Innsbrucker Nachrichten (May 2, 1945)
Aus dem Führerhauptquartier, 1. Mai – Unser Führer Adolf Hitler ist heute nachmittags in seinem Befehlsstand in der Reichskanzlei, bis zum letzten Atemzuge gegen den Bolschewismus kämpfend, für Deutschland gefallen.
Am 30. April hat der Führer den Großadmiral Donitz zu seinem Nachfolger ernannt.
Der Großadmiral ist der Nachfolger des Führers.
In San Franzisko erlitten die Sowjets wieder Niederlagen – Stalin antwortet Truman nicht
…
Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (May 2, 1945)
FROM
(A) SHAEF MAIN
ORIGINATOR
PRD, Communique Section
DATE-TIME OF ORIGIN
021100B 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 U.S. & CANADIAN PRESS AT 0900 HOURS GMT
(22) AHFQ, ROME FOR PWB
(REF NO.)
NONE
(CLASSIFICATION)
IN THE CLEAR
UNCLASSIFIED: Allied forces advanced seven miles beyond Leer to Hesel. We are two miles from the outskirts of Oldenburg.
West of Hamburg we occupied Horneburg and Stade meeting no resistance. The Elbe bridgehead, east of Hamburg, is now 30 miles in length and armor has broken out to the north. We captured Geesthacht and Boizenburg and crossed the Hamburg-Berlin autobahn.
Two airfields in the Lübeck area and road transport around Luebeck and Schwerin were bombed by our medium and fighter-bombers.
Northeast of Grafenau, our forces crossed the Czechoslovakian border at two points.
Farther south, our armor crossed the Austrian border in the vicinity of Oberkappel and entered Oepping northwest of Linz.
We reached the vicinity of Kollersberg, northeast of Passau, and an armored column advanced into Austria to reach a point 23 miles southeast of Passau.
West of Passau we entered Kriestorf and reached the vicinity of Poerndorf south of Deggendorf.
Advancing rapidly against light resistance, our armor reached the Inn River in the vicinity of Braunau. Other armored elements captured Eggenfelden and entered Koesslarn northeast of Braunau.
We captured Oberhoecking, south of Landau, and pushed 12 miles to the southwest.
Our units cleared Landshut and repulsed and enemy counterattack of 200 infantry southwest of the town.
South of Landshut we cleared Hubenstein and reached the vicinity of Dorfen.
The capture of Munich was completed. Southeast of Munich, our units reached the Mangfall River and south of the city we circled around the Starnberger See from north and south and continued five miles east of it.
Our forces crossed the Austrian frontier north of Scharnitz, ten miles northwest of Innsbruck. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, north of the border to the west, was reached.
Near the Plan See in Austria, we took a prison camp and liberated a number of high-ranking French and Belgian civil and military officials including seven French generals.
Gains southward were made generally through difficult Alpine terrain in Austria. South of Fuessen we advanced ten miles along the Lech River to within 35 miles of the Italian border.
West of the Iller River along a 20-mile front from Immenstadt to Bregenz, we gained up to eight miles southward. South of Bregenz we pushed five miles into Austria.
From the Munich area to the Iller Canal, 26,946 prisoners, including five German generals, were taken during the 24 hours ending midnight 30 April.
Enemy resistance on the Oleron Island on the French Atlantic Coast has been eliminated. The enemy was overcome rapidly following the liberation of the capital, St. Pierre d’Oleron. The commandant of the German defenses on the island surrendered and numerous prisoners were taken.
An ammunition plant near Stod, 16 miles southwest of Pilsen was attacked by light bombers.
During the day, 13 enemy aircraft were shot down, five of them in the Elbe bridgehead area. One of our fighters is missing.
Food supplies for the Dutch population were dropped at the Hague and Rotterdam yesterday by approximately 400 heavy bombers.
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 2, 1945)
Far Eastern Waters.
U.S. submarines have reported the sinking of 21 enemy vessels, including two combatant ships – a destroyer and an escort vessel – in operations against the enemy in these waters, as follows:
These actions have not been announced in any previous Navy Department communiqué.
The 7th Infantry Division which captured Kuhazu Village during the late afternoon of April 30 continued to advance southward on Okinawa on May 1 (East Longitude Dates). No substantial change was made in other sectors of the lines where our troops were under enemy artillery, mortar and small arms fire. On May 2, ships’ guns destroyed a number of enemy emplacements, strongpoints, and boat pens and carrier and land-based aircraft bombed enemy defenses. The infantry resumed the attack during the hours of darkness on the morning of May 2 and elements of the 7th Division moved 1,400 yards forward to the vicinity of Gaja Hill, approximately one mile north of the town of Yonabaru. Tanks and flamethrowers were being employed to develop this salient. The 77th Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Division launched an attack in the center and on the right flank and were moving forward during the morning of May 2.
Targets on Kume Island, west of Okinawa and in the Sakishima Group in the Southern Ryukyus, were attacked by aircraft of the U.S. Pacific Fleet on May 2.
Search aircraft of Fleet Air Wing One sank a medium transport south of Korea on May 1. On the following day, planes of this Wing sank two small cargo ships off the coast of Central Honshu and one off the coast of Kyushu. Two small cargo ships were damaged near Honshu and a number of fishing and small craft were struck off Kyushu on the same date.
Army Mustangs of the VII Fighter Command bombed and strafed radio installations and other targets in the Bonins on May 2.
Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Param Airfield at Truk and the airstrip and air facilities at Marcus Island on May 1 and 2.
Corsair and Hellcat fighters and Avenger torpedo planes of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing bombed targets in the Palaus and on Yap in the Western Carolines on May 2.
Neutralizing attacks were made on enemy bases in the Marshalls by search planes of FlAirWing Two on May 1.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 2, 1945)
Almost million troops affected by surrender – West Austria included
By Herbert G. King, United Press staff writer
ROYAL PALACE AT CASERTA, Near Naples, Italy – The German Armies of Northern Italy and Western Austria formally surrendered unconditionally to the Allies today, effective at 8 a.m. ET.
The surrender affects between 600,000 and 900,000 men commanded by Col. Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff and Gen. Karl Wolff, chief of police and security for Northern Italy and Western Austria.
Lt. Gen. W. D. Morgan of the British Army, who negotiated on behalf of Field Marshal Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, supreme commander in the Mediterranean Theater, said the terms “in effect are complete and unconditional surrender.”
The documents were signed in the Royal Palace here on Sunday by Gen. Morgan and two German officers, one of whom represented von Vietinghoff and the other Wolff.
The surrender will permit the Allies to make an unhindered advance to within 10 miles of Adolf Hitler’s former country home at Berchtesgaden. It also uncovers the flank of Col. Gen. von Lehr, commanding enemy troops in the Trieste area.
The surrender documents were signed in the presence of a group of Allied officers which included Russians. Secret negotiations for the surrender have been going on for several days.
The terms are the immediate immobilization and disarmament of enemy ground, sea and air forces.
Near Brenner Pass
The surrender imposes upon the German commander-in-chief the obligation to carry out any further orders issued by Marshal Alexander.
Von Vietinghoff’s command includes all of Northern Italy to the Isonzo River and the Austrian provinces of Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg and parts of Carinthia and Styria.
As the surrender was announced, the positions of the Allied troops in Italy were as follows:
The U.S. Fifth Army north of Lake Garda was within 35 miles of the Austrian border and 83 miles of the Brenner Pass. Farther east, the Fifth Army captured Feltre, 52 miles from the Austrian border. To the southeast, the British Eighth Army captured Udine, 38 miles west of Yugoslavia.
Near French frontier
Fifth Army units on the west were within 35 miles of the French frontier.
Yugoslav Marshal Tito, meanwhile, announced that his forces had captured the Italian port of Trieste. Tito’s forces made a juncture with British troops west of Trieste.
Two thousand troops of the Fascist Italian Ligurian Army’s Lombardy Corps surrendered in response to the capitulation order issued by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani.
WASHINGTON (UP) – President Truman declared today that the unconditional surrender of German forces in Italy was “but a part of the general triumph we are expectantly awaiting on the whole continent of Europe.”
At the same time, he called upon Japan as well as Germany to “understand the meaning of these events.”
Mr. Truman said “only folly and chaos can now delay the general capitulation of the everywhere defeated German armies.”
And the Japanese, too, he added, “must recognize the meaning of the increasing, swifter-moving power now ready for the capitulation or the destruction of the so-recently arrogant enemies of mankind.”
First announcement
The President’s was the first announcement in this country or abroad of the German surrender in Italy.
Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew said the German surrender in Italy would greatly reduce “the Possibility of prolonged resistance” in Southern Germany and Austria.
The President immediately sent Messages to Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander and Gen. Mark Clark, congratulating them for the “complete defeat of the Germans in Italy.”
Thanks generals
In breaking the news of the complete victory over German forces in Italy, the President said “the Allied armies in Italy have won the unconditional surrender of German forces on the first European soil to which, from the west, we carried our arms and our determination.”
In his messages to Marshal Alexander and Gen. Clark, he congratulated them on their persistent, difficult campaign. He said no praise was adequate to tell of “the heroic achievements and magnificent courage of every individual” under their command “during this long and trying campaign.”
The President told this country that the Allied and American officers who led the victorious forces in Italy “deserve our praise for the victory – we have the right to be proud of the success of our armies.”
Wednesday, May 2, 1945
Highlights on Hitler’s ‘death’
Gen. Eisenhower doubts Nazi version that Hitler died in battle; reveals authentic Himmler report that Hitler suffered stroke and was dying eight days ago.
Surrender of Germany regarded as hastened by elevation of Adm. Doenitz and his ousting of Foreign Minister Ribbentrop.
Doubt cast on report of death by Moscow. Washington skeptical. British believe Hitler is dead; doubt Nazi version.
Goebbels’ death in Berlin regarded as highly probable by well-informed quarters in London.
LONDON, England (UP) – Gen. Dwight. D. Eisenhower said today there was some evidence that Adolf Hitler had died of a brain hemorrhage instead of a hero’s death in battle as the Nazis claimed.
The statement by Gen. Eisenhower was the first from any Allied official to shed light on the mystery of Hitler’s reported death.
Gen. Eisenhower said the enemy claim that Hitler died fighting the Russians in Berlin was “in contradiction of facts” given by Heinrich Himmler at a conference with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden at Luebeck eight days ago.
Himmler and a Gen. Schellenberg, who accompanied him to the conference, said Hitler had a brain hemorrhage and could not live 48 hours and even then might be dead, Gen. Eisenhower said in a statement issued through Supreme Headquarters in France.
Through neutral source
Even though this version of Hitler’s death was based on Nazi information, it had the merit of coming to Gen. Eisenhower through Count Bernadotte, a neutral. Observers were inclined to put more credence in the Himmler version than in the melodramatic account broadcast by the Hamburg radio yesterday.
A high British source at the San Francisco conference told the United Press Saturday that Hitler had suffered a stroke and could not live more than 24 hours. That raised the possibility that Hitler’s death might have been covered up for two or three days to give time to build up a legend of a hero’s death.
Germany finished
Himmler admitted that Germany was finished, Gen. Eisenhower said in the official confirmation of the Luebeck conference. Bernadotte said in Stockholm yesterday that he could make no disclosure of his activity as the reported intermediary in Nazi-Allied negotiations.
Gen. Eisenhower said the radio statement by Adm. Karl Doenitz, announcing Hitler’s death and proclaiming himself as his successor, represented an attempt to drive a wedge between the Russians and Anglo-Americans.
The attempt “will be as completely ineffective as many previous efforts which have been made,” Gen. Eisenhower said. “Nothing which either Doenitz or Himmler may say or do can change in any way the agreed operations of the Allied Armies.”
Doenitz was reported already to have ousted Joachim von Ribbentrop as foreign minister in what may be the first move toward trying to save Germany from further battering.
London circles with excellent sources circulated a report that Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels probably had died in Berlin with Hitler.
Radio Hamburg, voice of the new Doenitz government, said the admiral had appointed British-educated Count Ludwig (also known as Lutz) Schwerin von Krosigk, 58-year-old nephew of the late Kaiser Wilhelm, as foreign minister.
Allied and neutral sources predicted that the death – real or fictional – of Hitler, and elevation of Adm. Doenitz to Fuehrer will hasten Germany’s collapse.
Belief persisted in London that victory in Europe will come this week. Prime Minister Winston Churchill conferred with his cabinet until early this morning on the swift sequence of events.
No Churchill statement
In the House of Commons, the question period passed today without any statement by the Prime Minister on the war situation or Hitler’s reported death.
German preparations to quit Denmark and possibly even Norway continued in what Stockholm suggested was the first step toward Germany’s full capitulation.
The first meeting of top-ranking Allied and German officials on the Western Front was disclosed by Supreme Allied Headquarters. It resulted in an agreement to ship food by air, sea and highway into German-occupied Holland, and a dispatch from headquarters added:
“The implications of a face-to-face meeting of high SHAEF and German officers at this time are obvious.”
Lt. Gen. W. Bedell Smith, chief of staff to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, headed the Allied delegation and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, governor of German-occupied Holland, the German group.
Rhodes scholar
The new German Foreign Minister Schwerin von Krosigk, a former Rhodes scholar at Oxford, speaks fluent English and it was suggested that Doenitz may have called upon him as a man capable of negotiating with the Allies.
He was Minister of Finance in Adolf Hitler’s government, but had been active in German politics long before Hitler’s advent. He became head of the German budget department in 1929 and served in the von Papen and Schleicher cabinets before Hitler came into power.
Like all members of the Hitler government, Schwerin von Krosigk was made a member of the Nazi Party. But he was regarded the least Nazi of those in the cabinet.
Radio Hamburg made no mention of Ribbentrop. He was last reported in Southern Germany two weeks ago.
Goebbels last in Berlin
London sources which reported that Goebbels may have died with Hitler in Berlin pointed out that he had not been mentioned by the German radio for more than a week, though as Nazi leader of the capital he then was directing its defense.
Thus, within six days, four of the top Nazi leaders of Germany have disappeared from the scene – Hitler, Goebbels, Ribbentrop and Reich Marshal Hermann Goering. The German radio announced last Friday that Goering had resigned as commander of the Luftwaffe because of poor health.
Whereabout and status of the other top Nazi, Gestapo Chief and Interior Minister Himmler, were not known. Doenitz did not signify immediately whether he considered Himmler part of his regime.
The surrender of German forces in Denmark may already be underway. A Stockholm dispatch to the London Evening News said that German naval forces in Denmark had begun to surrender.
Norway reports conflict
Conflicting reports were received from Norway. Some said the Germans were determined to fight to the death there, but others asserted the surrender of those forces was also likely.
One source said Doenitz had discharged Adm. Otto Ciliax, German naval commander in Norway, because he desired to capitulate. Adm. Theodor Kranke, formerly assistant to Gen. Fritz Boehme, German Army commander in Norway, was named to succeed Ciliax, it was said.
The announcement of Hitler’s death met a mixed reception in Allied capitals.
A British Foreign Office commentator said there appeared little doubt that Hitler was dead. Far from dying a “hero’s death,” however, the spokesman said all reliable reports indicated the Fuehrer died of a stroke.
Moscow sees trick
Moscow, on the other hand, inclined to the belief that the death report was a blind to enable Hitler and his henchmen to go underground.
Allied officials expressed surprise at Doenitz’s announcement that Hitler had designated him rather than Gestapo Chief Himmler as his successor.
They theorized, however, that Himmler must have approved the appointment since he still controlled the dreaded, all-powerful SS and Gestapo, without whose support no German official could remain in office.
Himmler may have decided that Doenitz as a non-war criminal might better be able to deal with the Allies.
Allied authorities were far from convinced that Hitler actually was dead.
One British official said he would have to see Hitler’s body before he would believe the Nazi leader was dead. Measurements of Hitler’s head taken by doctors before the war might clinch final identification.
Fight on, Doenitz says
Announcing Hitler’s death over the Hamburg radio last night, Doenitz called on the German Army to continue the struggle against Bolshevism “until the fighting troops and hundreds of thousands of families of the German eastern territories are rescued from enslavement or extermination.”
“Against the British and the Americans,” he said, “I shall continue the struggle in as far and so long as they will hinder me in carrying out the fight against Bolshevism.”
Observers pointed out that Doenitz’s anti-Bolshevist pronouncements followed the pattern laid down by Himmler who within the past fortnight offered to surrender Germany unconditionally to the United States and Britain.
The Western Allies replied that surrender could only be accepted if addressed to Russia as well. A British spokesman reiterated last night that Doenitz’s emergence as Fuehrer would have no effect on the Allies’ demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender to all of the “Big Three.”
Grew announces reply to Himmler
WASHINGTON (UP) – Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew today unveiled the hour-to-hour story of Heinrich Himmler’s unsuccessful attempt to surrender Germany to the United States and Great Britain.
Grew revealed that Himmler was told yesterday in Stockholm by Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte that President Truman would accept Germany’s unconditional surrender only if it were made “to the three Allied governments on all fronts” rather than just to the two Western Allies.
The American Legation in Stockholm said Bernadotte reported yesterday that he had delivered the President’s message “but had received no reply” from the Germans.
President withdraws $369,000 budget, cites need for state, local units
…
By Paul Ghali
BERN, Switzerland – The disappearance of Adolf Hitler from the political scene at this juncture – no matter by what means – is taken generally here as indication of the failure of any attempt at general German capitulation, thought it may precipitate local surrenders on the part of German Army generals.
The end of the war is no longer estimated in terms of hours, as did the more optimistically-minded over the weekend, but rather in days.
Some of Switzerland’s less pessimistic souls today voice undisguised joy at the latest report of Hitler’s demise. But the general belief that this most malevolent figure of modern history still lives despite the German radio’s efforts to convince the world otherwise seems at long last to be the boomerang of Nazi propaganda, which for so many years has outdone itself in building the Hitler legend.
Members of the German legation and consulates here now openly admit that the war’s end approaches. All employees of the Nazi foreign service in Switzerland yesterday received three months’ salary in lieu of notice. Many are already job-hunting.
NEW YORK (UP) – Astrologist Helen Paul read of Adolf Hitler’s reported death, checked over the same horoscope Der Fuehrer used to use, and decided that “it couldn’t be so.”
The charts showed Hitler left Germany last week on a long journey, Mrs. Paul said. The charts didn’t name the destination.