THE WAR IN REVIEW
THE WAR IN REVIEW SITTING in a bomb-proof shelter somewhere in Germany this week, Adolf Hitler watched the seams of his great European fortress begin to buckle under the relentless pressure of what...
...Taking off from carriers attached to the task force, bombers smashed at the fleeing Japanese force until it had withdrawn from range...
...Tokyo itself acknowledged this week that possession of the Mariannas would give the United States superiority in the western Pacific and open the way for bombing of the Japanese homeland from the east...
...The enemy task force, which included five aircraft carriers, approached within maximum range of American surface units and launched a large number of planes...
...The capture of Cherbourg gave to the Allies a major French port—in fact, the third largest in France— through which could be funneled much of the heavy equipment and re-enforcements necessary to carry on the fight for French liberation...
...Seven hundred les to the east, Josef Stalin had lau ;d a shattering attack along a 325-mile front in the central sector of the Russian line...
...Basing their opinions on the hysterical headlines earlier in the week and failing to see the later and more subdued accounts of what actually happened, many people believed that the main American and Japanese fleets had slugged it out in a spectacular battle east of the Philippines...
...As the unfolding military strategy of the United Nations gave cause for encouragement, the turbulent political scene—especially where France was involved— showed no indications of immediate improvement...
...Political news in the Pacific was made chiefly this week by the visit of Vice President Henry A. Wallace to Chungking...
...The best that could be said of the administrative progress in liberated France was that it was proceeding on a "day-to-day" basis...
...As a result, Americans were more than somewhat confused over just what had happened...
...What apparently occurred was that American forces repulsed, with heavy losses for the enemy, an attempt of a large Japanese task force to land re-enforcements on the island of Saipan in the Mariannas to counterattack against American troops recently landed there...
...Meanwhile, American troops on Saipan continued to push ahead in the drive to clear the enemy from the island which, when conquered, will provide a strong foothold for further attacks in the island group...
...Reports compared the German resistance to the Russian stand at Stalingrad, but it was obvious that no force could withstand the overwhelming power thrown against the city by the Allies...
...A real possibility that Gen...
...Sending waves of bombers and fighters into the air, the 58th prevented the plane landings at Guam and inflicted terrific losses in an air fight that raged over hundreds of miles of sea...
...Reds Push Westward The new offensive in the east, which the Reds dramatically launched on the 3rd anniversary of Hitler's invasion of Russia, had isolated Vitebsk, last major German fortress on Russian soil, and threatened to capture or annihilate the enemy garrison said to number 45,000 men...
...While many were disappointed that the Japanese Imperial Fleet had not been engaged, it could not be denied that a significant victory had been won in what has been regarded as enemy home waters...
...It was while it was on this homeward jaunt that our scouting planes spotted it...
...To the West—800 miles away— American invasion forces were storming the vital French port of Cherbourg and at mid-week were locked in "belly-to belly" combat for possession of the city...
...THE WAR IN REVIEW SITTING in a bomb-proof shelter somewhere in Germany this week, Adolf Hitler watched the seams of his great European fortress begin to buckle under the relentless pressure of what may soon become the most gigantic pincers movement in all military history...
...Their task was to fly to Guam, refuel, and continue on to Saipan in an apparent effort to prepare the way for bringing up re-enforcements...
...Charles de Gaulle had lost his ace-in-the-hole—the prospect of complete recognition of his committee as the provisional government of France by the Soviet Union—was raised when the North American Newspaper Alliance reported that "reliable diplomatic" sources insist that at Teheran Stalin renounced any right to interfere in western European affairs in exchange for an Anglo-American hands-off pledge in eastern Europe...
...In Italy—600 miles away—the Allied forces drove ahead against strengthened enemy defenses...
...The drive to knock Finland out of the war, meanwhile, had rolled through Viipuri, Finland's second city, and was pushing on toward the Finnish capi-tol, Helsinki...
...Significant Naval Victory There was big military news in the Pacific, too, this week, but it was not as big as Navy officials originally hinted and the newspapers proclaimed...
...Omar N. Bradley had driven into the central part of Cherbourg...
...In the waters around Guam, America's Task Force 58, one of the deadliest striking forces on the high seas, was waiting for just such an attempt...
...Three days later Wallace again made headlines when, with Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese leader, he issued a statement concerning Asiatic problems which was principally notable for its renunciation of white imperialism—an element conspicuously lacking in the Declaration of Cairo issued last year by Chiang, President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill...
...At mid-week Admiral ' Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, announced that the futile defense of the Mariannas had cost the enemy 747 planes destroyed, 30 ships sunk, 51 damaged, and 13 barges destroyed...
...Furious hand-to-hand fighting marked the advance of the doughboys through the city...
...The enemy task force, apprised of the defeat of its air support, streaked for safer waters...
...Less than 100 miles from the English coast, the port would be a valuable asset to the invasion forces...
...Its principal drawback is that it is situated on a peninsula which the Germans will fight hard to cut off...
...On the opposite end of the Normandy front, British and Canadian troops were launching powerful blows to protect the American forces at Cherbourg and to prevent a German attempt to cut off the peninsula by driving through to the English Channel...
...Speaking at dinner in his honor, the Vice President first made headlines by asserting that there was "good reason to hope" that Japan would be defeated within a year...
...At the end of almost a week of siege in which the city had undergone a murderous pounding from the Allied big naval guns, land-based artillery, and bomber squadrons, the infantry of Lieut...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 27
