1949. Dueling Governments Take Shape in Germany

Intelligence Reports of Increased Volkspolizei Activity

Soviet Ambassador Georgy Pushkin and East German President Wilhelm Pieck examine the people's police in East Berlin, November 4, 1949 (source)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

August 26, 1949

Intelligence reports from the Soviet zone of Germany sound ominous today and are reviving speculation among authorities here that Berlin will again become a crisis city in the fall.

For the past week my sources have spoken of increased activity in the German people's police, the puppet armed forces of the Soviet zone.

Today, further reports confirm a new recruiting drive for the Communist police. Also there is news that new police units are being moved to barracks which surround Berlin and are so located at the terminating points of the elevated railroad that rapid rail movement of these forces into all sectors of the city would be the work of but a few hours.

Whether these moves are in preparation for a decisive action later, no Western official would speculate. But the intelligence persistently speaks of the establishment of new training schools for young Germans where instruction is given in the use of antiaircraft guns, artillery, rockets, and flamethrowers. One German unit is reported to be training in preparation for action in the Balkans, presumably against Tito.

While most of Germany's attention has been concentrating on the formation of the new Federal Republic in Bonn next month, the Communist leadership of East Germany has been making political preparations of its own.

I understand that the political parties of the Eastern zone have been instructed by the Soviet military administration to prepare for elections early in October. The elections would select delegates to a Soviet-sponsored state to be called the "Free German Republic."

The Russian memorandum ordered that the East zone splinter parties be allowed to submit their lists of candidates along with the Communists. However, the German party members, anxious to keep things under control, are proposing that in election rallies all parties must speak from the same platform and be allowed an equal amount of time to speak on the same subjects.

Thus when the winter comes, the East-West struggle in Germany will have two German governments in the front line—the Western-sponsored Federal Republic and the Russian-backed Free Republic.

The juxtaposition of the two Germanys should provide an international example of what the East and the West mean when they use the word "democracy."

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

1967. Congress Examines the War on Poverty

Senate Holds Hearings on the War on Poverty

"Senators George Murphy, Jacob Javits, Joseph Clark, and Robert F. Kennedy of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty, listening to testimony during a hearing in Jackson, Mississippi, on April 10, 1967" (Photo by Jim Peppler - source)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

March 14, 1967

One of the first things Lyndon Johnson did after cooking Barry Goldwater's goose back in 1964 was to set up a whole banquet of sociological and economic legislation which he pushed through the 89th Congress.

The new president planned his political menu from earlier recipes developed by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and John Kennedy's New Frontier.

Taking a hard look at the hard core of poverty buried within the muscle and fat of America's overall affluence, Mr. Johnson decided that it was time for all citizens—including the most underprivileged—to be eating higher on the hog. Otherwise his dream of building a Great Society in this last half of the twentieth century could turn into a nightmare.

So the president put a top priority on fighting what he called the "War on Poverty." The legislative weapons of this war were ambitious projects with names like VISTA and Head Start and the Job Corps and community development job training and the Appalachia program. The ammunition in this war would be, of course, money—tax dollars to attack these national problems rooted in ignorance and prejudice and lack of opportunity.

So much antipoverty legislation was pushed through the Johnson Congress during the first session of the 89th that both Democrats and Republicans warned that the nation could not digest all the idealistic projects and programs enacted into law.

Local and state officials would conduct power struggles over who would get and control this flood of federal money, and it was inevitable that some of the appropriations would be misused and political empires built at the expense of taxpayers.

Undoubtedly some of these predictions came true during the past year or so that the War on Poverty has been getting underway. At any rate, a special Senate subcommittee headed by Democratic Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania has started an investigation to see how the antipoverty battle is faring.

The Clark committee called its first witnesses yesterday, including people from poverty-stricken neighborhoods or regions in Connecticut, Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.

There was plenty to be found wrong with welfare and educational projects and programs, these witnesses testified. Local politics had gotten mixed up with an Appalachia rehabilitation program. Racial prejudice had damaged a worker training project in North Carolina. Complex rules and regulations were hampering educational efforts in Connecticut. Bad administration was hurting antipoverty efforts in Minnesota. And just plain lack of money was threatening the War on Poverty in Pennsylvania.

But these witnesses, none of them rich and most of them poor, agreed on one thing. Now that the federal government has embarked on a national program to show its underprivileged citizens the road to economic and social justice to build useful lives in the American society, all these witnesses agreed to a man that there can be no turning back.

And what surprised both the Democratic and Republican members of the Senate subcommittee was the pride and determination of these witnesses to win this War on Poverty. "What did they want? What did they need?" asked the senators. "Guaranteed annual wage—family allotments, like some European nations have? Did they want that?"

The witnesses were shocked at the suggestion that, just because they and their people were poor, they wanted a handout.

"Giving money to people for doing nothing is ridiculous," said Mrs. Eudora Moore of New Haven.

Carl Johnson, a disabled coal miner from Harlan County, Kentucky, put it another way. "People," he said, "do not want to get paid for sorriness."

This is Bill Downs for ABC in Washington.

1942. Resistance Movements Across Europe Fight Nazi Occupation

The Enduring Spirit of Europe

"Members of the Maquis in La Tresorerie (a hamlet part of Wimille, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, France), 14 September 1944." (source)

Bill Downs

CBS London

November 1, 1942

The ancient cathedral town of Canterbury counted its casualties this morning after the biggest daylight raid on England since the defeat of the German air force in the Battle of Britain.

Although the German raiders caused extensive damage in this quiet British center of culture, the casualties were exceptionally light—much lighter than would be expected in a daylight attack at dusk yesterday evening when the city's housewives were doing their weekend shopping.

Yesterday's attack on Canterbury was the first time the Nazis had attempted a reply of any force to the daylight raids on the Continent that the American and British air forces have been making. For the number of planes Göring sent over undefended Germany, the German losses were high. Nine German bombers were shot down when the RAF chased the raiders back over the channel yesterday evening.

And then last night the German bombers returned to the same area and did scattered bombing which had little effect. In these raids last night, four more Nazi planes were destroyed. This makes a total of thirteen enemy aircraft shot down in the past twenty-four hours. Compared to the RAF losses in the daring Lancaster raids on Northern Italy and French war factories, it is quite possible for the German air force to raid itself to death if the losses continue.

However, today's most encouraging news came from Germany's "internal front." The subjugated peoples of Occupied Europe again are struggling against the Nazi bonds of slavery. A series of revolts in both Vichy France and the occupied zone threatens the German occupation troops with more trouble than at any time since the abortive Franco-German armistice after the Fall of France.

From Belgium and Holland there is news of a new wave of sabotage which appears to be aimed primarily at the German lines of communication and transport in these two countries.

From Poland, the most enslaved nation in Europe, there also is word of continued resistance despite the bloody efforts of the Germans to kill the Polish spirit. Fifty-five hostages have been taken under threat of death if sabotage of railway lines continue in the Warsaw area.

But it was the French who are carrying the most widespread campaign against their German conquerors. The Independent Belgian news agency said that locomotive repair depots on the French-Belgium border had reduced its output by fifty percent through sabotage.

In the French towns of Cluses on Scionzier, wives and sisters and mothers and sweethearts of workers assigned to work in Germany revolted. These men were supposed to be part of the 150,000 French war workers Hitler has been demanding Laval send into the Nazi war machine. However, the women of Cluses and Scionzier massed in front of the hotels the Germans had taken over and would not let the Nazi officials approach labor recruiting depots.

It also was reported that three hundred French trade union officials and workers have been arrested in Marseilles, Lyon, and other French cities for opposing the German labor conscription order.

1950. Germany Reacts to British Recognition of Communist China

A Split in Policy

"Chinese leader Mao Zedong gives a speech during the 7th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in June 1950, the year when Britain officially recognised the People's Republic of China as the government of the nation" (source)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

January 8, 1950

The British recognition of Communist China—and the reluctance of the United States to follow suit—is having its reaction in both Eastern and Western Germany today.

The Communist satellite government of East Germany already has given tacit recognition through its Cominform connections, and during the recent Moscow ceremonies celebrating the birth of Joseph Stalin, the German Communist delegation made contacts with a Chinese Communist trade mission, and an economic agreement between the two governments is expected soon.

However, in Berlin today it is the Communist press that is attempting to make the most hay out of the situation in Asia.

The official Soviet newspaper, Tägliche Rundschau, hails the division of Far Eastern policy between Britain and America as the first important break between the two nations.

"Britain's recognition of the Chinese people's victories is one of history's greatest imperialistic failures," the newspaper says. "It is the first break in the joint imperialistic front of the US and Britain."

The general line is that Britain is to be congratulated for having more hindsight than the United States; that America continues to waver in her policy of imperialism in Asia.

The West German reaction is less positive. The recognition of Communist China by Britain is a case of political realism—that is the theme of the British-licensed press here. Britain and her Commonwealth have greater interests in what transpires in Asia than the United States, thus she must act for practical results. America, for the time being at least, can afford to proceed according to her anti-Communist principles.

The West German editorial opinion, however, warns that this diversion of policy between the two Western Powers should not be a wedge to separate America and Britain in other fields.

There is little likelihood that the Bonn government will be allowed any foreign policy moves in connection with the situation in China, since both Britain and America collaborate in forming such policy for the West German state.

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