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

by The New York Times

  How best to dispose of this vast accumulation of goods without wrecking the normal channels of trade, stifling employment and creating a nation-wide depression in the post-war era, is the problem with which the Surplus War Property Administration and all responsible Government and business executives have been wrestling for months. Final solutions have not been reached yet but progress has been made and hopes are expressed that the task can be accomplished without jarring the economic machinery out of position.

  The determination to find a solution stems largely from recollections of the sorry job made in surplus disposal following the last war.

  At that time great quantities of raw and finished materials were dumped upon the country when the nation was trying to get its economic balance after a two-year spree of wartime spending. The results, in many lines of trade, were well-nigh catastrophic. Speculators grew rich buying consumer supplies from the Government for a fraction of the real value and marketing them at huge profits through retail outlets, while manufacturers of goods similar to the surplus items were forced to close the doors of their plants. Prices fell, employment dropped and the entire country suffered.

  To guard against such occurrences after this war all goods owned by the United States and stored abroad will be sold only on guarantee that it will not re-enter this country, either in its original form or as part of a manufactured item.

  One plan which is being tried out in the disposal of surplus cutting tools and some electronic equipment is to turn the goods back to the original manufacturer, letting him dispose of them for the Government on a commission basis. In such sales the plan is to have the goods marketed in a ratio of two surplus machines for each new machine sold. The ratio can be adjusted to conform to market conditions.

  Even with all the precautions which will be taken, the marketing of so vast a quantity of merchandise, whether in finished form or as scrap (as in the case of some aircraft, dismantled artillery, etc.), will present a strain upon the economy.

  The best that can be hoped for is that the impact will be softened through the proper timing of sales and by disposal in quantities which can be assimilated without disrupting the health of the nation’s economy.

  DECEMBER 18, 1944

  GERMAN ASSAULT IS A MAJOR EFFORT

  By HAROLD DENNY

  By Cable to The New York Times.

  WITH AMERICAN FIRST ARMY, in Germany, Dec. 17—The German counter-offensive that started yesterday moved forward several more miles into our lines today and with increased power. It looks like the real thing.

  It is too early yet to gauge its possible extent and scope and whether this is to be Germany’s final all-out effort to stave off defeat. But the rate at which the Germans are throwing in divisions, including some crack ones, shows that it is a serious, major counter-offensive and serious exertions will be needed to meet it.

  The Germans are supporting these divisions with everything in their arsenal—scores of paratroopers, who were dropped behind our lines in an effort to disrupt our supplies and communications, and tanks and aircraft in more lavish numbers than they have thrown at us at any one time since Normandy. And for the past two days they have been tossing over V-weapons in far greater numbers.

  German troops, we learn from prisoners, were sent into this drive on a wave of do-or-die ballyhoo. The following order of the day was read to all troops before the attack:

  “Soldiers of the west front: “Your great hour has struck. Strong attacking armies are advancing today against the Anglo-Americans. I do not need to say more to you. You all feel it. Everything is at stake. You bear in yourselves the holy duty to give everything and to achieve the superhuman for our fatherland and our Fuehrer.”

  It was signed “Commander in Chief of the West Front von Rundstedt, Field Marshal.”

  Today surviving members of the German first waves had the satisfaction of crossing from German soil through the Siegfried Line into Belgium and Luxembourg at several points and our troops were seriously on the defensive for the first time since Normandy. The Germans were paying heavy, however. German dead were piling up in front of our forward positions. Some front-line commanders reported German casualties at 50 or 60 per cent of the attacking units.

  As of yesterday, the total length of American front on which the attacks were occurring at various points was about seventy miles, which was in the First Army zone from the neighborhood of Monschau to near Echternach.

  We had motored by jeep down a road that should have led us, without incident, to the Second Infantry Division. At another town en route, however, we learned that the Germans had cut the road ahead and were attacking toward this town. In front of this town were infantrymen of a division that cannot yet be identified as in the line. They had held off German attacks all day yesterday and until midnight when the German attack waned. It began again at 3:30 o’clock this morning, however, with a determined assault on this division’s flank.

  The Germans sent in forty to fifty tanks with infantrymen riding them pick-a-back. The infantrymen jumped down and tried to knock out our antitank guns and open a path for the tanks. By 6 o’clock this morning the Germans had penetrated this division’s front three miles. Our men were out-numbered there and, except for some tank destroyers that were rushed up, they had to fight off these heavy attacks with rifles, grenades and bazookas.

  Our troops in this town knew that reinforcements were coming up and they felt that they could hold off the enemy until the help arrived. We left for a headquarters farther back in the rear. When we reached it we learned that the town we had left had just fallen.

  DECEMBER 19, 1944

  AMERICANS BATTLE TO STEM ADVANCE OF THE ENEMY; NAZIS STILL MOVING

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Paris, Dec. 18—The American Ninth Air Force and the British Second Tactical Air Force dived through sleet and fog today to hammer the tank-tipped German columns pressing deeper into Belgium and Luxembourg as Field Marshal Gen. Karl von Rundstedt’s counter-offensive continued to move westward for the third day.

  The greatest enemy penetration revealed by the Allies was in the area west of Stavelot, which is eight miles southwest of Malmedy and twenty miles from the German frontier from which the northern arm of the offensive was launched. There, rocket-firing Typhoons of the British Second Tactical Air Force fell on a column of twenty German halftracks, destroying three of them.

  ALLIED PLANES BATTER FOE

  The Allies’ ground forces continued their news blackout today, but it is obvious from the reports of air battles, which involved three American tactical commands and two British fighter bomber groups, that the German counter-offensive was monopolizing the Allies’ attention.

  The air battles raged over this battle front, with American pilots destroying forty-five German planes and the British one. The Ninth Air Force, whose fighter bombers operated against enemy columns, claimed the destruction of ninety-five German tanks and other armored vehicles, 265 trucks and sixty railroad cars, while Marauders, Havocs and Invaders dropped more than 290 tons of bombs on five towns in the Schleiden area, well to the east of the German spearheads.

  The Ninth Air Force also claimed that twenty-six tanks and other armored vehicles; sixty-five trucks and nineteen railroad cars had been damaged and that twenty fortified buildings had been destroyed and twenty gun positions silenced during the attacks today. German railroads were cut in three places.

  BOMBERS HIT RAIL CENTERS

  In a direct blow at the supply lines of the attacking German Armies, 1,800 American and British heavy bombers attacked major German railway centers including Cologne, Coblenz and Mainz last night and today.

  The German thrust to the vicinity of Stavelot placed the northern arm of Marshal von Rundstedt’s offensive in an area twenty-two miles southeast of Liege. There were no reports available here of the progress of the enemy drives into Luxembourg through Vianden and Echternach. The speed and depth of the pene
tration in the north, however, were disquieting.

  The nature of all Allied measures taken to halt the enemy thrust cannot be revealed, but it is obvious that the two days of extensive air activity have failed to check the German offensive in the north at least. It is probable, however, that American divisions already are attacking the sides of the German thrust.

  While the battle raged over the sodden hills of the Ardennes and through the stone villages of eastern Belgium, far to the south two divisions of Lieut. Gen. Alexander M. Patch’s American Seventh Army continued to push northward into the Palatinate from the German frontier in the area of the Wissembourg Gap.

  Meanwhile, on the American Third Army front, the Ninetieth Infantry Division has cleared most of Dillingen, except for a single fortified area, knocking out five Siegfried Line pillboxes in the process.

  On the Ninth Army front our troops cleared Wuerm, Mullendorf and Beeck (1) and before Dueren they entered Roelsdorf and Lendersdorf (2). Although there was a blackout on news of the German offensive, it was indicated that the force was beyond Stavelot in Belgium (3), that the push at the northern tip of Luxembourg (4) had gained and that the thrusts below Viaden (5) and Echternach (6) had been stalled. The Third Army pushed to the eastern edge of Dillingen (7). The Seventh battered Maginot Line defenses near Bitche (8), entered Nieder Shlettenbach (9), west of which it gained, and passed Berg (10). Bombs show rail centers blasted.

  DECEMBER 19, 1944

  COOKS AND CLERKS SLOW NAZI BLOW

  Mustered When Foe Strikes Suddenly, They Hold Until Armor, Planes Arrive

  By MORLEY CASSIDY

  Of The Philadelphia Bulletin

  North American Newspaper Alliance.

  WITH THE AMERICAN SECOND DIVISION, Dec. 18—Here and elsewhere on a front of sixty miles the Germans are throwing what looks like a Sunday punch at American forces. For two days I have been watching the greatest German counter-attacks since Normandy against forward elements of this division.

  Standing outside the division command post, I watched these veterans being forced, blow by blow, to give ground temporarily before enemy armored columns. German armored infantry forced its way over a hill less than three-quarters of a mile from this command post, while a column of German tanks poured withering machine-gun and artillery fire into the village streets for hours.

  The command post mustered cooks, bakers and clerks of the headquarters personnel into posts as infantrymen until reinforcements arrived. The German tank attack gradually was slowed by these men, who later were aided by tank destroyers and tanks, which knocked out four German tanks and an armored scout car.

  FOE USING GOOD UNITS

  Barely a half mile from here the German attack continues with heavy concentrations of excellent divisions, including armored, infantry and panzer units. The enemy also is striking heavily in more than a dozen spots from the Monschau area in Belgium to Echternach in Luxembourg.

  In some places these gains have been sizable, although the most ominous threats appear to be sealed off. One of the most dangerous of these was crushed—for a moment, at least—by the heroic stand of this division and its right-hand neighbor.

  This furious assault broke with little warning. The command post here was shelled fiercely Saturday morning—it was the heaviest shelling in its history—and other divisions near by were shelled from unexpected areas, which was an indication of the wide scope of the German effort.

  True to their tradition of Sunday attacks, the Germans hit with full strength yesterday morning, first in the air with V [robot] weapons and bombing missions. Shortly before dawn this whole division was alerted for the possibility of para-troopers. At about the same time came word that the Germans had broken into part of the division on our right with tanks and armored infantry and were sweeping toward our headquarters.

  NEWS IS STARTLING

  This news was startling, as this division had been in the midst of a terrific forward push and gained nearly two miles only the day before.

  Our crossroads village was roaring with vehicles, racing to take positions. Cooks, kitchen police and headquarters clerks were jumping from pots, pans and typewriters to grab rifles, grenades and pistols. Many of these men had not fired a weapon since hitting the Normandy beach on D-day-Plus-One.

  This job was too close for maps and telephones. Standing outside the command post Maj. Gen. Walter M. Robertson chain-smoked cigarettes as he directed the infantry into place. By this time German tanks had moved over the crest of a hill 1 mile across this little valley. They moved swiftly down the road in our direction, but suddenly there was a jet of flames when one tank was hit by a machine gun manned by Master Sgt. Melvin Brown and a jeep driver, Pfc. Alvin Taylor, both of Texas.

  By now the hills east and south of our command post were flaming with streams of tracers fired by our men, and the Germans were criss-crossing in the curtain of red arcs. Enemy artillery fire was growing and high explosive shells and phosphorous bombs were landing across the street from us, but through it all General Robertson stood unmoved. He gave orders to headquarters personnel to defend the building until the last.

  GENERAL LEADS THE WAY

  With the first thrust held by these makeshift forces, thanks to the tank destroyers, our anti-tank guns arrived from another sector and rolled through the town. General Robertson mounted the lead scout car and rode to the lines to place the vehicles. He had barely returned when the German tanks hit with full force.

  Five of them appeared on the road to our left. We watched breathless as a tank destroyer knocked off the first and set it blazing. A few moments later another was hit, then the third, along with a scout car. The other two turned and fled.

  The vehicles burned brightly a few minutes, then burst into hundreds of flames as their ammunition exploded.

  The danger was far from over, however. Infantry reinforcements had followed the lead tanks and other tanks were approaching up the valley to the south. With our command post ringed by machine-gun fire, we could see lines of fire moving down hills in our direction.

  “If we could only get air,” an officer kept repeating. Presently a dozen Thunderbolts of the Ninth Air Force circled overhead, spot ting targets.

  “Thank God they got through,” seemed to be heard all around.

  Diving, the planes dropped their eggs on troops and tanks. They were pinpointed to their targets by radio direction from Maj. J. P. Dunn of Chicago.

  Mission after mission came over, but today the Germans had thrown in the Luftwaffe, too. From the east appeared a dozen Messerschmitt 109’s. We saw one shot down by our ack-ack and another engaged by a Thunderbolt as it was dropping its bombs. There were two swift passes, then the Messerschmitt began trailing smoke and crashed.

  The Luftwaffe returned. A dozen planes dive-bombed and strafed our command post. This time our AA guns got another. On its heels another fell to a Thunderbolt.

  The situation at the command post was still desperate at noon and plans were laid for an escape route through a rear window. But again the doughboys turned up in scores of trucks. They dismounted to stream up the valley to the south. Grim-faced but cracking wry jokes, they plodded out to their posts, half a mile away.

  Two battalions went through and some soon began coming back, some limping and some on litters. Others who went out won’t come back, but they did a job.

  The surprise attack on our flank had been held and sealed off, and General Robertson was able to set up a new line facing south instead of east. Then, and not till then, did he agree to move his command post to the rear—while he moved forward.

  DECEMBER 25, 1944

  NAZI PUSH HALTED BY AIR AND GROUND BLOWS

  Enemy Forced to Pause as Americans Strike Back in Force

  By DREW MIDDLETON

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Dec. 24—The mightiest tactical air assault of the war and a series of determined attacks by American troops have at least temporar
ily halted the German offensive in eastern Belgium.

  The great battle neared its climax today when, with about 6,500 American and British bombers and fighters blasting the German divisions at the front, their supply lines and the airfields on which the Luftwaffe relies, the American forces smashed deeper into the southern flank of the enemy’s salient in Luxembourg.

  The halting of the enemy drive on which the Germans gambled so heavily—a Christmas gift for all who cherish freedom—may be only temporary, but it is apparent that the German smash has lost its first edge and that whenever his offensive is renewed the enemy will attack with greatly reduced forces against Allied divisions ready to resume their own offensive in the life-and-death struggle over the rugged, snow-covered hills and narrow valleys of the eastern Ardennes.

  GERMAN MIGHT EBBS

  The Germans, who attacked so confidently on Dec. 16 in the Indian summer of their military strength, suffered heavily in the air and on the ground today.

  American and British pilots destroyed 116 German planes in air battles that covered the front from the Cologne plain to the Colmar area. While the doughboys, artillerymen and tank crews hammered the German flank on the south, more than 2,000 bombers of the Eighth Air Force, the greatest force of heavy bombers ever flown on a single mission by any air force, pounded enemy road, rail and supply lines and smashed airfields from which the Luftwaffe had been operating in support of the offensive.

  Meanwhile, a vast number of fighter-bombers of the Ninth Air Force and Spitfires, Typhoons and Mustangs of the British Second Tactical Air Force swept over the battle area.

  HUNDREDS OF VEHICLES RUINED