Chicago Tribune Quotes
FDR’s War Plans
There was a major leak of the administration’s contingency plans for war in Europe. FDR had run on a platform not to send American troops to Europe, and this leak, presented as a fete a compli, caused a political upheaval.
Chicago Tribune, Banner Headline, December 1941
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The military security people were so used to ferreting out communists in the 1930s that they had a hard time adjusting to the fact that the security risks or people who might have German connections or backgrounds. Many immigrant scientists were recruited for work on the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb and they only did security clearances. The military security people kept checking on any communist background they might have had as opposed to possible connections with fascist organizations. By the end of the war they had adjusted but then had to go back to looking for communists as the Cold War evolved.
Truman had just told Stalin about the new technology. Stalin had actually already known something about it as the result of Soviet espionage in the United States.
Note that he assumes that not only will there be another World War, but he assumes that we will be on opposite sides.
After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson drafted the Declaration of War that President Roosevelt would ask Congress to vote for. However, there was a small but very vocal group of extreme Republican conservatives who opposed assisting England against Hitler and saw German and Italian Fascism as positive forces. They would oppose any administration declaration of war against Germany and Italy who had not yet attacked any American facilities. The President realized that German and Italy had a Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan, and when we declared war against Japan, would have to ally with Japan or reneg on their treaty. So FDR removed Germany and Italy from the Declaration and Congress just declared war against Germany. In the next days, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the de facto situation was as Stimson had drafted it, but FDR had not given the right wing American Fascist sympathizers any issue to criticize the administration.
Wikileaks needs whistleblowers to send it confidential and secret material in order to have something that people might be interested in. And then, it needs continuous money donations to keep the website going. This statement refuted critics who claimed that Assange and his colleagues were just criminal activists who had no public support or interest in what they were doing.
The only soldier ever so honored. Marshall was then Chief of Staff of the Army. This quotation is historically very important in that it refutes the accusation made by some FDR and New Deal enemies that Roosevelt was very naïve about the importance of capturing Berlin and ceded control over the invasion and capture of Berlin to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Marshall, one of the most upright of politicians in American history, was not a FDR apologist and few doubted his word or judgment. (Senator Joseph McCarthy and other right wingers however falsely accused him of harboring communists in the Army and working against America’s interest against Russia.
The Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017.
