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“FOUND ANYTHING YET HANK? .. . HANK? .. .” -

News item: The 17 nation disarmament conference in Geneva
last week heard a proposal from the Soviet Union that a pact out-
lawing flights beyond national borders by bombers carrying nuclear

nuclear weapons.

. warheads could follow the projected treaty to halt the spread of

Alexei Roschin, the Soviet delegate said that the recent crash
of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber in Greenland. “convincingly under-
scored the need for such an agreement.

The Greenland incident reminded delegates at the conference

“of the discussion which took place two years ago when a B-52

carrying nuclear bombs crashed off Spain near Palomares.
Discussion is still going forward on the proposed non-prolifera-
tion treaty and there is hope of meeting the March 15 deadline for

reporting to the United Nations.

Bert Whyte

MOSCOW

A QUARTER of a century ago

Soviet troops trunced Field
Marshall von Paulus’ Sixth Army
at Stalingrad after a six-month
battle which proved to be the
turning point in World War Two.

“May the Battle of Stalingrad
remain for all time the biggest
battle in the history of conflicts,
and the Second World War—the

last world war,” said Leonid-

Breznev at a meeting in the
hero city on the’ Volga some
months ago. This wish of the
entire Soviet people for an end
to wars was restated by Mar-
shall Vasily Chuikov, Comman-
der of the Sixty-Second’ Army
that defended Stalingrad, in a
speech he made on the eve of
the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary,

Shortly before the quarter-
century celebrations were’ held
I visited the site of the historic
battle of Stalingrad. Standing on
-Mamayev Hill, once a Tartar
burial ground, I looked across
the mile-wide Volga River and
realized how close: Hitler had
come to achieving victory. The
Nazi plan was to capture Stalin-
grad in August of 1942, then
wheel right and left, taking
Moscow and the Caucasus be-
fore winter.

On August 23rd 1,000 Nazi
bombers pounded the city. On
August 27th Hitler issued an or-
der of the day: “The fight for
the mighty Bolshevik Bastion of
Stalingrad has begun. Stalingrad
will fall.”

The German army, boasting
superiority in tanks, artillery and
mortar and supported by bom-
bers and fighter planes which
controlled the skies over the
burning city, moved in for the
kill

When direct assault came up
against a stonewall defence, the
Germans concentrated on cap-
turing Mamayev Kurgan. From
this hill batteries of guns could
blast the factories, the city. cen-
tre and the river crossings,
When the hill was taken in Sep-

’ tember the Berlin radio crowed

in triumph: “Stalingrad is about
to fall. This victory overshadows
all other victories. It is of deci-
sive importance to the war as
a whole.”

fantry divisions, 2,000 tanks and
2,000 planes in what he believed

But the city refused to surren-
der, even though in one. place
the Germans broke through to
the Volga. Marshal Chuikov re-

-calls that “there were five days

in October when the city’s des-

tiny hung by a hair. Once Ger- -

man tanks were within 300
yards of our army command
post.”

The fight inside the city be-
came a battle from house to
house, from floor to floor, from
room to room. This fercious
hand to hand fighting continued
for two months.

Meanwhile Soviet forces were
preparing a great counter-offen-
sive in November. Snow covered
the steppe and temperatures
dropped below zero. Zhukov’s

relief armies pressed down from °

the northwest. Roossovsky’s
forces squeezed the Germans
inwards. Chuikov’s army launch-
ed a counter-offensive on Nov-
ember 19th. :

~ The Soviet counter-offensive
was completed on February 2,
1943. -
Von Paulus and fifteen’ Ger-
man generals surrended, along

‘with some 90,000 German troops.

; Pictured is part of the huge

Hitler threw: in»scores of-in-, .. died defending Stalingrad.

FEBRUARY 16, 1968—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 8

John Williamson

LONDON

VERYTHING and more’ than

was predicted in my last

article, concerning the ex-
pected post-devaluation cuts of
£1,000 million to allay the Inter-
national’ Bankers, was carried
out ruthlessly by Prime Minister
Wilson and his right wing Labor
Government.

The ‘Economist’ said the City
“will not judge the cuts by their
economic validity but by how
they emasculate the social ser-
vices”, While “The Times” said

‘it was a “flabbergasting irony”
for a Labor and not a Tory Gov-
ernment, to be slashing like it
did. The London ‘Evening Stand-
ard’ took issue and says “It is
almost a law of British politics
that one party does the other’s
work for it”.

This is only true because
right wing Labor policy is aimed
at defending Britain’s imperial-
ist policy at home and abroad.

Things on which there was
the greatest public outburst
from Labor supporters and with-
in the Labor Party itself, were
the imposition of prescription
charges, the 2-year postponment
of raising the school leaving
age to 16, the decrease in the
building of new houses and the
discontinuing of free milk in
secondary schools.

Accompanying the arrogant

was a mopping-up operation. , ©2'Ying out of. Tory. policy is

the nauseating syrup of Wilson
and Crossman in explaining it
away. Crossman, the Lord Pre-
Sident and Leader of the House
has the gall to characterise
these as “British Socialism’s
mission” and divide them into
three steps: “first devaluation,
second the January cuts, and
thirdly the post-imperial budget
now in preparation”. And all
this in the name of “Socialism”.

The country is still seething
in the aftermath of this betrayal
of Labor’s‘own election platform
and reiterated pledges. Amongst
its many manifestations the fol-
lowing developments are im-
portant:

e The Tories have generally

greeted the Wilson measures,
Their only criticism is against
the limited cuts in defense
forces, especially east of Suez
and a howl that there should
have been tougher measures
against the people at home.
Chancellor Jenkins has promis-
ed them a ‘tough’ budget in
March and also emphasized the
Government’s determination to
oppose with all its power the
idea of wage increases to meet
price increases.

Devaluation has already
brought a flood of price in-
creases — a total of 1,600 items
affected in the last seven weeks
which is equal to the total of
the previous 47 weeks. It is
openly acknowledged this is just
the beginning. It is to be follow-
ed by increased rents and the
budget ‘items of increased taxes,
rates and purchase tax.

But the Observer is not satis-
fied. It refers to the measures
as “a useful step in the right
direction” but still “profoundly
disappointing”. They write that
if “the recovery in investment
is to go ahead, consumption will
have to fall in real terms”.

e A key sector of the struggle
will be around wagés. At the
moment this is centering on the
provincial busmen. After months
of delay the TGWU and bus
companies and municipal author-
ities agreed to a £1 a week raise.
This has been cancelled by the
Prices and Incomes Board while
Labor Minister Gunter has in-
voked legal authority to’ stop
payment for at least 7 months.
The Act makes it an offence for
an employer to implement an
award or contract, with penalties
of fine and imprisonment.

The busmen are seething and
the TGWU promise to continie
the fight. Other unions, especial-
ly the engineers and shipbuilders
continue to demand their wage
increases. ;

Inside the labor movement
and the Labor Party itself there
is a combination of anger and

frustration. It has not yet Ccrys-~!
tallized into an organized count-:
er Offensive based on an alter
native program — although the
latter is there as worked out by
the Communist Party, left La-
borites and the T.U.C.

The 25 Labor MP’s who a0
stained in Parliament from €Ms
dorsing the Govednment cuts are
to be disciplined and a new CcOdg
is being imposed on all Labor
MPs. Left winger Michael Foos
said the Wilson leadership “Wil
tear the Party to pieces” WIG
their measures “and the respon
sibility will be on their heads
My own M.P. James Dickens;
one of the abstainers declared
“I was acting in support of the
official policy of the Labor Party
on which I had a clear mandate
. . . Those .who abstained were
doing so in the best interests
of the principles of Parliament
ary democracy.”

While the trend of the indus-
trial worker is to fight on dogs
gedly for a change of policy or
to “blow a fuse”, the professi0=
nal and middle class lefts
threaten to leave the party. A
bus driver who is a union branch
secretary and delegate to the
Labor Party, and was a member
of the TGWU delegation that
met Labor Minister Gunter was
so furious at Gunter’s action im
negating the negotiated £1 raise,
that with tears in his eyes, he
tore up his Labor Party card in|
Gunter’s office.

In the posh London area of
Hampstead, which Labor won”
for the first time in 1964 — and
where at least 30 Labor M.P.s /
and several Ministers live—four .
of the seven Labor Party |

branches have called for disaf-
filiation. A meeting of the 1,200
members have been called for
February 13th to approve this |
5

_ proposal 4

While mounting its own inde-
pendent campaign, the Communh-
ist Party General Secretary,
John Gollan, in Manchester de-

-Clared:

“The right wing are going mad
as they try to change the Labor
Party “into a dragooned second
edition of a Tory Party.” He
called for the labor movement to
rally behind the left M.P.s under
attack, and declared “The Labor
Party is not the personal pro-
perty of Wilson and Jenkins.”

Though many fierce battles still
loomed ahead, Hitler’s doom

Was actually sealed on the banks ~

of the Volga.

And now, twenty-five years
later, I stood alongside other
foreign correspondents on Ma-
mayev Hill and thought of that
historic battle as we examined
the majestic monument unveiled
just a few months before to the

tary glory, and finally the im.

heroes of the battle of Stalin-
grad. i

We had climbed the long
flights of cement stairs; covered
with snow and ice, stopping to

-look at ensembles of sculptures,

the ruins of two walls bearing
inscriptions made by the city’s
defenders, the sculptures’ in
Heroes Square, the hall of mili-

_Tall buildings, apartment houses

pressive fifty-yard high figure
of a woman holding a sword,
symbol of the Motherland.

One British journalist who
visited Stalingrad after the
siege was lifted wrote: “around
the central square tall buildings
show their bones in the air, the
skeletons of buildings that’
house the skeletons of men.
Millions of shellpocked bricks
and mountains of twisted metal
are all that remains of the fam- »
ous Dzerzhinsky tractor works.
Deep bomb craters, filled with }
ice, pit the almost trackless
streets. And here and there a
frozen corpse still stares up
pale through the ice. All over .
the city hangs the sick smell of
rubble and death.” ee

Now, twenty-five years later,
we stood on Mamayev Hill and
looked down upon a new city,
Volgograd, Gleaming in the sun.

and department stores, plants
and factories, modern streetcars
and buses.

The people. of Volgograd are
proud of their rebuilt city,
proud of their accomplishments
and of things that are to come.
They are also proud of their
past, proud of their immortal
heroes who gave their lives for -
their country in the greatest
battle of all time, the Battle of
Stalingrad.