEVELT AGAIN CALLS ON ITALY TO KEEP OUT
The War in the West
The Battle of the Meuse, marking the first meeting of main bodies of the German and Allied Armies, started yesterday. The Germans, hoping for quick victory, struck with all their might. For the first time since the beginning of their offensive they encountered resistance commensurate with their blows. Their most spectacular feat was south of Sedan, where, according to the French, they advanced into the outer fortifications of the Maginot Line on a four-mile front. Reserves were rushed into the area and the French reported that a counter-attack had reduced the size of the pocket.
The apparent German strategy was (1) to cut the Allied line at Sedan and (2) to outflank Allied forces in Belgium by breaking through the Meuse defense line south of Namur. They succeeded in crossing the Meuse at several points between Namur and Mezieres, France.
The battle had not progressed far enough for the outcome to be indicated; that may take days. But the Germans, admitting that they were running into stiffening resistance, claimed to have pierced the Maginot Line at Sedan and to have forced the Meuse south of Namur “on a broad front.” This latter action, if successfully pressed, would doom Brussels. Charging that Brussels was the scene of so many troop movements that it no longer could be regarded as an “open city,” the Germans threatened to attack it with all the horrors of war.
German army trucks passing through the ruins of a village near the river Meuse. France, May 13, 1940.
MAY 16, 1940
Editorial
A NATIONAL DEFENSE PROGRAM
The High Command
Any reconsideration of our program of defense must begin with the problem as a unified whole. We cannot first consider ships in isolation, then planes, then the army, then industrial organization, and let separate answers to these questions add themselves together as they will. Our defense must have the balance and integration of a single great machine, in which the numbers and kinds of planes, tanks, guns, ships, industrial plants, workers and fighting forces are recognized as being intimately dependent on each other, because they must work in practice in the closest coordination. At present we do not have any agency whose business it is to study this problem as a unified whole. We have merely the heads of separate branches of the services, each of whom makes his separate requests for appropriations solely from his special point of view.
The War Resources Board, headed by Mr. Stettinius of the United States Steel Corporation, though organized to study the special problem of industrial mobilization in case of war, was disbanded last Fall after only a few weeks of life. What is needed now is a much wider attack on the problem by a body of experts capable of seeing, as a related whole, problems of administration, the size and proper balance of our defense forces, the industrial organization necessary to support them, and the broader technical and economic questions involved. That can be done without loss of valuable time. Data are readily available. Some central agency is needed to shape them promptly into a definite program.
Such a board or commission, it is hardly necessary to add, should be composed of the ablest experts available in varied fields and should be strictly non-partisan. The appointment of a board of this high type would be a gauge of good faith on the part of the Administration which would lift the defense issue above party or factional politics and would unite Congress on that issue under the leadership of the President. It would also do much to set at rest any further doubts of those who have been anxiously asking what we have got for the billions already spent on defense.
It is no less essential that we create a defense organization to assure far more coordination between our armed services than exists at present. The jealousies and frictions existing between our army and navy, and between air and ground officers, must be eradicated. We should do well to follow the example of France and create a war college at which officers of the army, navy and air corps, and related civilian officials, could study the problems of unified high command. Only by the cooperative effort of all arms unified under one directing head can our defense forces achieve their maximum efficiency in planning, in procurement, in strategy and in operations. Within the War and Navy Departments, further, there is still a clear need for reorganization in the interest of unity and the elimination of overlapping functions. There are still too many separate chiefs of equal rank working in watertight compartments.
These are not changes to be made in some vague future. Our peace and security gravely depend upon our ability to expand production of war supplies with sufficient promptness, not only for use by our own forces, but so that we can continue to sell immediately th
e vitally needed airplanes and other equipment to the democracies which still stand in the path of a nation seeking to dominate the world by intimidation, terror and mass murder.
MAY 19, 1940
JAPAN SEES STAKE IN WAR’S OUTCOME
Visualizing a New World Order of Hegemonies, She Hopes to Rule East Asia
By HUGH BYAS
Wireless to The New York Times.
TOKYO, May 18—Stories of the battle in China go unread as the Japanese watch the battle in Europe moving toward its climax. They see that there is a death grapple going on between one world order and another and they feel very near to the ring. They may remain uninvolved in the war but they cannot remain uninvolved in its results. Not only the shape of the world they will live in but their own futures are going to be affected.
“If Germany wins, Japan will become like Germany,” said a Japanese to this writer. If democracy proves stronger Nazi doctrines will be discredited and Japan will swing back from the extreme right to right center.
Public opinion here is neutral in form but pro-German in sympathy. The press commiserated with Finland when the Soviets invaded it, but has not had a word of sympathy for Norway, Holland and Belgium. Nationalist organs like the Hochi and Kokumin daily anticipate German victory and a new era opening on Nazi lines.
FRIENDS OF THE ALLIES
The few friends the Allies have are found among those Japanese who have lived abroad. About 80 cents out of every dollar of Japan’s gainful foreign trade is done with America and the British Empire and business classes in general admire Anglo-America. Most senior educators and most Japanese Christians can be added.
At the other extreme are near-Nazis and Fascist sympathizers, also a minority but powerful because of the support they command among young officers and young bureaucrats. Among the masses the younger men, every one of whom is enrolled in some nationalistic youth organization, expect a German victory.
Amid the clash of empires Foreign Minister Arita confidently steers a course which this nation in its collective way understands and believes in. He sees the world of tomorrow falling into a new pattern no longer arranged as a liberal individualistic civilization with large and small nations living side by side in legal and political equality.
WORLD OF TOMORROW
The new world, as Japanese statesmen see it, will consist of vast regional aggregations, each grouped around a dominant power. The Americas, under United States hegemony, will form one such group; East Asia, under Japan, another, and Central Europe, under Germany, another; the Russians are big enough to constitute a unit and Britain and France are thought strong enough to survive, although their empires may be trimmed.
Japan’s national policy is opportunist in method, clear and simple in principle. Its aim is to make Japan the overlord of East Asia, exercising that regional hegemony due it as a superior power. It means besides a new order in China a kind of Monroe Doctrine for the Western Pacific implying that there is to be no more foreign colonization in Japan’s sphere.
MAY 21, 1940
CONFUSION MARKS BATTLE IN FRANCE
Reports of Commanders Fail To Go into Details and Lines Cannot Be Drawn
Wireless to The New York Times.
The devastation in Tours after a German bombing raid on the city during World War II, circa 1940.
PARIS, May 20—Few tactical accounts of the great battle in France have yet come to hand. No newspaper correspondents of any nationality have yet been permitted anywhere near the actual fighting line. Even reports from corps and divisional commanders do not go into details; obviously there is more pressing business.
Nevertheless one point stands out already—the great confusion on the battlefield and the virtual impossibility of defining the respective lines at any given hour. It was difficult enough at Verdun; this is Verdun plus.
The best description yet heard is this: Imagine the Place de la Concorde filled with a dense crowd. Then send into it from every adjoining street scores of motor street sweepers that begin zigzagging in every direction. Add to these several dozen airplanes spinning round the obelisk. Then multiply the Place de la Concorde 100-fold and let the street sweepers represent tanks and you may gather an idea of the scene. As for the noise it baffles all description.
In the region of Danain, north of Cambrai, yesterday authorized reports indicate that the milling mass included not only French and German troops but many peasants caught in the whirl. And through this mass tanks darted in all directions while planes dived and rose, dived and rose as they raked the ground with their machine guns. Near the Crozat Canal in the same region French, British and German tanks were so intermingled that the infantry troops could scarcely tell friend from foe.
The German tactical plan is manifestly to sow terror everywhere. Light motorized units make sudden dashes into towns and villages often without any thought of occupation but only to create panic. After this they fall back on their main body. In the air the policy seems to be the same—a few bombs in many places rather than many bombs in few places. But now that the first surprise is over the resistance is becoming more and more dogged and also more systematic. In the regions of Cambrai and St. Quentin, for instance, where small streams and canals abound, full use is made of them to retard enemy progress and at the same time permit the regrouping of units and the advance of supports.
MAY 26, 1940
CRUCIAL STRUGGLE GOES ON FOR CHANNEL PORTS
German Success Has Been Notable but Invasion Of Britain Will Be Harder
By HANSON W. BALDWIN
Europe lived through one of the most crucial periods in its long and sanguinary history last week as the German legions moved to the Channel coast and threatened to annihilate vast Allied forces fighting with their backs to the sea.
In two weeks since the campaign in the West opened with the invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, the German forces have conquered the Netherlands, overrun Belgium, won the titanic Battle of the Meuse, smashed a French army, broken through on a sixty-two-mile front in Northern France, swung to the sea and advanced to within seventy miles of Paris, placing both the French and British Empires in the gravest peril in their history.
The “Battle of the Channel Ports,” or the “Battle of Flanders,” as it has variously been called, was still raging yesterday. The issue was still in doubt as the week ended, but despite furious Allied attempts to break through the German pincers—forged last Tuesday when the Germans thrust to the sea at Abbeville—those pincers were slowly closing on 500,000 to 1,000,000 Allied troops caught in a wide net in Northwestern France and coastal Belgium.
DRIVE FOR ANNIHILATION
The German plan of conquest was neither von Schlieffen’s nor Banse’s, though indebted to both of them; it was Germanic in conception, Hitlerian in operation; it was total war ruthlessly applied—object annihilation of the enemy’s fighting forces, destruction of the enemy’s will to resist.
The German drive, in addition to imperiling some 500,000 to 1,000,000 troops, blazed a red trail of flaming ruins and broken bodies across Belgium and Northern France. It put villages far behind the fighting lines to the torch (with the aid of bombers and parachute troops). It was directed against the nerve center of a people—their morale.
The Allied counter-moves were quickly taken. Bridges were blown up leading to Switzerland; the Rhine valley was flooded on the French side; the Eastern frontier was stripped as much as possible of French soldiers, and troops from all over France were rushed to the Northwest to try to close the gap. On the home front extraordinary measures were taken by both nations not only to give greater power to the military effort but to meet the German thrust against morale.
WEYGAND THE DYNAMIC
General Maxime Weygand replaced General Maurice Gustave Gamelin—an exponent of dynamic action replaced a man dedicated to the concept of static strength. In Britain Parliament passed a bill bestowing broad powers upon the government and enlisting the entire strength of the nation in the war, thus definitel
y and finally abandoning the military policy with which Britain started the war—the policy of a war of limited effort, a defensive war.
The Allied counter-measures—the replacement of Gamelin by Weygand, the enlistment of all of Britain’s powers in a totalitarian effort in the war against totalitarianism—may not have much effect upon the outcome of the crucial battle now raging. A substitution of the doctrine of “always the attack” for a doctrine of “always the defense” cannot win battles. The old military adage, “A good offensive is the best defensive,” is just as much a shibboleth as the Liddell Hart aphorism, “Defense is the best attack.” For a great leader, a great general, uses the offensive and the defensive; he knows when to attack and when to defend; generalship consists of knowing this and of seizing opportunity when it comes.
Now it is quite possible, in fact probable, that Weygand is a better general than Gamelin. Gamelin, however, has suffered for the sins of a system, and Weygand has inherited that system. Weygand may well manoeuvre that system better than Gamelin could have done, but he cannot change it overnight. Nor can the passage of an act of Parliament speed up the production of planes or war matériel.
FACTOR OF MORALE
It is, therefore, questionable whether the French shift to Weygand and the British shift to a totalitarian war machine can much affect, except in one way, the course of the Battle of the Channel Ports. And that way is morale. The measures of the Allied governments have undoubtedly restored much of the morale of the home fronts. The energetic measures taken by Premiere Paul Reynaud of France and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain and by General Weygand have also excited the determination and restored the confidence of both the French and the British troops.
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 29
