The Nationalist radio at Burgos, General Francisco Franco’s capital, announced a revolt had taken place at Cartagena and that the fleet had left the port. Reports from the British fortress at Gibraltar, however, said the fleet was understood to have remained at Cartagena after the unsuccessful uprising. A Madrid announcement declared the Cartagena revolt had been put down “promptly and completely”” early this morning, and that the fleet remained loyal. Dispatches from Gibraltar said the rebels had seized the Cartagena radio station, but were arrested and many were shot.
Nationalists at Burgos reported last Thursday that three Republican naval officers had been sentenced to death at Cartagena to check the spread of revolutionary activity behind the Madrid government’s lines. These reports said disaffection had been created by the government’s plan to establish floating government offices aboard the naval craft.
A Spanish Nationalist fleet was reported en route tonight to Cartagena, where fighting was proceeding between rival factions following an unsuccessful Nationalist attempt to capture the city today. The Republican fleet refused to surrender and fired on several parts of the city. In the last days of the Spanish Civil War, Cartagena was one of the last Republican strongholds, and harbored most of the remaining Republican Navy. When the anti-communist Cartagena Uprising broke out, the Nationalists sent reinforcements to try to capture Cartagena and the Republican fleet.
With less than 48 hours preparation, the Nationalists sent from Castellón and Málaga a convoy of 16 ships, carrying more than 20,000 troops. The convoy comprised the Júpiter-class minelayers Júpiter, Marte and Vulcano, the auxiliary cruisers Lázaro, Jaime I, Domine and J.J. Sister and the transports Castillo de Olite, San Sebastián, Castillo Peñafiel, Gibraltar, Monforte, Mombeltrán, Huertas, Montealegre and Simancas.
The body of Bishop Anselmo Polanco of Teruel, allegedly slain by machine-gun fire February 7 near Figueras while being taken by Spanish Republican forces toward the French frontier, was returned today for burial in the ruins of Teruel Cathedral. The bodies of Lieutenant Colonel Rey d’Harcourt, commander of the Teruel Nationalist garrison, and forty other Nationalist soldiers captured after the surrender of Teruel in December, 1937, also were recovered. Identification was difficult, however, as the bodies had been partly cremated.
Franco intelligence agents today seized ten persons, including two women, on charges of complicity in the slaying of Nationalist sympathizers, before Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s forces captured Barcelona January 26.
Germany introduces a compulsory labor law for Jews, but does not allow them to become part of the German Labor Service (Arbeitdienst). Having eliminated all Jews from trade, industry and the professions, the government has now issued a decree drafting all German and Stateless Jews for work on both public and private enterprises, but in a ghetto-like separation from “Aryan” Workers. This decree, issued by Dr. Friedrich Syrup, president of the Institute for Labor Placement and Unemployment Insurance, under Field Marshal Hermann Göring’s express authority, is apparently designed to meet pledges made to George Rublee, former director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, that Jews would obtain a chance to earn a living again, and it comes sooner than was expected by the committee. Perhaps the decree is also somewhat different from what the committee expected, for, as addressed to local labor control leaders, it reads:
“The State has no interest in leaving the working power of employable workless Jews un-utilized and perhaps even having to support them from public funds without return service. An effort must be made to employ all workless and employable Jews as soon as possible and combine therewith the release of German workers for urgent and important State-political projects. The employment of Jews occurs in enterprise departments, in building construction, soil amelioration, etc., separate from followers (“Aryan” workers). I therefore request you immediately to influence public and private enterprises in your district to provide such work. It is assured that contractors and their enterprises will not suffer disadvantages by the employment of Jews. Jews in the sense of this decree are Jews of German State membership and Stateless Jews suitable for work.”
An agreement giving Germany exclusive rights to prospect for oil and exploit oil wells in Slovakia is reported to have been signed by the Slovak Ministers for Transport and Commerce during their recent visit to Berlin.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister, scornfully assailed Nazidom’s “carping critics” at home today and advised against outside attempts “to block healthy business with Germany,” as he opened the 1939 Leipzig Fair. “Germany must live and Germany will live,” the fiery Minister declared. To the British public he addressed the special advice to support Germany’s efforts to decrease the disproportion of goods owned by Britain and this nation because they would decrease the causes of tension in Europe.
With conversations between German and British industrial groups scheduled for this month, the propaganda minister advised the British public “not to smile scornfully at the sight of the obvious disproportion in the ownership of the goods of the world which yawns between Germany and England.” It would be a good thing for the British public, he said, to support Germany’s efforts because these “seem particularly suited to decrease the causes of tension in Europe — which otherwise are only too apt to increase.” He declared it was impossible “to talk an obvious condition of tension out of court by dividing nations into haves and have-nots.”
Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” nets millions in sales.
Speaking at the second “Reich meeting against the misuse of alcohol and tobacco,” Dr. Robert Ley, Labor Front leader, said that the “abstention from alcohol and tobacco by the whole German people is the wish and will of our Führer.” He himself had ceased drinking five years ago, he said, because Chancellor Hitler could not understand how he could carry out his great responsibilities if he drank. “I propose to lead the German worker out of the drinking houses. into the temples of German art,” Dr. Ley exclaimed. “Cases of drunkenness within the party will be severely punished, because it is so vile it can never be forgiven.”
Belgium plans an election, as Cabinet formation is at an impasse. The Belgian Cabinet was convened tonight by Hubert Pierlot, former Prime Minister, after the failure of Eugene Soudan to form a coalition government and it is understood it decided to dissolve Parliament and call a general election. The decree dissolving Parliament probably will be issued tomorrow. There is general regret that it will be necessary to hold an election on the linguistic issue, but no other solution of the Maertens affair seems possible. The National Congress of the Liberal party today approved, with only three opposing votes, the refusal of the Liberal leaders to join the Cabinet while Dr. Adrian Maertens remains a member of the Academy of Medicine.
Taxation changes as a part of the Administration’s business-appeasement program and the question of government reorganization have. moved into the front rank in Congress, and this week will share with the issue of national defense the spotlight which for several weeks has been turned on the nation’s foreign policy and on plans to provide adequate defense for the country’s possessions.
The House will begin debate tomorrow morning on the Reorganization Bill, reported last week by its Special Committee on Reorganization. The Senate will continue discussion of the $499,800,000 Army Appropriation Bill, with its passage expected by mid-week. The question of tax revisions to encourage expansion of private business, as publicly advocated by Secretaries Morgenthau and Hopkins, has not yet reached the point of formal legislative discussion. The speed with which it reaches that stage may depend upon the course followed by President Roosevelt, back from his Caribbean cruise and now ready to take a personal hand if he so desires in the guiding of Administration projects through legislative channels.
Senators debate a war referendum. War “must be cured” rather than “run away from” through a resort to war referenda, in the opinion of Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah, who, with Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, broadcast here tonight on the American Forum of the Air over the Mutual Broadcasting System on the proposed amendment to the Constitution providing for a referendum on foreign wars.
According to Senator Capper, however, the adoption of the amendment would implement and strengthen the Monroe Doctrine, would limit the powers of the President and the State Department “to meddle and muddle” in European affairs, and would minimize the possibility of the State Department “being used by European countries as a threat against other countries of the Old World.” In his address Senator Thomas asserted that the proposed amendment for a referendum on war “does not face the problems as they are.”
“It is, instead,” he asserted, “a reaction to the slimmest of assumptions, namely that war, when undertaken by the United States, has been undertaken at the behest of Congress and the President, while the people have been against it.” That assumption, he stated, was “historically simply untrue,” and thus, he added, “there is no reason for assuming that it will be true in the future.”
Census takers start the task for 1940. The enumeration of 132 million Americans is the most comprehensive ever.
Economy large enough to count in the federal budget “can come only from elimination and curtailment of certain types of activities, a step which involves large issues of public policy,” according to a study by the Brookings Institution made public today. The possibilities of saving through mere structural reorganization of federal administration agencies are “relatively minor.” It would be better to eliminate “conflicting policies” in the social and economic program, the report says.
Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, in his weekly radio address, predicted today that “the Hitler government will reconcile itself with the views of the Vatican.” If not, he said, Germany will “accept the inevitable destiny of casting its lot with the outcast government of Moscow.” Eulogizing the new Pope, Father Coughlin said that “the world will wait anxiously for the contributions which this Pontiff will make in behalf of peace.”
“One thing appears to be morally certain,” he continued. “It is this: Portugal, Spain and Italy are predominantly Christian countries. whose citizens entertain extraordinary love for the person of Pius XII. I believe the same appraisal can be made of the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Poles, the Yugoslavians and the Czecho-Slovakians. I am also of the opinion that German Catholics and Protestants hold their former Nuncio in the highest esteem.
“Weigh these facts, if they are such. It appears to me that, confronted with them, the National Socialist Government of Germany, finds itself in a most untenable position. It cannot retain its present affiliations with Italy and the other nations I have just mentioned and be contentious toward Italy’s noblest son; and certainly the Italian Government, in any given crisis, will prefer to remain on friendly terms with the Papacy.”
College researchers unearth a letter written by Thomas Jefferson. The letter emphasizes Jefferson’s religious liberalism.
Studebaker debuts a car for lower-income families.
Dodger pitcher Van Lingle Mungo disappears after talks with baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Gandhi weakens as his fast continues in Rajkot, India.
Gandhi’s fast causes political problems for Britain. London is asked to intervene to help resolve the India conflict.
Japan occupies Lungkow and two other cities in Shantung province. The Japanese reported today the occupation of Lungkow, Shantung Province seaport, and two near-by inland cities in a series of attacks against Chinese guerrillas. The fall of Lunkow and the cities of Hwanghsien and Chaoyuan were said to have cleared Chinese irregulars from that part of Shangtung in which the hit-and-run fighters have taken a heavy toll of Japanese.
To the south, in neighboring Kiangsu Province, the Japanese said their forces followed up the capture of Haichow, coastal terminus of the east-west Lunghai Railway, by surrounding 60,000 Chinese troops southwest of the fallen city. The Japanese said naval aircraft were aiding land forces in “exterminating” the Chinese. Elsewhere in Kiangsu disorganized Chinese troops were said to be falling back rapidly before the Japanese westward drive, which began following the fall of Haichow.
Farther down the coast the Japanese struck south of the Yangtze River in the vicinity of Foochow. Planes bombed Foochow, formerly the capital of Fukien Province, and Kwantow, at the mouth of the Min River. Dispatches from Amoy said communications were interrupted after a Japanese cruiser at the mouth of the Min River had shelled the approaches to Foochow.
On the central front, where the Japanese are fighting westward through Hupeh Province along the Han River, the invaders announced the occupation of three towns on the east bank of the stream north of Kiukow. Crossings of the Han River were said to have placed the Japanese in positions to strike toward more important towns in Northwest Hupeh.
Heavy rainfall hampered the central front operations, the Japanese reporting their troops were battling in knee-deep mud, while horses attempting to pull artillery pieces were bogged down to their flanks. Hupeh reports said numerous villages along the Han River were fired by Japanese artillery, causing the fear-stricken civilian population to flee. At the river town of Anlu, north of Kiukow and 115 miles northwest of Hankow, the Japanese said they found 2,000 Chinese bodies.
Born:
Samantha Eggar [Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar], English actress (“Collector”, “Dr. Doolittle”), in London, England, United Kingdom.
Charles Fuller, American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (“A Soldier’s Play”; “Zooman and the Sign”; “The Brownsville Raid”), and screenwriter (“A Soldier’s Story”; “A Gathering of Old Men”), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 2022).
Norman Seeff, South African-American photographer, filmmaker, and album cover artist (Joni Mitchell; Captain & Tenille; Fleetwood Mac), in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Peter Woodcock, Canadian child rapist and serial killer, in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (d. 2010). He gained notoriety for the murders of three young children in Toronto in the late 1950s, as well as for a murder in 1991 on his first day of unsupervised release from the psychiatric institution in which he had been incarcerated for his earlier crimes.
Wayne Frazier, AFL center and linebacker (San Diego Chargers, Houston Oilers, Kansas City Chiefs, Buffalo Bills), in Evergreen, Alabama (d. 2012).
Naval Construction:
The Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type IX U-boat is U-122 laid down by AG Weser, Bremen (werk 954).
The Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) Brin-class submarine Archimede is launched by Tosi, Taranto, Italy.
History Diaries 