1943. The Occupation of Kharkiv

Nazi Germany's Colonization of Ukraine

A delicatessen Kharkiv, Ukraine during the Nazi occupation in 1941 (Photo by Johannes Hähle – source)

Bill Downs visited the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv following its initial liberation in February 1943. He later reported on the city's reoccupation during the Third Battle of Kharkov. Parentheses in the reports featured here indicate text that did not pass Soviet censors for military security or propaganda reasons.

(For more, see the complete 1943 Moscow reports.)

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

February 27, 1943

I have just had a close-up of how Adolf Hitler's New Order makes history—you know, the kind of history he raves about at the drop of a helmet. The Nazi brand of history he has sold to Italy and certain other countries in Europe. The kind of history Japan is trying to market in the Far East.

At 9:30 this morning I took a plane out of Russia's rich Ukraine. I spent Thursday and Friday wandering around the streets of Kharkov talking to people and seeing what I could see.

Right now, Kharkov is a very special place. It is more than just another city which the Red Army has recaptured. It's the first big city in Europe that has been retaken from the Axis in which Hitler's New Order had a chance to work. You remember the Germans held Kharkov for fifteen months. And I got to Kharkov with a party of other news reporters only eight days after the New Order was kicked out—before the smell of it had completely left the city.

(Yes, you can still smell Hitler's New Order tonight, if you were in Ukraine. It's the stench of cordite, and the dry smell of bombed buildings and the wet smell of charred wood. It's the sweet smell of blood and the bitter smell of people too weak from hunger to walk a couple of miles to the river to wash.)

(When we flew with a Russian fighter escort towards Kharkov the other day, you could follow the path of the New Order very easily. The miles were marked with the walls of ruined villages where fighting had occurred. Along the railroad leading eastward from the city were the hulks of ruined tanks and occasionally Junkers or a Heinkel bomber.)

(After we landed on the ruined airport—there wasn't a building left standing—we saw our first definite sign that the Germans had actually possessed this Ukrainian industrial center. It was a German sign which read, "Parking verboten." We found out that a lot of things were "verboten" during the German occupation of Kharkov.)

There is no doubt that the Germans thought they were in Kharkov for keeps. All the street signs were written in both German and Ukrainian—German first, of course.

German colonists—at least that's what Hitler calls them—had set up business, and there were restaurants and shops with German signs on them. Yes, the Nazis sent a lot of loyal German families to (examine the corpse of Kharkov) collect what they thought was going to be easy money and a pleasant life in the wake of Hitler's Wehrmacht. No one knows just how many colonists Hitler sent to Kharkov. They were a little difficult to count—like flies on a sugar stack. For months they played at being super-men. Ukrainians couldn't ride in the same street cars with them—they had to catch the one hitched on behind.

If Ukrainians had better homes or business than [the colonists] had been allotted, the colonists went around to authorities and arranged to take over. That's the way the New Order works. But these good Nazi families were too smart to get themselves caught by the Russians. They ran away with everything they could carry early in January when the Red Army started to march.

Two days before the German army fled the city, the Nazi command destroyed every major building in Kharkov. There literally is not one single store, office building, hotel, or government house in the main part of the city which has not been gutted by fire, blown to bits, or bombed.

But during the occupation, the Germans did something else—something much more damaging than making piles of rubble out of buildings.

It's something you can see in the face of every kid you run into on the streets. The women and old men who are left have the same look.

The people are pale from hunger. The boys and girls, particularly, have faces the color of wet dough. They have rings under their eyes like old people.

I stopped what I thought was a 10-year-old boy on the street to talk with him. He was thin and had black hair that hung down into his eyes.

He grinned when I introduced myself and said in a tough kind of way that he supposed he would tell me his name. He was Vladimir Voskresensky, a good Ukrainian name. He was 14. You see, kids just don't grow very fast without food.

I asked him what he did while the Germans were there. He shrugged and answered, "Oh, sometimes I begged for food. Some bread or a piece of chocolate if I was lucky. And sometimes I could earn some food by taking my sledge and dragging luggage to the station for German officers. I would get half a slice of bread for that."

I noticed that Vladimir had on an outside man's suit coat which struck him below the knees. He looked a little bit like Jackie Coogan used to in the silent pictures. I asked him where he got that coat—I should never have asked.

Vladimir started out bravely enough. "It belonged to my father," he said. "He was an engineer. They took him to the hotel over there and beat him for four days. He died. I never saw him again."

He was crying when he finished the story. He was a tough kid, like all the kids that survived the New Order in Kharkov.

But those kids won't forget. And neither will the rest of the world.

During the fifteen months of German occupation, a lot of things happened to Kharkov—all of them bad. For example, there are some facts repeated to me at random by a half-dozen people to whom I talked on the streets of the city.

A year ago last October when the Germans took the city they started hanging people. By the second day of the occupation, every balcony stretching for two miles on the main street through the center of the city had become a gallows. Scores of men and women were trussed up and left to hang.

Six weeks after the occupation, every Jew in the city was ordered to go to an empty machine tool shop nine miles out of town. Women cried as they told me about this. 10,000 Jews were herded into this camp. Ten days later a huge ditch was dug and a squad of German Tommy-gunners shot every man, woman, and child.

It is estimated that 18,000 people were executed in the first weeks of the occupation, but no one knows the exact number. The Germans didn't bother about death proclamations or keeping records. I have checked that figure not only with Soviet officials now in charge of Kharkov, but also with a school teacher, a college professor, and four other people who were in the city at the time.

This is simply another example of how the New Order works.

____________________________

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

February 28, 1943

Hitler's guns, which for fifteen months were held against the heart of Kharkov, were pushed further back westward from the city last night. This morning's communiqué announced that another series of inhabited points have been taken west of the wreckage and ruined buildings which today mark the site of one of the proudest cities in the Ukraine.

I left Kharkov yesterday morning after spending Thursday and Friday wandering around the city's streets talking to people and seeing what I could see.

Kharkov was about the size of Washington, D.C. before Hitler got to it. It had a peacetime population of 900,000 which swelled to over a million inhabitants as the war progressed.

Imagine every major building in Washington gutted with fire. Imagine all of the buildings across the Potomac blown to bits. Imagine every railroad station deliberately wrecked. Imagine street car and bus trolley wires lying over the street. Imagine Washington with just two water fountains and the sewage system wrecked with the streets thick with ice. Scatter a goodly number of bomb craters throughout the city. Then you will have a pretty good picture of Kharkov after fifteen months of Hitler's New Order.

But the New Order has done something else to Kharkov. Something more terrible than mere wrecking of buildings and homes and streets. Something more deeply significant than putting up street signs in German and deliberately looting the city. Something more than taking warm clothing from men and women who walked the streets.

Kharkov has a hungry population of only 350,000 today. This means that during the fifteen months of Hitler's New Order, something has happened to about 600,000 people. This does not include a quarter of a million people which the Russian government succeeded in evacuating from Kharkov before the Germans took the city a year ago last October.

In talking with Soviet officials, college professors, and people on the street, here's all I could find out about the 600,000 Kharkov citizens who have disappeared under Hitler's New Order.

During the first days of the occupation about 18,000 people were executed. Bodies hanging from balconies were a common sight. Among these 18,000 executed were about 10,000 Jews—men, women, and children—who were taken nine miles out of the city, shot and buried in a big ditch.

One hundred and ten thousand people were shipped to Germany for forced labor.

Meanwhile, it is estimated unofficially that at least 70,000 people died of starvation under the German rule. (And all the time during the fifteen months the executions went on. As conditions grew worse, more and more people escaped from the city to unoccupied Russia.)

All in all, it is estimated that between 90,000 and 100,000 Kharkov citizens will never be accounted for. It's something to think about as Doctor Goebbels prattles about saving European civilization from the "eastern hordes."

Soviet partisans hanging from the balcony of an administrative building on the Mius-Front near the Ukrainian village of Dyakivka in March 1943 (source)

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

March 9, 1943

(Ever since Hitler took over Czechoslovakia and marched into Poland, we have been hearing about the slavery and semi-slavery into which has been throwing the conquered European peoples. With the Red Army killing his soldiers in Russia—and with the United States and British air forces knocking out his factories in Germany and Western Europe—the Fuehrer has been forced more and more to rely on kidnapped labor to keep his war machine working.)

At Kharkov a couple of weeks ago, I got my first glimpse of just what Nazi "forced labor" means. Simon Legree, with his whip and bloodhounds, was a sissy compared to the Nazi with his rubber hose, his barbed wire, and his hangman's noose.

An estimated 110,000 Kharkov citizens are doing forced labor in Germany today. They range from boys and girls of fourteen years of age to men and women of forty. The only requirements for work in Germany is a strong back and a brace of biceps.

According to the people to whom I talked in Kharkov, the Germans there used two methods of getting workers to work in their factories. They simply picked them up off the street and packed them off, or they sent around a notice saying the workers should report to a recruiting headquarters—or else.

The Germans have an efficient, standard identification card with which they register their foreign workers. It's printed in eleven languages, so it comes in handy for a dozen countries from which they can kidnap labor.

This identification card serves as a passport. When the kidnapped worker gets to Germany, he finds that it allows him to move from his factory, or his labor gang, to his barracks—and no place else.

____________________________

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

March 16, 1943

We (the American and British foreign correspondents who live at the Metropol Hotel) here in Moscow are a pretty sad group of people today.

It's because of the bad news from Kharkov.

It was only two weeks and two days ago that we were in that Ukrainian city—and every one of us came away with a clearer picture of what Hitler's New Order means to the conquered people of Europe than any one of us ever had before.

(During the fifteen months of occupation by the German forces, Kharkov had all but died of Nazism. Over 18,000 people had been executed. 70,000 had died of starvation. Over 110,000 had been shipped off to Germany. And about 90,000 were simply listed as "missing.")

Today the Germans are back in Kharkov. (It is depressing to think just how many of the 350,000 Kharkov residents we found there two weeks ago will be left when the Red Army again takes the city. And it will be retaken—make no mistake about that.)

(Another thing which saddens the foreign press corps here is the uncertainty of) We are wondering what is going to happen to the people to whom we talked. The people who told us the horrible story of the German occupation.

For example, the little 14-year-old boy who (broke down and) cried as he told how his father was killed by the Germans. (The indigent Ukrainian housewife who wept when she told how her sister had been shipped away to Germany.) The kindly little college professor who was trying to reorganize Kharkov's educational and social services to care for the children orphaned by German executions. He was very pleased when we talked to him that he had found homes and food for 300 of these orphans.

(You see, as news reporters, we used the names of all these people so that you people in America reading our stories could have verified evidence of what the Nazis did to Kharkov.)

If I know anything about the efficiency of the Gestapo, (the names of) these people today head the list of German reprisals. I and the rest of my colleagues here in Moscow can only hope that those people evacuated the city with the Red Army. Or that they go into hiding until the city is captured again.

I know, as every correspondent does, that it is not often the problems of news reporting make significant news. (These things are part of our job).

But there is no better demonstration of just what Hitlerism stands for in this world than Kharkov.

Usually, discussions about "truth" have a nebulous quality that almost always end up in confused arguments about what is right and what is wrong.

I don't want to preach any sermons. There is nothing nebulous about "truth" in Kharkov today. The people who told the truth to us American and British reporters now stand under the thread of execution.

Truth in that Ukrainian city today is a matter of life and death. (And so it is in this whole war raging throughout the world.)

One writer in the Moscow newspapers said this morning that "it is not easy to give up Kharkov." Kharkov is a city of tears. Then he added, "but for every Russian tear, let there be mountains of dead Germans."

That's the way the foreign press corps in Moscow feels this morning.

1970. Aircraft Hijacking Foiled

Calls for a Federal Commission on Aircraft Hijacking

Front page of The Arizona Republic on June 5, 1970 (source)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

June 5, 1970

Next to treason and murder, the crime of piracy has for centuries been one of the most heinous in the catalogue of evils that one man can commit against his society. It was true in the olden days because nations depended on shipping to provide the essentials of life for their people. Even so, Spain, France, Holland, and England have used pirate ships as unofficial men-of-war—and many captured pirates ended their lives at the end of a yard-arm.

Air piracy, of course, is a twentieth century innovation. And the abortive hijacking of the TWA Jetliner yesterday demonstrates the difficulty of preventing and stopping this most dangerous crime. However the Airline Pilots Association, the aircraft industry, and the government are determined to crack down on hijackers. And Arthur Barkley, the Phoenix, Arizona cookie truck driver charged with taking over the TWA plane, is in a serious position. Aircraft piracy is a federal charge, and it carries a penalty, on conviction, ranging from twenty years in prison to the maximum sentence of death.

Like ocean-going ships of old, the commercial airliner has become the major long-distance passenger carrier for most nations of the world. The successful hijacking of a plane consists of an implied threat to the safety of every other airliner in the world. Had not airborne pirates been successful in hijacking more than fifty airliners from the US to Cuba, there probably would not have been the subsequent rash of hijackings in South America, nor attacks on Israeli and other planes in Europe and the Middle East.

All the same, there is a difference between today's serial hijacker and the men like Blackbeard and others who terrorized the Spanish Main of old.

The swashbuckling scoundrels who lived by piracy those days were mostly pirates in search for gold.

By contrast, the serial hijacker of today is lucky to get away with his life.

A federal commission is now studying ways to prevent the piracy of commercial airliners. Possibly the most effective weapon is the psychiatrist.

This is Bill Downs in Washington for the American Entertainment Network, a service of ABC News.

1970. The Political Implications of the 1970 Census

The Midterm Elections

The opening session of the 92nd Congress on January 21, 1970 (photo by Marion S. Trikosko – source)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

August 12, 1970

The Ides of August are rapidly approaching, which means the nation's political bookmakers should be establishing the odds on the Republican and Democratic candidates for this November's off-year elections. The more than 30 Senate, 435 congressional, and a phalanx of state gubernatorial seats up for grabs in November have all been charted—and the party hopefuls have been weighed in, saliva-tested, and now are making training runs across the grassroots in preparation for the real campaign races which get underway around Labor Day.

However, this muggy mid-August season have really been the dog days for political prognosticators. The reason? The United States Census returns, which now are just beginning to be released by the Census Bureau. The data from the 1970 headcount records the migration of the electorate over the past ten years.

The preliminary census returns already show that for the first time in US history, more Americans live in the suburbs than those within the city limits and on the farms put together.

For Washington's political pros, it means further diminution of the once-powerful farm vote, and it probably means further concentration of Blacks and other minorities in the urban ghettos. But here too the statisticians are not sure because these families, too, are escaping the central core tenements and heading for exurbia.

The census indicates that every major city north of the so-called "Sun Belt" that runs from the Gulf Coast and across the Southwest to California has lost its population—a fact of great political and career significance to men like Mayors Lindsay of New York, Stokes of Cleveland, and Daley of Chicago.

California now is unchallenged as the most populous state in the Union, and if the figures stand up it means the state may get as many as four additional congressmen, while New York state may lose two seats in the next reapportionment of the House of Representatives.

Republican National Committee leaders here say they are most pleased with the demographic portrait now being painted by the Census Bureau. Democratic leaders are sad—as befits the party out of the White House this time of year.

So the summer book on the November elections will be late this year, because privately the political pros confess they just don't know.

Former Census Director Richard Scammon, now a private research specialist, says the 1970 and '72 elections will be settled in the suburbs—that's where the action is. But, says Scammon, neither political party can stake out a claim on the commuter vote—it's moving too much.

This is Bill Downs for ABC in Washington.

1944. "The Battle of Nijmegen Bridge" by Bill Downs

The Battle of Nijmegen

"Cromwell tanks of 2nd Welsh Guards crossing the bridge at Nijmegen, 21 September 1944" (source)

This report by Bill Downs on September 24, 1944 was published in the BBC's The Listener magazine on September 28, 1944. As an eyewitness, Downs described the Nijmegen bridge assault as "a single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach."

From The Listener, September 28, 1944:

The Battle of Nijmegen Bridge

By BILL DOWNS

The story of the battle of Nijmegen bridge should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal River possible. You know about the Nijmegen bridge. It's been called the gateway into northern Germany. It stretches half-a-mile over the wide tidal river and its flood land. And without the bridge intact the Allied airborne and ground operation northward through Holland could only be fifty per cent successful.

The Nijmegen bridge was built so it could be blown, and blown quickly. Its huge arching span is constructed in one piece. Only two strong charges of explosives would drop the whole thing into the river. Special cavities for these dynamite charges were built into the brick by the engineers that designed it. The bridge was the biggest single objective of the airborne invasion and its capture intact is a credit to all the American and British fighting men.

American airborne patrols reached the area at the southern end of the bridge on Sunday night, September 17th, shortly after they landed, but at that time they were not in enough strength to do anything about it. On Monday the paratroops and glider forces were too busy beating off the German counter-attacks to co-ordinate an assault on the bridge. By this time the armour of the British Second Army was on its way northwards from the Escaut Canal. Then on Tuesday the British tanks arrived on the outskirts of Nijmegen and an attack was commenced, but still the Germans held on strongly in the fortification and houses on the south end of the bridge. American airborne infantry and British tanks were only 300 yards from the bridge in the streets of Nijmegen, but they couldn't get to it.

Tuesday night was the strangest. The American troops took machine guns to the top of the houses and sprayed the approaches and the entrance to the bridges with bullets. All night they shot at anything that moved. Perhaps it was this constant fire that kept the Germans from blowing the bridge then. But still the shuddering blast that would signal the end of the bridge did not come. And when morning arrived a new plan was devised. It was dangerous and daring and risky. The commanders who laid it out knew this; and the men who were to carry it out knew it too. Thinking a frontal assault on the bridge from the south was impossible, American infantry were to fight their way westwards down the west bank of the Waal River and cross in broad daylight to fight their way back up the river bank, and attack the bridge from the north.

On Wednesday morning the infantry made their way westward through the town and got to the industrial outskirts along the river bank near the mouth of a big canal. Some British tanks went with them to give them protection in the street fighting and to act as artillery when the crossings were to be made. Accompanying this task force were trucks carrying twenty-six assault boats brought along by the British armoured units in case of such an emergency. Most of the men who were there to make the crossing had never handled an assault boat before. There was a lot of argument as to who would handle the paddles and preference was given to the men who had at least rowed a boat. Everything was going well. The Germans were supposed to be completely surprised by the audacity of the move.

But late in the morning the impossible happened. Two men showed themselves on a river bank and were fired at by the enemy. No Americans were supposed to be in that part of the town. The 88 mm. shells began plastering the area. The gaff was blown. Reconnaissance spotted batches of German troops being transferred to the opposite bank. A few hours later, machine guns were dug into the marshes on the far side—the plan had been discovered. The task force was under shell-fire, and several hundred Germans with machine guns were sitting on the opposite bank waiting for the crossing. This was about noon.

There was a quick conference. It was decided that the original plan would proceed, but this time the men crossing the river would have the help of heavy bombers: Lancasters and Stirlings flying in daylight a few miles from the German border to drop their bombs on the opposite bank in tactical support of the men from the assault boats.

Working under enemy shell-fire, the assault boats were assembled. When they were put into the water, another difficulty arose. The tide was moving out with a downstream current of eight miles an hour. Some of the boats drifted 300 yards down river before they were retrieved and brought back. Meanwhile machine guns spluttered on the opposite bank and German artillery kept smashing the embarkation area regularly.

At last everything was ready. The bombers went in but didn't drop their bombs close enough to knock out the machine guns. Twenty-six assault boats were in the water. They would carry ten men each: 260 men would make the first assault. Waiting for them on the other bank were some 400 to 600 Germans. The shelling continued. Every man took a deep breath and climbed in. Someone made a wisecrack about the airborne navy and someone else said they preferred airborne submarines to this job. And off across the river they started. At the same time behind them, the British tanks fired their heavy guns, and our own heavy machine guns fired into the opposite bank giving the little fleet as much cover as possible.

And over on the other side of the river the enemy tracers shrieked at the boats. The fire at first was erratic, but as the boats approached the northern bank the tracers began to spread on to the boats. Men slumped in their seats—other men could be seen shifting a body to take over the paddling. One man rose up in his seat and fell overboard. There was no thought of turning back. The paddling continued clumsily and erratically, but it continued. One of the boats had so many holes in it that the men were baling out with their tin helmets—it was almost splintered when it reached the other side.

The fighting, though, had only just begun. The hundred or so men who had arrived on the opposite side fought their way forward with bayonet and grenade, going from one machine gun nest to the other until they had established a bridgehead only a few yards deep and several hundred feet wide. The thirteen boats had hardly left for the return trip for the reinforcements, when the men on the north bank saw specks in the water. The men on the opposite bank, seeing the casualties suffered in the landing under fire, were not waiting for the boats. Some of them had stripped off their equipment, and taking a bandolier of ammunition, were swimming the river with their rifles on their backs. And thus it went—the thirteen little boats going time after time across the river under fire; the men on the bridgehead digging in and firing as rapidly as possible, routing out the German machine gun nests by hand while British tanks fired for all they were worth. After an hour and a half of concentrated hell, the infantry were over. They held a bridgehead several hundred yards wide and one hundred yards deep. At that time, one officer counted 138 Germans dead in a space of sixty yards of that bloody beachhead.

There was a welcome pause as the men consolidated and rested in their foxholes. Some had thrown the German bodies out of the Nazi machine gun nests and were using these to stiffen their defences. The plan was to turn eastwards and assault the northern end of the bridge. But on the left flank of that minute bridgehead was another menace—for there on the high ground overlooking the bridge and firing at us with some 88 mm. guns, was an ancient fort. It is called Hatz van Holland and was supposed to have been used centuries ago by Charlemagne as a fortress. The Germans had been using the fort as an anti-aircraft gun position to defend Nijmegen, and now they turned the ack-ack guns downward to bear on the bridge and the airborne bridgehead across the Waal. While these guns were firing at the back, the troops could not fight their way to the northern end of the bridge. A detail was formed to attack the Hatz van Holland and put its guns out of action.

That, as warriors centuries ago found out, was extremely difficult because the Hatz van Holland was surrounded by a moat. This moat had a few feet of water in it—black dirty water, covered with a layer of bright green slime. Also, the attacking party would have to advance under point blank 88 mm. fire. But anyhow the party set out. They crawled towards the high ground and the 88s banged away at them. And then they came to a zone where there were no 88 shells. It was found out that the other 88 guns were so installed that the guns could not reach downward that far. The German gun-crews discovered this too late and rushed to put up a rifle and machine gun defence along the moat.

But the Americans by this time had faced so much that a few machine guns were nothing. They made a stand-up attack, shouting like Indians, and, with tommy-guns blazing, knocked out the historic Hatz van Holland. A few Americans with blood in their eyes left seventy-five Germans dead in that moat. The remaining troops fought their way up the river all right. They captured the northern end of the railroad bridge and worked their way to the junction of the railroad highway from the main bridge. The entire German position on the northern side of the river was cut off. There was bitter bayonet fighting and Americans died, but more Germans died. And finally, British tanks made their way across the bridge and it was ours.

British tanks and airborne American infantry had begun their frontal assault on the southern end of the bridge at the same time as the river crossing was started. They had to make their way down streets alive with Germans. And this is how it was done. The tanks went down the streets firing at targets of opportunity, which means any German or German tank or vehicles that appeared. And the Americans went through the houses on either side of the street. Yes, literally through the houses—for instead of going along the outside of the houses and risking cross-fire from the Germans within, the American troops blew holes through the sides of the houses with bazookas. That was how they made their way through the strong defence area built to protect the bridge—blowing a hole with a bazooka into a house, clearing it of Germans and going on.

Meanwhile, the tanks had discovered that sitting on one street corner was a German Tiger tank waiting for them to make their appearance. It was out of sight and protected by the houses, but one of the Sherman tanks mounting a big 17-pounder gun decided to have a shot anyway. It aimed its armour-piercing shell in the general direction of the tank. There was a great boom: the shell plunged through twelve houses and came out with a great crash, taking a large section of the last house with it. The Tiger, seeing this destruction, decided he did not like the neighbourhood so well and retreated.

At the southern end of the bridge were stationed four self-propelled German guns guarding the streets leading to the bridge area. There was nothing to do but rush them. So the tanks lined up four abreast around the corner of the wide main street leading to the bridge and, at a signal, all roared into the street firing their mortars, their heavy guns and even machine guns. The assault was so sudden and heavy that three of the self-propelled guns were knocked out before they could bring fire to bear. The fourth gun ran to safety. Between the two—the American airborne troops and the British tankmen—the south end of the bridge was seized. At first only tanks could get across the bridge because a half-dozen fanatical Germans remained high in the girders of the bridge sniping. These were soon cleaned up. Today the Nijmegen bridge is in our hands intact—a monument to the gallantry of the Americans who crossed the river and the British and airborne troops who stormed it from the south.

1970. Today's Youth and the Environmental Crisis

The Generation Gap

"New York City Earth Day crowd, April 22, 1970" (source)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

August 13, 1970

We of the barbershop, square generation might as well face up to it. All the tortured, masochistic, and guilt-ridden adult talk about bridging the generation gap is a lot of bunk and time-wasting twaddle.

It's my generation gap, too—and I want to keep it that way, just as did my father and his father before him.

So it ill-behooves the older generations who couldn't keep themselves out of a half-dozen wars of living memory to be shocked at the antics of a small minority of young peace protestors. And for the generations which invented bootleg booze, goldfish swallowing, and the Black Bottom—their professed shock at long hair, pot parties, and adenoidal guitar pickers smacks of hypocrisy.

Parents who deplore the bas couture, low-style hobo-jungle look that is now the "thing" among the young should come off it. They should welcome the fact that junior and his sister are shopping at the Goodwill Industries and Salvation Army store. It certainly doesn't hurt the family budget.

For our money, the only group of adults who have a legitimate gripe about the bedraggled mode of the flower children are the hair stylists and barbers union. But just wait, their day will come when the pendulum returns and everyone goes on a Yul Brynner kick. In case you've forgotten when you were a younger generation: as far as youth groups are concerned, they are about as non-conformist as West Point cadets.

As a parent of two college students and one high school type, their mother and I worry—just as my parents did when I decided to leave home and work in a soap factory. But that's about all we can do, because by now we've made them what they are, and so did you.

So concerned parents may take comfort from the words of battling Margaret Mead, a venerable little lady who has fought anthropological battles across the world.

Speaking in New York on last April's Earth Day, Miss Mead had this assessment of today's younger generation:

"Young people have a sense of this planet that older people did not have when they grew up." Margaret Mead goes on to say, "They have a sense of the unity of the human race that older people had only as a dream . . . All these things are linked together . . . their feeling about the whole planet . . . about war . . . about population balance and the environment."

And Miss Mead concludes: "If we put all these things together in a new ethic . . . that ethic ought to give us the possibility of inventing the kind of scientific advances which will cope successfully with the ecological crisis mankind has inflicted on the Earth."

Margaret Mead is 68 years old. It appears it is we of the middle-aged generation and those with intellectual arthritis that she objects to. So do I.

After World War I, there was the "Lost Generation," then the Depression Generation, and after World War II the Silent Generation which, in part, fathered this present tribe of kids.

Discounting the Charles Mansons and the lunatic fringe that turns up in every age, I'm betting the flower children are going to turn out all right.

This is Bill Downs in Washington with "The Shape of One Man's Opinion," a service of ABC News.

1943. Ambassador William H. Standley Discusses Aid to USSR

"Prodding Russia"

"Admiral William H. Standley presents his credentials as Ambassador to the USSR, to Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR" (source)

From Newsweek, March 15, 1943, pp. 33-34 (based on an earlier CBS report from Bill Downs):

Prodding Russia

Admiral William H. Standley, United States Ambassador to Russia, invited correspondents to the American Embassy in Moscow on Monday of this week. His talk: a blunt accusation that American aid to Russia was being concealed from the Russian people.

The white-haired admiral, reported Bill Downs of the Columbia Broadcasting System and Newsweek, was worked up over his subject, and his expressive eyes were "shooting sparks."

The ambassador declared: "I have been looking for evidence of some recognition of the aid that the Soviet Union is getting from America . . . The American people in their sympathy are digging into their own pockets, thinking that this help is going to the Russian people. Maybe it is. But the Russian people don't know it."

As for the motive of the Russian authorities, the 70-year-old admiral replied: "They seem to be trying to create the impression at home as well as abroad that they are fighting the war alone."

Discussing the extension of the Lend-Lease bill (debated in Congress this week), Standley said: "The American Congress is rather sensitive. It is generous and big-hearted as long as it feels that it is helping someone. But give it the idea it is not helping and it might be a different story."

Standley's statement caught Congressional leaders in Washington by surprise. The frank talk was expected to provide Lend-Lease opponents some material on the topic of gratitude but not to affect expected passage of the bill. Other observers believed that it was an attempt to break down Russia's aloofness to United Nation collaboration in the war and in the postwar peace.

1943. Boxing Match Hosted in Moscow

"Moskva Maulers"

Soviet boxer Nikolai Korolev (left) in 1954 (source)

 From Newsweek, September 6, 1943, pp. 90-92:

Moskva Maulers

In the June 7 issue of Newsweek, Al Newman described the AEF boxing championships in London. Now another report on boxing in the United Nations comes from Bill Downs, Newsweek's Moscow correspondent. Here is his story on the fine art of pugilism as practiced in the Land of the Soviets:

The biggest fight in the world is only a few hundred miles away, yet Moscow fight fans jammed dignified Hall of Pillars last Wednesday to witness a boxing card which featured the "Absolute Championship of Russia and Moscow."

Although the German-Soviet go is distinguished by dirty tactics, inter-Soviet fisticuffs are of a brand to make the Marquess of Queensberry feel completely at home. The boxing was the most polite I have ever seen. Infighting in the clinches is allowed here, but Russian boxers, unlike America's Tony Galento, behave in gentlemanly fashion—no elbows, no thumbs, no butting.

The crowd was more or less typical—for Moscow. The hall was crammed with soldiers and women. However, there was little to make a cigar-chewing American fight fan homesick. No smoking is allowed. It is considered uncultured to shout "Moider the Bum." Polite applause greets a good blow, and vocal encouragement is discouraged by disapproving stares. When blood flowed in one of the six four-round preliminaries, the bout was stopped. Boxing and blood don't mix in Moscow arenas.

The crowd tensed when the feature fight was announced. There was much applause as Master Sportsman Nikolai Koroloff, defending champion, appeared in baggy white trunks. A squat 190-pounder with shaved head, Koroloff is a popular public figure at 26. He joined the Partisans shortly after the outbreak of war and later became an officer in the Red Army. He looks something like a gentle, bleached Galento.

The challenger, Ivan Ganikin, is also a Master of Sports—a government-awarded title for specialists in the Russian sport movement. Tall and wiry, Ganikin spotted the champion 36 pounds.

For six unexciting rounds, Koroloff, who entered the ring with an injured left hand, shot his right fist out with piston-like regularity. Ganikin couldn't get out of the way often enough, and even with two good hands he couldn't outpoint the champ. No one was surprised when Koroloff got the nod.

I got the feeling, in this polite atmosphere, that perhaps it would have been bad manners to have taken the title away from a nice guy like Koroloff.

1945. Associated Press Breaks Allied News Embargo on German Surrender

Controversy and Criticism Over Associated Press Scoop

"The Associated Press journalist Edward Kennedy (Sam Goldstein / AP)" (source)

From Newsweek, May 14, 1945, pp. 80-82:

Kennedy of AP Scoops Whole World but Writers Call Him Double Crosser

As a veteran Associated Press man put it: "The Old Lady certainly came back." But for nerve-racking hours he couldn't be sure.

The horrendously wrong V-E Day report out of San Francisco on April 28 (Newsweek, May 7) still was a raw memory on Monday this week when the London Printer in the AP's tense New York office coughed out this flash: "Allies officially announced Germany surrendered unconditionally."

Glenn Babb, the AP's foreign news editor, hesitated until succeeding bulletins bore out the flash, then ordered: "Let it go."

The AP desk's reaction was duplicated in newsrooms throughout the country, but one minute after the flash at 9:35 a.m. (EWT), the AP sent a bulletin that mollified fears. It read:

BY EDWARD KENNEDY

REIMS, FRANCE, MAY 7—(AP)—GERMANY SURRENDERED UNCONDITIONALLY TO THE WESTERN ALLIES AND RUSSIA AT 2:41 A.M. FRENCH TIME TODAY.

Adds to Kennedy's bulletin unfolded the details swiftly, simply, and convincingly (see page 31). But news editors, still groggy from the ten-day-old AP boner, still almost numb after a month's record of war news, now were jittery. International News Service and United Press, twitting AP only ten days before, could help with no official confirmation. Nor would Washington, London, or Moscow. Supreme Allied headquarters in Paris angrily suspended AP's sending privileges.* These later were restored for all AP men except Kennedy. But no one denied the facts in Kennedy's story.

'Get It Out': With fingers crossed, news editors extraed the from coast to coast. Radio stations interrupted programs, but labeled the report unofficial. The AP continued to have its jitters, but stood pat—convinced its 39-year-old veteran correspondent had the biggest beat in history.

But on Tuesday, 54 irate correspondents at SHAEF charged Kennedy with violating a pledge not to break the news until SHAEF cleared it. His beat, their petition to General Eisenhower said, was the "most disgraceful, deliberate, and unethical double cross in the history of journalism." Official Washington shared this view.

Earlier, Roy Howard, head of Scripps-Howard newspapers and himself the victim in the UP's premature Armistice flash in 1918, had protested the AP's punishment in a telegram to President Truman. He was wiring, Howard said, "as a correspondent in the last war who was personally pilloried and whose organization was unjustly condemned for doing a legitimate reporting job."

From Paris, Relman Morin, Kennedy's AP colleague, said most of the correspondents at SHAEF had congratulated Kennedy on his beat—even though it was at their expense. Here's how it came about, as Morin told it:

Kennedy returned from Rheims with 1,500 words of his story cleared by a field censor. He wrote the rest in Paris and filed it with SHAEF. Then Paris began to buzz with the news. When the Germans broadcast it from Flensburg, Kennedy went to the censors and demanded they free his story. His argument: There no longer was any question of military security and SHAEF could hold him to no considerations of political censorship. Turned down on his demand, Kennedy bluntly warned the censors he would try to get the story out.

Then he telephoned it to the AP's London Bureau. "This is official, get it out," he barked. Censors in London cleared it as a routine relay.

Too Many Headlines: The Brooklyn-born Kennedy quit the study of architecture at Carnegie Tech to take up newspaper work twenty years ago. He went to Paris for the AP in 1935 and his newspaper odyssey since has taken him through the Spanish civil war, the conquests of Yugoslavia and Greece, the North African battles, Sicily, Italy, and back into France.

His beat this week climaxed ten days of the biggest news breaks since the war began. News editors could remember nothing like the week before V-E Day. It had been one of cumulative surrenders in which, for instance, the fall of Rangoon, the invasion of Dutch Borneo, President Truman's first Cabinet appointment and veto (upheld), and the anthracite-coal walkout could get but secondary headlines.

Radio's Part: In Europe, news was made as well as broadcast by radio during the momentous week preceding the V-E announcement. It was Radio Hamburg that carried the news of Hitler's death and Admiral Karl Doenitz's succession. Four days later, Bill Downs, CBS correspondent, broadcast from the same studios.

The radios of the Allied and neutral capitals in Europe played the week's news with composure and, unlike American networks, waited for official confirmation of victory before going all out.

In the United States elaborately planned V-E programs—in the making since D-Day—remained on the shelf as news came in fragments throughout week. Only extra news programs indicated the growing excitement over the German piecemeal collapse. Then on Monday the networks and most of the independent stations carried the AP flash. Morning schedules were hashed, but by mid-afternoon the networks had resumed commercials while newsrooms waited on tenterhooks. Don Goddard of NBC voiced radio's dilemma when he said on Monday morning: "We are staying on the air expecting some kind of an announcement from some headquarters somewhere."

When the official announcement finally came, all networks and stations hauled out their special programs—which now served only as a weary anticlimax to the rumors of the preceding ten days.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

* Another AP worry: The Chicago Sun's London bureau reported that virtually all London papers began a boycott of AP news as of Sunday. London and AP sources refused comment; the United Press carried nothing on the boycott.

1943. "Proletarian Opera Is Staged With Czars' Pomp and Show"

The Reopening of the Bolshoi Theatre

"Portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin hang on the front of the Bolshoi Theatre in Soviet times" (source)

From Newsweek, October 11, 1943, pp. 34-36 (originally from a report by Bill Downs in September 1943):

Moscow First Night

Proletarian Opera Is Staged With Czars' Pomp and Show

What was probably the most brilliant social event since the start of the war took place in Moscow last week—the reopening of the Bolshoi Theater, which had been damaged by German bombs. Bill Downs, Newsweek and CBS correspondent, attended and sent this account of what a first night looks like in a Communist country.

Although I expected to see something extra special at this opening, I was startled to observe what a dressing-up had been achieved. The theater has an exceptionally large stage. The parterre and loges have been completely recarpeted, and all the seats have been done in brand-new red plush. Designed inside in European style, six tiers of balconies run entirely around three sides. The front of these balconies displays shining gilt. The ceiling has been done in light blue and decorated with gigantic figures of the nine muses—all of them plump, Russian-looking women, who are a little bit incongruous and give a strip-tease effect to the roof.

The Russians like perfume—men use eau de cologne extensively in barbershops. The soft lights, red plush, glowing gilt, and perfume gave the setting a nineteenth-century atmosphere. It was nineteenth century until I looked at the new Bolshoi curtain printed in a red and gold design. The most prominent features are various dates of the development of the socialist state—1871, Paris Communes; 1905, First Revolution; 1917, October Revolution.

Next to the stage on each side are the former royal boxes, in which the family of the Czar used to sit before the revolution. These boxes are now reserved for the highest Soviet officials.

Throughout the performance of Glinka's "Ivan Sussanin" the audience looked constantly at one of the boxes, which was empty, and it was amusing, looking through opera glasses at the opening chorus number, to see 100 men and women singing the stirring opening number and constantly rolling their eyes to make sure that Stalin was not there. There had been rumors—as there always are at such events—that the supreme commander-in-chief might attend. However, he didn't show up.

"Ivan Sussanin" was originally called "A Life for the Czar," but the title was changed several years ago. The lead was sung by Mamilhailoff, whose tremendous bass voice sounds as if it comes out of the bottom of a barrel. Many critics consider that he is the best Russian basso since Chaliapin. He's hampered by the fact that he just can't act.

The other star performer was the current darling of Moscow ballet, Olga Lepeshinskaya. She got the biggest hand of the evening dancing a brief ballet number in the brilliant second act, where it is easy to see how Russia got its great tradition for this type of dancing.

During the first intermission reporters went in search of diplomats to find out who was attending. The diplomats did not prove difficult to find. They left a trail of their personal police which led to a private reception room where the theater had laid out a buffet supper. There is nothing quite so complete as Russian hospitality.

However, the high spot of the opening for the audience was in the men's smoking room. I was walking past there when I heard someone say: "Peevo." Several others took up the cry. I followed, and sure enough there were bottles and bottles of peevo—beer to you.

It was the first time I had seen it on public sale since I had been here. The Bolshoi opening was truly a success.

1943. Moscow Hosts Concert of American Music

"Rhapsody in Red"

"The statue of a ballerina, holding a hammer and sickle, could be seen atop the building at No. 17 in this 1943 photo" (source)

 From Newsweek, July 19, 1943, pp. 79-80:

Rhapsody in Red

On the Fourth of July Moscow helped celebrate our Independence Day with a gala concert of American music. Newsweek and CBS correspondent, Bill Downs, attended, and the following is his report of the historical event:

Moscow critics are trying to decide whether the first concert of all-American music in the history of the Soviet Union had greater musical or political significance. The political facet was distinguished through the attendance of Maxim Litvinoff, United States Ambassador William H. Standley, and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, the British envoy. Musically, the concert was distinguished for the first public playing by a Russian orchestra of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" Also, Shostakovich arranged "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" in a way that was surprisingly straight, simple, and tuneful for all his modernism, but exceedingly short.

Moscow's staid Conservatorium—which represents to the Russian capital what Queen's Hall meant to London and what Carnegie Hall means to New York—had one of its biggest audiences of the war. But it was not a long-haired crowd. There were a lot of youngsters—Russian versions of the hepcat, who looked about the same as American jitterbugs. Obviously, this was the first time many had attended the Conservatorium. Alexander Tsfasman, who leads the best-known band, has as faithful a following as any swing master in America. Incidentally, "swing" has not yet entered Russia's musical vocabulary. But this can be expected as a musical postwar development, for the Soviet citizen dotes on American dance tunes.

It was an expectant audience when Nathan Rachlin walked to the podium. Rachlin, a popular conductor, is considered new school. However, his style is exceedingly distracting. His conducting nears caricature, with great shakings of the head, gruntings and groanings audible in the first half-dozen rows of the audience, and heroic posturings which one American defined as "University of Southern California cheer-leading school of conducting."

The musical commentator of the evening announced the first piece as Roy Harris's "When Johnny Comes Marching Home—With Victory." That "With Victory" is a good indication of how the ordinary Russian is thinking these days. The State Symphony Orchestra swung bravely into the Harris composition, but it soon became evident that his dissonances and difficult rhythms made it more of a struggle than a pleasure. The audience was a little puzzled but applauded vigorously, and the commentator next announced three American folk songs, whereafter on walked the dark and buxom Natalia Schpiller.

She is one of Russia's best sopranos, and her high and flexible voice proceeded to bring down the house with excellent interpretations of "Weeping, Sad, and Lonely" and “Old Folks at Home." The Russian translations were exceedingly good. The mood of the Negro spirituals is easily understandable and adaptable to Russian artists and audiences, whose most-loved folk song is the "Volga Boatmen." The last "folk song" turned out to be the last war waltz, "Till We Meet Again," but no one cared particularly whether it was a folk song or not for the arrangement and Schpiller's singing left the audience shouting for more. 

The first half of the program was completed by the orchestra's playing Samuel Barber's "Overture to the School for Scandal." Now everyone was much more at home. Barber's phrasing is surprisingly like Shostakovich's—and anything approaching him is OK with the Russian audiences.

Jazzhounds in the audience sat up expectantly after intermission, for Tzfasman's band moved in among the regular symphony with clarinets and saxophones. They probably were the first saxophones ever played in the Conservatorium, The youngsters gave loud cheers and applause when Tzfasman himself appeared to play the piano part. The "Rhapsody" was all in all worthily performed with a not unpleasant slowing down in many parts, giving Rachlin's interpretation of Gershwin's moodiness and contrasting with the sophisticated polish usually applied in America.

Then came the Shostakovich arrangement of "When Johnny," etc., followed by an entirely too operatic and formal presentation of Kern's "Ol' Man River" by the opera baritone Panteleimon Nortsoff. The Soviet audience, generally familiar with Robeson's singing of the riparian epic, didn't like it much. But the first playing of Walter Piston's ballet suite "The Incredible Flutist" drew almost as much applause as the "Rhapsody," although there were murmurs from some youngsters who expected to hear all jazz.

All in all, American music stood the test of a critical Russian audience who turned out on America's Independence Day to hear the latest developments in musical culture from the United States.

1943. Foreign Press Preview Soviet Film "The People's Avengers"

"Partisans in Action"

Soviet partisans in the forest near Polotsk, Byelorussian SSR (source)

 From Newsweek, August 30, 1943, pp. 80-82:

Partisans in Action

The obscure paragraphs at the end of Russian communiqués—those dealing with the incredible Red guerrillas—have come to life on the Soviet screen. Here Bill Downs, Newsweek and CBS correspondent in Moscow, tells how the Partisan film was made. It probably will be shown soon in the United States.

Moscow—The foreign press has just seen a preview of "The People's Avengers," a new documentary which promises to make cinema history. It is surely the best war film that has been produced by the Russians.

This story of Soviet guerrillas was made by sixteen cameramen sent behind the German lines early this spring. They stayed from two to three months, shooting thousands of feet that covered every phase of Partisan life. Two of them were killed in accidents getting to and from Guerrilla land—and one liked the place so much that he sent his films back but decided to stay himself. So intent was the government on doing a good job that the director, [Vasiliy Belyayev], took a camera and went along—and the composer, Dmitri Astradantseff, likewise went behind the lines to get the spirit of the thing for his excellent accompanying music.

The film covers guerrilla life from Karelia to the Black Sea. It ranged from the Leningrad district through whole Partisan-controlled districts in Byelo-Russia; from actual scenes of bridges being blown up in the Ukraine to raids on German headquarters on the Kuban. For an hour and a half it practically makes guerrillas out of the audience. And for the first time the world is given a clear picture of what the word Partisan means—what kind of people the guerrillas are.

There are kids of 12 and 14, grandfathers over 60, and women of all ages. There are shocking views of villages ruined after visits by German punitive expeditions, followed by the guerrillas' revenge. There are such human touches as a woman darning a sock and using a grenade for a darning egg. Memorable episodes show the surprisingly quiet and uneventful way in which a sniper's bullet kills a German railroad sentry, and the execution of a traitor by a calm three-man firing squad. 

But the film's greatest moment is a full-scale attack on a town by a large detachment of Byelo-Russian Partisans, using captured German artillery and weapons flown in by plane.

The cameramen who came back were full of stories of their adventures. Since most guerrilla operations are conducted at night, the photographers had to beg for daylight operations which they could film. One, somewhere in the central sector, got more than he bargained for. A guerrilla leader placed him behind a bush overlooking a village and told him to wait. Then the guerrillas attacked the other side of the village and drove the Germans straight toward him. Several machine-gunners at his side waited until the Germans were almost atop the camera before they fired and killed them. But that was all the luck the cameraman had that day. He had forgotten to open his shutter and the film was a blank.

The film gives only the nicknames of the Partisan leaders—their real names will be revealed after the war. I asked the director if it wasn't dangerous to show their faces, in case the film fell into enemy hands. He replied: "We got permission of all the Partisans before the pictures were taken. Their attitude was: 'Send the Germans a marked copy—then let them come and get us'."