The Lights Are Coming On

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin did something for their nations and for victory that propaganda, battles and the press could never quite do. The peoples and soldiers of Great Britain, the U.S. and Russia got their first clear understanding of the war, of how their leaders proposed to win it, and of what they had recently been doing to win it. In the light of history, last week may be more memorable for this than for the brilliant occupation of North Africa, or for the assurance that the offensives now beginning will create a real front in Europe.

Light from the Past. In their different ways—the Prime Minister as though he were paying a duty to history, the President as though he were enjoying a feast of wisdom and success—Messrs. Churchill and Roosevelt threw much light on the probable future of the war by explaining its immediate past. In all essentials their recitals to Parliament and to a Washington press conference tallied with each other. According to Churchill and Roosevelt:

The invasion of French North Africa was conceived last December, 15 days after Pearl Harbor, when Winston Churchill visited Washington. Mr. Roosevelt thought that North Africa would be the best place for an initial U.S. effort (Churchill: “I was his ardent lieutenant”). Mr. Churchill and his military men agreed in part, but insisted that preparations should be made for invasion there and in Western Europe (“either alternately or simultaneously”).

Week by week as the chances of attack on Western Europe lessened, the focus inevitably fixed on North Africa. In June Churchill told the impatient Russians in writing that “while we were preparing to make a landing [in Western Europe] in 1942, we could not promise to do so.” Churchill and Roosevelt were already sure that they could not do so.

But, also in June, came the famous statement from London, Washington and Moscow that “complete agreement has been reached on the urgent task of creating a second front in Europe in 1942.” Said Mr. Churchill last week, providing a useful guide for readers of subsequent statements: “I hold it perfectly justifiable to deceive your enemy, even if at the same time your own people are for a while misled.”

In July the U.S. and Britain decided finally against a second front in Western Europe this year, and for a lesser effort in North Africa. Both Churchill and Roosevelt knew that an African invasion alone would not be a second front. Mr. Churchill last week said baldly that pinning down 33 German divisions, a third of the Luftwaffe bomber force and much of its fighter force in Western Europe did not give Russia its needed relief—and that he knew it. He also declared that the flow of British and U.S. supplies to Russia did not meet the need.* Said he: “The Russians have borne the burden. … I think it is absolutely natural on their part, and fully within their rights, to make the very strong and stark assertions which they have made.”

The orders were issued and the places of initial landings in Vichy Africa chosen in July. The date was fixed in August. The Russians did not share in the decisions, and Stalin did not know of them in full until Churchill told him in Moscow on Aug. 12. (“It was a very serious conversation. . . . The Russians took their disappointment like men.”)

In early September Rommel lost heavily in his second, unsuccessful push and, with the assurance that Egypt was secure, the plans for a West African front must have begun to look really promising. The re-equipment and counteroffensive plans of the British Eighth Army were pushed and by Oct. 23 it was ready to attack Rommel with a fair chance of success. Before the actual assault at El Alamein opened, invasion convoys began to move from the British Isles toward French North Africa.

Said Winston Churchill last week: “That was the strategy from the beginning of this year. . . . We hold a very powerful enemy pinned on the French shore, and every week our preparations to strike [in Western Europe] will increase and develop. At the same time we make this wide and encircling move in the Mediterranean, having for its primary object the recovery of the command of that vital sea, but also having for its object the exposure of the underbelly of the Axis, especially Italy, to heavy attacks.”

As to Western Europe, Winston Churchill said: “Should the enemy become demoralized at any moment . . . risks could be run in large scale. But this certainly is not the case at the present time.” Mr. Roosevelt said that the African landings would certainly develop into invasion of southern Europe. Mr. Churchill said, in four separate references, that Italy was to be an immediate target of Allied bombers from Africa, and that the Italian people would soon feel the full Allied weight.

Light on the Future? The actual occupation of French North Africa precipitated a torrent of premature rumor. From Ankara came exaggerated reports of the immediate effect on the Russian front: Hitler had withdrawn 42 divisions (unlikely, except for some divisions already on the way to winter quarters); he had diverted most of his air force (he apparently had diverted a good deal of it); he had shifted a transport fleet of 4,000 planes from Russia to the Mediterranean (probably true in part, although the Germans already had a big air-transport fleet in the Mediterranean).

Hitler’s problems were real and grave enough; the Luftwaffe’s were certainly very grave. But, in Western Europe and in his central European reserves, he probably had more than enough troops for the occupation of Vichyfrance and the initial rush to other points on his Mediterranean belly. Protecting these points against invasion, saving Libya and the Mediterranean, are harder tasks—and ones which may be beyond Germany’s strength. To prove them so is now the task of the Allies.

Japanese envoys in German Europe, skittering to Berlin, caused speculation that Hitler had asked Japan to attack Russia in Siberia, or perhaps to distract the U.S. and Britain with either a feint or a real assault on India. The Mediterranean campaign will certainly affect the war in the Pacific: on the U.S. side it has already done so by absorbing the bulk of U.S. military and air power, plus a portion of U.S. naval power. Whether Japan after the naval reverse reported this week can take decisive advantage of this Allied diversion from the Pacific front, the Allies have yet to learn.

Light on the Present came from Joseph Stalin, who furnished the week’s best commentary on the Allied offensives. For his statement he used the same vehicle which he used last month when he called upon the U.S. and Britain to meet their obligations “in full and on time”—a letter to A.P.’s Moscow correspondent Henry J. Cassidy. Last month Stalin was cold with frustration.* Last week he wrote:

“This campaign represents an outstanding fact of major importance . . . opening the prospect of the disintegration of the Italo-German coalition in the nearest future.

“The campaign in Africa refutes once more the skeptics who affirm that Anglo-American leaders are not capable of organizing a serious war campaign. There can be no doubt that no one but first-rate organizers could carry out such serious war operations. . . .

“It is yet too soon to say to what an extent this campaign has been effective in relieving immediate pressure on the Soviet Union. But it may be confidently said that the effect will not be a small one and that a certain relief in pressure on the Soviet Union will result in the nearest future. . . .

“The initiative has passed into the hands of our allies. The campaign changes radically the political and war situation in Europe in favor of the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition . . . undermines the prestige of Hitlerite Germany as a leading force in the system of Axis powers and demoralizes Hitler’s allies in Europe, releases France from her state of lethargy, mobilizes anti-Hitler forces of France and provides a basis for building up an anti-Hitler French Army.

“The campaign creates conditions for putting Italy out of commission and for isolating Hitlerite Germany; finally . . . the campaign creates the prerequisites for establishment of a second front in Europe nearer to Germany’s vital centers. . . .

“There need be no doubt that the Red Army will fulfill its task with honor, as it has been fulfilling it throughout the war.”

Last month’s signature was rubber-stamped in pale violet ink. Last week Stalin, with his own hand, signed himself: “With respect, J. Stalin.”

* Britain’s Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Richard K. Law told the House of Commons last week that U.S. and Britain had sent to Russia during the past twelve months: 3,052 planes, 4,084 tanks, 30,031 vehicles and nearly a million tons of shells, small arms, ammunition, machine tools, food, nonferrous metals and other important war materials.

* A British officer, recently arrived from Egypt, told a U.S. Army tank class at Fort Knox that he once asked a captured German captain: “What do your fellows really think of the Italians?” The German replied: “Oh, about what the Russians think of the British and the Americans.”