The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN What fa Da Witk tkm free ma>*» TrIB NEW LEADER mi assailed Hitter snd the Naxia ever eiace we started publication. That waa ia 1*24. We favored helping the...
...a torrent of fire and steel began to fall on our capital...
...It should be abandoned...
...All the4members of the Nazi Party, moat of the aoldiers in the S.S...
...Never did the Poles waver for a single moment, nor have there been traitors among them...
...In defiance of the German terror regime, there grew up a wide network of underground organization, especially an underground labor movement centering around the Polish Socialist Party...
...If there will be a fourth time, it will be because opinions like your in The New leader rather than Vanaittart's will prevail...
...We lacked one thing only: we did not have sufficient arms to contend against the modern mechanized might .of the Nazis...
...Our voice is the voice of Warsaw's people, who, for 150 years, have been rising in every generation to fight against foreign invaders...
...We wanted the U.3.A...
...A fine idea...
...We had to obey...
...We will not, of course, imitate the Nazis...
...The fate which met the Warsaw Ghetto shsll now be the fate of all Warsaw, the fate of a million men and women...
...The Germans, under Nazi leadership, have done worse and been worse than any other nation in history...
...Asa Spectator calls him Hitler's whitewash artist in a blast that does my heart good no matter how pigheaded it is...
...Do you think there is any humor in explaining Germsn psychology ? All of Jthe liberals who were sent to concentration camps or were ousted from their professions—would they say the basic vice of the Germans is respect for law snd order...
...So long as there are journalists who see good in the German nation, just so long will there be Hitlers and New Orders...
...It'a far easier to shoot men than to put guts into them, to get each one to the point where he will be able to think for himself and stand up for himself...
...Maclver and Dr...
...I said to him: "Suppose that by some sudden calsautf we wore to aad a Hitler maniac at the head of ear gsTsrasaaat aad he were to order oar soldiers to asm, atit atrocities, torture people, massacre whole popL latieas as the Cormaas did at Labim—suppose tat order were sent dowa from the commakAi-id chief M the sergeants—what would happen...
...Warsaw had to begin its fight on August 1, 1944, insufficiently armed...
...We believe, we wish to believe, that immediate and effective help for Waraaw will be a confirmation for the martyred Polish nation of its unyielding faith that a new aolidarity of the free nations •f the world will be born of the atruggle for freedom...
...What I want to discover is how far my correspondents are willing to go with me...
...It ia the sort of peppery fusilade that editors used to get when people were not afraid to come clear with their opinions and folks were less squeamish about slander...
...Shuster, I am sure, have the same aense of outrage...
...We little people must do as we are told...
...It was routine, a minor incident...
...I am willing to go the limit...
...We share the pride of the people of London who victoriously withstood all trials...
...I hope they will answer...
...No help arrived from the Russian army...
...Fighting with the almost strain of nerves and willpower, Warsaw demands that the voice of coascience shoald be followed by immediate help ia the straggle...
...Nothing can stop the raging fires...
...How these people who were crucified by the Germans would despise you and your ilk (vide article in your New Leader of August o, Uevitt Advocate) who defend the German nation...
...We appeal to you on behalf of fighting Warsaw...
...This ran, and should, and must be granted withoat delay...
...Bobby wrote all this to me while he was still shuddering with horror...
...It was all right, they said, to kill all those people, but burying so'many was rather a nuisance...
...Warsaw is not begging for anything...
...But millions of Germans have *ad a part in these crimes...
...We know sne trath and one reality—the truth of a city which ia fighting and dying for the common cause: freedom of the world...
...Someone suggested that in the peace terras it be provided that Germans he forbidden to make or wear uniforms...
...The other day I pat thia up to aa American often...
...We are addressing this voice ef Warsaw to the workers, peasants, democrats, trade unionists, and Socialists of the world...
...Wt repudiate all charges and all pretexts which try to veil the trath of the fighting in Warsaw...
...Remember Peter Zenger...
...But new—during the past three weeks—we have been exposed to a mail barrage from correspondents who think we advocate being "too soft" with the Germans...
...We believe that they will make the cause of Warsaw their own cause...
...Broadus Mitchell and Dr...
...The answers hsvc been given by ragged and tired warriors of the Wehrmacht at far separate points, but the sense is always the same: "We were ordered to do it...
...Spectator...
...We began the struggle convinced we would receive speedy and efficient help from the Allies...
...Then we were alone, but we did not regret our sacrifices because we linked them with the certainty of future victory and the right of Poland to recover full freedom and independence in the hour of triumph of the free nations of the world...
...Warsaw ia- not waiting for words of sympathy...
...It is from Dr...
...The real trouble with thoae fellows over there is that they Mindly obey the leaders' orders...
...You may have noticed all the stories of interviews with German prisoners of war...
...Always the assumption that they are not supposed to have minds, consciences, wills...
...But the nature of the German weakness constitutes oar greatest long-run problem...
...Whaa Stalin and Hitler were partners, we knew we would have to fight the Asia sooner or later—and we preferred to do it sooner...
...There must have been thousands of butcheries like this...
...That takes development...
...If anything like the standard of ordinary civil justice is to be attained, we shall have to punish millions of men...
...Among the rums snd raging fires, units of the Polish Underground Army have been clinging to every inch of ground, and the enemy has entered only where no human being remained alive...
...George N. Shuster for what he has written in The New Leader and in hia history of Germany...
...My question is: Gentlemen, how many Germane do you want to execute...
...You can't do that by passing laws...
...Let me put a question toJPr...
...Warsaw is without light snd wster, as well as without food...
...We demand, and we have the right to dement, immediate and effective help in our struggle...
...Take this letter aa a sample...
...I am sure if the laat paragraph of your column were available to them in limefloored freight ears, human abattoirs, and cyanide chambers, they would have died laughing...
...Shuster, President of Hunter College, is denounced in every conceivable way, with figures of speech appealing to all the five senses...
...One district after another' fell into ruins...
...Three times in seventy yesrs have the Germans tried to destroy European civilisation...
...I sit here and open Bobby's letter, see what he haa seen, feel as he felt...
...The Germans drive the civilian population—men, - women and children—into camps around Warsaw, where conditions are unbelievable for the civilized world...
...We appeal to the conscience of the world...
...What do you do with a backward bey ?" "I hope the 1,716,000 Jews who were exterminated by the German backward boys appreciate the quaint humor of your column...
...Two millions?- Three millions...
...Omr nation cannot understand why, in the hoar ef Us hardest trial...
...The Germans threaten to erase Warsaw completely...
...This massacre of fifty Italians was not even noted by the press...
...The Polish Underground never capitulated and during the five yea,rs of struggle sacrificed five million victims...
...We continued fighting even when the German armies reached the peak of their success, When they occupied all of Europe, when they were at the gatea of Moscow and Stalingrad...
...The extent of criminality goes beyond imagination...
...But today, looking upon the ruins of burning Warsaw, we ask ourselves and the world: "Why is similar joy denied us...
...Hunger and epidemics cause the -death of masses of the people...
...a • a How Many Woofd few Kill7 AtlA, of the readers and writers of this paper must agree about one thing...
...We must talk fsst if we are to say anything to the point before our boys have punctured the Siegfried Line...
...Rosenberg and Mr...
...Rosenberg and Asa Spectator are invited to read the story of Sergeant Robert Gladnick on page 4 of last week's issue...
...As the German misdeeds pile up, I am more and more inclined to go the limit...
...1 ventured the opinion that the chief fault in the Vaterland is not cruelty but obedience...
...We will try to do justice...
...They have come from Russia, from France, from England, and from Italy: The questioner would say: "Why have you German soldiers murdered innocent civilians in these horrible ways...
...Since I wrote that Tittle piece, the war correspondents have given me notable support...
...They must have a government, an educational aystem, and a way of making a living Bute, seeass to have proved pretty thoroughly that fee can't run the world by kilting people...
...I have, too, letters—and hot ones—denouncing Robert Miclver for his article, Thr Devil and the Peace, and also Or...
...With the first stroke of the uprising, the workers of Warsaw seized nearly the whole city...
...Our few arms were produced secretly in underground workshops...
...After years of the hated rule of the oppressor, other capitals of subjugated nations are throwing off the yoke of occupation...
...After forty days of unequal struggle, righting among the ruina and fires with the last ef their energy, the patriots of Wsrsaw expert help...
...divisions, and plenty of soldiers in the regular Wehrmacht, have obeyed orders and had a hand in unspeakable atrocities...
...Would they be willing to execute a million men...
...Jacob Rosenberg of Brooklyn and starts with a quotation from my column of August 12: "There is nothing wrong with the genes of the people we call Germans...
...And what of the victims of the robot bombs...
...Five years ago Warsaw was the first to put up armed resistance against the aggression of German imperialism and paid for its resistance with 80,000 killed...
...We appeal to the simplest morality in relations between free nations...
...We share the joy of liberated Paris snd free Brussels...
...I have, aa you see, company...
...Warsaw Workers Appeal to the Conseienee of the World An appeal of the Polish Socialist Party, made September 10, for help for the people of Warsaw, whose uprising against the Germans is now in its seventh week...
...We favored helping the Spanish democrats fight hira fai 1*34...
...Scores of thousands of people met their death under the debris...
...v —i H aWa*v fnwajtfaj§0MWef WhAT started ail this was my little easay aa German faults...
...And the people of Rotterdam, of Coventry, those machine-gunned on ths roads in France, those who went down in the hospital ships and Red Cross ships— they are all outsiders...
...Our voice is the voice of Warsaw's workers, who are the backbone of the present fighting in Warsaw...
...By G«4...
...be said, "I don't know just where it wsofci happen, hut somewhere along that line, as the order want dawn, there would be some fellow who would stand up aad say, 'over my dead body!'" Fellows like that with individual consciences make the difference between Germany and America...
...We might run into the difficulties which embarrassed thoae German officers in Belgium...
...to join with the French and the British to atop Mm in 1*3...
...And after they have been tried and killed and buried, there remains ths problem of those who are left...
...Broadus Mitchell, who posed recently, as the devil's advocate, gets his...
...But I saw a good hist in the right direction the other day...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 38
