The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945
Page 116
At length we arrived at the top to find the Marshal waiting to welcome us. He led us into the study of a small, simply furnished apartment.
A long dining table stands against a wall facing two windows which look directly down over the ravine and out into the valley. The chairs are all simple, wooden affairs. On three walls are maps, including a large-scale one of Yugoslavia. The meeting with the marshal was completely informal, and we discussed a variety of topics. The marshal does not like to talk in English as he does not consider himself sufficiently fluent. He can, however, read it easily. We spoke with him mostly through the American correspondent, Stoyan Pribichevich (Time and Life correspondent), who is a Serbian by birth.
The marshal wore the blue-gray uniform of the National Army of Liberation, with his marshal’s insignia on his sleeves and collar. He is some 5 feet 8 inches tall, very strongly built and has an exceedingly strong face, which at first strikes one as being stern until one sees the lines of laughter at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
I asked him if he thought that German and Quisling troops had any plans for another offensive against the Partisans.
“No,” he answered. “I do not think they have.
“The main German concern at the moment is to keep the forces of the National Army of Liberation split into groups throughout the country.
“German tactics at present consist of minor thrusts in various localities, with the idea of making the Partisan soldiers use up their scanty stores of ammunition and thus immobilize them.
“We are finding now that the German soldier is deteriorating as a fighter and is not what he used to be a year ago. By far the best soldier the enemy has is the Ustashi (Yugoslav puppet troops). I think one Ustashi is two Germans against us. Chetniks definitely are bad soldiers.”
MAY 18, 1944
LETTERS TO THE TIMES
De Gaulle Stand Questioned
To the Editor of The New York Times:
I have no doubt that many of your readers felt as I did that your editorial of May 9, “French Realities,” laid stress upon a vital point, namely, that while it is in the clutches of the most cruel of enemies, none should discount the will of the French people in the selection of its government until it is able at last to exercise that will. And you stressed another fact: that the liberation of France necessarily depended upon the exertions of the British and American armed forces now awaiting the signal to attack France’s invader from the north, east and west as the foe is now being attacked on the Italian front.
My good friend Oswald Chew argues in your columns today that General de Gaulle and the Committee of National Liberation are “the ones to administer the rights of the French civil population” during the process of liberation. He supports this by the claim that “they have the complete confidence of the French underground movement, representing 90 per cent of the French people.” Of course, Mr. Chew’s authority for that assertion is that of the Committee of National Liberation and its various organs of propaganda. But why should any American assume that his own Government with its intelligence facilities is not informed as to the sentiments of the French people?
DE GAULLE SELF APPOINTED
General de Gaulle was self-appointed when he asked the French people to continue to fight notwithstanding the Hitler-Pétain armistice. He asked them to rally to him as a military leader, and his fame rests on that. The British Government thereupon reached an agreement with him dated Aug. 7, 1940, in which he was recognized as “leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be, who rally to you in support of the Allied cause.”
There were Frenchmen in Africa, under the Pétain regime, who not only had not rallied to General de Gaulle but had fought him. To have resorted to him for the landing in Africa in November, 1942, after the experience at Dakar, would have been fatal to the undertaking and perhaps to the outcome of the war. Our Government sought a leader who might prove acceptable to the Frenchmen in Africa.
If General de Gaulle will devote himself to the common task of defeating the Boche and leave aside the idle question whether he is the head of the Government of France, he will render the greatest service which it is in his power to render to the common cause which he served so nobly in July, 1940.
Maurice Leon
New York
May 15, 1940
MAY 21, 1944
EDUCATION IN REVIEW
UNRRA School Is Training Workers For the Grim Job Of Relief in War-Stricken Countries
BY BENJAMIN FINE
In what is probably the only school of its kind in the world, a group of carefully selected men and women have returned to the classroom for a concentrated eight weeks’ program dealing with the salvaging of human lives. The school, located on the peaceful University of Maryland campus, is the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Training Center. From early morning until far in the evening, these men and women—there are fifty of them on the campus now, and they are called “members” rather than students—sit in classrooms, listen to lectures, pore over maps and books, and tackle “homework.”
Operated by UNRRA, under the immediate supervision of Dr. Frank Munk, a Czech refugee who has been a lecturer in economics at the University of California since 1941, the training center has been in operation since May 1. A continuous flow of members is expected, as UNRRA will need many hundreds of field workers in devastated countries of the world before the full job of rehabilitation is completed. The Maryland project can accommodate as many as two or three hundred at any one time.
This is not an academic institution in the accepted sense of the term. The “students” are all employes of UNRRA or of the voluntary agencies collaborating with it. At present the center is emphasizing the “Balkan Mission.” Following their training the men and women will go to Cairo, there to get practical experience in dealing with refugees. Several camps are located in Egypt. When the time is ripe they will take their posts in Greece, in Yugoslavia, and wherever else they may be needed.
CURRICULUM OF FIVE PARTS
Although the course of studies is rather flexible, the curriculum can be divided into five major headings: a study of regions, languages, instrumentalities, people and operational programs. The students learn about the region to which they are to be assigned—the economic, political, social or cultural background. They study the languages of this region; each member of the training center is required to select one language for extensive study. Instrumentalities of services—such as the agencies that are to operate in the field, especially the functioning of UNRRA itself—are stressed.
A typical week’s work may include such topics as “People in Need,” “What UNRRA Expects from Its Representatives in the Field,” “Simple Living,” “Balkan Mission,” “Displaced Persons in the United States of America,” “How to Get Along in Greece,” “Work of Division of Industrial Rehabilitation,” “Impact of Nazism” and “Allied Military Government in Sicily and Italy.” Each student gets two hours of language daily.
In a sense, the training school is a point of embarkation. Even before their eight weeks are up, many of the members are “alerted” and then called into active service. They know that they may be sent abroad on twenty-four hours’ notice. While at the school they live in dormitories, eat in the cafeteria “army style,” take toughening exercises, and follow a semi-military discipline.
“You are going to see things that will be awfully hard on you physically and emotionally,” their lecturers warn. “You will need strong stomachs; it will not be an easy job. You’ll have to learn to take it.”
Dr. Munk summed up the purpose and objectives of this unique school in these words:
“I’m trying to make them understand the country that they are going to, the people that they will work with, the purpose of UNRRA and their particular place in it.”
MAY 23, 1944
ALLIES PREPARED TO MEET NAZI GAS
Its Use by Enemy Doubted, but Our Troops Are Equipped For 50-to-1 Retaliation
By Cable to The New York Times.
LONDON, May 23—Retaliation swift and sure, on an unprecedented scale, will follow any use of poison gas by the enemy, either against the invasion ports or the Allied armies invading the Continent.
Responsible opinion here is that the employment of gas as an anti-invasion measure is possible but not probable inasmuch as the German General Staff is aware of the Allies’ ability to retaliate with at least fifty cubic feet of gas for each one loosed by the Germans.
Nevertheless, every precaution is being taken, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s invading armies will be equipped both to withstand gas attacks and to retaliate.
It is thought here that the enemy will use gas only if he hopes to achieve a victory so important that the use of gas would outweigh the long-term effects of retaliation. The two periods when the enemy may use gas are the pre-invasion period, when the Allied armies are embarking, and when the Atlantic Wall is being assaulted.
Gas attacks on British ports by the Luftwaffe bomber force, which has had little employment lately, would have as their objective the dislocation of the invasion timetable to such an extent that the enemy might be able to deal, in the initial onslaught, with smaller forces than they now contemplate facing.
It is more likely, however, that the enemy would employ gas to strengthen his static defenses along the coast. It would certainly increase the difficulties of attack, especially if mustard gas were sprayed over the areas across which the assault against the Atlantic Wall were to be launched. The best anti-gas precautions in the world cannot entirely nullify the effects of mustard gas.
Although gas has not been used by the Allies, experimentation in its use has not ceased.
Chapter 19
“THIS IS THE EUROPE WE CAME TO FREE”
June–July 1944
While an estimated 350 correspondents waited patiently in London for news that the invasion of France had begun, Herbert Matthews of The Times was with the U.S. Fifth Army ducking German bombs and snipers while battling into the suburbs of Rome. By June 4 the Italian capital was in American hands. This symbolic triumph was overshadowed two days later when the news blackout imposed in Britain was finally lifted. Just after dawn on June 6, a fleet of 7,000 ships and landing craft of all sizes, supported by 12,000 aircraft, transported the first American, British and Canadian troops—more than 130,000 in all—across the English Channel to five beaches in Normandy. The news first reached The Times in New York City from the German broadcasting service just after midnight. Ninety minutes later, the paper was on the street, the first announcement of the invasion the world had been anxiously awaiting. A few hours later General Eisenhower released a formal communiqué, but it was brief and short of hard facts.
Although The Times sent seven newsmen ashore in Normandy, reports of the battle lacked real detail. The Times used the first week of the campaign to renew its enthusiasm for the liberation of France. “The love of France,” claimed one editorial, “of the French culture, of the French landscape is shared by all civilized men.” Among the first reports, “The Europe We Came to Free” declared that Europeans were “hungry and rebellious,” alternately animated by “hope, depression and exaltation.” The struggle to free them went more slowly than anticipated, “Hedge to Hedge” as one headline put it.
The beachhead was well-established by mid-June and by June 26 the port of Cherbourg was captured by General Omar Bradley’s forces. But the city of Caen, opposite Montgomery’s British and Canadian forces, was strongly defended; when the Germans finally withdrew to a line south of the city, a British assault, code-named “Goodwood,” failed to dislodge them. To make matters worse, on June 13 the German secret weapon, long threatened by Goebbels’s propaganda, became real. The first V-1 “flying bombs”—unmanned cruise missiles—landed on London, the opening of an assault in which 10,000 bombs were fired, though only 2,419 reached the British capital. Not until the end of July was the deadlock in Normandy finally broken, a week after a group of senior German army commanders had tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler and seize power. Hitler remained in control, ordering fanatical resistance in France as German forces grew weaker. On July 25 Bradley finally unleashed Operation Cobra for a breakout from Normandy toward the port of Avranches. The German Front crumbled at once, the start of a two-week retreat that left much of France in Allied hands.
The news from France once again eclipsed battles elsewhere. In Belorussia the Red Army mounted one of the largest operations of the war, code-named “Bagration,” against German Army Group Center, the major front in the East. It began on June 22, when 2.4 million soldiers, 31,000 guns and 5,200 tanks smashed forward into the German line. Unlike Normandy, the Soviet offensive worked like clockwork. Minsk was captured by July 4, and Brest-Litovsk, where German forces had launched Barbarossa three years before, on July 26. Army Group Center was destroyed. That summer the German Army lost 589,000 men in the East, the biggest defeat inflicted on German armed forces.
Progress was also rapid in the Pacific,. On June 15 American forces stormed ashore on Saipan in the Marianas, supported by a huge fleet that included fifteen aircraft carriers. The Japanese responded by sending a large task force with nine carriers to intercept the invasion. The Battle of the Philippine Sea began on June 19, the largest carrier-to-carrier engagement of the war. The result was a decisive defeat for the Japanese Fleet. Despite Japanese successes in China in the so-called Ichi-Go offensive, on July 20 General Hideki Tojo resigned as premier, following his country’s defeats in the Pacific. By the end of July not only Saipan but also Guam was in American hands.
In the United States, President Roosevelt was named the Democratic Party’s candidate for president for an unprecedented fourth term with The Times now in support of his candidacy. Arthur Sulzberger thought Roosevelt was more likely to guide the nation to “ultimate victory” than any other choice.
JUNE 5, 1944
CONQUERORS’ GOAL REACHED BY ALLIES
Fifth and Eighth Armies Drive Up From South on Rome In a Historic Campaign
By HERBERT L. MATTHEWS
By Wireless to The New YorkTimes.
ROME, June 4—The Allies’ troops fought their way into Rome this morning and at nightfall they were still fighting on the outer edges, which the Germans were defending despite all their protestations about considering Rome an open city. Other large German units faced entrapment south of Highway 6 unless they could be pulled back across the Tiber or through Rome.
But Rome has been reached—the goal of conquerors throughout the ages, though none was ever before able to make the almost impossible south-north campaign. What Hannibal did not dare to do, the Allies’ generals accomplished, but at such a cost in blood, matériel and time that it will probably never again be attempted.
FIRST TANK SET AFIRE
Early today Rome was just a few yards in front of us and a road sign, “Roma,” faced us tantalizingly. On the other side the Allies’ first tank to penetrate Rome proper was blazing fiercely, while a German self-propelled gun, some tanks and machine-gun snipers held up the triumphal entry into the greatest prize of the war thus far. Here is the story of our getting to that point.
It was the break-through on the Fifth Army’s right wing yesterday that did the trick. That thrust into the mountain ridge behind Velletri three days ago that permitted the flanking of Rocca di Papa cooked the Germans’ goose. Faced with the certainty that their positions along the coast would be quickly flanked, the Germans fell back swiftly to positions just before Rome, playing desperately and successfully for time until darkness had fallen. Meanwhile their right wing began falling back, but they are going to lose plenty, for they have delayed overlong.
Evidently they underestimated the Allies’ drive. They started massing tanks north of Highway 6 to throw against our advancing columns, but they could not even get those up in time.
Mark Clark, Commander of the U.S. Fifth Army, rides through Rome follo
wing the liberation of the city in June 1944
HEADQUARTERS QUICKLY SHIFTED
Correspondents started for Rome at 5 P.M. yesterday. Divisional headquarters were moving so quickly that we had trouble finding the one that we wanted. There they told us that their force was moving quickly.
Prisoners were filing back by the dozens. The Hermann Goering Armored Division was really steam-rollered this time, but everyone available was thrown in, even veterinaries, in the vain effort to stem the Allies rush.
We knew that there would be strafing, bombing and perhaps shelling by dark, but we had to get up there on Highway 6. A three-quarter moon was a blessing, just as it was the night before we took Messina. There was an eerie tenseness in the air as darkness came on. We got over the Alban Hills in the dusk and our eyes searched vainly through the haze for Rome, which, we knew, lay on the Campagna right before us. Excitement had gripped everybody, but it was a grim, silent and deserted countryside, except for our advancing columns.
Our little jeep wound in and out among the cars and soon we reached the infantry filing along both sides of the road. The wounded were coming back steadily, and so were the prisoners, but otherwise this was like all the roads that led to Rome, not far away.
Every moment we expected the Germans to react, but still we kept going. At Kilometre 18, dead bodies began cluttering the landscape—ours as well as theirs. Suddenly we struck a clear patch and rushed on alone through the darkness, almost holding our breaths. But we knew that there were some reconnaissance units ahead and perhaps the way into Rome was clear, after all.