There are now 14 days to war in Europe.
The Reich Interior Ministry ordered all physicians, nurses and midwives to report children under the age of three who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability. This was the first step in the Nazi Germany’s child euthanasia programme (Aktion T4).
The international crisis over Danzig produced no fresh development on the German side today although official and press comment left no doubt that the deadlock, as viewed here, is drifting to a climax that may be as sudden as it is destined to be tragic.
Nazi District Leader Albert Forster, reviewing the first parade of the newly militarized home defense force, declared tonight that “Poland has become the only possible attacker” of Danzig. For this reason, he declared, Danzig’s new armaments had become necessary.
Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker repeats his warning about the seriousness of matters to the British and French Ambassadors. (See August 15)
After learning a German attack on Poland is threatened to take place within two weeks, Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, implores Chamberlain to write personally to Hitler.
Poles charge Reich atrocities, saying Germany is expelling border families.
Rome has lived through a day of intense but vain diplomatic efforts, and it is clear that Europe has now entered a crisis period as acute as last September’s.
Doenitz dispatches Germany’s 35 operational U-boats. 18 are sent to the eastern Atlantic and the remaining 17 to the Baltic for operations against Poland and possibly Russia, if necessary.
Orders to sail are issued to the German Navy. The pocket battleship Graf Spee is ordered to waters off Brazil, and her sister ship, Deutschland, is directed to the North Atlantic, each accompanied by supply ships. 21 submarine U-boats also receive sailing orders.
The Bratislava radio station announced tonight that “owing to the existing situation” Germany had taken military possession of Slovakia. The announcement, for reasons unexplained, was made in English — a language that most of Slovakia’s 2,600,000 inhabitants do not understand. It was learned from reliable sources that a military agreement, which was ratified today between Slovakia and Germany, places the little Slovak army of 30,000 and reservists numbering 300,000 under German command. Alarming rumors, which had circulated through the capital all day, seemed verified tonight. These were:
- A German military governor will assume control in Bratislava, the capital.
- Expanded operations by German troops in Slovak territory, near the Polish border.
- General Ferdinand Čatloš, Slovakia’s Minister of War, has threatened to resign as a protest against domination of Slovak armed forces.
- The Slovak National Council has virtually surrendered its authority over internal affairs to German leaders, who only last March guaranteed Slovakia’s independence for twenty-five years.
Slovakia’s frontier extends for 200 miles along the southern border of Poland, giving German troops a chance at a wide-swinging flank attack on Polish industrial centers in South Central Poland should war come. The area of Slovakia is about 14,000 square miles since it became an independent republic on the eve of Czecho-Slovakia’s breakup.
The propaganda department said the pact was secretly negotiated several months ago and that it clearly defined the German military zone by which Germany could “defend” Slovakia. Between Cadca and Zilina, about fifteen miles, civilian motor traffic was repeatedly interrupted by the movement of soldiers. Cadca is on the Polish border in the Jablunka Pass south of Teschen. Slovaks estimated 30,000 to 50,000 German troops were concentrated in a relatively small area about Zilina and declared additional forces had been sent eastward along the frontier.
Slovakia, a part of the former Czecho-Slovak Republic, voted its independence last March 14, the day before Chancellor Hitler declared a protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia. Herr Hitler, by a treaty of March 18, undertook to protect Slovakia, guaranteeing the boundaries for a period of twenty-five years. The treaty permitted the German armed forces at any time to construct and man military works in Western Slovakia. A part of Slovakia’s original territory was sheared off on the eastern frontier April 4 when Hungary and Slovakia signed an accord that followed occupation of many villages on the frontier by Hungarian troops who met resistance.
London sees a German coup and calls Slovakia the Reich’s third protectorate.
Germany and Slovenia sign an arms pact. Nazis are to command an army of 30,000 with reserves of 300,000. Berlin is expected to send a military ruler.
Hungarian Premier Pál Teleki angers the Reich. Said to be anti-German, he may be forced to quit. Premier Count Pál Teleki’s position as head of the Hungarian Government has become endangered, according to reports received in Paris today, by acts that have earned him the reputation of being anti-German. One of these acts was his attitude concerning Professor Ivan Lajos’s anti-Nazi book, since the Premier permitted its publication, and, secondly, in a recent speech he openly admitted that he had waited for six weeks without obtaining a reply from the German Minister as to whether Germany regarded the book as offensive.
Rightly or wrongly, he has been blamed for pursuing a double policy in recent months. As a matter of fact the ties between the Rome-Berlin Axis and Hungary are too strong to be loosened by a sudden switch of policy. Dr. Tibor Eckhardt’s semi-official soundings in British political circles and Count Teleki’s friendly relations with the British Minister to Budapest were quickly discovered by Germans, who keep thoroughly advised of events in Hungary, often! with the assistance of voluntary Hungarian informers.
France’s military aviation program now calls for 8,000 first-class planes, and if need be they will be produced at the rate of 750 monthly under the new “speed-up plan” worked out by Air Minister Guy La Chambre.
Winston Churchill and Chaim Weizmann meet in London.
The Norwegian tanker President de Vogue ran aground at Port-de-Bouc, Bouches-du-Rhône, France.
The French cargo ship Tourny ran aground at Dog Island, River Gambia, British Gambia.
A plea to Zionists not to resort to force in Palestine was made today at the Zionist Congress in Geneva by Rabbi Solomon Goldman of Chicago, head of the American Zionist organization. Although several left wing speakers had previously recommended combating Arab terrorism by counter-terrorist methods, Rabbi Goldman warned the congress that “only madmen can urge the Jews to measure their strength against the British and the Arabs.” “Arab terrorism,” he said, “has brought the Arabs a questionable victory. It may have, for the moment, impeded the rapid growth of the Jewish homeland, but even that is doubtful; for the Jewish achievement in the last three years, in the face of the Arab terror, is not the least among the achievements of the pioneers since the Balfour Declaration was issued.”
The American Federation of Labor called upon the U.S. Government today to start a cooperative effort to spur recovery, and held out to business and industry the threat of new Federal spending-lending legislation unless there was an upturn in business and employment.
Miss Helen Vooros, a 19-year-old German-born Brooklyn girl, told the special House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities today that she quit the German-American Bund Youth Movement last year because of its intensive efforts to convert her and others into “un-American” advocates of the Nazi philosophy and because of the immorality of leaders and members of the Youth Movement.
Much of her testimony was in contradiction of that given in the last two days by Fritz Kuhn, Bund leader, who pictured the Bund as a “patriotic,” “democratic” and “pro-American” movement with little special interest in Nazi Germany. In her testimony Miss Vooros dealt with the inculcation of Nazi “ideals” received in a six-week training course in a Nazi youth camp in Germany, to which she and fourteen other girls and fifteen boys of the Bund’s Youth Movement were sent in 1938 at the expense of the German Government and its agencies and the Bund itself.
Speaking in a soft, cultured voice the witness listed some of the teachings which the group, and also groups from Rumania and Hungary, received from Nazi propaganda officials at the camp as follows:
Nazi Germany would get back all the territory lost in the World War, including Czecho-Slovakia, Danzig and the Polish Corridor, SchleswigHolstein and the German colonies.
Then it would take over Scandinavia, “because that is where the German culture originated.”
After that it would capture the United States because of the large content of “German blood” among its citizens. To this end Bund members should begin gathering German-Americans into compact communities and colonies now, a process already started around New York.
National socialism is a religion in itself and its supporters must have no other religion.
The American girls in the group should work hard and strive to become school teachers because in such positions they could most effectively promote the Nazi program.
President Roosevelt “has a streak of Jewish blood in him,” and all Jews should be considered the same as Negroes and not of the same blood as Germanic peoples.
Masonic societies are organized to “ruin girls,” and those who expose them are submitted to tortures illustrated in a museum they were taken to visit.
Girls of German blood should not be ashamed of having illegitimate children because it is their duty to propagate the German race, but alliance with Jews was “vile.” The lecturer, she added, explained that Nazi Germany maintained “Mutter und Kind” homes to care for the illegitimate.
In a formal refusal to abide by a recent order of the National Labor Relations Board, the Ford Motor Company charged today that the board was attempting to deprive Henry Ford of the right of free speech. The order was for the company to reinstate twenty-four men discharged for union activity, to refrain from disparaging or criticizing labor organizations and to stop advising employees not to join such organizations. The company’s refusal to obey the order paves the way for a hearing before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals on an application of the NLRB for an enforcement decree.
The collapse of negotiations to settle the actor-stagehand war brought to the surface last night widespread dissension among members of the Actors Equity Association over the strategy of their parent body, the Associated Actors and Artistes of America.
The American Bar Association is chastised for its color barrier. A borough president says the group has brought disgrace upon itself and pleads for African-American rights.
Alabama counted millions in crop and property losses and listed about 4,500 homeless tonight while storm-bred flood crests shifted down into the basins of the Alabama and Cahaba Rivers.
The U.S. motor vessel O.M. Arnold sank in a storm in Chatham Strait in the Alexander Archipelago, Territory of Alaska with the loss of three lives. There were five survivors. She was on a voyage from Chatham to Noyes Island with a cargo of 60 tons of fresh salmon.
The New York Yankees polished off the Philadelphia Athletics in the opening engagement of a four-game series at Yankee Stadium yesterday for the edification of a ladies’ day crowd of 13,380. Bill Dickey and George Selkirk unloaded a pair of homers, each with a runner on base, Joe DiMaggio propelled another another tally across with a single, and that was all Charlie Ruffing needed to romp off with his eighteenth triumph of the year by a score of 5–0.
Fritz Oestermueller (9–2) pitches the Boston Red Sox to a 6–2 win over the Washington Senators. Alex Carrasquel takes the loss with 8 innings of pitching. Mike Palagyi takes over in the 9th and walks 3 and allows 3 runs without an out in his lone Major League appearance.
The Chicago White Sox got only three hits off Bobby Feller tonight but squeezed across a run in the eleventh inning to defeat the Cleveland Indians, 1–0, before 46,000 spectators.
Opportunity, which is supposed to knock only once, kept hammering persistently on the Philadelphia Phillies’ door at Shibe Park today, but the National League tail-enders ignored the pounding and hence beat the New York Giants by only 5–2, despite amassing twelve hits and nineteen base runners.
Al Simmons’ sacrifice fly scores Rabbit Warstler in the bottom of the 14th inning and gives the Boston Bees a 4–3 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The flying St. Louis Cardinals won their seventeenth victory in nineteen games today behind the airtight hurling of Bob Bowman, who handed the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates their tenth consecutive defeat, one less than the season’s record, made by Philadelphia. The score was 3–0.
Mexican General Juan Andreu Almazan, principal Opposition candidate for the Presidency, pressed by various newspapers to give an opinion on the oil controversy, has issued a statement declaring it is the duty of all patriotic Mexicans to support their government. He did not mention the oil issue with the United States, but it was widely assumed that was what he was referring to.
Wang Ching-wei’s efforts to promote a separatist movement in South China has met little or no support from leaders in the Chinese-controlled areas of South China Provinces.
China accuses the German Embassy of unreasonable interference after it protests the showing of a Soviet film. The Embassy says the movie has anti-German sentiments.
The British Government today issued a firm declaration to Japan that the issues affecting Chinese currency and silver reserves in the British Concession at Tientsin could not be settled by discussion between Japan. and Britain alone. It was therefore held here that consultation among the various signatories to the Nine Power Pacific Treaty, which guarantees the territorial integrity of China and the Open Door, would be likely. The possibility of a conference of those powers was also implicit in the British declaration.
After Britain had gone a long way toward meeting Japanese proposals for a settlement of the Tientsin problems, it was stated in official quarters here, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Hachiro Arita, suddenly asked the British Ambassador, Sir Robert Leslie Craigie, during the course of their discussions, that Britain make two main economic concessions to Japan. These concessions were:
- That Britain should hand over to Japan £8,000,000 worth of Chinese silver now in the blockaded British Concession;
- That Britain should prevent the Chinese dollar from circulating within the British Concession at Tientsin.
Britain has now decided that proposals such as these would be likely to harm the Chinese currency as a whole, and therefore are the direct concern of other powers with interests in China. Accordingly she has informed Japan that no single signatory to the Nine Power Treaty is entitled to prejudice the rights of the others. The views of Britain, China and Japan are already known. The United States and France have been fully informed of the negotiations. Thus far the four other signatories, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, have not disclosed their attitude.
On all hands tonight there is evidence of a firmer British attitude toward Japan. For instance, The Daily Express says editorially: “The time has come to speak plainly to Japan on behalf of the people of Britain. Japan should know that we have long memories and that she is arousing hostilities in Britain that will not die down for a long time. Japan will have reason to regret the pressure she has put upon us in the hour of our difficulties long after the present situation has been cleared away and when new issues confront the world.”
Britain’s decision to rule out any bilateral discussion of Tientsin’s economic issues is received by the press with an outburst of anger and a warning that it means the immediate rupture of the negotiations.
Great Britain has the support of the United States in rejecting Japanese demands that economic questions in China be included in the Anglo-Japanese discussions in Tokyo, Summer Welles, acting Secretary of State, indicated in his press conference today.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 135.54 (-2.79).
Born:
Joe Azcue, MLB catcher (All-Star, 1968; Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City A’s, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, California Angels, Milwaukee Brewers), in Cienfuegos, Cuba.
Donald Coffey, AFL wide receiver (Denver Broncos), in Burnsville, North Carolina.
Johnny Preston, American singer (“Running Bear”), in Port Arthur, Texas (d. 2011).
Maxine Brown, American soul and R&B singer and songwriter (“It’s All in My Mind”), in Kingstree, South Carolina.
Molly Bee, American actress (“Pinky Lee Show”), in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (d. 2009).
Harald Heide-Steen Jr., Norwegian actor and comedian, in Oslo, Norway (d. 2008).
Robert Horton, British businessman and CEO (BP), in London, England, United Kingdom (d. 2011).
Died:
William Demaine, 80, Australian newspaper editor and politician.
Naval Construction:
The Royal Navy Tree-class minesweeping trawler HMS Almond (T 14) is laid down by Ardrossan Dockyard (Ardrossan, Scotland) : Plenty.
The Royal Navy Tree-class minesweeping trawler HMS Mangrove (T 112) is laid down by Ferguson Bros. Ltd. (Port Glasgow, Scotland).
The Royal Navy Kingfisher-class (Third group) patrol sloop HMS Pintail (L 21, later K 21) is launched by William Denny & Brothers (Dumbarton, Scotland).
The Royal Navy Fiji-class (Crown Colony-class) light cruiser HMS Kenya (14) is launched by A. Stephen & Sons Ltd. (Glasgow, Scotland).
History Diaries 