The Pittsburgh Press (May 3, 1945)
All Nazi fronts caving in
Churchill in Reich negotiating peace, London speculates
BULLETINS
LONDON, England – A Kalundborg, Denmark, radio said today in a broadcast purported to be in the name of the German government that Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz, the new Nazi Fuehrer, will not lay down arms.
A speaker identified as Albert Speer, Nazi minister of arms and munitions, made the Kalundborg broadcast. He said he was speaking in the name of the government.
LONDON, England – A BBC front reporter, broadcasting over the army radio, said today that “a general surrender of the German forces facing Lt. Gen. Sir Miles C. Dempsey’s [British Second] Army may come at any moment.”
With the end in sight, German forces crumbled on all fronts. In the north, British forces occupied Hamburg and linked up with Russian troops along the Baltic coast. In the south, there the Nazi redoubt was smashed with the surrender in Italy and Western Austria. U.S. Third Army troops were near Linz and Berchtesgaden. In Italy, Eighth Army troops occupied Trieste.
LONDON, England (UP) – The unconditional surrender of all German forces in Holland, Denmark, Norway and Czechoslovakia was reported under negotiation today and possibly in some cases already concluded.
Negotiations for the complete capitulation of Germany were believed in some quarters also to be underway.
There was widespread speculation in London that Prime Minister Winston Churchill may have gone to Germany on a mission to negotiate for the end of the war in Europe. The speculation embraced the possibility that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower might be engaged in a similar task together with British and Russian military and political leaders.
Mr. Churchill was absent from the House of Commons today. Sir John Anderson, speaking for him, told the House that should the war end on Saturday or Sunday there would be a general holiday Monday.
Mr. Churchill’s absence together with continental reports of surrender negotiations created a feeling in diplomatic and political quarters here that the hour of victory probably was near.
Mr. Churchill’s latest public appearance here was Wednesday evening. Then he announced in Commons the fall of Northern Italy. He sent word that he could not attend today’s session, a highly unusual procedure.
The last four major pockets of Nazi resistance outside the Reich were reported near collapse. Some sources believed the capitulation of some or all of them might be announced by nightfall.
Only four other tiny pockets of German troops remain inside the borders of Germany and Austria.
The house of cards that Adolf Hitler built around Germany by seizing his neighboring countries was tumbling down, Already the southern ramparts had crumbled with the surrender of Northern Italy and Western Austria.
Following hard on the Nazi announcement of Adolf Hitler’s death and the fall of Hamburg, the new Fuehrer, Adm. Karl Doenitz, apparently was wandering the northland in search of a new refuge. The Press Association said it was “fairly certain” that he was in Denmark, or perhaps had even gone on to Norway.
Reliable informants said the capitulation of German forces in Denmark was arranged tentatively some time ago. The country was cut off by the British push to the Baltic. Collapsed Nazi censorship indicated that the Danes controlled their own country again.
Reports from the United Press said the Germans isolated in Northwestern Holland were ready to give up. The Allies were already moving foodstuffs into Holland.
The Paris radio said that the foreign minister of Maj. Vidkun Quisling’s puppet government of Norway had arrived in Copenhagen to discuss the surrender of perhaps 250,000 German troops in Norway.
A broadcast by the Hamburg radio in the last hours it was controlled by the Nazis indicated that surrender arrangements for the Czechoslovak redoubt around Prague were in progress.
**A broadcast decree by Hamburg purported to declare Prague a “hospital town” – apparently an open city, not to be defended. It said negotiations for the “reorganization of political conditions in the protectorate” of Bohemia-Moravia had begun.
Only a few days ago, the German radio said the loss of Prague – and now-fallen Berlin – would mean the loss of Europe.
A German diplomat in Zurich told the Exchange Telegraph Agency that Doenitz had dismissed the entire Nazi cabinet which served Adolf Hitler and was appointing as new ministers only those men whom he believed would have the confidence of the Allies.
Only the appointment of Count Ludwig Schwerin von Krosigk as foreign minister to succeed Joachim von Ribbentrop has been announced. The Exchange Telegraph dispatch said the remainder of the list would be published soon.
Another Exchange Telegraph dispatch from Zurich said Doenitz was expected soon to dissolve the Nazi Party organization and had already ordered the arrest of several hundred leaders, including party chief Martin Bormann and Dr. Robert Ley.
The same dispatch, however, said reports were also circulating that Doenitz had arrested the wife and children of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler and threatened to execute them if he tried to contact the Allies.
Where Doenitz has set up his provisional capital was not known. He was believed to have fled Hamburg as British troops approached and the British Press Association said he may be in the German naval base town of Kiel.
Highly reliable sources in London said arrangements had been completed some time ago for the two to five German divisions in Denmark to surrender as soon as Allied troops reach the country.
Near Danish border
British Second Army troops were fast approaching the Danish border today. Supreme Allied Headquarters has prepared a military mission to fly into Denmark and establish contact with King Christian at the earliest possible moment.
The Allies conducted negotiations with Dr. Werner Best, Reich Commissioner for Denmark, through Swedish intermediaries, informants said.
The Stockholm correspondent of the London Daily Mail said Wilhelm Buhl, who will become Danish premier as soon as the German capitulation takes effect, told him by telephone from Copenhagen that Denmark already has a “de facto peace.”
Ready to take over
Buhl said:
The Gestapo is inactive. We merely are awaiting [British Marshal Sir Bernard L.] Montgomery before my new government officials, taken over the administrator. Everything is under control and we are waiting for the German capitulation to become effective.
Word of the approaching capitulation of German forces in Southwest Holland, estimated at 75,000 to 90,000 men, came from authoritative United Nations sources at the World Security Conference in San Francisco.
These sources said German resistance in Holland has ceased and that formal announcement of surrender “may be expected at any time,”
Comment refused
Supreme Allied Headquarters at Paris refused to comment on the report, but dispatches from there hinted that it may be true. It was recalled that Lt. Gen. W. Bedell Smith, chief of staff to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, conferred with Nazi occupation officials on the shipment of food into the occupied area recently.
Backs peace aim
Schwerin von Krosigk, the new German Foreign Minister, made his initial broadcast to the German people over the North German radio last night.
He endorsed the aim of the World Security Conference at San Francisco “not only to prevent future wars, but in good time to eliminate potential centers of conflagration from which cause for war might arise.”
However, he said, peace only could be brought to the world if “the Bolshevik tide does not flood Europe.”
He said:
The world at the present moment stands before one of the decisions of the greatest importance in the history of mankind. The manner in which this decision is met will result in chaos or order, in war or peace, in death or life.
He said hundreds of thousands of German civilians had been “struck down” by the fury of war, while millions of German troops had fallen on the various fronts.