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Here is an interesting article from World War Two that goes into some detail explaining what is involved when a lieutenant colonel in an infantry regiment presents his plan of attack on a German town that is heavily defended. We hear him as he addresses the junior officers who will do the heavy lifting, and we get a sense of their concerns. Few reporters have ever paid any attention to this aspect of an assault.
“The Russians today apparently had stopped the German advance beyond Kharkov and had even regained the initiative on some sectors of the Donets. The turn of the tide came in Chuguyev, a town on the Donets River some 20 miles southeast of Kharkov. Yesterday the German radio said that Russin forces ‘encircled’ there had failed in attempts to break out.”
Three months into 1943, the Allied Command announced that the British 8th Army would soon be on the march alongside the newly arrived Americans:
“It will be a tough battle against the best of Hitler’s fighting men and weapons, but there is no doubt among Allied militarists of the outcome. Even pessimists agree that the Axis will be driven into the sea. There is reason to believe that the Nazi command itself is resigned to the loss of its last foothold on the south shore of the Mediterranean.”
“Seven million New Yorkers let down their hair last night in the wildest, loudest, gayest, drunkest kissingest, hell-for-leather celebration the big town has ever seen.”
Click here to read about VE-Day in New York City…
After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the U.S. Navy believed that the Japanese had lost over half their original strength:
“Naval observers in Washington are exhilarated by the evident extent of the Japanese defeat but, in true Navy tradition, they are being canny about it. It isn’t what we have sunk or disabled [that matters], it’s what is left that can still fight.”
After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the U.S. Navy believed that the Japanese had lost over half their original strength:
“Naval observers in Washington are exhilarated by the evident extent of the Japanese defeat but, in true Navy tradition, they are being canny about it. It isn’t what we have sunk or disabled [that matters], it’s what is left that can still fight.”
Listed herein are 17 events that transpired between the U.S. diplomatic corps and their opposite numbers representing the Empire of Japan.
“The news of [the Pearl Harbor] attack broke out at a time on Sunday afternoon when a comparatively few newspapers in the U.S.A. were being published (there were no evening papers on sunday). The result was that the nation learned of the war and its immediate developments almost entirely by radio. The National Broadcasting system held the bulletin for a few minutes, and at 2:30 gave the news simultaneously to its Red and Blue networks, and subsequently to the whole world over its international short-wave system.”
“Don’t believe that the Japanese ordered their dawn assault only yesterday. The fact is that they ordered it not days ago but weeks ago. While Japan’s special envoy, Saburo Kurusu, was busy talking in Washington, the ships that were to attack us were already on their way. While he was staling and waiting ‘for instructions’, they were getting into position. More than that: they had their orders before Kurusu even started talking.”
The mass arrests of Japanese Americans began the evening of the Pearl Harbor attack:
“As the arrests began last night, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that FDR had authorized him to apprehend as ‘alien enemies’, Japanese aliens considered dangerous ‘to the peace and security of the U.S.A. He said that at least 1,000 Japanese nationals would be affected, but there would be ‘a fair hearing for all persons apprehended.’ “
“The spy phobia possesses all inhabitants of Nippon. No one believes a foreigner can possibly be living in or visiting Japan for any simple reason such as business or pleasure. He must be in the pay of a foreign government. This entails a counterespionage system in which every Japanese joins with enthusiasm.”
During the August of 1945, C.C. Beall (1892 – 1970), popular commercial illustrator of the Forties, was dispatched by Collier’s to illustrate the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Empire on the decks of the battleship Missouri – and to draw-up whatever else caught his fancy on mainland Japan. Much of his account concerns his search for food and suitable lodgings.
“At the end of last year, our authorities discovered that there were nearly one hundred Japanese leg men in New England reporting to the Boston office. More than five hundred in Washington; something above two hundred in Chicago; twenty-five hundred were in the New York area; twenty-five in Cleveland; thirty-eight in Detroit; eighty-odd in Florida, and so on out to the West Coast where around three thousand Japanese are ‘on duty’ from San Diego to Port Washington.”
Six months before Japan’s devastating assault on Pear Harbor came this article concerning how remarkable the Navy’s defensive measures were and how unlikely it would be if the installation was ever to be attacked. A large part of the article concerned how overwhelmingly Japanese the Oahu population was, and the many steps taken by the Army and Navy to keep them off-base. How terribly unimaginative of them to think that Japanese Naval Itelligence wouldn’t think to farm-out spying to an Englishman like Frederick Rutland – which they did.
“German prisoners of war are not coddled at the Fort Dix camp. The PWs are not mistreated, but neither is any kindness shown them. The officers supervising them are not cruel or lenient; they adhere strictly to the letter of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners.”
PM reporter Jack Shafer knew all this to have been true, because he went to Fort Dix and saw for himself.
When Hitler and Mussolini declared that they would no longer import Hollywood films for viewing, they inadvertently gave birth to a new kind of Hollywood – a Hollywood that would now produce movies criticizing European Fascism.
Read about Mission to Moscow (Warner Brothers, 1943) – made when Hollywood wished not to offend Stalin…
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) had much to say as to how the German people could come to terms with all the dreadful acts that were committed in their name during the previous 12 years.
“[The German] will try frantically to rehabilitate himself in the face of the world’s accusations and hate – but that is not the right way. The only right way is his unconditional acknowledgement of guilt… German penitence must come from within.”
Click here to read Jung’s thoughts on Hitler.
PM war correspondent Victor Bernstein filed this story three weeks before VE-Day concerning a 180-mile forced march that was the lot of assorted Allied prisoner of war in Germany. Numerous interviews with the survivors of the march revealed that the Nazis lording over as many as 4,000 POWs choosing to brutalize the U.S. prisoners in much the same way they abused Poles and Soviets. British POWs seemed not to attract their ire.
