Tuesday, August 29, 1944

A RACE FOR THE BORDER. There’s not as much ballyhoo in the papers the last couple of days about the liberation of Paris as I might have expected. But there seems to be one good reason for that -- the Allies are tearing through the rest of France at a stupendous pace. One tank spearhead of the U.S. Third Army has shot forward across the Marne River fifteen miles east of Paris, and has wheeled north to cut off the retreat of the German Fifteenth Army’s shattered remains. Other Third Army spearheads are crossing the Seine in force, pushing northwestward toward Reims, the cathedral city whose seizure would make a German stand in northern France untenable.

Meanwhile, the American invasion column which landed on the south coast near Cannes last week is blazing northward at such a pace as to suggest that the Germans aren’t doing -- or can’t do -- much of anything to stop it. U.S. tanks from this invasion group has gone past Grenoble and into the Rhone Valley, some 100 miles north of Marseilles. Ahead of them, Nazi soldiers are fleeing pell-mell, and any attempt to reorganize a German defense is being hindered by attacks from French partisans. In Marseilles itself, the remnants of Nazi defense units holding out on the waterfront and in the harbor islands have surrendered, clearing the city of Germans. The A.P. reports today some 55,000 Nazi troops have been killed, wounded, or captured as a result of the southern invasion. It’s remarkable to realize that, at the pace Allied troops are moving, a linkup between the southern invasion forces and the units pushing eastward from Paris might not be more than days away. Any German forces caught in southwestern France might as well give up now.

Also remarkable -- U.S. armored troops pushing across the Seine are at one point only 125 miles from the German frontier. The battle of Germany might be getting underway very, very soon -- if the Nazis still have any fight left in them by then.

posted by Michael 8:04:00 AM

. . .

TWO OF HITLER’S ALLIES SWITCH SIDES. First it was Romania, which agreed to accept Big Three armistice terms as Russian armies plunged toward the Danube in a blistering offensive less than a week old. King Mihai has ordered the country’s troops to stop firing on the Red Army, but according to Moscow shooting has broken out in another respect -- between German and Romanian troops who just a short time ago fought as brothers on the Eastern Front. Then, only two days later, Bulgaria as well announced that she has asked the Allies for an armistice and has disarmed Nazi troops on her soil. We’ll see -- as a rule Germans don’t like to give up their guns.

But the effects on the 300,000 German troops in the Balkans has already been disastrous. The A.P. reports today that Germans were overwhelmed "in a disaster of Stalingrad proportions" by advancing Russians at the crucial Galiti Gap defense line protecting the Ploesti oil region in Romania. They’re facing disaster not only at the front, but in the rear, as Romanian troops have attacked the Germans at Ploesti itself and have blocked critical mountain passes through the Carpathians. Even farther away from the Russian advance, the effects are being felt -- several divisions of Bulgarian troops, for example, were relied on by the Nazis for garrison duty in restive parts of Yugoslavia. The Germans don’t have the reserves left to replace them. So what happens? And what happens in Greece, where German forces have been outflanked by Allied diplomacy, and whose people are this week challenging the vestiges of Nazi authority with general strikes and partisan attacks?

And what will happen now with the few "friends" that Hitler has left in Europe -- Slovakia, Hungary, and Finland? The latter two no doubt want out of the war at almost any cost, but are heavily under the German gun. Little Slovakia has declared martial law to keep its Fascist government from being overthrown. How many weeks, or days, do these Quislings have left?

posted by Michael 8:01:00 AM

. . .

JITTERBUGGED. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In McCook, Neb., Pfc. Ernest Olivier spun in a jitterbugging step, reached out for his jiving partner’s hand, plunged out the second-story window of the dance hall."

posted by Michael 7:57:00 AM

. . .

Sunday, August 27, 1944

PARIS IS FREE! All week press reports have made it clear that the liberation of the French capital was nigh, but Friday evening radio reports and Saturday morning papers all carried the triumphant news. Apparently the German defenders of Paris have given up the ghost. An A.P. dispatch says that the German commander of Paris has "signed a document ordering his troops to cease fire immediately." Outside of a few scattered snipers, there’s no enemy left to contend with. The A.P.’s Don Whitehead reports that once the fighting subsided, Parisians went absolutely wild with joy --

"Never do I expect to see such scenes as I saw on the streets of Paris. There was only a narrow lane through which the armor could roll. Men and women cried with joy. They grabbed the arms and hands of soldiers and cheered until their voices were hoarse. When the column stopped I was smothered, but pleasantly, with soft arms and lips giving me not one kiss but the usual French double one. They hugged me and my jeep driver and pinned French Tricolors on us, and left us exhausted, with our bosoms covered with emblems and ribbons. An old man came up, saluted, and said with tears in his eyes, ‘God bless America. You have saved France.’ Men and women, old and young, and children stormed the jeep every time the column stopped and they were wild with emotion. Crowds were banked from the center of the streets to the sidewalks in a colorful, cheering throng which stretched for miles. There seemed to be no end and apparently everyone in Paris except the Germans and the collaborationists was standing there to cheer, shout, cry, and leave themselves exhausted with happiness."

Then some Nazi and French Fascist dead-enders opened fire, and the carnival mood soured --
"Our column moved to a point one block from the Luxembourg. Then from all sides burst machine-gun fire. From housetops and windows guns rattled. Machine guns and tanks opened up in reply. We leaped from the jeep and took cover behind a tank. . . . Bullets rattled on the streets and glanced off with ugly whines. The crowds, which a few minutes before lined the streets, melted as if a blast from a furnace had hit a snowbank. Then the streets were terribly lonely and barren except for armor with guns clattering. My driver and I leaped into a jeep and raced back down the street, but another burst of machinegun fire sent us diving for the curb. We felt bare and exposed there in the street. Leaders of French Forces of the Interior crouched and ran from door to door, pointing to the rooftops and windows. Up there, shooting down at us were the Milice (Vichy collaborators) who were helping the Germans defend the city. One Frenchman said there were many German snipers in civilian clothes. . . . Ahead of us patriots crouched along the buildings and answered the enemy fire. Lying there, I felt lonely and lost in the city which all of us had dreamed of entering as a joyous occasion."

As of this morning, the A.P. reports there are still scattered incidents of German and French Fascist sniper fire in Paris. But French resistance fighters are hunting them down one by one, and the capital’s long nightmare is almost completely over. At the Eiffel Tower, the French tricolor is flying alongside the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes today. This is perhaps the greatest moment of the war thus far.

posted by Michael 7:43:00 AM

. . .

A DELICATE OPERATION. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Chicago, Dr. Cecil Fisher complained that a young lady patient fainted in his examination chair, removed $175 from his pocket while being revived."

posted by Michael 7:41:00 AM

. . .

Tuesday, August 22, 1944

THE GATEWAY TO PARIS IS OPEN. And American patrols are moving within five miles of the city limits, according to both the A.P. and the German news service DNB. The A.P. also says the patrols are "virtually unopposed." Allied reconnaissance pilots report a bumper-to-bumper road jam east of the city, as Germans attempt to flee. There’s no doubt now that the fall of the French capital is coming sooner rather than later, now that Allied units have punched across the Seine to the north and south of the city. One delicious irony -- German troops eastward fleeing across the Seine are doing so in barges originally built in 1940 to ferry the then-victorious Nazis on what was expected to be their triumphant invasion of Britain.

The question is still open whether Paris will fall undamaged, as it did in 1940 when the French declared it an open city, or whether Nazi forces inside the city will insist on a Stalingrad-style battle which will reduce the city’s historic landmarks to rubble. There’s two possibly good signs in that regard -- (1) Allied forces to the north and south of Paris are now advancing so fast that German forces inside the city risk encirclement if they try to put up a big battle for the capital, and (2) the Germans can’t mount a proper defense because they’ve already got their hands full battling French partisans within the city. As to the latter point, a United Press dispatch says this morning that "tens of thousands" of French patriots are now engaged with German troops inside Paris, with large fires reported burning.

The Nazi propaganda line now is to consider Paris a kind of hostage, which will only escape destruction if French patriots stop fighting. "We spared Paris in 1940 and we want to spare it now, but Parisians must bear responsibility for the fate of their city," piously intoned a Nazi spokesman in a German Transocean broadcast. Some nerve, huh?

posted by Michael 8:04:00 AM

. . .

RUSSIA’S FIDELITY ON POLAND. I haven’t seen much of anything in the day-to-day dispatches about the latest in the long-running rift between the Soviets and the London-based Polish government-in-exile. Namely, the notable lack of Russian help to the Polish partisans who, under command of the shadowy "General Bor," staged an uprising in Warsaw against Nazi troops. This week’s Time magazine suggests that the Russians are being unbelievably cold-blooded in their apparent refusal to help these particular Polish patriots --

"General Bor complained that Red artillery had not been heard on the Warsaw approaches since Aug. 3. Unless help arrived soon, he said, his patriot forces would be ‘totally exterminated.’ The Germans were attacking with planes and tanks; the partisans had no artillery. Moscow seemed to feel that the uprising, which had been touched off by the Polish leaders in London, was none of Moscow’s affair. London’s Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, declared that the revolt was a 'bluff' staged by the London Poles to get credit for Warsaw’s liberation. It appeared that the Red Army commander had not been consulted; nor had the Moscow-sponsored Polish Committee of Liberation."

The lack of consultation is tragic, but it’s fair to say that the London-based government’s attempts to deal with the Red-controlled "Committee" have so far been a waste of time. The current negotiations in Moscow on merging the two Polish groups have gone nowhere. And it’s also fair to point out that the U.S. and Britain have had no hesitation about providing support for Communist fighters against Nazi-ism, such as Tito in Yugoslavia. We’re supposed to have a common enemy, remember? Sure, the Soviets probably couldn’t send in a tank army, but they could supply artillery and air support and get supplies to the partisans -- if they cared to.

posted by Michael 8:00:00 AM

. . .

NOW THAT’S A CRIME. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Detroit, Charles Willoughby and Jasper Manier got 90 days in jail for selling to Mrs. William Young, for $10, two whiskey bottles full of cold tea."

posted by Michael 7:57:00 AM

. . .

Sunday, August 20, 1944

THE MEANING OF THE "SECOND D-DAY". I remember that first week after D-Day in Normandy the way the Germans seemed obsessed with husbanding their resources for a "second landing" somewhere else in the area, say, at Calais. Well, now it’s finally happened -- on the other side of the country. The Allied landings on the French Mediterranean coast near Cannes this past week have already put in jeopardy France’s "second city" of Marseilles -- and have raised the tantalizing possibility that both Paris and Marseilles could be liberated the same week. Right now "hundreds of thousands" of Allied troops are said by the A.P. to have been brought ashore for the push northward, and U.S. tank spearheads are about 25 miles northeast of Marseilles.

Fletcher Pratt recounts in the Washington Post a couple of the ways this newest Allied drive multiplies the problems faced by the Wehrmacht in France --

"This is the Allied reply to the indicated German strategic plan of abandoning the plains of southern and western France to make a defense along the line of the Seine and the high broken ground running down to the Mediterranean and known as the ‘Massif Central.’ The new landing cuts in behind the line of that massif, and opens the way for a campaign up the Valley of the Rhone to its headwaters. It is, roughly, the line taken by Julius Caesar when he conquered Gaul for the Romans . . . . The advantages to the move are several. At the start, the new invasion must face a good deal of rough country where the arms in which the Allies are superior -- tanks and planes -- are less important than the ordinary infantry soldier and his artillery support. But the belt is thin; once really into the Rhone Valley, the invasion will have country in which it can roll, and in which it can only be held back by similar concentrations of mechanical arms. . . . Put it this way -- the push into the south of France is calculated to engage the last of the German mobile forces. . . . If the invasion in the south can be made to stick, no port between recently taken Nantes and Marseilles can be called safe for the Germans. They hardly have time to evacuate; they cannot really have time to indulge in the usual program of destruction. The very least we should get out of this invasion is two or three good harbors."

posted by Michael 7:47:00 AM

. . .

GALLUP ON THE ELECTION -- STAY TUNED. This morning George Gallup’s ongoing poll of sentiment in the Presidential election has announced its findings for Missouri and five other border states. President Roosevelt is in the lead in four (Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Maryland), but one is a real surprise. Missouri, Senator Truman’s home state, favors Governor Dewey by a slight margin of 51% to 49%. More good news for the Republicans is found in the slippage of the President’s support from the 1940 vote. According to Gallup, F.D.R. has lost three points in Missouri, seven in Oklahoma, four in West Virginia and four in Kentucky.

Of the 45 states now surveyed, Gallup finds that President Roosevelt leads in 26 states, with 248 electoral votes, while Governor Dewey leads in 19 states with 229 electoral votes. (A total of 266 electoral votes is needed to win the election.) It’s pretty darned close, and the Gallup people will announce the results of their polling in the three remaining states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, totaling 54 electoral votes) this coming week. Dewey should be strong in those states.

I’ve got more and more of a feeling that the New Deal has finally, completely run out of steam -- and that the President will find in November that he’s vied for the White House one time too many.

posted by Michael 7:45:00 AM

. . .

ONE REASON TO BE NICE TO CATS. From Time magazine’s Misellany section -- "In Brookline, Mass., the late Lawyer Woodbury Rand left $40,000 to his pet alley-cat Buster. To his housekeeper he left Buster’s comb, brush, harness and an extra $40,000 to provide for the cat’s additional comfort. To nine outraged relatives he left nothing. Reason: '. . . their contemptuous attitude and cruelty to my cat.'"

posted by Michael 7:41:00 AM

. . .

Tuesday, August 15, 1944

"THE BATTLE FOR PARIS IS ON." This is what the German broadcasts are now saying, despite the fact that Allied tank forces are still some 50-something miles west of the French capital. But their rate of advance continues to be stupendous. The Allies have already burst through what was once reputed to be a Nazi defensive line between Alencon and Le Mans. U.S. forces are pushing steadily ahead -- American armored columns forces are heading in two directions from Le Mans, toward Tours and Chartres. Overall, the Allied front in France right now looks like a pendulum swinging in both directions at once. While the northern part of the front remains relatively unchanged, in the south the Americans are madly dashing both westward (into Brittany) and eastward (toward Paris) at the same time.

Meanwhile, an even bigger story right now than the developing battle for Paris is the fate of the German Seventh Army. It’s stuck south of Caen being pounded on all sides by Anglo-American tanks, infantry, and warplanes, and it’s near encirclement. If the Nazis fail in extracting these 100,000 to 200,000 soldiers through a corridor now shrunk to 13 miles wide to the northwest, then the Seventh will face complete encirclement and annihilation. That ought to free up the stalemate on the north side of the old Normandy front and allow the British troops now in the Caens regions to sprint northwest-ward toward Le Harve and Rouen, and outflanking the Gemans forces trying to defend Paris from the American attacks farther south.

It’s terrifically exciting, after the slow pace of earlier Allied offensives, to finally see the Anglo-American forces press ahead in a way that compares well with their Russian allies in the east. But the question starts to nag -- will the Nazis spare Paris a destructive battle, as the Allies did when they left the city open to German troops in June of 1940? Or will they stand and fight inside the city herself, reducing her cherished monuments to ruin? Given that Nazis are not the most sentimental people around, I shudder to think of the answer.

posted by Michael 8:01:00 AM

. . .

A "NAZI UNDERGROUND" BEING READIED? Drew Pearson’s column notes a new reason why Hitler’s henchmen are still bothering to fight, namely to buy time to propagate a "Nazi underground" that will shelter war criminals and create the basis for a future Reich --

"Diplomatic observers in London and Washington think they know why Hitler is fighting on. Underground reports are that Hitler is now laying plans through the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel for a German movement to continue opposing the Allies sub rosa after any armistice; also to provide the groundwork for a rebirth of a ‘greater Germany’ after the war. Another thing to remember is that German now has more than a quarter of a million hunted men inside its borders. Throughout the war, the Russian, British, and all the Allied governments-in-exile have been compiling careful lists of Germans guilty of atrocities. As result, these quarter of a million Germans know they must fight or die. So the Gestapo is busy planting caches of light arms, sub machine guns, pistols and ammunition all over Germany, buried underground where they will be available for the hunted Nazi criminals. Diplomatic reports also are that Himmler is developing mountain hide-outs in several parts of Europe, where key Nazis can live quietly until the Allied cry for vengeance lets up. All these preparations take time and until they are completed, so Hitler will keep fighting."

posted by Michael 7:58:00 AM

. . .

ONE STEP AT A TIME. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Marquette, Mich., four inmates broke out of the country jail, sneaked back in with stolen clothes, candy and cigarettes, were found discussing plans to get an automobile the next night and leave for good."

posted by Michael 7:55:00 AM

. . .

Sunday, August 13, 1944

THE NAZIS’ LAST-DITCH DEFENSE LINES. In looking at the maps of the western front and the eastern front that run every day in the papers, it’s hard to dope out what the Nazis must be thinking. Where can they hope to stand and fight, and stop the ever-stronger Allies? Hanson W. Baldwin takes a long look at this in today’s New York Times, and his answer is that it’s all about rivers --

"The greatest danger to Hitler’s Reich is now posed in the east rather than the west. For in Poland and the Baltic States, the Nazis are fighting on Germany’s doorstep; they are already occupying the last natural defense line -- the line of the Vistula -- in front of German itself; they must hold where they now stand or the land war is likely to sweep across the eastern borders of the Reich. . . . The Battle of Central Poland is just commencing. Warsaw itself and the German Vistula line positions have not yet been overwhelmed, and the Germans are constantly attacking the Russian bridgeheads across the Vistula. The one just below Warsaw, which offers the greater threat to Germany because to the west of it lie clear and open plains until Germany is reached, apparently has been somewhat reduced by German counter-attacks, but the large bridgehead across the Vistula at Sandomiers has been much strengthened by the Red Army. This bridgehead is a potential springboard for a Russian drive into western Poland and German Silesia, but this route leads through somewhat more difficult country than that which is found farther north, with hill masses and river lines intervening. If the Vistula line is completely breached, the Germans may try to make a stand along the line of the Warta River, and possibly finally along the Oder within Germany itself."

The city of Frankfort-on-Oder is a little less than 50 miles east of Berlin. It’s hard to believe that anyone, outside of a few bitter-end Nazis, would still be willing to fight for Germany by the time the Russians get this close. Think back to the World War, when the German Army gave up the fight with the French-Anglo-American armies still some distance from Germany’s western border, let alone her principal cities.

And speaking of the western border, Mr. Baldwin says it’s still an open question whether the Germans will put up a major battle for Paris --

"The Germans have undoubtedly written Brittany off, but they may still hope to hold Paris, or to delay our entry into that city, by threatening the flanks of our far-flung tank spearheads, and by plugging a gap between the Loire and the Seine. It is not yet clear as to whether the Germans intend to, or can, make a fight for Paris; it is quite possible they will try to make the city a strong point and hold it as long as they can, regardless of its destruction. But Paris, sooner or later, will be ours -- and sooner or later the German defensive line must pull back to the line of the Seine River. . . . Behind the Seine line are the lines of the Somme and the Oise and the Aisne -- but if the Seine defensive position is broken, the Nazis will almost certainly have to evacuate all of southern France and abandon their French communications with their forces in Italy."

posted by Michael 7:46:00 AM

. . .

SURPRISE RIGHT BACK. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Rhinelander, Wis., Lieut. Donald Karr got home from the European Theater early in the morning, slipped quietly into his parents’ bedroom, shouted ‘Surprise!’, woke up the new tenants."

posted by Michael 7:43:00 AM

. . .

Tuesday, August 8, 1944

THE RED TIDE CONTINUES, BUT... There’s an instructive map of the Eastern Front in the current issue of Time magazine, showing the amazing strides made by Soviet troops since the opening of their summer offensive on June 23. Time estimates the Reds have thrown the Nazis out of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian territory at the rate of 121 square miles per hour! In the process the Soviets have taken Minsk, Vilna, Lvov, Brest-Litovsk, and just in the last few days, the Old Polish city of Bialystok. As Time points out, "If the Germans had been resisting as stubbornly as a year ago, any one of the five would have been deemed worth weeks of siege."

And now Russian troops are approaching Warsaw, the first capital city conquered by the Nazis in this war, almost five years ago. But there are signs here that the Germans might be stiffening as the Soviets get closer to Reich territory. A courageous uprising has broken out inside Warsaw by Polish underground troops under the command of a "General Bor," although the International News Service reported yesterday that their strength is "ebbing." The A.P.’s Monday dispatch seems to indicate that the Russians are unfortunately not in much of a position to help out the Polish underground right now --

"German stubborness also was apparent in the raging battles east of Warsaw, Polish capital whose fall to the Russians would perhaps be one of the decisive blows of the war. Moscow’s daily communique did not even mention this sector. The German high command communique, however, asserted that the Third Soviet Tank Corps had been trapped and wiped out after several days of fierce fighting in which the Russians were said to have lost 192 tanks and suffered severe casualties."

The Reds continue to make impressive gains farther south, seizing the major oil centers of Drohobycz in Old Poland and Boryslaw in the Carpathian Mountains. And they’re now a tantalizing 70 miles away from the eastern border of the Reich (not to mention less than 10 miles from East Prussia). But there’s reason to believe that it’ll be slower going for a while, as the Nazis fight desperately to keep their old enemies out of their fatherland.

posted by Michael 8:08:00 AM

. . .

THE FALLOUT FROM TOJO’S RESIGNATION. The resignation of Japan’s Premier Tojo and his entire cabinet, after admitting the loss of Saipan to U.S. Marines, is said to be a blow to the Japanese Army, who’ve dominated the empire’s other interests – Japanese big business, the Navy, the banks, the Imperial house – for several years. But as the A.P.’s James D. White points out in a news analysis today, Tojo’s replacement, General Koiso, is an army man himself. And to anyone who thinks the government change indicates that Japan’s losing her will for the fight, the early indications are that this new cabinet might direct Japan’s entire military to fight even more savagely --

"The new cabinet is still a war cabinet, and under Koiso the ground is laid for even more desperate prosecution of the war. There even may be counterlandings at Saipan or some other important American conquest to show the Japanese people that the army and navy still fight. But the change means the realization in high places that two major assumptions have collapsed. One was that America could not fight a naval war in the Pacific at the same time she helped England and Russia defeat Germany. The other was that East Asia would accept Japan’s promises of co-prosperity. No willing help is coming from millions whom Japan had hoped to rally to keep the white man out forever. Though the Koiso cabinet is designed to show the Japanese people that all elements are united in the war, the inclusion of the conservative elements paves the way to peace feelers. But these are likely to come later, with another cabinet."

posted by Michael 8:04:00 AM

. . .

THE PERILS OF IMPATIENCE. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In San Diego, Mary A. Galyen, tired of waiting for the electric company to install a meter, was fined $10 for trying to tear one off a nearby pole."

posted by Michael 8:02:00 AM

. . .

Sunday, August 6, 1944

NORMANDY BREAKOUT -- WHERE ARE THE NAZIS? Of the newspaper coverage thus far of the Allies’ spectacular breakout from Normandy, this one sentence from Saturday’s A.P. account leaps out --

"The surprising development of the day came when American forces, moving to guard the left flank of the great force pouring down from Normandy, ranged out southeast of Avranches feeling for a German western flank that was not there."

"...That was not there"! For the first time we’re finding out the real poverty of the German defenses in France. Apparently the Nazi anti-invasion strategy was to push the Allies back into the sea at Normandy. Once that failed, there was no strategy at all, because there were so few troops, tanks, and planes left to fight a mobile defense. That’s why American tank units swept through the Brittany peninsula to the outskirts of Brest on the coast -- 75 miles in a single day! Other tank columns have raced south to the Loire River, near St. Nazaire and Nantes, which finishes the job of isolating Brittany in its entirety. And that would put the entire peninsula in Allied hands within a few days. There are a few German units left in Brittany to be put down as they fight a last-ditch fight with their backs pinned against the sea, but no organized line.

Yet another American armored spearhead is driving toward Paris, having gone 27 miles eastward this week-end from Fougeres to Mayenne. (They might have gone farther already – the A.P. says that the tank spearheads are running 24 hours ahead of official reports.) The Allies don’t expect a lot of resistance on this part of the front, for the moment -- not until Allied tanks and troops reach a north-south line running from Alencon to Le Mans, where the Nazis are husbanding their battered forces and hurridly trying to mount a proper defense. That line is roughly 110 miles west of Paris, so our troops still have a ways to go to take the big prize.

But look in the meantime at what they’ve done in just a few days. No doubt the German Army’s officer corps is looking, and rueing more than ever the failure of the bomb plot against their Fuehrer. Maybe next time they’ll take better care not to miss.

posted by Michael 7:55:00 AM

. . .

HOW NOT TO FIGHT GERMANY. I don’t know much about the London Daily Dispatch, but I don’t think I want to find out much more. This prominent British newspaper editorialized last week that the way to stop Hitler’s blitz of robot bombs against Britain was (1) for the Allied High Command to make a list of 1,000 small German towns, and (2) present that list to Berlin with an ultimatum that unless the Nazis’ inhuman assault of robots against Britain is stopped immediately, the Allies will bomb these 1,000 small towns -- and their civilian populations -- into nothingness.

Yes, Britain is reeling from the daily V-1 robot attacks, and they are indiscriminate terror attacks against civilians. And the anticipated V-2 rocket bomb, said to be as big as an elephant, might well be more fearsome. But such an ultimatum, to which the Germans would surely reply with a contemptuous nein, is a stupid way to oppose them. We won’t put an end to Nazi methods by adopting those same methods ourselves. Better to do what the Allied High Command is now doing -- employing fighters to shoot down the robots, bombing the V-1 bases as fast as they’re found, and above all, putting an end to the infernal Nazi war machine once and for all.

posted by Michael 7:42:00 AM

. . .

SAFE AS A CHURCH. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Alton, N.H., Mrs. Eugenia Shorrock, keeper of a reptile zoo, kept her purse in the python cage."

posted by Michael 7:37:00 AM

. . .