1943. "Ten Years of Hitler"

The New York Times on the Tenth Anniversary of Hitler's Rise to Power

Adolf Hitler and Paul von Hindenburg at the memorial ceremony in Tannenberg, August 27, 1933 (source)

This article is part of a series of posts on how newspapers covered the rise and fall of fascism in Europe. In January 1943 the New York Times editorial board published a piece marking the tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

From The New York Times, January 30, 1943:

TEN YEARS OF HITLER

A tortured humanity writhing under the scourge of the most extensive and the most savage war in history will contemplate this day with mingled fury and regret, but also with a sense of triumph and a new dedication to final victory over the powers of darkness. Ten years ago today a demoniacal demagogue named Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and thereby unleashed forces which are now drenching the world with blood. There will be increased fury over the war itself, but also over the savagery and brutishness with which the unspeakable Nazis and their allies are waging a campaign of extermination against helpless conquered populations. There will be regret over our own past mistakes which permitted these forces to get out of hand. There will be, above all, elation over the fact that these forces have been met and stopped, and a new resolve to crush them and wipe them from the face of the earth so that they will never rise again.

But ten years of fevered history have also demonstrated that if Hitler was the mainspring of events the forces which he was able to mobilize are greater than any individual—that, in other words, Hitlerism is a far greater menace than Hitler himself, and that, therefore, the problems we face go deeper than the mere elimination of Hitler and his regime. These forces are both peculiarly German and worldwide, and this anniversary is a good time to impress them on our minds for future reference.

Within the German orbit Hitlerism is primarily the heir of Prussian militarism serving as the instrument of German industrialism. Both kept Hitler in his days of penury and brought him to power to carry through German rearmament after the pathetic failures of their first choices, the tricky but frivolous Junker Papen and the wily but politically inexperienced General Schleicher, who proposed to rearm Germany with the cooperation of the German labor unions. But their final choice fell on Hitler only because he had already rallied behind himself a large popular following by appeals to all the worst elements and instincts of the Germans and, above all, had gathered around himself a fanatical crew of hoodlums and adventurers with whom he promised to terrorize the rest of the Germans into line. This he did, and out of all these elements he was able to forge a military machine with which he could overrun Europe, and to build up a regime that derives its motive force from racial hatred, lust of conquest and domination, and a cold savagery that sets aside all the cultural and moral progress of the last 2,000 years and proposes to clear a Lebensraum for the German master race by exterminating the "inferior" races already living there as a preliminary to world conquest.

From a world-wide standpoint, Hitlerism represents both the drift toward totalitarian government first exemplified in Soviet Russia and touted in this country as the "wave of the future," and also a middle-class counter-revolution against the "proletarian" revolution of the Bolshevists. In this dual role it won the support of many Germans attracted by its totalitarian features or scared by the Communist menace, though the final support that put it over the top came from Communists jumping on the bandwagon. And it also attracted sympathies in other lands which, facing similar issues, were split in two, like France, or considered nazism a good bulwark against bolshevism, as did some elements in England.

Now nazism has fully unmasked itself and the whole decent world is up in arms against it. Today, on its tenth anniversary, it stands at bay like a hunted criminal on which the avengers are closing in from all sides, and the thousand years of Hitler prophesied for his Third Reich are running out fast. The Nazis have proclaimed this war is an Armageddon in which the vanquished will be forever eliminated from the stage of history. So be it. Today we know that it is not our side which will be eliminated, and the ultimatum at Casablanca is the guarantee that there will be no compromise with Hitler or his works.

1948. "Historians Rate U.S. Presidents"

"The U.S. Presidents" by Arthur M. Schlesinger

LIFE magazine, November 1, 1948

From LIFE magazine, November 1, 1948, pp. 65-74:

Some time ago 55 outstanding authorities in American history were invited by Harvard's Arthur M. Schlesinger to rate the Presidents of the U.S. in five categories; the results, which Professor Schlesinger analyzes in an article beginning on the next page, are illustrated above. The order within each category runs from left to right. Three men were omitted from consideration: William Henry Harrison, who died within a month of taking office; Garfield, shot four months after his inauguration, and Truman, whose record is not yet complete.

THE U.S. PRESIDENTS

What makes a President great? Or a failure? The verdict of history provides some answers

By ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER

Those who believe that in a democracy people generally get the kind of government they deserve will be heartened by the results of an informal presidential rating poll which I conducted not long ago among my colleagues in American history and government (p. 65). Only two of our past Presidents were labeled "failures"; four were judged "near great"; and six received the accolade "great." 

There was a large measure of agreement among the "experts" within the important categories of great, near great and failures. The six greats—Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wilson, Jefferson and Jackson, in that order—had no close runners-up, though Lincoln was the only one to get all 55 votes for the top rank. 

Among the four near great—Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams and James K. Polk—the selection of Polk will no doubt surprise most readers. Polk's position in American history has been unjustly neglected. His record in the White House was an exceptional one. A coldly practical and methodical man, Polk set himself certain precise objectives to be achieved while he was President, and achieve them he did during his single term of office from 1845–49. He lowered the tariff, re-established the independent treasury system for public funds and completed the westward expansion of the country. To get Oregon and Washington he risked the threat of war with Great Britain. And he did go to war with Mexico to acquire California and most of the territory of the present states of our Southwest. 

The failure rating went to two postwar Presidents, Grant and Harding. Theirs were the only administrations in American history which can be described as riddled with corruption. As President they were both far beyond their depth. Grant allowed himself to become the dupe of crafty swindlers, speculators and plain grafters who rocked the country with schemes involving watered railroad stock, defrauding the government of taxes due on whisky, selling Indian trading-post concessions and raising congressional salaries (while doubling the President's). Grant indulged freely in nepotism, appointing a number of his relatives to various government posts, but he was otherwise personally untouched by the profiteering which went on around him. The greatest scandal of his administration followed the famous attempt by Gould and Fisk, with the aid of Grant's brother-in-law, to corner the gold supplies of the country, an attempt which almost came off and resulted in the Black Friday panic of 1869. 

What the glitter of gold was to Grant's administration, the smear of oil was to Harding's. There was the Teapot Dome affair, in which lavish bribery influenced the sale of government oil lands, and corrupt practices were also uncovered in the Veterans' Bureau, the office of the Alien Property Custodian and even the Attorney General's office. Three of Harding's Cabinet appointees were forced to resign, one going to prison. Harding was an amiable, easy-going man who had been pushed into office by machine politics and the ambitions of his wife. His death, after two and a half years in office, undoubtedly was hastened by his consciousness of having betrayed the public interest. 

The judgments reached in this poll, of course, are based entirely on the performance of these men as President. The total contribution to statesmanship of some was greater—and of some, less—than their contribution as chief executive. As one of those who voted in the poll remarked, "If the whole sum of the man's work were considered, certain of my ratings would be different. Madison and John Quincy Adams would go in the first group. Polk, by contrast, was better as President than he was in general, and Grant was much worse." Another commented, "This inquiry makes you realize how lucky some of the Presidents were in their times, and how others no less able suffered the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'" 

Were the six great Presidents merely "lucky in their times"? Or was greatness inherent in them? Let us see what kind of composite portrait we can draw of the six great Presidents. 

In appearance and temperament they differed as much as six men can. Lincoln we remember as the shambling-gaited, gaunt man of simple humanity whose speeches were like authentic religious statements and whose jokes were like parables. The impeccably dressed Washington personified the cavalier tradition of Virginia at its most heroic and austere. Roosevelt combined urbane sophistication with deep feeling, impishness with evident dedication to the job which he filled despite the handicap of partial paralysis. Wilson, the man who loved humanity but so conspicuously lacked the human touch, retained all his life the manner of a thin-lipped college professor; he was dry, didactic and determinedly rational. Jefferson was a complex, many-sided man, a skilled architect, ingenious inventor, profound political scientist and adept practical politician, musician and philosopher, a Virginian who did not use tobacco or hard liquor and once received the British minister in dressing gown and slippers. Jackson was the hothead of the six, a duelist, celebrated for profanity and stubbornness. 

The pattern of the great Presidents

It is in the administrations directed by these men that we can find a common pattern. The greats were indeed "lucky in their times": they are all identified with some crucial turning point in our history. As our first President, Washington got the infant republic on its feet. Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was our first territorial expansion, pushing back the western boundary from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Jackson put down an attempt at secession on the part of South Carolina and acted to right the imbalance between the eastern moneyed interests and the Western and Southern farmers. Lincoln preserved the Union through four years of bloody civil war. Wilson's "New Freedom" and Roosevelt's "New Deal" introduced far-reaching changes in the social and economic structure of the country, and both men led the U.S. to intervene in world wars and the making of international peace. All six by timely action achieved timeless results. 

All of them, moreover took the side of progressivism and reform as understood in their day. It is true that Washington's administration resembled in manner and tone a European court, and that Washington himself (like Franklin Roosevelt later, but for different reasons) was charged by his opponents with harboring kingly ambitions. But we cannot ignore the fact that Washington led the revolt against monarchical Britain, and his lasting contribution as President was to demonstrate the workability of what he called "the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people." Jefferson's party, the Democratic-Republicans as they were then called, was the party of the small farmers and the nonpropertied class. Jackson destroyed the overweening power of the United States Bank which gave financial interests special privilege in the use of public funds. Lincoln, confronted with armed revolt, summoned the North to "settle this question now, whether, in a free government, the minority have the right to break up the government," and in settling the question took action which ended by transforming four million slaves into human beings. Wilson and Roosevelt expanded the government's authority over business and industry, fought concentrations of economic power at home and became spokesmen for the cause of democracy throughout the world. 

To their contemporaries the six great Presidents often seemed politically ahead of their times, but they had to be careful not to get too far ahead. They had to work experimentally within the framework of the democratic tradition as it had been handed down to them. Political considerations permitted them to be idealists if they liked, but not doctrinaires. "What is practical must often control what is pure theory," wrote Jefferson the chief executive, no doubt with a view to placating Jefferson the political theorist. As James Russell Lowell put it in his essay on Lincoln, the ultimate test of statesmanship is not a "conscientious persistency in what is impracticable" but rather, "loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them." Presidents who considered themselves strategists in the public interest had to practice the tactics of political management, thus bringing down on their heads the wrath of the pure-minded among their supporters. 

They were party men 

The six great Presidents were all party men and, with the exception of Washington, they all had their hearts set on becoming President. After election they functioned as party chiefs as well as chief executive, using the powers of the one to back the other. Washington was not a party man from the beginning, but as President he declared that to appoint a member of the opposition to office "would be a sort of political suicide." These are facts which are generally overlooked by posterity because it is so far removed from the heat of earlier party battles and because it first meets the great figures of the past enshrined as wax figures in schoolbooks. 

As administrators the six great Presidents did not distinguish themselves. Some of them, indeed, were in this regard distinctly inferior to men who were otherwise mediocre. The American tradition, rightly or wrongly, dismisses as unimportant the aspect of the President as manager of our national government. We value the ends of public policy over skill in executing it. Franklin Roosevelt said, a week after his election in 1932, "The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That is the least part of it." Judged in the light of his later performance, this sounds like what lawyers call a plea in avoidance. Jackson and Lincoln would probably have endorsed Roosevelt's view, as well as his description of the presidency as "pre-eminently a place of moral leadership." It was the exercise of moral leadership that won these men their popular acclaim and the lasting regard of posterity. 

The great Presidents were strong Presidents. Each of them magnified the executive branch at the expense of the other branches of the government. They acted on the premise that "the President," as Woodrow Wilson wrote while he was still an academic student of public affairs, "is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can." They had to be strong to break down inertia and overcome opposition to the programs they wanted to carry out. Recalcitrant Congresses were reluctant to pass legislation asked by the Executive; supreme courts sometimes declared wanted measures unconstitutional when they were passed. 

The methods used by these Presidents to get action out of Congress varied with their temperaments and the times. Washington simply overawed the legislative branch with his enormous personal prestige as the military hero of the Revolution and his godlike position as "father of his country." Jefferson preferred to work behind the scenes, pulling party strings in caucuses and overseeing the judicious distribution of patronage. Later executives leaned more on public opinion. They appealed directly to the voters when Congress balked. Jackson was the first to use his veto power extensively. He also exploited the possibilities of a disciplined party press. Wilson revived the practice, which Jefferson had abandoned, of making personal appearances before Congress. Roosevelt's voice worked political magic over the air waves. In our day a vivid personality and gifts of showmanship have become indispensable prerequisites of presidential leadership. This points up one of the weaknesses of our political system, for men who might make good Presidents often make poor candidates, and so get no chance at the office. 

With the supreme court all but one of the six great Presidents sooner or later found themselves in conflict. The exception was Washington—and he appointed all the judges of the court with which he had to deal. 

Strong leaders arouse strong opposition. Business interests resist anything new in the way of controls; politicians usually prefer to let well enough alone; Congress resents executive "encroachments"; the opposition party views everything with alarm. Moreover big Presidents often have big faults which, seen at close range, are apt to appear magnified still more. As a result the great Presidents fell foul of the bitterest antagonisms inside their own parties as well as elsewhere. Even the comparatively sacrosanct Washington was not immune. As he remarked, he was assailed "in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter or even to a common pickpocket." When he retired an opposition paper rejoiced that "the man who is the source of all the misfortunes of our country ... is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the U.S." 

The press has regularly thrown the weight of its influence against the great and near-great Presidents in their election campaigns, with the exception of Washington. The majority of newspaper editors tried to defeat Jefferson and Lincoln when they first ran for the presidency, fought Jackson and Wilson both times when they were candidates and lambasted Roosevelt in all four of his campaigns. 

The task of being a great President would seem to be more rewarding to the nation than to the man in office. A few, to be sure, were exhilarated by the ordeals of office, but all looked for abiding satisfaction in the verdict they expected history to render on their service.
That verdict is favorable not only to them, but to the political system which put them in office. More than a third of our Presidents—10 out of 29—achieved the rank of great or near great, a creditable showing for any system of government. 

The common run of our Presidents, as it happens, held office during periods that demanded little of the man in the White House. It is not humanly to be expected that even a young and vigorous nation will always be at its best. Indeed there are periods when the general welfare may call for rest and relaxation. What endows a country with greatness is the ability to produce greatness when it is needed. That test America, up to now, has well met.

1945. Bill Downs Reporting on Allied Occupation Forces Arriving in Japan

American GIs in Occupied Japan

Bill Downs

CBS

August 19, 1945

ROBERT TROUT: Out at Admiral Nimitz's headquarters today, the men who plan amphibious operations are getting set for a peacetime landing on Japan. A Columbia correspondent has recorded the scene on Guam, and for his report here is Bill Downs.

BILL DOWNS: We're sweating out another "D-Day" here in the Pacific—the most peculiar D-Day of the whole war. This occupation move on Japan has taken on all of the aspects of a full-scale combat landing. The men are teed up, the convoys are on the move, and more are assembling. The Air Force is waiting to play its role in the show. Tempers are getting short, and the usual D-Day restlessness is in evidence everywhere.

There are many things that make this peacetime D-Day like many others that have happened before the peace was on. In the first place, there's the uncertainty. No one knows exactly what is going to happen, and it's the same old story of being crowded onto a ship, only this time there are not quite the same number of anxiety complexes in evidence. And the men know that, when they get to their destinations in Japan, that the living will probably be the same tough field conditions that they've had all through the Pacific campaign.

I've talked with a number of men slated for the occupation of Japan, and next to the primary question of whether they're going to be shot at or not, there's the question of what they're going to do when they get there. And if you know the soldier's mind you'll know what I mean. Yeah, that's right: fraternization.

I saw the non-fraternization policy fail in Germany. From completely unofficial sources I understand that a similar non-fraternization policy is contemplated for Japan. But there is a difference. No GI is going to fraternize with a little lotus blossom when Lotus Blossom might have a knife in her hand. And the GIs know the fanaticism of the Jap from a ways back. But a soldier is still a soldier, and an American soldier, believe me, is even more so. Sooner or later there very definitely will be a fraternization problem in Japan.

The people of Japan are getting desperately hungry. The American army will have more food per man than the Jap's ration ever contained in the best of times. The GI is naturally a friendly animal, and he's going to come to like the children of Japan. And nothing can stop that.

In other words, the American soldier is a human being. He's going to suffer when he sees suffering, and he's going to sympathize with any people in distress. He's also going to remember the Jap atrocities and the POW that was killed on one of these island campaigns, and he's going to be a frustrated person for a while. But in the end, the GI is going to be a human being, and when he lives with the suffering that Japan has brought upon herself, he's going to feel sorry. There's nothing that can be done about that here.

1948. Berliners Celebrate Christmas as the Airlift Continues

Bill Downs and Larry LeSueur Reporting from Berlin

A group of children with gifts from the Berlin airlift, 1948 (Photo by Hank Walker for Life magazine – source)

Bill Downs was the CBS Berlin correspondent throughout the blockade in 1948 and 1949. During that time he received visits from CBS colleagues and fellow Murrow Boys who also made reports, including Edward R. Murrow and Larry LeSueur (then the UN correspondent), whose Berlin Christmas reports are also featured below.

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 19, 1948

Bisected Berlin has become so used to tension and crisis that every time there is a short period of quiet, rumors begin circulating as if to fill the vacuum.

The past few days we have been hearing whispers of a projected putsch by the Communist-led East Berlin government in which these unfounded reports say armed East sector police would march into the blockaded West sectors and take over. A number of dates have been mentioned. One rumor said the putsch would come on Christmas. Another said it would be made the first week in January when the newly elected West Berlin city assembly holds its first meeting.

So persistent were these rumors that one nervous Western sector newspaper published them as news, evoking a denial from British authorities who said there was nothing to the reports.

However, the spirit of Christmas gradually is overshadowing the spirit of crisis in this blockaded city. With the military units, clubs, and organizations staging scores of parties for German children all over the city, it is a common sight to see lines of starry-eyed kids on the street excitedly carrying toys and dolls, bundles of clothing, their mouths full of candy saved from the American rations for the occasion.

Despite the blockade, hundreds of smuggled Christmas trees have found their way into Western Berlin. There is a shortage of decorations, and sometimes when passing a church you can hear the shrill voices of children practicing carols—somehow they seem to blend nicely with the drone of the airlift planes providing a bass obbligato.

The Germans always have been sentimental over Christmas. Perhaps this season those on both sides of the invisible barrier will call a temporary, unofficial truce for the rest of the week and allow Berlin to have peace for a few days.

However, there has been no relaxation of the blockade. More East-sector police have been stationed at streets connecting the two parts of the city.

Down in Stuttgart, however, there is proof that the Christmas spirit is solidly established. American and German officials held special tree lighting ceremonies in front of the Stuttgart Opera House. For the first time since the end of the war, no policemen are being stationed at the tree to prevent the light bulbs from being stolen.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Larry LeSueur

CBS Berlin

December 22, 1948

It's going to be a light Christmas here in the red-white-and-blue sector of Berlin. I said light, not white, because no snow has yet fallen to cloak the ruins of this shattered city.

At the first meeting last night of the Allied three-power Kommandatura—reconstituted without the Russians—the Americans, British, and French decided to give their sectors of Berlin a Christmas present. There'll be light all day on December 25th, instead of just for two hours in the cellars and patched-up ruins of this cheerless northern city, where even the sun shines for only a few hours a day.

Two hundred extra tons of coal will be burned for electricity on Christmas Day to illuminate the sparsely decorated Christmas trees and the Berliners' Christmas dinner of canned meat and dried potatoes. This gift of light to the loyal Berlin population represents hundreds of bags of coal flown in by the hardworking boys of the airlift. And also, every Berlin household in the Western sector will get a pint of kerosene for their lamps.

It's a funny thing about the Christmas tree situation here. There aren't enough trees in the Western sector for all the Berliners who want them. And naturally we couldn't allow space on the airlift for inedible trees. But no German family would be without one at this time.

Well aware of this, the Russians imported 350,000 Christmas trees into their sector, and lo and behold, those little trees are appearing for street corner sale in this Western sector now. The Germans are smuggling them in from the East by subway and trolley car. The Russians are so displeased that today they've announced spot checks of all subway passengers carrying food parcels or trees across the line.

Coming from Paris to Berlin as I just have is literally like going from one world to another. I never realized how far along the road to recovery France is, or what it really means for any country to be defeated and occupied.

_______________________________

Larry LeSueur

CBS Berlin

December 24, 1948

Nature gave beleaguered Berlin a Christmas present today. The day dawned bright and clear, and the airlift boys are really laying it in. The heavy rumble of the aircraft fills the Berlin skies, and for the first time in weeks the shabby residents on both sides of this wrecked city can actually see the cloud-free airplanes streaming in with their heavy loads of food and fuel.

Nor is America forgetting its young citizens who make the great Berlin airlift possible—a feat which has raised American prestige sky-high all over Europe. Vice President-elect Alben Barkley is expected in Berlin tonight. Secretary of War Royall and Air Secretary Symington will also spend Christmas with the American airmen. Vice President-elect Barkley is bringing the airmen a special Christmas message from President Truman.

General Clay, after delivering a Christmas message of hope for Western Germany, has just flown up to the big air base at the other end of the line to Wiesbaden. He'll escort these dignitaries back to Berlin on the air corridor over Russian-occupied territory. And on Sunday night, over many of these CBS stations, General Clay will broadcast an exclusive interview on the past and the future of American policy in Germany.

The impersonal snow which covered the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin alike yesterday has melted under the watery sunlight, and the gray-faced, undernourished Berliners are trudging through the ruins on their traditional Christmas Eve holiday. But the repercussions of Soviet anti-religious policy were heard here in Berlin today. Soviet authorities have announced that ten thousand German steelworkers in the Russian zone have "voluntarily" renounced the Christmas holidays to work on the two-year plan. Berliners are quipping that these workers are 98 per cent behind Marshall Sokolovsky—that is ninety per cent Marshall and eight percent behind Sokolovsky.

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Larry LeSueur

CBS Berlin

December 25, 1948

Santa Claus and his reindeer haven't got a thing on the young men of the Berlin airlift. In fact, I think the young men are working a bit harder today than old Saint Nick himself. He knocked off work last night, but all day long the lead-gray skies of Berlin have been filled with the rumble of airplane engines. You can't see the big four motored planes through the overcast, but they're streaming in, heavily-laden, into Tempelhof right now, on the most ticklish kind of blind landings.

The boys have the airlift have been grabbing their Christmas dinner on the run. This afternoon I watched them gnawing on drumsticks and gulping hot coffee while their planes were unloaded. and now that darkness has fallen over Berlin, they're still keeping them flying. Their Christmas decorations are the red, green, and yellow flares that mark the flying strips of Berlin.

I was so used to reading about that Berlin airlift in the headlines that it wasn't until I came here I realized that it's not done by push-buttons. It's just like the war, it's all very human. They're pretty young, these men of the airlift, and most of them are separated from their families in America—and they're thinking about them today, but there are no holidays for the airlift. Two million people in Western Berlin must be kept warm and fed every day, and Christmas is no exception.

It's touching, for as soon as you climb aboard an airlift plane, the pilot does what has become inevitable for Americans far from home. He reaches for his wallet and proudly shows you a picture of his wife and family, and you do the same. Sometimes the heaters don't work in the planes, and it's not warm at six thousand feet over Russian-occupied Germany. But their morale is excellent and their discipline is perfect. One and all they love to fly. The only thing that bores them is sitting on the ground waiting for the planes to be loaded and unloaded.

Yet they're only human after all, and they're glad that America has not forgotten them on this day; that big brass have come to share Christmas with them in beleaguered Berlin.

There are more top American fighters in Berlin this evening than on any day since the war ended. Vice President-elect Alben Barkley, Secretary of War Kenneth Royall, Secretary of Air Stuart Symington, and Ambassador to Moscow Bedell Smith—they had Christmas dinner with General Clay a few hours ago. And perhaps best of all, there's a corps of Rockettes and a group of top American radio entertainers.

They'll do a show in Berlin's old movie house, the Titania-Palast, while the airlift rumbles on like a railroad in the sky.

This is Larry LeSueur wishing you a Merry Christmas from Berlin.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 27, 1948

The year-end holiday season is prompting some Berliners to take stock of this uneasy world, and this morning there is a typical comment in the British-licensed newspaper, The Telegraph, which pretty well reflects the worldwide confusion over the Berlin crisis.

The Telegraph says: "The outlook for 1949 is not very gay, but it is not hopeless. Never was the danger of war more imminent than it is now, but never was the outbreak of war less probable."

I pass along this comment to you because maybe you can find its meaning.

However, less confused is America's military governor here. General Lucius Clay last night was interviewed by my colleague, CBS UN reporter Larry LeSueur. What the general had to say is the top news in Germany today and worth summarizing.

General Clay believes that the worst is over for this winter's airlift; that there will be adequate food but that extremely cold weather will cause some suffering among blockaded Berliners. "However, I am convinced," Clay said, "that the people of Berlin have learned from experience under one totalitarian government to withstand almost any hardship rather than accept another totalitarian regime."

Clay revealed that the governments of America, France, and Britain are in substantial agreement on the duties of a Military Security Board to operate in Germany to prevent this nation from ever again becoming a military power. He opposed the creation of a German police force which might be converted into an army, and said that only time will tell whether our democratization program will succeed in killing the military spirit which has so dominated Germany in the past.

The European Recovery Program and the currency reform has had an amazing effect on German recovery, the military governor said, increasing production by fifty per cent. "But there still is a long road ahead to German self-sufficiency. German recovery still lags far behind general Western European recovery."

And about the future, General Clay had this to say to CBS:

"I think any expectation that a stable, peaceful world can result from a general peace settlement is oversimplification of the problem. While a general peace settlement has not been agreed in the broad sense of the word, we are at peace now; or, at least, we are not engaged in war." And he added, "We do not need to be plunged into war."

The American military governor said that the conditions of stability, both economic and political, which make for a long peace, are returning to Europe. "When the freedom-loving democratic countries of Western Europe are on their feet economically and able to protect their freedom, then we may expect a long peace."

About the future of Germany itself, Clay said that the future is bright for progress both politically and economically. Increasing ERP aid will stimulate production; the establishment of a Western German government will generate healthy political activity.

The statement is a significant summary of the success of American occupation policy. It also is another significant CBS News exclusive.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 29, 1948

When Germany was defeated three and a half years ago, the victorious Allied powers agreed upon one thing: that never again would this nation be allowed to become strong enough to build a war machine that twice in a generation brought war to the world.

At this time there was talk of pastoralizing Germany, making her an agricultural nation; destroying all industry that might be converted to war production.

The Ruhr agreement announced yesterday shows how far this thinking has changed, with a recognizing of the important part the highly developed German heavy industry must play in the reconstruction of Western Europe.

The setting up of an international Ruhr authority changes the policy of the victors from a negative restriction to a police of positive production for peace. There will be an international policing of the Ruhr to assure that it doesn't again trend toward war production, but generally speaking the approach is one that will attempt to tie in Ruhr production with the European Recovery Plan, which eventually will relieve the American taxpayer of part of the burden now being carried under the Marshall Plan.

German reaction to the new Ruhr authority this morning is bitterly critical. Every political party, all of which appeal to the nationalism of the Germans, made statements condemning the international control of the Ruhr. Political leaders complain that the six-power agreement is "serious injury of German sovereignty," although there is at present no German government existent to claim any kind of sovereignty.

The Communists for the first time are joining the so-called Western German parties in condemning the Ruhr authority. They charge that the six-power agreement means a surrender to monopoly capitalism and American imperialism.

Probably the most important immediate effect the new Ruhr agreement will have on Western Europe will be to further emphasize the political and economic division between East and West.

The agreement makes it clear, if only by inference, that the vital coal and steel production from the Ruhr will only go to those nations "cooperating" in European recovery. This will exclude the Iron Curtain countries and further alienate the Soviet Union.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 30, 1948

Christmas is over in Berlin. The holiday quiet that has marked the past week of relationships between the Eastern and Western parts of the city is drawing to an end, and the old East-West fireworks are popping again.

East Berlin police are attempting to tighten their control of goods traffic between the Soviet sector and the blockaded parts of the city, but they are having a tough time.

Sector guards are now armed and have been issued thirty rounds of ammunition. Elevated and subway guards now try to stop all passengers carrying bags and luggage. But the passengers are retaliating when they can. In one subway station yesterday, an inspector was dragged inside the train, beaten by the passengers and then kicked off at the next stop.

Stoppage of food into Western Berlin appears to be the main target of the new clampdown, although in one instance a woman was relieved of five briquettes of coal she was taking home in her handbag—proving that, as in America, one can find almost anything in a lady's pocketbook. Soviet soldiers have joined German police in some inspection points.

Wilhelm Pieck, General Secretary of the Berlin Communists and President of the so-called People's Council of East Berlin, gave a New Year's interview to the official Communist party newspaper in which he denied reports that the Communists would set up a separate East German government in 1949. He made the old charges that it was the Western Powers who split Germany and Berlin. He added that a new two-year plan for the Soviet zone would begin on January 1st.

Intelligence reports of a revival of the Polish underground—which fought so successfully against the Germans—have been received in Berlin today. These reports say that anticommunist Poles last Friday derailed the Berlin-Moscow express southeast of Warsaw. A number of people were killed—one report says eighteen—and others injured. A news blackout has stopped any direct news of the incident.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.