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Summer Session Kansan
Friday, June 26, 1964
Axis Outbluffed in Diplomatic Poker Game In Late War. State Department Reveals
WASHINGTON—(UPI)—Just two years before the end of World War II, neutral Turkey was the scene of a high-powered economic poker game between the Allies and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis-complete with bluffs and cheating.
This was revealed when the State Department published hitherto secret documents on U.S. policy in the Middle East in 1943.
STAKES IN THE game were chrome, of highest wartime importance; copper, cotton and other raw materials badly needed by the axis powers — plus a Turkish decision whether to remain neutral or make its airfields available to allied bombers.
The gamblers were the U.S. and British ambassadors and German ambassador Franz von Papen, all backed by unlimited funds and commodity offers from their governments, including arms.
THE ODDS: TURKEY was committed by treaty and pressing import needs to large-scale exports to Germany. But President Ismet Inonu and his government were leaning toward the Allies. However, they believed the Turkish people were not yet prepared to enter the war against the Axis.
The Allied strategists' short-run aim was to block or at least substantially reduce Turkish shipments of strategically important materials to Germany.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull outlined the strategy in a telegram to U.S. Ambassador John C. Winant in London May 11, 1943:
"THE UNITED STATES IS engaged in three types of pre-emptive purchasing operations in Turkey:
a) Planned efforts to seek out and deplete Turkish markets of the total exportable surpluses of a given commodity.
b) Spot purchases consisting of efforts to buy up particular stocks of a commodity (less than the total export surpluses) in which the Axis seems for the moment to be interested.
c) Disruptive, designed to raise the price of a commodity with the fewest possible purchases, in order to increase Axis exchange difficulties and thereby to interfere with or prevent Axis purchases."
HULL'S TELEGRAM came in answer to British suggestions to review and possibly discontinue unauthorized Allied purchases in Turkey — which Hull refused.
The British suggestion, in turn, was the result of a suspicion that the Allied pre-emptive purchasing strategy might:
—Not affect the Axis as seriously as it was hoped.
—Damage the Turkish economy through an inflation of commodity prices resulting from the economic warfare.
—Eventually tip the scales against the Allies when and if the Turkish government embarked on a public investigation of unauthorized purchases.
THE U.S. AMBASSADOR in Ankara indicated the amount of trade involved in a telegram to Hull June 12:
"Although no foreign trade figures have been published for two years, we estimate that during the last six months the joint unauthorized purchases represented very roughly one-half of the Anglo-American purchases and one-quarter of foreign sales of Turkish products. . . The Germans are also making unauthorized purchases though on a smaller scale."
He indicated, however, that Turkish authorities were turning a blind eye, partially because of sympathy with the Allies, but also "because the resulting funds and credit balances are welcome from the point of view of war and post-war needs.
THE DIPLOMAT-GAMBLERS' attention was focused on the jackpot—all important chrome exports from Turkey.
When Germany provided 25 locomotives and other transport plus some diplomatic pressure to keep the chrome rolling the Axis way, the U.S. Charge D'Affaires in Turkey reached for the gun.
Istanbul railway line outside of Turkish territory."
"British ambassador and I," he told Hull in a telegram Oct. 18, "strongly recommend question of interruption of railway communications between Turkey and Axis Europe be given urgent consideration and appropriate action be taken to disrupt Sofia-
HE SAID THEY also agreed that "interruption of rail communications would not produce an unfavorable reaction on the part of the Turkish government, provided the rupture of the railway does not occur too close to the Turkish frontier."
Eventually, the Axis lost the poker game.
In February, 1945. Turkey declared war against Germany—well-stocked with arms supplied by the Germans in exchange for raw materials.
Gubernatorial List Is Lengthy
TOPEKA, Kan-(UPI) -The largest field of gubernatorial candidates in the memory of Kansans is off and running.
After the deadline for filing last weekend there were 14 candidates for governor on the two major tickets.
Seven others filed for the lieutenant governor's office, six were competing for attorney general, and another half dozen were in the state printer's race.
The only new gubernatorial candidate to file at the last minute was Albert S. Myers of Pawnee Rock. Myers seeks the Republican nomination.
Although there were plenty of candidates in some races, there was a dearth in others.
State Auditor Clay Herrick, R-Newton, Insurance Commissioner Frank Sullivan, R-Lawrence, and Secretary of State Paul Shanahan, R-Salina, were all unopposed for GOP nomination for re-election.
On the Democratic ticket, there were no primary contests for the positions of attorney general, treasurer, auditor, and state printer.
the gubernatorial candidates are:
Republican-Grant Dohm, William H. Avery, William M. Ferguson, Paul R. Wunsch, McDill Boyd, Harold Chase, Del Crozier, and Albert Myers.
Democrat - Jewell V. Doty, George Hart, Harry Wiles, J. Donald Coffin, Joseph Henkle Sr., and Ewell Stewart.
CLOSED for INVENTORY June 27 and 28
8:30 to 4:30 Closed Saturdays
Beginning Monday June 29
kansas union BOOKSTORE
Summer Hours
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