Posted on 06/19/2010 5:55:00 PM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
bump
I bet it won’t prevent the further spread of war.
8:55 Eastern Daylight Time, and Columbia and its affiliated stations bring you Elmer Davis, and the News.
The French peace commissioners, a general, an admiral, an aviation general, and a diplomat, have met the Germans and according to a United Press dispatch from Berlin, the Armistice will probably be signed tomorrow in the forest of Compiègne where the Armistice of 1918 was concluded; and perhaps in the same railroad car that was used at that time. Hitler will be there in person. There is still no official information as to the terms, but the general belief is that this will be only a preliminary to a general peace to be concluded at the end of the war. And that meanwhile France will be totally disarmed and at least parts of the country occupied with the Channel Ports to be used as German bases for the attack on England. A hint as to the general nature of the settlement was given by the German radio in a broadcast picked up by our shortwave listening station an hour or two ago, which said that the voice of pity does not exist anymore in Europe.
The Italians will apparently conclude a separate Armistice which will have to wait for the appointment of French commissioners and the fixing of a time and place of meeting by Mussolini. Thus it seems that France may by at war with Italy for a day or two after fighting against the Germans stops. Our correspondent Cecil Brown reported from Rome earlier this evening that Mussolini wants his troops to be on French soil when hostilities end and of course this would be more easily accomplished if the Germans have disarmed the French first.
Meanwhile it is far from certain that French forces outside the homeland will stop fighting even if ordered to do so by Premier Pétain. Both in Rome and London there are reports that some of the men in the French government want to continue the war from the colonies. And a considerable number of planes that have flown across to Algeria hardly went there to surrender. Reports from Cairo tonight say that the French fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean and the French Army in Syria will also go on fighting.
In France today the Germans kept up their drive against the weakening French armies, but still had to do hard fighting at various points. They captured Brest, the great naval base at the northwest tip of the country, virtually completing occupation of the Channel coast, and in the southeast they took Lyon, the third city of France. Part of the garrison of the Maginot Line is still fighting on though surrounded, and a good many thousand French and Polish troops fighting in the corner near Switzerland were forced over the frontier and interned.
The government’s departure from Bordeaux which was heavily bombed by Germans last night started rumors that it was going over to Algeria. But so far as we know it merely wanted to deprive the Germans of any reasons for further bombings of a city overcrowded with refugees. It is believed that the new capital will be Biarritz on the Spanish border. Last night the Germans again made extensive air raids over England, Scotland and Wales, and claimed to have damaged docks at Bristol and Southampton, munitions factories at Billingham, and oil tanks at Hull. The British say there was some damage to factories, but that it was not serious. There were about 70 casualties. The British raided widely in western Germany, hitting Hamburg and a number of cities in Westfalen and the Ruhr district, as well as Helgoland and the Frisian Islands. The Germans say that only non-military objectives were hit.
It is reported from Rumania tonight that Russian troops, which have been massed just over the Rumanian frontier, have been reduced in numbers, and that the concentrations along the German-Russian frontier in Poland are increasing.
In this country the action of President Roosevelt in appointing Henry L. Stimson, who was Secretary of State under Hoover and Secretary of War under Taft to head the War Department again, and Colonel Frank Knox who was Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 1936 as Secretary of the Navy, stirred the Republicans who were assembling at Philadelphia for the convention to indignation which appears to have become mixed with apprehension. Colonel Stimson, when he was Secretary of State, tried to stop the first aggression of the totalitarian powers in Manchuria and Colonel Knox has advocated aid to the Allies. So John D. M. Hamilton, the Republican National Chairman, after practically saying the two men could not be regarded as Republicans any longer, added that the appointments make the Democrats the War Party. This was echoed in the Senate by the isolationist Democrats Wheeler and Clark, and the Republican candidate Dewey called the appointments a direct step toward war. The President, however, in accepting the resignation of Secretary of War Woodring, said I quote, “The preparedness program is extensive and not aimed at intervention in world affairs which do not concern this hemisphere,” end quote. Later the President said that the appointments are in line with the overwhelming sentiment of the nation for national solidarity in a time of world crisis and in behalf of our national defense and nothing else.
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8:55 Eastern Daylight Time and Elmer Davis and the News, brought to you by the Gillette Safety Razor Company. Do you dread shaving? No need for that. Today’s Gillette Blue Blade whisks off beards quickly, easily without irritation. That’s because it fits your Gillette razor precisely and has the sharpest edges honed. For good looking comfortable shaves get Gillette Blue Blades.
The German Armistice terms, handed to the French delegates at Compiègne today, have been received and are being studied by the French government which is still in Bordeaux. Action on them may not be taken till tomorrow. We still have no information as to what they are except that the preamble read to the French delegates by General von Keitel, Hitler’s Chief of Staff, said that their purpose was prevent resumption of fighting, to give Germany full security for continuance of the war against England, and to create prerequisites for the construction of a new peace. This sounds as if the terms were only preliminaries like the Armistice of 1918. But from Bordeaux it is reported that they are a lengthy document including the Italian claims, which a French source describes as quote, “even more pretentious and embracing than those of the Germans”, end quote. The terms were handed to the French delegates in the railroad car where Marshal Foch handed the Armistice terms to the Germans in 1918. The car had been moved from the museum in which it was housed to the exact spot a short distance away which it occupied 22 years ago and a studied effort seems to have been made to reproduce the condition of that meeting in reverse. In order, as the preamble stated, to eradicate a memory, which was felt by the German people to be the deepest shame of all time. In style and content, this document is pretty plainly the work of Hitler himself, and he left the car as soon as it been read. The car and the monument on the scene are going to be taken to Berlin as trophies.
Fighting still goes on in France chiefly in the east, where French troops in a vast square are holding out in the Vogues Mountains, also at Clermont-Ferrand in south central France. The Germans report the capture of much war material, but the story that they have seized France’s two newest battleships under construction in the shipyard at Brest comes only from Dr Goebbels’s newspaper, Der Angriff. And as one of the ships is known to be afloat, the story is open to suspicion.
German air raiders again attacked England in force tonight, but we have no details of the action which apparently is still going on. Today British planes bombed gun emplacements at Calais from which it was reported German long range artillery was preparing to bombard England, and also attacked German airfields at Rouen in France, Amsterdam in Holland, and Paderborn in Germany. And tonight there was anti-aircraft firing on the southwestern edge of Berlin.
The Italian editor Virginia O’Gaiden warned the United States against participating in a war which he said is solely a European affair and does not concern us. The Monroe Doctrine, he said, excludes American intervention in European affairs as well as European intervention in American affairs, so that American intervention now would mean destruction of the Monroe Doctrine. Our Rome correspondent reported earlier this evening that no one could recall if this argument was advanced in 1917, when America intervened on the same side as Italy.
In Washington, the objection of isolationists to the resale of American military equipment to England and France, and the Republicans to the appointment of Henry L. Stimson as Secretary of War and Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy flared out in sharp criticism of the President. Senate Committees will examine Stimson and perhaps Knox too before they can be confirmed in office and this will probably not take place before the Republican convention. Representative of Carlson…of Kan…Kansas demanded investigation of published reports that Secretary of War Woodring has resigned because of his opposition in the resale policy. Senator Walsh of Massachusetts said that men of property were agitating for warlike policies in this country. Senator Nye of North Dakota demanded that the President resign, and accusing him of having lost the confidence of Europe and said he would not be surprised if Mr. Woodring had resigned because he refused to give up the Army’s secret bombsite. Mr. Nye produced no proof of this and Senator Barkley said the Chief of the Air Corps had told him that the bombsite is and will be kept a secret.
And that’s the news to this moment.
(end transcription)
it’s really amazing to read these posts- It seems so fast and they were just at the Maginot line last week
Listen up ping.
Seems much more thorough and intelligent than the sound bites of today.
A million man army surrendered.
pathetic, huh?
“I bet it won’t prevent the further spread of war.”
Oh, ye of little faith... He’s talking. It’s amazing what can be accomplished by communicating with one another. I’m sure that Mr. Hitler means well.
The Republican National Convention in Philadelphia begins in about a week. The GOP had better think hard about the image they want to project to the voters, who are beginning to think about the November general election in the context of the scary news from abroad. And not just from Europe.
“defense” preparations? Homer.....
Hindsight is 20/20.
Watching the Military Channel as we speak. Of the 21,000 Japanese troops on Iwo Jima (Feb 1945), only 200 were taken alive. Hell on Earth, as described by our boys.
We didn’t have a clue what we would be up against with the Japanese, or the Nazis.
I forget who said, “The absence of war is not necessarily peace”.
God Bless our precious Troops - past, present, and future.
Tarawa was the one that was pretty striking to me. Of around 4500 Japanese soldiers, only 17 were captured on the little atoll.
‘he would not be surprised if Mr. Woodring had resigned because he refused to give up the Army’s secret bombsite. Mr. Nye produced no proof of this and Senator Barkley said the Chief of the Air Corps had told him that the bombsite is and will be kept a secret.’
What is this ‘secret bombsite’?
Norden Bombsight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight
The reds in the Roosevelt administration wanted to give it to the British (which would have probably been the same as giving it to the Reds). Those that cared about American security wanted to keep it secret.
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