300 Superfortresses hit Japan in triple attack
Five U.S. ships sunk by suicide planes
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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
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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.