The Pittsburgh Press (February 14, 1945)
4,000 PLANES RIP GERMANY
Cities in path of Russians shattered by Yanks and RAF
Reds at Queis River, only 70 miles from Dresden rail center
BULLETIN
LONDON, England – Marshal Stalin announced tonight that the Russians had captured Freystadt, 15 miles northeast of Sagan; Jauer, 11 miles south of Liegnitz; Neusalz, 19 miles northwest of Glogau, and a number of other Silesian towns.
Aiming for Dresden, Soviet forces on the Queis River were bolstered by U.S. and British raids on the Saxony capital. To the north, the Germans reported a Soviet bridgehead across the Oder River east of Berlin.
LONDON, England (UP) – Nearly 4,000 Allied planes blasted and burned German cities in the path of the great Russian flanking drive south of Berlin today.
Chief target of the U.S. and Royal Air Force heavy bombers was the Saxony capital of Dresden, now less than 70 miles from Red Army spearheads.
The attack was opened by night when some 1,400 RAF planes blasted Germany. Nearly 800 of them concentrated on Dresden, where they lighted vast fires visible to the advancing Red Army.
U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators took up the assault by day, sending some 2,250 planes over Germany, including 1,350 heavy bombers. One large U.S. formation dropped a new bomb load on Dresden while others hit Chemnitz, 38 miles to the southwest, and Magdeburg, 70 miles southwest of Berlin.
Marshal Ivan S. Konev’s First Ukrainian Army, meanwhile, pressed against the Queis River, third of the six barriers before Dresden, on a nine-mile front.
Hit rail network
The Anglo-American raids on Dresden struck the network of rail and highway arteries and depots upon which the German Army is dependent to supply its forces falling back on the city.
In addition to two “very heavy” and “highly concentrated” attacks on Dresden, the RAF targets announced by the Air Ministry were:
A synthetic oil plant at Bohlen, near Leipzig, 82 miles southwest of Berlin; Magdeburg, 75 miles west-southwest of the German capital; Nuremberg, 225 miles south of Berlin, and Bonn and Dortmund, in the Rhineland.
16 bombers missing
Sixteen British bombers were missing, but a communiqué said some may have landed in Allied territory on the continent.
The American targets in addition to Dresden were: Chemnitz, 38 miles to the southwest; Magdeburg, and a bridge across the Rhine at Wesel, in the area of the Canadian First Army offensive.
More than 900 Mustang and Thunderbolt fighters shepherded the U.S. heavy bombers over Germany.
The American bombardiers were able to fix their sights on the Dresden targets visually, and reported good results, The industrial section of the city was hit.
Many government offices in Berlin are known to have been evacuated to Dresden, which never before felt any great U.S. Eighth Air Force attack.
Dresden’s pre-war population of 640,000 has been swelled much above that figure by the tide of evacuees from other heavily-bombed German cities and from the regions of the east.
It is a great freight center and has extensive railroad shops. Chemnitz also has large freight yards capable of handling 3,500 cars daily.
First three-way attack
It was the first time in the war that the elements of all three of the major Allies had been coordinated in the blow at Germany. Whether the Anglo-American air support for the Red Army was a fruit of the Yalta conferences was not known.
In addition to the First Ukrainian Army’s drive against the Queis River, the Germans reported a Soviet advance to the north. Berlin said the Red Army had bypassed both the Queis and the Tschirne River barriers by reaching Sorau, eight miles west of Sagan, at the confluence of the Queis, Tschirne and Bober Rivers.
Set to drive south
From Sorau the Russians were in a position to strike 72 miles southwest to Dresden with only two river barriers, the Neisse and the Spree, to hurdle.
On the Berlin front, First White Russian Army forces have established a “major” bridgehead across the Oder at Reitwein, 35 miles east of the capital and five miles southwest of Kuestrin, Nazi broadcasts said.
The Germans also said street fighting was raging in Lebus, on the west bank of the Oder 33 miles east of Berlin and five miles north of Frankfurt. These forces presumably had cut the Kuestrin-Frankfurt railway at Lebus and were within a half mile of the west bank railway between the two cities.
Northeast of Berlin, Russian forces advanced to within five miles of the Danzig-Stettin-Berlin railway.
The Second and Third Ukrainian Armies, meantime, regrouped in Hungary under 73 generals for resumption of offensives aimed at Vienna, Bratislava and Bohemia after completing the liberation of encircled Budapest.
Budapest, ruined capital of Hungary, finally fell yesterday to the two armies following a 50-day siege in which 49,000 enemy troops were killed and 110,000 captured. The Nazi commander, Col. Gen. Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, and his staff were captured in their headquarters in an underground sewer.
Eighth to be freed
Budapest was the eighth European capital to be liberated by the Red Army. How many of its pre-war population of 1,116,000 remained in the city was not disclosed immediately.
Marshal Konev’s First Army drove to within 70 miles northeast of Dresden with the capture of Klitschdorf, on the Queis River 26 miles from the border of Saxony.
The Russians also reached the Queis at Neuhammer, nine miles north of Klitschdorf, in an advance of 9½ miles from the Bober River, a tributary to the Oder.
Threaten Sagan
Sagan, site of the three big American and British war prisoner camps eight miles northeast of Neuhammer, was threatened by the breakthrough. Johnsdorf, seven miles east of Sagan, and Ruekersdorf, nine miles northeast, were also captured.
The Germans were believed to have moved most Allied prisoners from the Sagan camps, but it was possible the Red Army would overtake and rescue some of them.
Deep in a German salient east of Sagan, Marshal Konev’s forces began a battle of annihilation against the encircled German garrison of Glogau, on the Oder 119 miles southeast of Berlin.
Glogau was formerly chief supply base for Nazi troops holding a bridgehead on the east bank of the Oder midway between Berlin and Breslau, but German broadcasts indicated the bridgehead may have been abandoned.