OCR Text |
Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne British - Russian Forces Invade Iran In Drive to Foil Alleged Nazi Coup; Navy Takes Over Shipbuilding Plant; Fierce Battle Marks Russo-Nazi War (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) I iRotancflrf by Western Newspaper Union.) I COLOGNE, GERMANY. This picture gives a dramatic view of a recent sensational daylight air raid by the British Royal Air force on a huge power station in the vicinity of Cologne. The bombers flew at a height of less than 100 feet at times. Much of the smoke was caused by air raid missiles and many direct hits were scored. The planes then swept lower still to get photographs like this. PRODUCE: Or Else While President Roosevelt struck out at critics who said that production produc-tion was lagging, quoting chapter and verse, also war department figures fig-ures to show Senator Byrd ofVir-ginia ofVir-ginia that he had been misinformed, he also put the Kearny, N. J., shipyard ship-yard back into production by ordering order-ing the navy to take over the plant Secretary Knox sent one of his admirals to take charge, and history, his-tory, made when the army took over the North American Aviation plant, was repeated. Yet there was said to be a difference differ-ence in this latest plant seizure, in that the navy would not plan to relinquish re-linquish it to the private owners , after putting it in operation, but continue to operate it as a . navy yard. Thus the eventuality oddly enough sought by men and employer as well in this instance, was brought into being, an eventuality which the state authorities of New Jersey sought vainly and bitterly to prevent. pre-vent. ' Sixteen thousand workers were affected, af-fected, and the work on two cruisers, cruis-ers, one almost ready for launching, launch-ing, six destroyers, three tankers and two freighters was halted, contracts con-tracts adding up to $493,00,000, and awarded by the navy and the maritime mari-time commission. The union was the International Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of the C.I.O. IRAN: And Britain The British demand on Iran that she expel all Nazi agents from her borders, and the Iranian refusal to obey, turned eyes again to the Middle East and Near East, and showed that Britain, conquerors of Syria with the aid of the Free French, realized the need of strengthening the position of her forces in that part of the world. Few doubted the . ability of the British, with the possible aid of the Russians, to take over little Persia, and present to the Nazis coming down from the Ukraine, or wishing to, a firmer front. It also would extend ex-tend the common frontier with Turkey, Tur-key, and allow Ankara to have an excuse for maintaining a stronger pro-B"ritish neutrality. Iran's fears were realized when British troops under the command of Gen. Archibald WavelJ crossed into southern Iran and at the same time Soviet Russian forces moved into northern Iran from the Cauca-sis. Cauca-sis. , There was resistance encountered, encoun-tered, according to the early reports from the fighting fronts. London sources indicated that the movement move-ment into Iran came to foil a Nazi coup. The move was seen as a direct di-rect action to the refusal of the Iran to give a satisfactory reply to the British and Russian request that Germans be expelled from the country. Iran was powerless militarily, though with an army technically measured at 120,000, to halt a British invasion in similar force to that which moved in on well-defended Syria, but she was in an important position geographically for Britain's Middle Eastern defense, believed one of the next tactical moves of the war, as the weather in northern Russia was about to tighten into winter win-ter temperatures and snows. TRIPOLI: The lengthening range of R.A.F. bombers was bringing the harbor of Tripoli, chief Mediterranean base for Nazi-Fascist operations in North Africa, more easily within reach. Ports of the character of Tripoli being rare in northern Africa, the latest of these bombings, during which 25 tons of explosive were dropped, were said to show that the British are putting into effect a plan they believe utterly necessary the preparation for the switching of a major Nazi offensive to Africa. The harbor was reported badly damaged, and it was the British plan to continue the attacks with full power until its use as a landing and supply base would be seriously impaired, im-paired, if not put out of commission altogether. Using American-made "Maryland" "Mary-land" bombers, the British stated that they were flying low, with all 10 machine guns firing, and raking the Nazi and Fascist transport columns col-umns when they were landing, also that they were taking a heavy toll at sea. JAPAN: 'Not So Wide'? The statement by Ambassador Nomura of Japan in Washington that the bridge between Japanese and American policy was not so wide that it could not be spanned was viewed as perhaps a sign of the weakening of Nippon. It was recognized in both Britain and the United States that the far eastern menace of Japan was largely large-ly a war of nerves and a battle of bluff. The Indo-China move both these nations could laugh off as a good joke provided it did not develop into one of two things an invasion of Thailand, or a move against the Burma road. Either of these eventualities, . it was understood, could reasonably set fire to the powder magazine in the East, yet Japan made no such move, only issuing statements which were more and more bitter. Now Nomura Was saying, after a 20-minute 20-minute conference with Secretary-Hull: Secretary-Hull: "He outlined the position of your government. I outlined the position of mine. No conclusions were reached. "I believe the gap between the two can be bridged. It would be folly to do otherwise. I have a very strong conviction that it will be done, but I don't just know how." And that, atleast the "folly" part of it, was exactly what America and Britain had been preaching to Japan for weeks, since the start of the move into Indo-China. It offered room for hope that Japan might yet decline to be the Axis tool. DEFENSE w Of Leningrad The defense of Leningrad, which apparently was to be undertaken by the Russians despite the belief of most observers that a military involvement in-volvement of the city could only end in its total destruction, drew the eyes of the world, heralded by the dramatic announcements of Soviet leaders preparing everyone for the imminence of battle. There was only one way to read this situation, and that was to understand under-stand that the Russian army resistance re-sistance on the Finnish front and against the pincers attack from Latvia Lat-via and the south was crumbling, that the soldiers were fighting rearguard rear-guard actions and falling back on the Soviet's second city, and that the civilian population was being armed to fight it out. Such a battle had been fought only once before in recent world history, and that was in Warsaw, and the pages of that battle were filled with stories of the glorious heroism of the defenders, and of the ruthless destruction of the city and thousands of its inhabitants in the course of the battle. The story was to be even more bitter and terrible in Leningrad, not only, believed most observers, because be-cause of its greater size and population, popu-lation, but because of the fact that the1 German invaders undoubtedly were not so "hot" as they were before be-fore Warsaw, and the Leningrad-ers Leningrad-ers were better prepared. It seemed that the army retreating retreat-ing toward Leningrad was not, like the ill-fated Polish army, a rabble in a rout, but an orderly group whose ' losses might have been heavy, but which was moving backward slowly. In fact, as the northern forces, under Voroshilov himself, were falling fall-ing back, the Russian communiques told of encounters in . the Smolensk area, although . they had admitted the loss of the city days before, and some thought this might mean that the Reds were driving the Nazis back in the center. On the southern front the Germans Ger-mans were consolidating their gains, and the battle of Odessa, sort of a foretaste of the battle-to-be at Leningrad, Len-ingrad, was admitted by the Germans Ger-mans to have been a Hand-to-hand encounter of the bitterest sort. It was interesting that the, Nazis were admitting casualties of more than 1,500,000 men, while the Russians Rus-sians were claiming only 2,000,000 Germans had been lost. The German admission was one of those left-handed things, as the communique com-munique in which it contained said that the Russians had lost 5,000,000 while the German losses were "about one-third" of that, amount. It gave an idea of the magnitude of a war in which the admitted casualties, cas-ualties, dead, wounded and missing, could be that many human beings in a brief 70 days. |