THE WAR IN REVIEW
THE WAR IN REVIEW SOVIET RUSSIA dominated the news of the war this week. The Red Army, racing against the arrival of the Spring thaws, hurtled across the Ukraine in the most sensational gains of...
...The decision of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Commander of the Southeast Pacific theater, to permit British troops to fight alongside Chinese and American regulars in the jungles of north Burma, indicated that the British aloofness toward people of the yellow race was at least yielding to the pressure of military exigency...
...The Red Army, racing against the arrival of the Spring thaws, hurtled across the Ukraine in the most sensational gains of the Winter campaign, but Kremlin diplomats, more enigmatic than ever, were adding new problems to the turmoil of European politics in diplomatic moves that left commentators in this country and England completely baffled...
...Kremlin Creates Confusion The heartening news of the Ukrainian successes was tempered by the continued strange quirks of the Kremlin's political policies...
...At mid-week Premier Josef Stalin was able to announce triumphantly that Red Army spearheads had crossed the Dniester River into Rumania and that further to the south another Soviet column was sweeping on toward the Black Sea port of Odessa...
...The great Ukraine drive climaxed an offensive launched last July, soon after the German Summer offensive shattered itself to bits against the mighty Russian military machine...
...Meanwhile, the surge of the Red Army in the Ukraine loosed another flood of peace rumors...
...However varied were the explanations of Russia's conduct, there was unanimous agreement that it was seriously endangering Allied cooperation...
...Rumania was said to be jittery and seeking avenues to get out of the war...
...Since Nov...
...5 of 1943, the Red Army has retaken 90,000 square miles of German occupied territory and, with previous gains, reduced conquered territory from 534,000 square miles to 70,000...
...The recognition of the Badoglio government in Italy last week, without previous notice to or consultation with other signatories to the Moscow and Teheran agreements, threw Allied diplomats and commentators into great confusion...
...MacArthur Renews Pledge In the Pacific, Gen...
...Conjectures concerning the reasons for the surprising Soviet move were as varied as they were numerous...
...His speech was made at a dinner given in his honor by high Australian governmental officials commemorating his second anniversary as Supreme Allied Commander in the Southwest Pacific...
...Others saw in it a Russian indication of displeasure for the unfavorable reaction in Britain and America to Stalin's demand for a third of the surrendered Italian Navy...
...Typical of American reaction was a statement issued this week by 36 educators, jurists, publicists, labor leaders, and churchmen—many of them friendly toward Russia-warning the Soviets of the anti-Russian sentiment in this country that would result should Russia continue to follow policies "in contradiction to the Atlantic Charter and the Moscow declaration...
...Meanwhile, the concern over progress of the Italian campaign had heightened...
...Douglas MacArthur made the big news this week with a speech and then an announcement that the American offensive in the Admiralties had crushed the last pocket of important enemy resistance...
...Despite the fact that 3,500 tons of bombs—1,000 tons more than were ever dropped on Berlin in one raid—were dumped on the little city of Cassino in a desperate effort to smash German resistance there, Allied forces were still encountering the fiercest opposition in their drive to take the city...
...Hopes for an early cessation of hostilities with Finland were alternately reported to be rising and fading, with some stories reporting that Field Marshal Mannerheim would soon go to Moscow to discuss peace terms...
...Elsewhere in the Pacific progress was being made...
...Renewing his famous pledge,' made at the time of his arrival in Australia from the Philippines, "I shall return to the Philippines," MacArthur declared that "nothing is more certain than our ultimate reconquest and liberation from the enemy of those and adjacent islands...
...Some commentators in London and Washington, remembering that Churchill recently came out for Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel, thought it Moscow's way of reciprocating for British support of Marshall Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia...
...One of the great est offensives of the war will at the appropriate time be launched for that purpose...
...Secretary of State Cordell Hull informed newsmen that he asked Moscow for an explanation and that one of the major assignments of Undersecretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr., in his forthcoming mission to London, would be to attempt a revitalization of the European Advisory Commission, whose creation was decreed at the Moscow Conference—in an effort to prevent a recurrence of such independent action...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 13
