Macht und Friede
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Führer HQ (February 18, 1945)
Kommuniqué des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht
Unsere Truppen brachen nördlich der Donau tief in den feindlichen Gran-Brückenkopf ein und stießen bis zum Südufer des Parizskykanals durch. Beiderseits der Straße Losonc–Altsohl und bei Schwarzwasser wurden wiederum Durchbruchsversuche des Gegners verhindert.
Der starke Druck der Bolschewisten nördlich Ratibor sowie zwischen Strehlen und Kanth dauert an. Unsere Truppen vereitelten jedoch jeden größeren Erfolg des Feindes. Gegen die Front zwischen Lauban und Crossen an der Oder greifen die Sowjets weiter an. Der gegen die Süd- und Südwestfront der Festung Breslau angreifende Gegner wurde in harten Kämpfen abgeschlagen.
In Südpommern wurden im Angriff feindliche Stellungen durchstoßen und Gefangene eingebracht. In der Tucheler Heide und westlich Graudenz leisten unsere Truppen den mit verstärkten Kräften angesetzten feindlichen Durchbruchsversuchen erbitterten Widerstand. Auf ostpreußischem Gebiet ließ die Kampftätigkeit etwas nach. Versuche des Feindes, die Front in den bisherigen Brennpunkten aufzuspalten, wurden auch gestern nach Vernichtung von 38 Panzern vereitelt.
Starke feindliche Angriffe südöstlich Libau und nordwestlich Dohlen scheiterten. Mehrere Einbrüche wurden abgeriegelt oder im Gegenstoß beseitigt.
Nach dem Festlaufen ihrer Angriffe beiderseits der Straße Kleve–Kalkar verlegte die 1. kanadische Armee am zahnten Tage der Abwehrschlacht zwischen Niederrhein und Maas ihren Angriffsschwerpunkt in den Südteil des Reichswaldes. Unter stärkstem Feuerschutz angreifende Infanterie- und Panzerverbände brachen trotz erneuter Verstärkung nordöstlich Goch im Feuer unserer Waffen zusammen. Westlich davon konnten sie sich nach harten Kämpfen näher an die Stadt heranschieben.
An der Sauer behaupteten unsere Truppen das Kampffeld gegen amerikanische Vorstöße. Teile der 7. amerikanischen Armee traten gestern gegen unseren Brückenkopf südlich Saarbrücken zum Angriff an. Die Kämpfe mit Schwerpunkt beiderseits Forbach halten noch an.
Vor La Rochelle warfen unsere Truppen den Feind aus einem Stellungsabschnitt. Die Besatzung von Gironde-Süd wies einen feindlichen Stoßtrupp ab und brachte Gefangene ein.
In Kroatien blieben Angriffe stärkerer Banden nördlich Mostar in unserem Feuer liegen. Feindliche Übersetzversuche über die Drau nördlich Virovitica wurden zerschlagen.
Die Angriffsziele der anglo-amerikanischen Terrorverbände waren am gestrigen Tage das Rhein-Main-Gebiet und Südostdeutschland. Durch Bombenwürfe entstanden Schäden vor allem in Wohnvierteln von Frankfurt am Main.
London lag unter Vergeltungsfeuer.
Kleinst-Unterseeboote versenkten auf dem feindlichen Geleitweg zwischen Themse- und Schelde-Mündung einen Nachschubfrachter von 3.000 BRT und torpedierten einen weiteren, dessen Untergang wahrscheinlich ist.
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (February 18, 1945)
FROM
(A) SHAEF MAIN
ORIGINATOR
PRD, Communique Section
DATE-TIME OF ORIGIN
181100A February
TO FOR ACTION
(1) AGWAR
(2) NAVY DEPARTMENT
TO (W) FOR INFORMATION (INFO)
(3) TAC HQ 12 ARMY GP
(4) MAIN 12 ARMY GP
(5) AIR STAFF
(6) ANCXF
(7) EXFOR MAIN
(8) EXFOR REAR
(9) DEFENSOR, OTTAWA
(10) CANADIAN C/S, OTTAWA
(11) WAR OFFICE
(12) ADMIRALTY
(13) AIR MINISTRY
(14) UNITED KINGDOM BASE
(15) SACSEA
(16) CMHQ (Pass to RCAF & RCN)
(17) COM ZONE
(18) SHAEF REAR
(19) AFHQ for PRO, ROME
(20) HQ SIXTH ARMY GP
(REF NO.)
NONE
(CLASSIFICATION)
IN THE CLEAR
Communiqué No. 316
UNCLASSIFIED: Southeast of Kleve, the Allied advance has made good progress against stiff opposition. After capturing Louisendorf, our units cut the main road between Kalkar and Goch, bastion town in the Siegfried Line defense belt. We are converging on Goch from the north and northwest, having taken Hervorst and Asperden. Our bridgehead over the Niers River has been further extended, and after clearing the enemy from numerous concrete strongpoints, we captured Hassum and Afferden.
Our forces repulsed a counterattack in the Hermespand area, northeast of Prüm, and our artillery fire broke up a concentration of tanks, vehicles and infantry one mile farther northeast.
Northwest of Echternach, we have entered Rohrbach and Schankweiler, and other elements have reached the high ground northwest of Schankweiler. The bridgehead across the Sauer River at this point is now three and one-half miles in depth.
Along the Echternach-Irrel road, we have made a half-mile gain and have occupied the high ground, two and one-fourth miles northeast of Echternach, overlooking the Prüm River. During this push, our units captured a number of pillboxes against heavy machine gun and mortar fire.
Two enemy attacks were repulsed in the Sarreguemines area, one south of Forbach and another in the vicinity of Rimlingen. One of them was made by armored forces, the other by infantry in battalion strength. Our forces, aided by accurate artillery fire, inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.
Allied forces in the west captured 1,090 prisoners 15 February.
Weather severely restricted air operations in many areas yesterday.
Railroad yards at Frankfurt am Main and Giessen were attacked by heavy bombers. Fighters which provided the escort, and fighter-bombers, struck at transportation targets in the region of Frankfurt and Limburg, and in the Munchen and Ulm areas.
A railway bridge at Mayen spanning the Nette River was attacked by medium bombers.
An enemy troop train near Bitburg, northeast of Echternach was hit by fighter-bombers.
From these operations, two heavy bombers and two fighters are missing.
COORDINATED WITH: G-2, G-3 to C/S
THIS MESSAGE MAY BE SENT IN CLEAR BY ANY MEANS
/s/
Precedence
“OP” - AGWAR
“P” - Others
ORIGINATING DIVISION
PRD, Communique Section
NAME AND RANK TYPED. TEL. NO.
D. R. JORDAN, Lt Col FA2409
AUTHENTICATING SIGNATURE
/s/
U.S. Navy Department (February 18, 1945)
CINCPOA Communiqué No. 262
Battleships’ gunfire damaged defensive installations including three heavily casemated coastal guns knocked out and probably three more damaged during a heavy bombardment of shore defenses on Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands on February 18 (East Longitude Date). The island was under fire of heavy units of the United States Pacific Fleet throughout the day. The bombardment of Iwo Jima on February 16‑17, and 18 was under the immediate tactical direction of RADM W. H. P. Blandy, USN.
Carrier aircraft of the Pacific Fleet damaged sixteen small ships and barges at Chichi Jima in the Bonin Islands on the same date. Four planes were damaged on the ground by strafing attacks and three aircraft at the island seaplane base were strafed. Our planes met intense anti-aircraft fire.
Bombing from low altitude Seventh Army Air Force Liberators operating under the Strategic Air Force attacked airfield and defense installations on Iwo Jima on February 17 setting large fires. Anti-aircraft fire was intense.
StrAirPoa Liberators and Navy search aircraft of Fleet Air Wing One attacked the airdrome on Marcus Island on February 18.
On the same date, aircraft of the same forces attacked airfields of the Truk Atoll meeting only two enemy fighters which were not aggressive.
Corsairs of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing bombed and damaged a pier, warehouses and other targets on Babelthuap in the Palaus on February 16.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 18, 1945)
Yanks seize most of Corregidor
Paratroops, infantry capture key points on Manila Bay fortress
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
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Nimitz silent on reported Iwo landing
Says bombardment continues third day
Action in the Pacific included capture of most of Corregidor Island by Gen. MacArthur’s forces. Tokyo reported an American landing on Iwo Island, but Adm. Nimitz said merely that Iwo was being bombarded for the third day. Meanwhile, U.S. carrier planes carried their raid on Tokyo into a second day. U.S. troops served a surrender ultimatum to Jap troops holed up in Manila. Bataan Peninsula was captured by a combined U.S. landing at Mariveles and advances down the coasts.
PACIFIC FLEET HQ, Guam (UP) – Adm. Chester W. Nimitz announced today that a powerful American battle fleet had carried the bombardment of Iwo Island into a third day.
Tokyo claimed U.S. troops had begun invading that “doorstep” island to Japan, 750 miles south of the Nipponese capital.
U.S. ship damaged
A bulletin issued at 10:30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. Saturday ET) reported that one ship in a task force of Adm. Raymond A. Spruance’s U.S. Fifth Fleet had been damaged by “intense” Jap fire from Iwo, which was being blasted by naval artillery shells or airplane bombs for the 74th consecutive day.
Carrier planes of the attacking force strafed the Bonin Islands of Chichi and Haha north of Iwo, damaging 23 grounded planes and exploding an ammunition barge Friday. Warship anti-aircraft batteries shot down two Jap planes attacking the warship armada in what was the first announced enemy attempt to strike back.
A Berlin broadcast said that Jap headquarters in Tokyo announced that U.S. troops had invaded the Bonin Islands early Saturday. Berlin claimed the Japs damaged two U.S. troop transports and repulsed those landings.
The Bonins comprise 27 major islands, the northernmost of which lies 580 miles south of Tokyo.
Claim attempts repulsed
Tokyo claimed the Americans had attempted to land on the southeastern coast of Iwo at 10:30 a.m. Japanese Time Saturday (9:30 p.m. Friday ET), but were repulsed. Ten minutes later, another force battled ashore at a point two miles to the northeast, the enemy said, without adding at that time any claim to having repulsed it.
A later Tokyo broadcast warned Japan that the situation “warrants us no optimism” because U.S. warships were still massed offshore and “persistently watching for an opportunity to make a landing.”
‘Glorious victory’
The broadcast said the Jap garrison had scored a “glorious victory” in that “not a single enemy has been permitted to land on Iwo Jima yet,” but said “it is apparent that the enemy still has a reinforcement convoy behind him.”
None of Tokyo’s claims were confirmed by Adm. Nimitz although from the scope of the three-day operation it appeared momentous developments were at hand in the Battle of the Pacific.
Adm. Nimitz’s bulletin did not say whether attacks by some 1,200 carrier planes on the Tokyo-Yokohama area of Tokyo were continuing into the third day.
Further reports ‘unavailable’
“Further reports on the attacks on Tokyo by aircraft – are unavailable,” Adm. Nimitz said.
But Tokyo reported that the carrier planes attacked Japan for six hours yesterday – second day of the attack. A high officer here said a radio silence which had blacked out details of the Tokyo assault was “beautiful,” meaning that as long as the Japs did not attack the carriers and escorting warships the American commanders would not break silence.
Indicating the ferocity of the attacks, however, Tokyo admitted it lost 61 planes over the homeland and claimed to have downed or damaged 250 U.S. planes.
Battleships and cruisers
Of the assaults on Iwo, Adm. Nimitz said: “Bombardment of Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands by battleships and cruisers of the Pacific Fleet is continuing.”
He announced that carrier planes, and Army heavy Liberator bombers had joined the attack Friday, going down through intense anti-aircraft fire to deliver their assaults.
The reported landing on Iwo – which lies about the same distance from Tokyo as Bermuda from Washington – would be the first American invasion of the Japanese homeland. The eight-square-mile island in the Volcano group is part of the Tokyo administrative district.
4,197-mile march
Tokyo said the Americans climaxing a 4,197-mile march from Pearl Harbor via Guam and Saipan, smashed into Iwo at two points along a two-mile front.
Covered by bombardment from a fleet of 30 battleships, cruisers and lesser craft, the Americans first tried to land on Futatsune Beach, at the southeastern tip of Iwo, Tokyo said.
“Garrison troops promptly counterattacked and completely smashed the enemy attempt,” Tokyo said.
All U.S. troops withdrew to their transports, Tokyo claimed, but 10 minutes later more invasion craft ground ashore at Kamiyama Beach, two miles northeast of Futatsune.
The enemy claimed that in Friday’s bombardment of Iwo and Saturday’s pre-invasion shelling. Jap shore batteries and warplanes sank an American battleship, two cruisers and two unidentified ships, and damaged three landing ships and shot down 10 planes. The Japanese said the attacking fleet included five battleships and six cruisers.
Iwo, 717 miles north of Saipan, lies 675 miles from Honshu. It is the largest of the Volcano group and 48th island in a chain of 48 which extend southward from Tokyo – all stepping-stones on the road to the Jap capital, third largest city in the world.
Has large airfields
The island has three large airfields and its capture would give the U.S. Army Air Force a base from which to send fighters in escort of B-29 Superfortresses launched on a campaign to blast the industrial heart from the Jap war machine.
Superfortresses taking off from Iwo would cut approximately 1,500 miles from their present flights from the Marianas, enabling them to carry more bombs.
Tokyo said the Kanto area – the metropolitan district of Tokyo and Yokohama – was attacked for six hours by U.S. carrier planes starting at 7 a.m. Saturday.
The Japs reported great air battle southwest of Tokyo.
Tokyo said Friday’s attackers, which dropped approximately 1,000 tons of bombs, concentrated on points deep inland but that the Saturday attacks were mostly around Tokyo and Yokohama. One enemy broadcast reported 600 planes over Japan at one time.
Ultimatum to surrender given to Japs in Manila
Saturday, February 17, 1945
MANILA, Philippines (UP) – Maj. Gen. Oscar W. Griswold, commander of U.S. forces in Manila, today called on Jap troops holding the Intramuros District of South Manila to surrender.
The general asked the enemy to capitulate or permit the evacuation of civilians “in the true spirit of the Bushido and the code of the Samurai.”
Bushido is the name given the unwritten law supposedly governing the conduct of Jap nobles. The Samurai are Jap warriors.
‘Defeat inevitable’
The ultimatum was first sent by public address system and by radio at 3 p.m. Friday and was sent again Saturday morning. The Japs are believed to have received it. But there was some confusion in establishing radio contact with the enemy and the result was doubtful.
The message said:
Your situation is hopeless and your defeat is inevitable.
I offer you honorable surrender. If you decide to accept, raise a large Filipino flag over the Red Cross flag now flying, and send an unarmed emissary with a white flag to our lines. This must be done within four hours, or I am coming it.
In event you do not accept my offer, I exhort you that in the true spirit of the Bushido and the code of the Samurai, you permit all civilians to evacuate the Intramuros by the Victoria Gate without delay, in order that no innocent blood be shed.
The Jap radio replied, but finding a common code proved difficult and the enemy reply was not intelligible.
This morning, the Japs ran up a Red Cross flag, but it was uncertain what this meant.
Ready to blast Japs
U.S. artillerymen, meanwhile, are preparing to blast out the Japs, and are awaiting a final enemy reply before they open fire.
Jap demolitions and American shellfire have wrecked large areas within the Intramuros. West of the city, Manila’s Pier Seven, which was able to care simultaneously for five ocean liners in peacetime, has been damaged severely.
West Wall bases flanked by Canadian breakthrough
Allies cut highway between Goch, Calcar – Nazis may be forced back seven miles
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U.S. merchant ship sunk in North Atlantic
Saturday, February 17, 1945
WASHINGTON (UP) – The Navy announced today that the Steel Traveler, a medium-sized U.S. merchant ship, was sunk by enemy action in the North Atlantic in mid-December.
All but a few crew members were rescued by a French destroyer a half hour after their ship was sunk.
Ernie leaves Marianas –
Pyle believed in on Tokyo raids as first taste of war in Pacific
Preview of Jap POWs makes him creepy
Ernie Pyle has left the Marianas on his long trip to the Pacific front and last reports from him indicated that he is now aboard an American aircraft carrier – probably participating in one of the great naval actions now going in the Pacific.
“Covering this Pacific war is, for me, going to be like learning to live in a new city,” Ernie cabled from Honolulu. “The methods of war, the attitude toward it, the homesickness, the distances, the climate – everything is different from what we have known as the European War.”
Famous as the correspondent who has best pictured G.I. Joe in the campaigns in Africa, Sicily, Italy and France, Ernie finds the Pacific war an experience so new that he is constantly amazed.
And because he is a greenhorn in the Pacific, he has started to reveal the little details of that vast conflict which impress him and which will picture it to American readers as it has not been pictured before.
From Honolulu, Ernie’s first stop on his assignment with the Navy, he cabled:
Distance is the main thing. I don’t mean distance from America so much, for our war in Europe is a long way from home too. I mean distances after you get right on the battlefield.
For the whole western Pacific is our battlefield now, and whereas distances in Europe are hundreds of miles at most, out here they are thousands. And there’s nothing in between but water.
You can be on an island battlefield, and the next thing behind you is a thousand miles away. One soldier told me the worst sinking feeling he ever had was when they had landed on an island and were fighting, and on the morning of D-3 he looked out to sea and it was completely empty. Our entire convoy had unloaded and left for more, and boy, did it leave you with a lonesome and deserted feeling.
Hundreds of people daily travel the 3,500 miles between Pearl Harbor and the Marianas, Ernie wrote, “as casually as you’d go to work in the morning.”
The days are warm and on our established island bases the food is good and the mail service is fast and there’s little danger from the enemy and the days go by in their endless sameness and they drive you nuts. They sometimes call it going “pineapple crazy.”
Our high rate of returning mental cases is discussed frankly in the island and service newspapers. A man doesn’t have to be under fire in the front lines finally to have more than he can take without breaking.
And another adjustment I’ll have to make is the attitude toward the enemy. In Europe, we felt our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people.
But out here I’ve already gathered the feeling that the Japanese are looked upon as something unhuman and squirmy – like some people feel about cockroaches or mice.
I’ve seen one group of Japanese prisoners in a wire-fenced courtyard, and they were wrestling and laughing and talking just as humanly as anybody. And yet they gave me a creepy feeling, and I felt in need of a mental bath after looking at them.
In the Marianas, from whence he later flew to join the aircraft carrier, Ernie cabled that “we are far, far away from everything that was home or seemed like home.”
He wrote:
The Pacific names are all new to me too, all except the outstanding ones. For those fighting one war do not pay much attention to the other war. Each one thinks his war is the worst and the most important war. And unquestionably it is.
We came to the Marianas by airplane from Honolulu. The weather was perfect, and yet so long and grinding was the journey that it eventually became a blur, and at the end I could not even remember what day we had left Honolulu, although actually it was only the day before.
We came in the same kind of plane that brought us from California – a huge four-motored Douglas transport, flown by the Naval Air Transport Service.
Our first step was at Johnston Island, four hours out from Honolulu. As it came into view, I was shocked at how tiny it is. It is hardly bigger than a few airplane carriers lashed together, and it hasn’t got a tree on it.
Yet it has been developed into an airfield that will take the biggest planes, and several hundred Americans live and work there.
From Johnston Island another long hop, this time at night, and then Ernie wrote:
Suddenly there were lights smack underneath us, lights of what seemed a good-sized little town, and then at last we were on the ground in an unbelievably hustling airport, teeming with men and planes and lights. The place was Kwajalein.
That’s not hard to pronounce if you don’t try too hard. Just say “Kwa-juh-leen.” It’s in the Marshall Islands. There, during last March and April, American soldiers and Marines killed 10,000 Japanese, and opened our island stepping-stone path straight across the mid-Pacific.
Even today our Seabees can’t dig a trench for a sewer pipe without digging up dead Japanese. But even so the island is transformed, as we so rapidly transform all our islands that are destroyed in the taking. It is a great air base now.
Ernie Pyle is fortunately participating in the Navy’s greatest Pacific actions. His dispatches from the aircraft carrier to which he is now attached will appear in The Pittsburgh Press daily. Watch for tomorrow’s Pyle story.
War-inflated payrolls here start to drop
Peak was reached last summer
By Dale McFeatters, Press business editor
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Forced into marriage, naval lieutenant says
Commanding officer’s wife threatened him with court-martial, pilot charges
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Washington believes –
Nazi home front collapsing, but army will fight longer
Civil government breaks down – ration system fails – half of coal supply lost
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Army’s draft of job-quitters faces fight in Senate
4-Fs inducted under work-or-fight order will be sent to camps in Illinois
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