Bendix talks ‘hard’ but he’s a baby’s man
Radio’s Riley is proud dad
By Si Steinhauser
…
Soldier who gave life to save leader honored
WASHINGTON (UP) – Pvt. Elmer E. Fryar has been awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing his life to save his platoon leader after single-handedly killing 27 Japs in a rifle duel on Leyte last December.
The medal will be presented to his father, George Fryar of Denver.
The platoon leader was Lt. Norvis L. Davis of Wells, Nevada.
CBS report of German ceasefire, 6:30 p.m. EWT:
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (May 5, 1945)
FROM
(A) SHAEF MAIN
ORIGINATOR
PRD, Communique Section
DATE-TIME OF ORIGIN
051100B May
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 MAIN
(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) SHAEF MAIN
(20) HQ SIXTH ARMY GP
(21) WOIA FOR OWI WASHINGTON FOR RELEASE TO COMBINED US AND CANADIAN PRESS AND RADIO AT 0900 HOURS GMT
(22) AFHQ, ROME FOR PWB
(REF NO.)
NONE
(CLASSIFICATION)
IN THE CLEAR
Communiqué No. 392
UNCLASSIFIED: All German armed forces in northwest Germany, Holland and Denmark, including the garrisons on Helgoland and the Frisian Islands, have surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces. Hostilities ceased at 0800 hours British Double Summer Time, today.
Enemy shipping off Wangerooge and Flensburg, in Kiel ford and Eckernfoerde Bay and south of the Aero Island, was attacked yesterday by fighter-bombers and rocket-firing fighters. Attacks were made on large- and medium-sized surface vessels as well as on smaller craft and barges, and also on submarines. Seven ships were sunk and more than 70 damaged.
Airfields at Leck, Husum and Grossenbrode were hit by fighter-bombers which also attacked motor transport in the Schleswig Holstein area north of Bremen.
In the Stendal area, the remnants of two German armies, the Ninth and Twelfth, surrendered to our units.
North of Regen, our forces reached Zelena Lhota in Czechoslovakia. Other elements advanced to a point 22 miles northeast of Regen and ten miles inside the Czechoslovakian border.
Farther south, our units crossed the Czechoslovakian border and reached a point 25 miles northeast of Passau.
In Austria, we are along the west bank of the Muehl River in the area 20 miles northwest of Linz.
North of Linz, our armor cleared Zwettl, Reichenau and Gramastetten and reached Altenberg, three miles northeast of Linz.
Our infantry elements crossed the Inn River at a point eight miles south of Passau and cleared Waizenkirchen, 22 miles to the southeast.
Other infantry units advanced rapidly to clear Sulzbach, 18 miles southwest of Linz.
West of Linz we cleared Ried and Aichkirchen.
Fourteen miles northeast of Salzburg, our units made rapid advances to clear Strasswalchen.
Salzburg surrendered to our mechanized cavalry forces. We captured Berchtesgaden.
To the southwest in Austria, our forces took Innsbruck, and drove through the Brenner Pass to link up at Vipiteno, Italy, with Fifth Army units pushing northward. Other forces fanning out from Innsbruck advanced 18 miles northeast along the Inn River.
Following our juncture in Italy, practically all organized resistance collapsed along a 70-mile front extending from 30 miles east of Austria’s western border with Germany to 15 miles east of Innsbruck.
We took 48,100 prisoners between Salzburg and the Iller River and 1,500 from the Iller River to the Lichtenstein. Prisoners included 14 generals.
Allied forces in the west captured 412,493 prisoners 3 May.
Airfields, railyards and rail and motor transport in southwestern Czechoslovakia and northern Austria, and motor transport between Salzburg and Innsbruck were attacked by fighter-bombers.
In the attacks on airfields a number of aircraft were destroyed on the ground and others were damaged. One enemy aircraft was shot down. Five of our fighter-bombers are missing.
Heavy bombers dropped over 400 long tons of food for the Dutch population in enemy-occupied Holland.
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 FA4655
AUTHENTICATING SIGNATURE
/s/
U.S. Navy Department (May 5, 1945)
CINCPOA Communiqué No. 353
Following and in conjunction with the attempted landings of Japanese troops behind the Tenth Army lines on Okinawa on the night of May 3‑4 (East Longitude Dates) and in coordination with his heavy air attacks of May 3 and 4, the enemy on May 4, launched a general counterattack. Its greatest weight was against the positions of the 7th and 77th Infantry Divisions. This attack was supported by tanks and was preceded by intense artillery fire. Our troops supported by a heavy barrage from Army and Marine artillery and low-level strafing by carrier and Marine aircraft broke up the enemy attacks. Taking advantage of the disorganized state of the enemy’s lines after his failure in these operations, Army and Marine infantrymen resumed the offensive on the morning of May 5 and were advancing at midmorning when elements of the 1st Marine Division began an assault on Hill 187, east of the Asa River Mouth. A total of 3,000 of the enemy were killed during the attacks on May 3‑4, including troops which made landings on our beaches. Five enemy tanks were destroyed.
During the air attacks of May 4, our forces shot down 168 planes over the Okinawa Area including 45 by the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing and 67 by Fast Carrier Forces Patrols. Early in the morning of May 5, a small group of enemy planes approached our forces and bombed the Yontan Airstrip causing no damage.
From the beginning of the Okinawa operation to May 5, the enemy lost 33,462 killed and 700 prisoners of war including 297 labor troops.
The Tenth Army up to May 3, lost 2,337 soldiers and Marines killed. A total of 11,432 were wounded and 514 were missing.
Search Planes of Fleet Air Wing One sank two large tankers in Fusan Harbor, Korea, and damaged a cargo ship south of Fusan on May 4.
Aircraft from escort carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet continued to neutralize airfields in the Sakishima Group on May 4.
Corsairs and Avengers of the 4th MarAirWing and Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force bombed installations in the Palaus on May 5.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 5, 1945)
400,000 Nazi troops give up in Austria
German surrender in Norway may come hourly, enemy says
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
BULLETIN
LONDON, England (UP) – An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 troops of the German Army group defending Austria surrendered unconditionally to Gen. Jacob L. Devers today.
The second mass German surrender in two days collapsed resistance to the American and British forces on the continent except for Norway, Czechoslovakia, and some coastal pockets.
Germans in Czechoslovakia, Eastern Austria and the Dresden-Chemnitz area of Germany were still fighting the Russians.
LONDON, England – Reliable Czechoslovak sources in London said today that a patriot uprising had liberated Prague.
A Nazi report said the German forces in Norway might surrender at “any hour.”
Responsible quarters here said Prague, main bastion of Germany’s southeastern redoubt, had been in the hands of patriots since early this afternoon and the Czechoslovak flag was flying over the capital for the first time since 1939.
The Nazi-controlled Scandinavian Telegraph Bureau reported that Maj. Vidkun Quisling, puppet premier in Norway, had been overthrown and that the German garrison estimated at 250,000 men might give up at any time.
The Swedish newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen said the surrender of German forces in Norway was expected today. “Agreement has already been reached” between the Allied and German authorities, it said, and “only technical details in connection with the evacuation of troops” remained.
The Exchange Telegraph News Agency said unconfirmed reports indicated the Nazis were negotiating for the withdrawal of all German troops, totaling from 500,000 to 750,000, from Czechoslovakia.
The last big pockets of German resistance in Europe are in Norway and in and around Czechoslovakia. The loss of these last major citadels would leave only tiny enemy nests scattered around the fringe of the continent from Latvia to the French ports to the Aegean.
Already the war was ended in Denmark, Holland and Northwest Germany with the formal surrender of one million German troops. Developments occurred so fast that even as this capitulation to the British became effective, attention was already focused on the possible fall of other zones.
One vague and roundabout report even said that Josef Terboven, Reich Commissar in Norway, had offered to surrender his forces unconditionally. It was accepted with some reserve pending more authoritative accounts.
If Prague had indeed fallen, it appeared to herald the collapse of the Germans’ southern pocket. The Germans had already shown signs of being willing to be rid of Czechoslovakia. They declared Prague a “hospital city” – presumably open city not to be defended against the Allies.
Other evidence of Nazi disintegration in the south came in the form of a German High Command report that the U.S. Third Army had captured Linz, Austria’s third largest city. The report as contained in a communiqué broadcast from Flensburg on the Danish border was not confirmed immediately.
The German-controlled Oslo radio reported heavy fighting between the Danube and Mur Rivers in Austria, and west of St. Poelten. This indicated that the Russian forces west of Vienna were in action.
The German command said the surrender to Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery was arranged on orders of Adm. Karl Doenitz “after an honorable fight lasting nearly six years because the war against the western powers has lost its meaning and results only in the loss of precious German blood.”
But resistance against the Russians “is being continued to save as many Germans as possible from the Bolshevik terror,” the Nazi communiqué said.
“All formations of the armed forces not affected by the truce continue to fight against the attacker,” the High Command communiqué reported.
The reliable London reports of a patriot uprising in over the Nazi-controlled Prague radio.
Radio Prague appealed three times for Czech soldiers and police to hurry to the radio building at 12.45 p.m. (6:45 a.m. ET).
“We need help!” the station cried, a hint that patriots might be attempting to seize the building.
A few seconds later, the station returned to the air with music.
V-E Day was at hand, but whether it was hours, days or weeks away nobody in authority could say. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a formal statement, said the Germans were “thoroughly whipped” and attributed any further resistance to “either their own stupidity or that of the German government.”
A London Daily Mail dispatch said the Allies this weekend may address a final demand to the Germans to surrender unconditionally the remainder of their forces.
Failure of the enemy to accept the ultimatum, the dispatch said, would result in a final big offensive to envelop the enemy pockets. This might take several days, he said, “in which case V-E Day might not come until the middle or end of next week.”
Other unconfirmed reports circulated in London that President Truman, Premier Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill may meet soon in Germany.
All hostilities ceased in Denmark. Holland and Northwest Germany, including the Heligoland Fortress and the Frisian Islands, at 8 a.m. (2 a.m. ET) today in accordance with the enemy’s unconditional surrender yesterday.
Marshal Montgomery. commander of the British 21st Army Group, said upwards of one million troops – “a good egg,” he added – were included in the surrender. It ended the war in Northwest Continental Europe just one week short of five years after the Germans invaded the Lowlands.
Preliminary reports indicated the surrender went into effect everywhere without incident. The German radios at Wilhelmshaven and Bremerhaven, two of the main German ports that fell into Allied hands with the surrender, called on the population to maintain “exemplary calm, order and discipline.”
1,000 fight patriots
In Denmark, nearly 1,000 Danish Nazi police, many of them wanted for trial as collaborationists or war criminals, barricaded themselves in buildings and behind walls in Copenhagen last night. They fired on Danish patriots.
Copenhagen dispatches said all German forces throughout Denmark laid down their arms without incident.
Included in the surrender terms signed by Germany were all naval ships in the great naval bases of Kiel, Wilhelmshaven, Flensburg and Copenhagen. It was likely, however, that all warships in seaworthy condition fled to Norway before the surrender was signed.
Play game
Norwegian sources in London said the Germans appeared to be playing a game of “come and get us.” They believed the enemy would surrender immediately if the Allies sent any sort of force at all to Norway.
“They might give in if Montgomery sailed up Olsofjord in a cruiser,” one Norwegian official said.
Should the Germans decide on a last-ditch stand, six or seven Allied divisions could defeat them in three weeks or less in an amphibious invasion, a Norwegian general said.
It was assumed that Doenitz and possibly Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler went to Norway.
Ask for discipline
A possible clue to German intentions was seen in a broadcast by the Quisling radio in Norway calling on members to maintain calmness and discipline “to prevent Norway from becoming a battlefield.”
“With this end in view, we are prepared to collaborate with all forces willing to do so,” the broadcast said.
The Swedish Foreign Office was understood to be playing a major role in negotiations in Norway. Sweden could hold a big stick over the Germans in Norway by threatening to permit Allied troops to move through Sweden to Norway or even sending her own army against the Nazis.
Close on Linz
In the southeast, Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army was fast closing on the Danube River fortress of Linz, third largest city in Austria, in a bid to link up with the Red Army and complete the encirclement of Czechoslovakia.
The Third Army advanced as much as 38 miles in the past 24 hours. The Americans were within three miles northeast, five miles north, six miles northwest and seven west of Linz. More than 20,000 prisoners, including four lieutenant generals, were captured along the Third Army’s 50-mile front yesterday.
Biting into the Bohemian pocket from the east, two Russian armies attacked on a 110-mile horseshoe-shaped front and bent its prongs to within 150 miles of Prague. They cleared the last German-held portions of Slovakia.
Capture 45,700
Northwest and southwest of Berlin, other Russian forces captured 45,700 prisoners in two fast-shrinking German pockets. U.S. troops on the opposite side of the pockets accepted the surrender of the remnants of two German armies, the Ninth and 12th.
German resistance on the Seventh Army front vanished along a 70-mile stretch from a point 30 miles from the tip of Austria eastward up in the Inn Valley. Berchtesgaden, site of Hitler’s mountainous retreat, was seized without a major fight. Other Seventh Army units linked up with the U.S. Fifth Army in North Italy.
Danish Nazis resist despite surrender
Patriots battling 1,000 policemen
By the United Press
Danish Nazi police, defying the German surrender of Denmark, fought Danish patriots and German Army troops in Copenhagen today.
An estimated 1,000 of the police barricaded themselves in buildings and streets for a last desperate burst of violence even as Denmark was celebrating liberation from the German yoke.
A Stockholm dispatch said German warships shelled the Oesterbro quarter of Copenhagen for 25 minutes beginning at 10 a.m. – well past the surrender hour – and 10 persons were killed and several wounded.
Appeals for protection
The dispatch said shooting was still going on in several sections of the premises of Dr. Werner Best, Nazi envoy to Denmark, after he appealed for protection.
Radio Kalundborg reported that Danish police forces had captured the German Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen.
Another Kalundborg report said King Christian had broadcast asking “everyone to remain united in order to build up a new free and secure Denmark.”
Parliament to meet
Exchange Telegraph reported from Copenhagen that the Danish Parliament would be convoked as soon as possible. The dispatch said a new penal law would reinstate the death penalty for the first time in 50 years to deal with collaborationists.
The British radio reported Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had recognized Lt. Gen. Edward Gortz as commander-in-chief of the resistance movement in Denmark.
The Danish Freedom Council warned the population to leave the work of arresting collaborationists to members of the resistance movement. It told those “who fear the anger of the population” to give themselves up for their own safety.
Premier broadcasts
The new premier, Vilhelm Buhl, in another broadcast called for “calm and worthy behavior toward German troops and refugees.”
The Danish patriots were fighting side by side with their sworn enemies of 24 hours ago, German Army troops, to subdue the Danish Nazi police.
Twenty-five persons were killed or wounded in the first few hours. Fires broke out in a number of places, especially in the harbor area, as result of the fighting.
Traitors listed
The Nazi police, known as Hipomen, disregarded Germany’s unconditional surrender of Denmark. Perhaps because they faced later execution as war criminals, they decided to sell their lives as dearly as possible.
A Stockholm dispatch said 3,500 fully-armed and trained Danish military police were expected to leave from Sweden for Denmark momentarily, taking with them a list of 7,000 Danish collaborationists wanted for trial.
The fighting, scattered throughout Copenhagen, marred joyful celebrations of Denmark’s liberation. Nazi bullets killed several civilians among the tens of thousands marching through the capital’s streets, singing and cheering.
Halt Jap envoy
Crowds halted an auto in which the Jap minister to Copenhagen was attempting to escape from the city. When patriots discovered he was hiding a machine-pistol in the car, they forced him to leave the vehicle and walk home.
Copenhagen’s five-year blackout ended spontaneously. Big warehouses, office buildings, newspapers and private buildings switched on floodlights and unfurled flags in their glare despite a century-old tradition that the banner should not be flown at night.
Go to castle
Thousands of persons converged on the Royal Castle. They carried flags and flowers and sang the national anthem and Allied war songs.
Despite the clamor of the crowd, Christian failed to appear on the balcony. An aide appeared in his place and explained that the King was “too deeply moved to appear personally.”
“He thanks you for your splendid enthusiasm and asks everyone to go home peacefully,” the aide said.
Direct report from inside Germany –
Most Germans believe Hitler died July 20 in army bomb plot
People, troops wanted only to escape Reds and give up to Americans and British
By Edward W. Beattie Jr.
Since last September, United Press war reporter Edward W. Beattie Jr. has been inside Germany – a prisoner of war. He was captured while going up to an advanced Allied combat position to cover a story. Yesterday he came out of Luckenwalde Prison Camp, which had been overrun by the Russians, and was flown back to Paris. The following dispatch is the most recent and most reliable report on the dying days of the Reich.
PARIS, France – I do not know the answer to the mystery of Adolf Hitler. But I can tell you what a good proportion of the German people – front frontline troops to village housewives – think about it.
They think he has been dead since July 20, 1944.
They think the bomb plot against Hitler, hatched by German Army officers, succeeded. They think Heinrich Himmler and a small group of his henchmen seized control of Germany after July 20 and kept it in the war.
Few Germans believe the story their own propagandists put out – that Hitler died in battle as the Russians closed in against the heart of Berlin. The ones who do believe that are Nazi fanatics who also believe they can go underground and continue the fight against the Allies for years.
Don’t care about Hitler
For the last few weeks, no Germans with whom I talked cared where Hitler was. They didn’t care whether he was dead or alive.
The only thing they cared about was getting themselves into position to surrender to the Americans or the British.
At the Luckenwalde Camp, the German guards talked frankly about what they intended to do when the Russians came.
They said they would fire one token volley and then run. Actually, they didn’t wait to do that. They fled before the Russians ever got there and turned the camp over to those of us who were prisoners.
The average German soldier seems to have realized as early as last fall that he was fighting in a lost cause.
I say that because there were two weeks after I was captured that I was forced to live in the battlefield with a unit of the German Army.
Surrounded by Allies
We were surrounded by Allied troops southwest of Epinal on the western approaches to the Vosges. For transportation we had a strange convoy of French autos and most of the daylight hours we were strafed by Allied planes.
One day I tried to buy a bottle of schnapps from a French distiller and offered him Allied occupation money in payment. He finally took it when some of my German captors told him:
“The Americans will be here in two days or so.”
I knew then that the Germans knew they were licked.
My captors finally broke out of the Allied trap and then I was shuttled from place to place. In these travels I came into contact with all types of Germans from Foreign Office officials to victims of Gestapo torture. Almost all of them were blaming Hitler and the Nazi regime for their troubles and the remark that was made most often to me was: “We are victims of our leadership.”
One day last November I was taken into the office of Dr. Paul Schmidt, head of the Press Section of the German Foreign Office.
Learned Nazi plans
Obviously, he was trying to get information out of me, but in the course of our conversation he let out some interesting information himself. What he outlined to me was Germany’s grand strategy for the remainder of the war.
He said quite frankly that Germany had no chance to drive the Americans and British back out of France into the sea. But he insisted that the German Army could keep the Western Allies out of Germany through the winter and, in the spring, start a tremendous offensive against the Russians.
German hopes fade
“This offensive," he said, “will shatter the Russians’ propaganda front line and roll up their last-ditch army. Then we will force England and the United States into a compromise peace.”
They clung to that hope until January. Then the Russians made their great breakthrough and threw all of Eastern Germany into chaos.
Then the German propagandists made one last attempt. They circulated a story that Marshal Semyon Timoshenko had led a revolt against Marshal Joseph Stalin and had seized the great military base of Smolensk. This coup, the German propagandists told their people, had split the Russians’ Eastern Front and deprived the northern end of it of supplies.
Beginning of end
The onrushing Red Army cave the lie to such propaganda. Then the tide really began running heavily against the Germans.
The Allies crossed the Rhine. The Russians rolled up to the Oder. Secret weapons promised to the German soldier never appeared. But as late as three weeks ago, an SS agent, who claimed to be a Swiss doctor, was circulating through our prison camp at Luckenwalde, trying to persuade American and British prisoners to sign a round-robin letter denouncing the “Red Evil.” Shortly before the Russians arrived, he disappeared.
Now the German panic is on. The fear of the Russians has caused groups of armed Germans, numbering as many as 100, to try to surrender to American prisoners of war who were still deep inside Russian-occupied Germany.
Body of Hitler reported hidden
Frick, high Nazi, seized in Bavaria
LONDON, England (UP) – Adolf Hitler’s body has been hidden so well that it will never be found, Nazi Propagandist Hans Fritzsche told his Russian captors today.
Radio Moscow said Fritzsche, deputy German propaganda minister taken prisoner in Berlin, asserted that the Fuehrer’s corpse had been concealed in an “undiscoverable place.”
Neither Hitler’s body nor that of Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels had been found in Berlin, Moscow said. Red Army troops who attempted to search the ruined Chancellery in Berlin were driven back by fires.
Frick captured
But two other prize Nazis have fallen into American hands:
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Dr. Wilhelm Frick, German minister without portfolio, Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and Heinrich Himmler’s predecessor as interior minister.
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Max Amann, deputy to Himmler, chief of the Nazi Party publishing department and publisher of Mein Kampf.
Taken in Bavaria
Frick, 68, probably the highest Nazi Party and German government official yet imprisoned by the Allies, was captured Wednesday at his Bavarian country estate by U.S. troops.
Amann was captured by the U.S. Seventh Army not far from Hitler’s home at Berchtesgaden, a BBC broadcast said.
The London Daily Express said today that “latest unconfirmed and unofficial reports” were that Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, Nazi Party Chief Martin Bormann and other Nazi bigwigs “may be on their way to Japan by U-boat.”
Adolf’s ‘intuition’ good in war, Rundstedt asserts
Ex-Nazi commander says Hitler ordered drive in Ardennes – Japs no help, marshal declares
…
V-E Day to end dimout order
WASHINGTON (UP) – The nationwide dimout will be lifted immediately after President Truman formally declares that the war in Europe is over.
The dimout, which has darkened the country’s shop windows, outdoor advertising and theater marquees since February 1, was ordered to save coal.
J. A. Krug, War Production Board chairman, warned, however, that it may be necessary to reissue the dimout order next fall if coal stacks have not been raised to a satisfactory level.
Civilians crawling from cellars of Berlin
Reds disband Nazi Party and subsidiaries – population warned on hostile activity
By Roman Karmen
The following dispatch from Berlin was written exclusively for the United Press by Roman Karmen, noted Russian war reporter.
BERLIN, Germany (UP) – The barricades of Berlin are being torn down today.
Quiet reigns in the city. The people themselves are demolishing the barricades which are present literally at every step. At many intersections they are dug-in tanks and guns that are silent forever.
Berliners, reassured that the war is over, are crawling from cellars and moving their belongings back from the basements to upper floors.
Streets obliterated
Law and order prevail. Only now that the whole city is occupied have I been able to traverse it from one end to another to see the terrific scale of the devastation caused by bombings. Entire streets are obliterated.
Berliners told me that the civilians suffered enormous casualties. In many cases hundreds of inhabitants were killed by the bomb.
Col. Gen. Berzarin, military commandant and chief of the Soviet garrison, has ordered the population to stay pout to preserve order. The Nazi Party and all subsidiary organizations have been disbanded and their activity outlawed.
Ordered to register
Within 72 hours of the publication of the order, all members of the German Army, the SS and the Storm Troops remaining in Berlin must register. Executives of all enterprises of the party, the Gestapo, the police, security battalions, prisons, and all other state organizations must personally appear at regional commandants’ offices.
All public utilities, electricity, waterworks, sewage, municipal transport, hospital good stores and bakeries have been ordered to resume service. The personnel of those organizations are required to remain at their jobs.
Until further notice, the previous rationing system remains in force. Owners and managers of banks are forbidden temporarily to engage in any operations. Their strongboxes and sales are to be sealed and immediate reports submitted to commandants. All employees of banks are forbidden to remove any valuables.
Told to yield arms
The population has been ordered to surrender to the commandant all arms, ammunition, explosives, motorcars, motorcycles and radio equipment. All printing shops are sealed.
The population has been warned it is fully responsible for any hostile activity against the Red Army or Allied troops, and culprits will be court-martialed.
Soviet troops can billet only in places selected by the commandant. Red Army personnel are forbidden to remove civilian property or search private citizens without orders of the commandant.
‘WHEN DO OUR LEAVES START?’ BRITISH VICTORS ASK
Germans sign surrender in tent on moor
‘This is good moment,’ Montgomery says
By Richard D. McMillan, United Press staff writer
MARSHAL MONTGOMERY’S HQ – “The war is all over, boys” was the jubilant Tommy’s reaction as news spread through the British ranks of the surrender of a million Germans in Holland, Denmark, and Northern Germany.
“When do our V-Day leaves for old Blighty start?” the troops wanted to know.
They said they knew surrender was in air “after seeing all those masses of Germans passing into our lines and surrendering on all sides. We knew it was the collapse of the Wehrmacht. They couldn’t fight on. Now it’s a walkover.”
‘The moment’
This indeed was “the moment,” as Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery called it when he signed the surrender agreement with the Germans here on Lueneburg Heath at 6:30 last night.
The formal ceremony was in a tent on the moorland here, a tent atop which a British flag flew in the cold breeze blowing in from the North Sea.
But the first act was in Monty’s trailer. The chief German delegate, Adm. von Friedeburg (commander-in-chief of the German Navy), stepped into the trailer to tell the Marshal they had decided to accept the terms. He wore a gray, oilskin coat over his naval uniform and he was white-faced and walked stiffly.
First came Thursday
The Germans had first come here Thursday to ask the terms. Before the signing, Marshal Montgomery outlined them to us – complete and unconditional surrender of all the German land, sea and air forces facing the British. That meant the Germans in Holland, Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and the Frisian Islands, including Heligoland.
That was what the Germans had come to accept. While Marshal Montgomery and von Friedeburg talked inside four other German delegates waited under the huge camouflage net overlapping the trailer. They were heavy-jowled monocled Gen. Kinsel, chief of staff to Field Marshal Ernst Busch (commander of the northern armies), Rear Adm. Wagner, one of von Friedeburg’s staff officers, and a Maj. Friede, an intelligence officer on von Friedeburg’s staff.
A Col. Polek represented Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, second only to Fuehrer Doenitz in the command of German forces.
Walk to tent
After a few minutes, von Friedeburg came out of the trailer and walked to the nearby tent. A few moments later, Marshal Montgomery followed, walking at a leisurely pace.
“This is a good moment,” he said as he passed us.
Marshal Montgomery was smiling as he entered the tent, sat down, and motioned the Germans to be seated. He stood there nonchalantly, with his hands in the pockets of his battledress jacket, while the Germans signed.
When they finished, he said: “That completes the formal surrender. There are various details to be discussed and that will be a closed session.”
Lasts two minutes
Thereupon the correspondents withdrew. The signing was finished at 6.30 p.m. and the whole ceremony lasted only two minutes.
Earlier, Marshal Montgomery revealed that he had told the German delegates if they did not accept the British Second Army was ready to carry on the fight with the greatest effort.
During their first talk, Marshal Montgomery showed von Friedeberg his operations map which revealed the full extent of the German collapse. The admiral wept when he saw it.