U.S. destroyer sunk off Guam
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Churchill mutters at Hitler death scene
BERLIN, Germany (UP) – Prime Minister Churchill bit hard on his inevitable cigar swung his cane and stared unsmilingly today at a shallow, rubble-drawn pit in the courtyard of the Chancellery.
“That,” a British correspondent volunteered, “is where the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun supposedly were burned.”
Mr. Churchill muttered under his breath and turned away. Just what he said was not clear. The handful of persons who heard the mutter decided it carried more of a tone of disgust than disbelief in Hitler’s death.
Sensational rumor: Hitler’s still alive
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (UP) – The newspaper Morgen-Tidningen reported today that a “sensational rumor” was circulating in Bern, Switzerland, that Adolf Hitler was hiding in the principality of Liechtenstein under the name of “Dr. Brandl.”
Hitler, according to the rumor, had changed his appearance.
Hitler’s escape, the newspaper said, quoting the Bern rumors, was prepared long ago and included the careful staging of Hitler’s and Eva Braun’s suicide in Berlin chancellery bunker.
Truman likely to rush home from Berlin
Believed to have canceled tour plans
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
WASHINGTON – President Truman is believed to have canceled plans for a Western European tour to return to Washington immediately after the Big Three conference.
There have been published reports that he would visit Denmark, Norway and Great Britain before returning here.
Less definite, but certainly under consideration, were plans for further extensive air travel. There was reason to believe the party might have gone at least into the Eastern Mediterranean.
Dinner coats ordered
It was to have been a strictly plush operation, too. Astonished press association reporters chosen to accompany the presidential party across the Atlantic were directed to take with them not only dinner coats but white ties and tails. There was suspicion at first that it was a gag. Then there was despair because tailcoats were hard to find in Washington.
Other correspondents who desired to fly to Europe after the Big Three conference to join the presidential party were advised that the cost of their journey might reach $5,000.
Enthusiasm dims
The enthusiasm and number of travel-candidates immediately began to diminish. Now the few who are willing to lay out the $5,000 are being told that post-conference travel plans are being reconsidered and probably will be abandoned.
The President reversed himself in mid-ocean, which was approximately his position when word spread that he might curtail his journey.
The most inviting speculation about the President’s new plans concerned the possibility that Japan may be nearer unconditional surrender than has been assumed. Supporting this theory is the U.S. fleet bombardment of Japan which has been going on for several days.
Early victory doubted
Opposing that line of thought is the fact that several senior military officers have said recently that the Pacific war is far from over.
If Mr. Truman decided to hurry home in expectation of the early collapse of Jap resistance, then there evidently has been some authoritative communication from Japan within the last few days. If so, that fact scarcely can be long concealed.
Congressional recess plans presumably would have to be changed if Japan is about to quit. The House will recess Saturday until October 1, according to the present schedule. The Senate will quit when it has disposed of the United Nations Charter, perhaps by the end of next week.
Simms: History’s greatest decisions slated at Big Three meeting
Potsdam session to test workability of United Nations conference rules
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
WASHINGTON (SHS) – Through President Truman at the Big Three meeting at Potsdam, the people of the United States are about to make some of the most important decisions in all their history.
Not even the 1815 Congress of Vienna faced such tremendous issues. The Napoleonic wars of 130 years ago left Europe comparatively intact. Today nearly the entire continent is a shambles, materially, morally and politically. And the world’s future depends on whether President Truman, Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin can lay the foundations for a new structure.
Must agree on rules
This means, so far as the American people are concerned, that the President must commit the United States to international cooperation far beyond anything ever before contemplated, let alone attempted.
Actually the Big Three meeting at Potsdam is more important than the United Nations Conference at San Francisco. At San Francisco, rules were formulated for safeguarding the future peace. Potsdam will largely determine whether or not the San Francisco rules will, in fact, be workable
What is widely overlooked is that peace terms have yet to be agreed upon. In fact, there is considerable doubt that a full-dress peace conference will be held. Already some of the Allies have made unilateral and bilateral decisions vitally affecting the peace, often without bothering to consult other interested parties. Potsdam will have to review these faits accompli and reconcile them, if possible, with decisions yet to be made.
8 points to consider
The Big Three must also consider:
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What is to be done with Germany and the German people; Europe’s new boundaries; whether vast populations are to be shifted from one area to another and, if so, where and how; how to govern what is left of Germany and whether it will be Sovietized or democratized.
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Allied policy with regard to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Lativa, Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and the Middle East, Hungary and Austria.
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The role of France in Europe. Up to the present, France has been absent from these meetings despite the fact that she will play a vital role in the world, especially in Western Europe.
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Problems presented by Italy and Italian colonies.
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Allied policy toward Spain, Switzerland and other neutrals.
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The question of lifting the news blackout now virtually complete in zones occupied or controlled by Soviet Russia.
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European relief – social, financial and economic; and possibly–
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Russo-Japanese neutrality. This would entail a review of the Cairo pronouncement of Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek regarding Manchuria, Korea and other Japanese conquests and also of Russia’s China policy in the light of the recent Soong discussions in Moscow.
Small nations voiceless
Setting the fate of small nations without letting them be heard admittedly is an anachronism after a war which presumably was fought partly in defense of the sovereignty of small nations. And much has been said about the autocratic behavior of the Big Fur (Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia) at the Congress of Vienna. But there the little nations were at least permitted to talk, even if they were not always listened to.
At Potsdam, it seems, the little peoples of the world will be more or less voiceless – unless, that is, President Truman speaks up for them as some believe he may. He knows public opinion in America would not long support the use of force to perpetuate an unjust peace.
The diary of Count Ciano –
Early Jap successes frightened Germans into steps to peace
Nazis saw Pacific war as clash between yellow, white races; Duce favored Nips
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Shapiro: Who’s ‘the brain’?
By L. S. B. Shapiro
BERLIN, Germany – Security precautions instituted for the Big Three Conference have been intensified as a result of sinister underground developments uncovered among the apparently prostrate and docile German population.
American war crimes investigation officers working closely with British and Canadian field security sections have discovered the existence of several Nazi underground movements, at least one of which is nationwide in scope and is organized on the imaginative scale of a Conan Doyle thriller.
Somewhere in Germany there is one man whose identity is camouflaged as thoroughly as is humanly possible, and who alone knows all the ramifications of this nationwide secret organization.
Allied authorities are aware of his existence and of that or this movement. As yet, he has not begun operations, but his influence is being felt and German democrats are freely warning the Allies that the current quiet may be replaced by highly organized violence on the part of the underground before the end of this war.
Patriots ‘spill the beans’
The known history of this organization reveals its potential danger. as far back as 1942, a special Gestapo commission was formed to study the resistance methods of the French, Russian and Polish undergrounds, to examine the reasons for their success and analyze the failure of German countermeasures against them in order that a foolproof German underground might be quickly organized if and when necessary.
The report of this commission has now become the bible and constitution of the new Nazi terroristic underground being prepared for action.
Allied investigators have come up against the first concrete results of the Gestapo study. Experience taught the Gestapo that “properly interrogated” French or Polish patriots often revealed the whole network of their organizations and made possible crushing countermeasures.
Now, in the new German organization, the cardinal rule is that each cell works in complete independence of the others, and knows nothing of the identity or even of the existence of other cells who may be operating close by. Only one supreme leader knows all and directs all.
Not being underestimated
This melodramatic arrangement is not being underestimated by the Allied authorities. In addition to many unapprehended SS and Gestapo thugs assumed to be in hiding, there is one other frightening fact: stock-taking of captured or surrendered German armament reveals that one-third of the nation’s small arms – from pistols to heavy machine guns – have, as yet, been unaccounted for. Undoubtedly the men of the new Nazi underground movement will be heavily armed, and because they know the death penalty must inevitably follow their capture, they will snoot it out to the finish if caught.
This already has happened when our security troops discovered a buried munitions dump.
A great army of Allied police is now scouring Germany in an effort to uproot this organization before it can get started. For these men, the last and most desperate battle of Germany has not yet really begun.