I DARE SAY —
Echoes of the thunder
By Florence Fisher Parry
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Fiesta of fraternization as Yanks meet Reds
Russians lecture sloppy U.S. writers
By William H. Stoneman
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Russians joyful over juncture
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In Washington –
Bigger meat subsidies demanded by senators
Amendments to price control extension threatened as committee cracks whip
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Pittsburgh girl singer kills Jap
But she was merely trying out machine gun for thrill while entertaining in Pacific
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Crashed plane’s gas supply probed
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SUICIDE OF HITLER NEAR, CAPTURED SPOKESMAN SAYS
End of war few days off, Dittmar claims
Reports Goebbels also in Berlin
By Clinton B. Conger, United Press staff writer
MAGDEBURG, Germany – Adolf Hitler will kill himself or be killed in Berlin within a few hours or days and the war will end, Lt. Gen. Kurt Dittmar, German High Command spokesman, said in his final war commentary – in American custody.
Dittmar, who surrendered to the Ninth Army on the Elbe River Wednesday, told his captors that Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels were in Berlin and will die there.
Dittmar said:
The war will end in a few days. Hitler will either be killed or he will commit suicide. One of three generals – von Brauchitsch, Guderian, or von Rundstedt – will take control and will make peace immediately on almost any terms.
Talks of redoubts
The elegantly-uniformed general outlined the war situation for correspondents, just as he used to do for Radio Berlin listeners when the Nazi Army was overrunning Europe.
Asked about the Bavarian redoubt, he said, there’s talk about it and the map will now you that to pockets are being formed, one in the north including Norway and Denmark and one in the south in the Alps and Italy. But that is probably less by intention than by force of circumstance.
Al any rate, he thought, the war could not last after the fall of Berlin.
Fears reprisals
Dittmar first crossed the Elbe with a white flag of truce at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday with a major and two enlisted men, who rowed his boat. He tried to arrange for the evacuation of civilians and wounded soldiers in the path of the Russian advance, and when he was refused, he returned to the river bank.
Two and a half hours later, Dittmar returned to surrender accompanied by his 16-year-old son, Bernhardt.
“It occurred to me the highest command might learn I had been here and I was worried about reprisals,” he explained.
Rome awaits return of Duce
ROME, Italy (UP) – The Italian capital today eagerly awaited the return of its chief balcony performer Benito Mussolini whom patriots claimed to have captured in Northern Italy.
Confirmation of Mussolini’s arrest was still lacking, but the Italians were already planning his swansong performance in Rome – a trial for collaboration for which the penalty is death.
The Rome radio said that Mussolini and his cohorts captured with him would be tried by a people’s court. However, it was believed the United Nations War Crimes Commission might have something to say about that.
Editorial: ‘So long’
He squatted at his typewriter, struggling again to array a troop of sturdy words that would serve his mood.
There were many words in his mind; but the ones he wanted had to come from his heart. And his heart was brooding, for another of his friends was dead. As man to man, he wanted to call out, “So long,” in an hour when so many were dying, so many that anything less than death was beginning to seem incredible.
The words came from his typewriter, slowly, but firmly and sincerely. They spoke of the terror of death and the way it can grip a man; and at the end they said: “I know that he, like myself, had come to feel that terror.”
Ernie Pyle snapped shut the lid on his typewriter. His story was done. It proved to be his last. Ernie had said: “So long.”
And so, with great sorrow, we print Ernie Pyle’s final column today.