Reading the paper on Oct. 5, 1941.
It is the fifteenth week of active warfare between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Soviet forces have pushed the Germans and Romanians back from dozens of eastern Ukrainian villages in fierce tank battles, but action there is expected to slow as rains and snow begin to fall over the area.
In the far north, Soviet forces have turned back a Nazi assault against Murmansk and heavy fighting continues against the Finns near Leningrad/St. Petersburg.
The Finns, engaged in diplomatic discussions with Britain, assert they are fighting a defensive war against Soviet forces and are not participating in any war between the ‘great powers.’
The Nazi commissioner for occupied Norway warned the country that it must accept ‘the new order’ and consider Germany’s enemies as its own.
If Norway fails to do so, then it will be extinguished as a nation-state and its people will be starved.
The RAF bombed German strongholds across four occupied Northern European countries overnight.
The heaviest bombing recently has taken place at the Rotterdam seaport, a major Nazi shipping hub.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull denounced the recent Nazi sinking of the J.C. White, a US commercial vessel, calling the attack ‘a lawless act of piracy’ which gives the US the right of self-defense.
The British ambassador urged the US to ramp up its production of aircraft to permit Britain to engage in heavy bombing of German installations in Europe.
Gaining air supremacy over Europe, followed by heavy bombing, were necessary for an Allied ground invasion, he said, noting that it is for America, itself, to decide whether an American expeditionary force should participate in a ground invasion.
Negotiations continue between Britain and Germany for a prisoner exchange of sick and wounded soldiers.
Germany has also requested the return of fifty German women who were residents of Britain at the start of the war and are now held in a British internment camp along with thousands of other German resident aliens.
Japanese forces continue their assault on Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in China, while German and Italian forces continue in their drive across Libya towards the British-controlled Suez Canal.
The German press said the recent partisan uprising in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia was caused by ‘an evil Jewish whispering campaign.’
Harsh retaliation against Jews in occupied Europe is feared.
German newspapers noted that six synagogues in Nazi-occupied Paris were bombed yesterday.
The infant death rate in Paris has increased by more than half due to prolonged famine.
Nazi authorities in occupied Belgium reported that, in the past few days, a number of Belgian youths had attempted to flee the country and enter England, to take up the fight against Germany.
In the future, those captured in escape attempts will be executed.
New public opinion surveys indicate a shift, with seventy percent of the American population now saying it is more important to defeat Nazi Germany than to stay out of the war.
Surveyors said the shift in opinion began in late 1940 with the fall of France and the Luftwaffe bombing of Britain.
The federal Office of Production Management has asked fire equipment producers to stop making bells for fire engines in order to conserve critical materials needed for wartime production.
The officials say the fire engines ‘will get to fires just as fast and fight fires just as efficiently, but they won’t look as gaudy going and coming.’
An afternoon high temperature of 85 degrees yesterday broke the New York City record for the date set in 1891.
Pennsylvania weather officials said that last month was the driest September in their fifty-three years of record-keeping and year-to-date rain totals are the driest since 1930.
Mayor La Guardia has directed the New York City Police Commissioner to form a new task force to root out bootlegging, a problem which has arisen with the onset of additional taxes on alcohol.
The Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor has allocated an additional $100,000 for the thirteen states treating most of the 5,800 new cases of polio which have been reported recently.
The guest speaker at the Mark Twain Association’s first meeting of the season will give a lecture on “Reasons for Rejoicing.”
In a speech to the American Chemical Society last night, Yale University Professor C.C. Furnas said the best prospect for obtaining energy after petroleum is used up is to develop an electric storage battery charged by sunlight.
In Game 3 of the World Series yesterday, the American League champion New York Yankees beat the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers 2 - 1 in front of 31,000 fans at Ebbets Field.
The win gave the Yanks the lead in the Series, two games to one.
And finally…
Two of New York’s finest, driving their patrol car, chased two runaway rodeo horses up 11th Avenue yesterday.
The horses had broken free from the rodeo’s livestock herds as they left the New York Central stockyards at 11th Avenue to parade to their performance venue at Madison Square Garden.
It was a struggle.
But the patrol car finally managed to pull abreast of the horses near the Third Avenue Railway carbarn between 53rd and 54th Streets.
A long blast of the patrol car siren frightened the horses into the carbarn.
And champion rodeo cowboy, Everett Bowman, took it from there.
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I’ll see you on Monday.
— Brenda
Banner image: German soldier with fishermen at the Seine.
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