European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

As THE land fronts roll back over the German borders, Allied airmen have erased over half a million square miles of target from their books. The air power thus released now concentrates directly on the shrinking target of Germany’s own territory of less than 190,000 square miles.

Allied advances give us the choice of excellent airfields among literally hundreds of former Luftwaffe bases close to the present battle lines. Though most of our heavy bombers continue to base in Britain — where facilities for servicing and distribution are superior to any we have in France — light bombers and fighters are making the most of these newly available flying fields on the Continent.

How much will this air power reduce the German capacity for resistance? In October, approximately 3800 tons of bombs were dropped every twenty-four hours on German targets. This tonnage has been almost doubled in November, despite enormous demands on air power for tactical support of offensives. Raids are now highly selective and far more deadly. Apart from the tactical bombing over the actual fighting fronts, Allied air power is now concentrated on these three objectives: —

1. Oil plants. Loss of all outside oil fields leaves the German Army entirely dependent on stockpiles and synthetic oil plants for fuel. The Allies rate these plants a number one priority. Concentrated bombardment has cut output of synthetic oil approximately in half within little more than six weeks.

2. Steel industries. Germany’s loss of Austrian and Hungarian iron and coal through Russia’s victories in the South; the disruption of her coal and iron supply centers in Lorraine, the Saar, and the Ruhr by Allied advances in the West; and the cessation of the flow of iron ore and machine-tool supplies from Sweden to Germany, automatically make the dwindling German steel industries another prime objective for bombs.

3. Transport. Major links in the communications system of the Reich — rail, waterway, and highway — have assumed a new importance for air raiders. By dislocating transport of men, weapons, and war matériel; by tangling the distribution of civilian necessities — especially food; by blocking and hampering the resettlement of refugee multitudes pouring back into Germany from all her borders, bombings will help to cancel Germany’s military advantage of interior lines of communication.

Before Germany lost the vast elbowroom which she enjoyed in occupied border nations, Allied air blows at the grand pattern of communications within the Reich could have little sustained effectiveness. That situation is now changed. The whole system is being plastered. It is difficult to move a train by daylight anywhere in Central or Western Germany.

Can the French make it?

Because of the influence of France, the struggle of the de Gaulle regime to bring order and economic life out of the wreckage is being watched closely by every neighboring state on the Continent. General de Gaulle, his Cabinet, and the National Resistance Council must find solutions for several stubborn problems without delay if civil war is to be avoided.

Because of the dislocation of communications throughout large areas of the nation, the regime at Paris is experiencing difficulty in making its writ run effectively. Lingering pockets of German resistance, unruly bands of youths composed of former members of the underground formations, and, above all, the growing opposition of the Communists, who constitute a large and energetic bloc among the Resistance forces, hamper efforts at Paris to re-create public order and build up recognition of the authority of the state.

The French instinct for order is on de Gaulle’s side. So is the slowly expanding but inadequately equipped Army. He is obtaining support also from a majority of the delegates in the Resistance Council forces. The head of the Provisional Government has shrewdly chosen to force the issue of authority for the state on the question of the Army. Into its ranks he has ordered all former members of the underground who wish to continue in armed service. The Patriot Militia, which comprises the Communist fighting arm, rejected this challenge early in November. The possibility of compromise is strong; yet this development may have ominous consequences.

Unrest among French patriots flows in part from dissatisfaction with the progress of the “purge” of traitors and collaborators. It is also fed by delay of social reforms. Thousands of German fifth columnists, skillfully disguised in civilian garb, are fostering discontent. Innumerable one-time collaborators with Fascism, highly placed in the social scene, have begun to function once more. Untutored American Army officers are the usual victims of these reactionary purveyors of charm. French patriots of all shades of opinion watch this with growing anger. It impels them to make the “purge trials” a test of the integrity of the de Gaulle government.

The Minister of Justice is attempting to meet this challenge by instituting trial courts. Before midDecember, he promises, more than 340 tribunals will be well on their way through the cases of more than 150,000 persons accused of treason, collaboration, or crimes against the people of France. This pledge has not stilled the storm. Demands grow for the speedy infliction of capital sentences and severe jail terms on the three or four score most notorious of those whom Pertinax has labeled the “gravediggers” of France, beginning with Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval, and including Etienne Flandin, members of the Vichy regime, highly placed industrialists who backed Fascism, exalted figures in the Army and Navy who aided Petain, and prominent financiers who served as tools of the Nazi cause.

The struggle for order, the purge of traitors, and the task of industrial reconstruction are tangled in France, as in every other liberated country in Europe today. Restoration of the important mining industry in the Pas de Calais, for instance, had been held up by charges of collaboration laid against scores of mining engineers in that district. Key men needed for the restoration of other industries are in a similar case. Speedy trials — which undoubtedly will clear the majority of these accused — are thus an urgent economic necessity.

The dilemma of French industry

The industrial disruption of France extends throughout her economic structure. Thanks to four years of German manipulation and looting and a scourge of pre-invasion Allied bombing, railways and docks, port facilities and canals, highways and factories, are a shambles. Dislocation of transport accentuates the shortages of power and raw materials caused by closed mines, blasted power plants, and disorganized agriculture.

The whole industrial organism is out of balance and out of gear. An immediate consequence is that the French government finds itself in control of the whole French economy but without adequate means at its disposal to hasten reconstruction. Mines, factories, transportation, banking, insurance, and the power system are all in state hands — together with the import trade, which scarcely exists, and the export trade, which is at a standstill.

Nationalization of all French industries is not on the program of the de Gaulle government, nor is it sought by the great majority of the patriotic groups. An attempt will be made instead to shift industry generally to a coöperative basis, with the state, the owners, and the workers sharing control and management through carefully democratized mixed committees of organization. Owners and workers under this plan would share also in the profits.

Danger of deep upheaval will persist until the French economy is mended sufficiently to meet the tremendous needs of a restless and impoverished people. Gold reserves held abroad will help. But until the promised elections are held next february and a new Provisional Assembly emerges to provide the basis for the Fourth Republic, the regime at Paris faces squalls if not something worse. Communist pressure for a temporary, one-party dictatorship made up from the Resistance torces, and for postponement of all elections, indicates the gravity of the weeks ahead.

Spain seethes

A by-product of the dislocation of state authority in France is the flurry of guerrilla warfare along the Spanish frontier. The Paris government’s decree establishing a closed zone twenty kilometers wide on the French side of the border seeks to prevent development of a situation which might prove highly embarrassing for France.

Neither General de Gaulle nor the groups associated with him have any use for Franco’s Spanish tyranny. French interest does not accommodate itself to Franco’s survival. The French are not deluded by the belated claims of the Spanish dictator of noninvolvement in the Axis conspiracy which has cost all Europe dearly, or by Franco’s professions of openmindedness toward the victorious forces of democracy. The dossiers are too heavily loaded with evidence against him.

Yet to permit thousands of Spanish Republican refugees in France to precipitate a crisis between the two nations by inaugurating open invasion from French soil, at a time when the French Army is insufficiently armed and French transportation is dislocated, would be to invite an awkward situation. Franco’s unease and his renewal of maneuverings toward monarchy forecast his imminent fall.

Real danger arises for Franco not only from the embittered exiles plotting in France but more immediately from groups conspiring against him in Spain. Underground cells are multiplying. Arms are being assembled. Yet it may be doubted that any rising will take place before the final defeat of the Germans. Premature moves suit neither the plans of the exiles assembling in France nor the purposes of their collaborators beyond the Pyrenees.

Sweden Is worried

Spain’s troubles have parallels in other neutral nations at both ends of Europe. In Sweden, where the late summer elections produced a sharp political shift to the left, anxiety grows as Russia’s invasion of Norse Lapland speeds ahead. Stockholm does not relish seeing Russia step in as liberator of Norway. She would prefer the British and Americans in that role. Russia as liberator might spread Russian influence entirely around Sweden. And now Germany has shut off all Sweden’s trade in the Baltic.

So there is a noticeable growth of concern in Stockholm, and in the Swedish press, over German brutalities in Norway. Some outspoken papers in the Swedish capital go so far as to suggest armed intervention and the rescue of the Norse neighbor. Sweden possesses sufficient power to make short work of the sharply reduced German garrisons in Norway — if she chooses to use it.

But Sweden’s Premier Per Albin Hansson and her Foreign Minister show no indication of favoring so adventurous a course. Nor does the Riksdag. This situation will bear watching as the Russians sweep over the top of the world toward Narvik, where the Nazis drive a huge army of labor slaves furiously to the building of defenses.

Apart from the shadow of Russia over Scandinavia, Sweden has another preoccupation growing out of her neutrality. Despite ever stronger measures against Germany, she remains outside the United Nations and is debarred from sharing in plans they are framing for the peace. At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference her plans for a Scandinavian bloc went by the board. She foresees rocks ahead for her trade position.

The Turk and the Black Sea

At the other end of the Continent, the slippery Turk is even less comfortable. Liberation of Greece and the Aegean Isles brings British Mediterranean influence and Russian influence to a juncture — at the Dardanelles. The conference of Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin at Moscow touched upon “Black Sea questions and Mediterranean questions,” according to the report made by Mr. Churchill to the House of Commons — but nowhere did he mention Turkey. What does this mean? Ankara would give much to find out. Does it mean that the control of the Straits is again at issue as Moscow evinces an ever stronger nationalism in policy which is reminiscent of the Russia of the Tsars?

Turkey’s troubles, like those of other neutrals, are accentuated by loss of trade with the Germans. The impoverishment of the Balkan States, the indifference of the great Allies to Turkish economic interests, the loss of the bargaining position she held until early this summer, make Turkey’s plight substantially worse than that of Spain or Sweden. Russian domination of the Black Sea is an event which must be laid alongside Russia’s new position of power in the Baltic, her interest in Rumanian oil, and her reach for the oil of Northern Iran, if the grand design of Stalin’s policy is to be understood.

Stalin insists upon friendly neighbors in Europe — with British approval. Extension of this policy to neighboring Persia is producing conniption fits in London and Washington. British and the American nationals already hold oil concessions in Southern Iran. Who gets the oil concessions in Northern Iran? The swift unanimity reached in Washington and London, following Persia’s rejection of a bid from Russia for oil concession rights, precipitates what the diplomatists call “an incident.” Persia says “no concessions till the war is over.” London and Washington applaud.

Now Russia has forced the resignation of the offending Foreign Minister. Does this mean that a tussle is on between the British Empire and Russia for the spoils of the Middle East? That would be an old fight reopened. Half a century of diplomatic skulduggery lies behind this maneuvering. Revived today, the question suggests that Russian policy in the Middle East, as well as in Western Europe and at the Dardanelles, has never changed.