Click on the link here for Audio Player – NBC Blue Network – News Of The World – November 13, 1941 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection
Depending on where you were getting your news from on this November 13th in 1941 was how the world, and the war, was going.
If you were in Britain, the heat was pretty much off for an invasion for the moment, or a continuation of the grim months of the Blitz, as Germany was preoccupied with Russia and the oncoming Winter and was attempting to use starvation as a method of capitulation for Britain. If you were in Berlin, you’d be hearing “things were going well” with reference to Russia, even though reports were filtering in that as many as 16 of the 19 known Panzer divisions in Russia were suffering heavy losses. Out of the 180 Infantry divisions the Germans had invading Russia, some 70 divisions had suffered heavy losses in killed and wounded. In some cases 1/2 to 1/3 of the personnel of those divisions was wiped out. It was also widely reported that sickness and disease was taking a huge toll on the Germans as they were ill-equipped to face the oncoming Russian Winter.
The other point of concern was one of semantics. Britons, it was learned, were hard-pressed to understand what labor strikes had to do with Foreign Policy, and that it was feared the labor troubles currently going on in the U.S. may have something to do with a rumored scrapping of Washington’s Lend-Lease policy towards the UK. The BBC took to translating American English to British English in order to clarify that strikes in the U.S. were different than strikes in the UK.
That thing about being separated by a common language reared its confused head again.
On Capitol Hill, the labor situation was continuing with some claiming it was a political situation and not really a labor one. That the current contentious climate was the direct result of friction between Labor Leader John L. Lewis and President Roosevelt, with Coal Strikes, Railroad Strikes, and Trucking strikes looming and a host of other labor troubles directly affecting the Defense industry had many in Congress bordering on a state of high anxiety.
And that’s just a small portion of what went on in the world on this November 13th in 1941, as told by NBC Blue Network’s News Of The World.
