Allies close on Rhineland road, rail hub
Flood slows drive of Canadians on Goch
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Yalta decisions boast hope of early V-Day in Europe
London observers believe Hitler and his gang may be holed up or finished off in weeks
By William H. Stoneman
LONDON, England – Speculation regarding the date of “V-Day” has been revived by the Yalta conference. Most serious people with enough knowledge to form an opinion now put it well ahead of previous estimates.
Last night’s statement by James F. Byrnes (director of U.S. War Mobilization and Reconversion) that Allied leaders “do not ignore the possibility of the early collapse of Germany” but “are not counting on it” is regarded as definitely cautious by these people.
His statement that they are planning on major operations in March involving more men and material than ever before is not taken to preclude the possibility of very sudden developments.
The opinion here in London is that a quick finale to the war in Europe is now on the books and that it can happen any time. It definitely is, believed that Hitler and his henchmen will be holed up in Berchtesgaden or finished off in a matter of weeks.
It is also the growing conviction that guerrilla warfare will be limited in scope. Everybody agreed that the final concerted blow at the Reich from the east and west will outdo anything seen before and those who can gauge its proportions and its direction do not think it can fail.
Although there has been much talk about the weather and swampy ground, the Germans themselves are not planning on it to stave off the evil day.
Denude Western Front
They talk daily of the impending assault by the U.S. First Army toward Cologne. Yet they have been forced by the Russian advance on Berlin to denude the Western Front of such potent units as the Sixth Panzer Army. A number of first class but badly battered paratroops units-are being depended upon to brace Field Marshal Gen. Karl von Rundstedt’s forces facing the British and Americans.
Irrespective of what the Germans may be telling themselves about the possibility of defending Berlin, it is regarded here as a hopeless proposition. Yalta’s achievement in coordinating the movements of Russian and Anglo-American armies should make it impossible for even the agile Germans to do much more switching of large forces.
It is believed here that Hitler may be able to stage a last stand in the Bavarian Mountains, but that this will be nothing more than troublesome. Guerrilla warfare throughout Germany now is thought to be unlikely because it simply would subject the civilian population to additional hardships and countermeasures without any prospect of reward. Even France, which always had the prospect of eventual liberation, was quiescent for two years after its occupation, it is pointed out.
Can play ‘possum
Germany’s only possibility for a comeback as a military power will lie in playing ‘possum for an extended period.
The present plans for control of Germany, accepted at Yalta, call for a high degree of military supervision and do not seem to require formation of a responsible central government of Germans in the near future.
Local German officials undoubtedly would be held responsible for the administration of towns and villages, but they would enjoy little political authority. Any confusion which results from the abolition of established governmental machinery must be accepted by the Germans as just another reminder that war doesn’t pay.
Two main prizes in Manila seized
Battle’s end in sight, MacArthur declares
MANILA, Philippines (UP) – Nichols Field and the U.S. Navy’s wrecked anchorage at Cavite were back in American hands today.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur proclaimed triumphantly that the end of the battle for Manila is in sight.
With Manila’s two main military prizes reconquered, Gen. MacArthur’s tanks and infantrymen swarmed in from all. sides to finish off the remaining Japs trapped along the flaming waterfront and around Fort McKinley, on the city’s southeastern outskirts.
The doomed Japs were writing off their three-year stay in Manila in a last orgy of fire and blood. Thousands of terror-stricken Filipinos escaped into the American lines with word that the Japs were massacring men. women and children indiscriminately in the teeming residential districts still under their control.
Inside the old Walled City, where the bulk of the enemy garrison was digging in for a last stand, the Japs barricaded the streets and ordered all civilians into their homes.
Then they fired the buildings and machine-gunned the occupants as they tried to flee.
Captured by paratroops
Units of the 11th Airborne Division, advancing on Manila from the south, captured the Nichols Airfield yesterday after more than a week of savage fighting, and then pushed on along the shores of Manila Bay to take the Cavite Naval Base.
At Cavite, which was burned once by the Americans before they abandoned it in December 1941 and now again by the Japs, Gen. MacArthur’s troops captured 10 enemy seaplanes and a battery of three-inch guns intact.
Armored spearheads of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, meanwhile, broke through to Manila Bay north of the 11th Airborne, clearing the Pasay District, and wheeled north toward the Walled City. They also mopped up a small Jap pocket around Nielson Airfield, near Fort McKinley.
The 37th Infantry Division was also moving in on the Walled City from the east and southeast, in conjunction with the 1st Cavalry.
Japs lose 68,000
Gen. MacArthur announced that the Japs so far have suffered more than 68,000 casualties in the five-week Luzon campaign, against 9,683 American losses – 2,102 killed, 192 missing and 7,389 wounded.
Eighty-five miles northeast of Manila, troops of the 6th Armored Division cut clear across Luzon win their second hold on the island’s east coast at Baler. Another column previously had reached the east shore at Dingalan Bay, 30 miles below Baler. The Baler Airfield was found abandoned.
Japs beaten off
Northeast of the Lingayen beachheads, the Japs attempted a night raid on Rosario but were beaten off in short order.
Systematic mopping-up operations were reported continuing in the foothills of the Zambales Mountains overlooking Clark Field and Fort Stotsenburg, 40-odd miles north-northwest of Manila.
Japs fire Catholic center, shoot fleeing refugees
Attempt to chain door fails – only 700 of 2,000 are believed to have survived
By Robert Crabb, United Press staff writer
MANILA, Philippines – The Japanese have run amok in southern Manila in a wholesale massacre of Filipino civilians trapped inside their lines.
Eyewitnesses said the Japs fired the Catholic refugee center at the College of La Concordia with incendiary grenades, after trying to chain the doors to prevent the refugees from escaping.
The center houses about 2,000 persons, including many blind, insane, wounded and sick. Only about 700 are known to have survived by running a mile-long gantlet of Jap gunfire.
Spanish-born Mrs. Denis Allmond, wife of a chief quartermaster in the U.S. Navy, escaped from the burning center with her two children, Denis Jr., 4, and Janet, 5.
Mrs. Allmond said the Japs tried several times to chain the doors of the main building at the center, which was operated by the Sisters of Charity.
Men inside the building, who had put out three fires started by the Japs, unchained the doors, and get most of the refugees out. Then the Japs mowed them down with machine-gun fire.
“All except about 700 were killed, including most of the infants,” Mrs. Allmond said.
Many of the Sisters, all of whom were Filipinos, were among the missing or known dead.
First-hand evidence of Jap atrocities was also uncovered by clean-up squads of the U.S. 37th Infantry Division. The Doughboys found the bodies of 200 Filipino men, women and children who had been killed by the Japs.
Many of the victims were bound before they were shot.
The bodies of eight members of the Filipino Constabulary were found in the Pasig River. They had been tied up, shot and then thrown into the river.
Vandenberg’s silence costs shadow across Allies’ peace session
Michigan Republican refuses to say whether he’ll become delegate
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
WASHINGTON – Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-Michigan) said today he had received no invitation to be a member of the American delegation to the United Nations conference at San Francisco. He refused to say whether he would accept if invited.
Mr. Vandenberg said he had seen newspaper reports that he had been named to the delegation in a White House announcement. But he said he had not heard from either the White House or State Department.
He is one of three Republicans designated yesterday to be among the eight American delegation members.
It was believed he would accept, but so long as any question remained about his plans the degree of Republican cooperation in drafting a post-war security treaty remained in some doubt.
Asked if he would accept an official invitation, Mr. Vandenberg replied: “As the President says, that is an ‘iffy’ question.”
His remarks clouded, for the moment at least, what had been a bright prospect that Republicans would accept joint political responsibility for the San Francisco conference. That acceptance in turn had been expected to speed the proposed anti-aggression treaty toward ratification.
The other Republicans named to the delegation were Rep. Charles A. Eaton (R-New Jersey), senior minority member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Cmdr. Harold E. Stassen. the 37-year-old political fireball from Minnesota.
Approval needed
The broad outlines of the Anglo-Russian-American plans for world stabilization evidently appeal to Mr. Vandenberg.
But he had not endorsed the partition of Poland nor, especially, the apparent assignment of the cities of Wilno and Lwow to Russia. There will be bitter objection by many persons of Polish extraction in the United States. Many of them live and vote in Mr. Vandenberg’s State of Michigan.
Membership on the American delegation probably would require direct or indirect approval of allotment of pre-war eastern Poland to Russia.
Mr. Vandenberg is the key figure among the three Republicans. If he balks the momentum of early anti-aggression treaty action would diminish considerably.
Avoids Wilson’s mistake
Announcement of the delegation personnel, with Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr., as chairman, followed within 24 hours the release of news that the Big Three in the Crimea had agreed on the pattern of the post-war world.
Members of Congress, with astonishingly few exceptions, were still speaking well if sometimes cautiously of the program when the San Francisco conference delegation was announced.
Unlike Woodrow Wilson, who went alone to Versailles in 1919, President Roosevelt is inviting individuals among his political opposition to help write the peace bond that he must ask the Senate to sign.
Selection of Cmdr. Stassen will be offensive to some Republicans. Although twice elected Governor of Minnesota and a potential 1948 GOP presidential nominee, Cmdr. Stassen is not loved by all his fellow party leaders. He went far beyond most Republicans for full United States participation in world affairs.
Hurt by Ball’s bolt
Cmdr. Stassen appointed Sen. Joseph H. Ball (R-Minnesota) to the Senate. Mr. Ball in turn managed the commander’s 1944 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, but finally bolted the GOP ticket last autumn. Cmdr. Stassen is smeared with that bolt. But he undoubtedly has a considerable following in the party below the grade of top leader.
Other members of the U.S. delegation will be former Secretary of State Cordell Hull with the courtesy title of senior adviser; Chairman Tom Connally (D-Texas) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Chairman Sol Bloom (D-New York) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Dean Virginia Gildersleeve of Barnard College, New York City.
Labor not represented
There was no labor representation on the delegation, an exclusion likely to sound the alarm siren among some of the President’s union supporters. But the service man with a gun float or in a foxhole will be represented by the big bodied, blond young man from Minnesota.
There were some strictly off-record but emphatic Senate protests against the delegation personnel. Senators are jealous of their treaty powers. Among them it was remarked that the two House members, Mr. Bloom and Mr. Eaton, had no business on the delegation.
Problem for Republicans
Cmdr. Stassen’s selection was condemned as a political reward, for Mr. Ball’s bolt rather than as recognition of the fighting services. Mr. Roosevelt has posed a nice problem for some Republicans by naming Mr. Vandenberg to the delegation. The Senator recently has been discussing foreign relations in a manner both forceful and challenging. Many Republicans, including Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, have made public commitments to his ideas.
Now, if Mr. Vandenberg joins in making a treaty which he reports conforms with his major objectives, it will be difficult but not impossible, for others to go all out in challenge to the pact. Persons who know Mr. Roosevelt well do not doubt he is having a chuckle about that – wherever he may be.
Senate recognized
Discussing the delegation, Mr. Connally said:
The President recognizes the functions of the Senate and his action indicates his desire to have the utmost cooperation peep the Senate and the executive.
Mr. Ball expressed approval of the whole trend of foreign policy as charted at the Crimean Conference by Mr. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph V. Stalin.
Mr. Ball’s statement seemed to ensure that Cmdr. Stassen will jump at the chance to appear again on the political stage. He is serving now on the staff of Adm. William F. Halsey Jr. Mr. Eaton is expected to accept delegate membership, but is a much lesser figure in the party than either Mr. Vandenberg or Cmdr. Stassen.
Germany to scrap all rules of war
Poison gas attacks predicted in Sweden
LONDON, England (UP) – European dispatches said today that Germany has proclaimed her intention of scrapping the rules of war for a “no-holds-barred” fight to the death as a result of the Big Three’s Crimean declaration.
The new policy was said to have been set forth yesterday by Paul Schmidt, official spokesman for the German Foreign Office, in an angry outburst at the Wilhelmstrasse over the joint statement of President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin.
Stockholm sources speculated that Schmidt’s statement might foreshadow German use of poison gas.
Cites death sentence
The death sentence outlined for Germany in the Crimean declaration frees the Reich of “all moral obligations” to abide by the rules of war, the Nazi-controlled Scandinavian Telegraph Bureau quoted else as saying.
“The Germans henceforth will conduct the war with all suitable means, no matter how grim their effect,” Schmidt said.
The STB dispatch, published in Stockholm newspapers, said mention of the Crimean declaration caused “by far the worst explosion” foreign correspondents ever have witnessed at a Wilhelmstrasse press conference.
The Swiss Telegraph Agency said the official German Foreign Office publication Diplomatische Information commented that the Red Army in eastern Germany already had “placed itself outside any moral qualification.”
Nazi arms stolen
“There would be no surprise if such a plan of destruction as the Yalta statement revealed would bring the complete ‘demoralization’ of war,” the publication said.
It contended that the statement, far from hastening Germany’s defeat, would steel the spirit of resistance inside the Reich.
The publication said:
Every doubter and every optimist throughout Germany now understands that Germany as a nation and Germans as individuals could not fare worse than if they capitulated now.
Reliable reports reaching Stockholm from Berlin said Nazi authorities were concerned over extensive thefts of arms from Volkssturm (home guard) barracks outside Berlin.
The Nazis were said to fear that foreign workers, war prisoners and native anti-Nazis may try to stab the German Army in the back as soon as military events force the Gestapo to loosen its grip on the German home front.
A Berlin dispatch to the Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter said German authorities had ordered that all guns, rifles, pistols, machine-guns, tommy guns, signal pistols and hand grenades must be registered by February 20.
The arms are needed for the Volkssturm, the dispatch said.
More trouble for OPA –
Fish crisis develops on first day of Lent
Men who catch ‘em insist on higher meat ration before they go back to sea
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Poll: Majority admit failure of make real sacrifices
Greatest number of those who defend record cite relatives in service
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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With a reporter in the Pacific –
Supplies move up as Yanks move in on Japs
By Lee G. Miller, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Auctioneer calls bribe charge ‘lie’
Denies testimony in government records
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Patterson urges draft of nurses
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He’s still cheerful –
Triple amputation revealed to end ‘basket case’ rumors
G.I. loses two legs and a hand
By Douglas Larsen
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Labor pushes fight on work-or-else
Leaders testify at Senate hearing
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Simms: Russian war against Japan called certain
Reds have scores to settle with Tokyo
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
WASHINGTON – Russia’s entry into the war against Japan, perhaps at a not distant date, is now regarded as just about certain.
The selection of San Francisco as the meeting place of the first conference of the United Nations, and of April 25 as the date, may or may not have significance. Russia may or may not give notice to Japan terminating their non-aggression pact on April 26, 1946. But whether she does is not regarded as particularly important.
What is important is the fact that Russia has many important scores to settle with Japan and that he hardly would overlook the present opportunity to wipe them from the slate – pact or no pact.
Treaty cited
Much is being made of the Soviet-Jap treaty as barring Russian involvement in the Pacific war. Russia, however, had a similar treaty with Poland – which treaty, incidentally, does not expire until the end of this year – but that did not prevent her from joining Germany in September 1939 and dividing that country between them.
Russia’s stakes in the Western Pacific are materially greater even than those of the United States. Unless Japan, like Germany, is forced to surrender unconditionally, and her war machine dismantled, she will continue to block Russia’s access to the Pacific.
Contrary to the popular impression, Siberia is one of the richest parts of the globe.
Has one good port
The vast empire, considerably larger than the United States, faces the Pacific, or rather the seas between the mainland and Japan’s island chain. Yet at present it has only one fairly good port – Vladivostok. As long as Japan remains a first-class power, she bottles up Siberia.
Russia is also vitally interested in Manchuria. The Chinese Eastern Railroad shortcut between Chita, on the Trans-Siberian, and Vladivostok crosses Manchuria, now a puppet of Japan. Russia built the Chinese Eastern but Japan cheated her out of it when Russia was weak. The warm water port, Port Arthur, on the Yellow Sea, once belonged to Russia but now is Japanese.
These are just some of Russia’s interests in East Asia. So, make no mistake about it: Russia intends to sit at the peace table when Japan is liquidated. This means she must come into the war, When, however, is another story. Russia certainly will do her own timing and neither the Soviet-Jap pact nor any pressure which we might try to bring on her is likely to affect it in the least.
Wounded on cots lowered to sea as carrier burns
Life preservers keep improvised rafts afloat and many are rescued but ship is lost
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Nimitz commands from Guam base
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Veto power still factor on peace move
Allies may adopt British proposal
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Power-hungry men to be curbed
Big Three to aid liberated nations
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