Das war Buchenwald…
Von Dr. Franz Nogy
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Grazer Volkszeitung (May 12, 1945)
Der letzte Akt des größten Dramas der Weltgeschichte
Keitel erschien mit verbissenem Gruß, hatte aber beim Weggang seine Arroganz abgelegt
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Hitlers Leiche gefunden?
In der unterirdischen Festung von Berlin
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Wo sind Himmler, Ley, Rosenberg?
Bormanns Leiche wurde aufgefunden
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U.S. Navy Department (May 12, 1945)
CINCPOA Communiqué No. 360
Cruisers and destroyers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet covered by aircraft from fast carriers, bombarded shore installations on Minami Daito Island, east of the Ryukyus on May 10 (East Longitude Date). On the following day, air groups and ships’ guns of the fast carrier task forces destroyed 72 enemy aircraft over the Ryukyus including 40 over Okinawa. Carrier planes made low-level attacks on May 11 on airfields and shipping in the Amami group destroying four planes on the ground and damaging warehouse Installations and a number of luggers. One of our major Fleet units suffered damage during an air attack on that date.
A total of 93 enemy planes were destroyed over our forces around Okinawa on May 11 including 19 planes shot down by one of our destroyers. Several surface ships were damaged during these attacks.
On May 12, the Tenth Army continued the general attack of the preceding day supported by heavy gunfire from ships and sustained bombing by carrier planes and by aircraft of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Appreciable gains were made on each flank of the Army line.
Elements of the 6th Marine Division entered the suburbs of Naha on the west coast of Okinawa. Progress of the center of the line against the positions of the enemy in the hilly central portions of the Island was slow. The 77th and 96th Infantry Divisions captured important enemy strongpoints and made local advances against stiff resistance in their respective zones of action.
Tori Island, approximately 55 miles west of Okinawa, was occupied by Tenth Army troops without opposition on May 12.
In waters south of Korea on May 11, search aircraft of Fleet Air Wing One including Privateers, Coronados and Mariners, inflicted the following damage on the enemy:
- One coastal cargo ship sunk
- Two coastal cargo ships set afire.
- One large coastal cargo ship set afire and listing
Mitchells and Liberators of the 11th Army Air Force sank a small largo ship and damaged two others in Kataoka Harbor on Shumushu in the Northern Kurils on May 11. A Mitchell was shot down during the attack. On the same date, 11th AAF Mitchells attacked targets at Kashiwabara on Paramushiru and planes of FlAirWing Four made rocket attacks on radar installations on Minami Cape on Shumushu.
Liberators of the 7th AAF bombed Truk in the Carolines and Marcus Island oh May 12.
Planes of the 4th MarAirWing struck targets in the Palaus and at Yap on the same date.
Search Privateers of FlAirWing Two bombed workshops and air installations on Wake Island on May 11.
The Pittsburgh Press (May 12, 1945)
GOERING INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES
Himmler held by British, Paris says
Gestapo chief turned over by Doenitz
BULLETIN
Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler “is now reported to be in our hands,” CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood said today in a broadcast from Paris.
Mr. Collingwood said Himmler is “understood” to have been held under arrest in the Flensburg area by Adm. Karl Doenitz who “is now believed to have turned him over to British forces in that area.”
LONDON, England (UP) – A member of the United Nations War Crimes Commission said today that Hermann Goering has been indicted on at least eight separate counts and “we have an airtight case.”
“I would like to prosecute him myself,” a commissioner member said in revealing that the evidence already compiled against Goering as a war criminal filled several volumes.
All but one of the counts against the roly-poly Reich Marshal, now in custody of the U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria, arise from his alleged responsibility as a minister of the Reich for the criminal policies laid down by the German government.
Civilians enslaved
The remaining indictment charges Goering with specific responsibility for the forced labor and slavery programs in Germany, which violated the articles of The Hague Convention.
Adolf Hitler named Goering commissioner for the four-year economic plan under which the Reich enslaved civilians of occupied territories and forced them to work on German defenses and in German war plants, without pay and frequently in conditions that caused wholesale death and disease.
Documents outlining and implementing the four-year plan are in the hands of the War Crimes Commission. Indicted with Goering are three men who assisted him in administering the program. They are Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, “plenipotentiary for the total war effort,” R. Walther Darre, one-time Minister of Agriculture, and Fritz Sauckel, manpower director.
Two under arrest
Goering and Darre are under arrest and awaiting trial. Goebbels was reported in Berlin, and United Press writer Joseph Grigg reported from the German capital this week that the Russians had found a body identified with reasonable certainty as that of Goebbels. Sauckel has not yet been accounted for.
Goering was among the first of the top Nazis to be indicted by the commission. His name was placed before it by both Czechoslovakia and Poland. The charges were investigated and documented by a committee of the commission, which then recommended their approval by the full commission – a step which was taken last November.
The indictments variously charge him with setting up courts which condemned thousands of Czechoslovaks; with the Lidice massacre; with atrocities at Dachau, Buchenwald and elsewhere; with the massacre of Czechoslovak students in a 1939 demonstration; and with establishing a Jewish extermination camp at Auschwitz.
Doenitz investigated
Coincident with the disclosure of the “airtight case” against Goering, a British foreign office spokesman said Adm. Karl Doenitz is “under investigation” for alleged U-boat atrocities.
The spokesman indicated that the main object of the investigation was to determine whether as chief of Germany’s submarine fleet Doenitz directed his men to murder Allied seamen, or whether this was done without his knowledge or consent.
The British Press Association’s diplomatic correspondent said there was no doubt that it was Doenitz “who gave the order to his U-boat crews that they should take no prisoners of war.”
Hesitate to indict
A source close to the United Nations War Crimes Commission said any charges against Doenitz necessarily would be filed by the British government and “so far they hesitate to indict admirals.”
The War Crimes Commission has adopted a policy under which membership in the German government is sufficient grounds for indictment as a war criminal. But the policy apparently was not being applied to Doenitz – possibly because of the shortness of his time as Fuehrer or possibly because of doubt whether he had anything to do with the establishment of the criminal polices of the Third Reich.
Yanks reach Okinawa capital
Landing on Mindanao splits Jap defenders into isolated pockets
Saturday, May 12, 1945
U.S. Marines stormed the outskirts of Okinawa’s capital of Naha today to pace general gains in the Allied land campaigns through the Pacific.
A new American landing on Mindanao in the Philippines split the enemy’s defending force into small isolated pockets.
U.S. troops continued: progress on Luzon and Australians advanced on Tarakan off East Borneo.
New U.S. offensive on Okinawa has driven through the Jap lines to the outskirts of Naha, the island’s capital. Other U.S. troops were nearing Shuri, the second largest town on Okinawa, and the east coast of Yonabaru.
Yanks on Luzon near Manila dam
MANILA, Philippines (UP) – The last Jap defenders of Mindanao Island were ripped into hopeless, small pockets today after a new U.S. landing in the north.
Troops of the 40th Infantry Division who waded ashore on the beaches of Macajalar Bay drove four miles inland without opposition to within 47 airline miles of 31st Infantry Division troops advancing from the south to bisect the island.
The landing was the third American troops have made on Mindanao. It caught the Jap defenders of Bukidnon Province by surprise as they were trying to battle off the 31st Infantry Division driving northward along highway No. 3. The 31st Division had reached the village of Maramag.
Guerrillas go ashore
The 40th Division’s landing troops had also reached a junction of highway No. 3 at Alae, after their four-mile gain inland.
It was also disclosed that Filipino guerrilla forces had stormed ashore two weeks ago on Butuan Bay alter a PT-boat bombardment of Jap defenses.
The guerrillas were now battling enemy garrisons in the Agusan Valley, to the east of the new American landing. They had previously cleared Surigao Province still farther east.
In the southeast, the 24th Infantry Division continued to make progress along the coast at Davao City and crossed the Talmo River, but they reported strong Jap resistance.
Close on dam
On Luzon, only four miles separated columns converging on the vital Ipo Dam from north and south. Filipino guerrillas captured the high ground overlooking the Angat River and drove within 3,600 yards of the dam, source of Manila’s water supply. The U.S. 43rd Infantry Division was meeting increasingly stiff opposition in the fight for the dam.
Gains also continued on oil-rich Tarakan Island, off the coast of Borneo, where Australian troops gained two miles to within 1½ miles of Karoengan, near the southern tip of the island.
Melbourne radio said the main body of the Jap forces near Juta Village “disappeared into what is believed to be a large tunnel.”
Marines reach Naha outskirts
GUAM (UP) – Marines of the 6th Division today stormed the outskirts of Naha, ruined capital of Okinawa.
Three other Marine and Army divisions also battled southward across the southern tip of Okinawa as a general offensive to crush the island’s last 45,000 defenders went into its second day.
They made slow but steady progress with tanks, flamethrowers, tommy guns and bayonets through the toughest defenses yet encountered in the Pacific war.
Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, commander of the Tenth Army, told newsmen that the offensive was “no Picket’s Charge, but rather a push Pacific style – a coordinated continuation of local offensives that have been going on since the last push April 19.”
Seize village
The 1st Marine Division seized the inland village of Dakeshi, northeast of Naha. The 77th Infantry Division deeper inland won high ground overlooking Shuri, second largest town on Okinawa, in a costly advance of several hundred yards.
On the east coast, the 96th Infantry Division fought closer to Conical Hill, key Jap defense position shielding the port of Yonabaru.
The 6th Marine Division chalked up the day’s biggest gain yesterday with an advance to within 200 yards of Naha on the west coast. Striking south from the Asa River estuary, the Marines fought 800 yards uphill.
Naha flattened
Naha itself was a smoking ruin, flattened by concentrated naval and air bombardment. Its streets appeared deserted, though its last known population was more than 60,000.
The Tenth Army’s general offensive was launched at 7 a.m. yesterday after a terrific naval, air and artillery bombardment.
The previous night, Jap troops attempted large-scale infiltration of American lines. All who penetrated the lines were killed. A communiqué announced that an additional 612 Jap bodies had been counted, boosting the total number of Japs killed in the Okinawa campaign to 39,469.
No new figures were announced for American ground casualties. But Adm. Chester W. Nimitz reported an additional 1,302 naval casualties for the past week.
Japs damage three ships
That brought the toll of the Okinawa operation and related actions against Japan to 6,853 officers and men of the fleet – 1,283 killed, 2,072 missing and 3,498 wounded.
Jap planes again attacked U.S. warships off Okinawa Thursday night. Three light naval units were damaged. More than 40 enemy planes were shot down.
U.S. Navy planes blew up a coastal cargo ship, damaged another so badly it was forced to beach, set a third afire and damaged several fishing craft and landing boats south of Honshu, the main Jap home island.
A small cargo ship was set afire west of Korea.
Army Liberators bombed shipping and installations at the Kataoka Naval Base on Shumushu and Kashiwabara on Paramushiru in the Kurils north of Japan.
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Jap diplomats to Reich seized
3 Nazi chiefs also taken by Seventh Army
By Jack Fleischer, United Press staff writer
WITH U.S. SEVENTH ARMY – Three more ministers in Adolf Hitler’s government and 130 Jap diplomatic personnel, including Ambassador Gen. Hiroshi Oshima, were in Seventh Army custody today.
Between 150 and 200 top Nazi government officials were rounded up by Seventh Army patrols in Austrian and Bavarian villages. In the latest batch were:
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Dr. Walther Funk, minister of economics and president of the Reichsbank;
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Dr. Hans Heinrich Lammers, chief of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery, minister without portfolio and an SS general, and
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Dr. Wilhelm Ohnesorge, post minister.
Others captured
Besides Oshima, Japs caught in the Seventh Army net were the ambassador’s wife, military attaché to the Berlin embassy Lt. Gen. Mitsuhiko Komatsu, Maj. Gen. Osamu Otani and Yoschicada Michima of the Foreign Office; naval attaché Hideo Kojima and four newspapermen.
The Jap party included embassy staff members and personnel from Berlin, France, Italy and the consulate-general in Vienna. They had moved to southern Germany from Berlin at the suggestion of the Hitler government.
Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, the Seventh Army’s prize catch to date, told Allied newsmen yesterday that Hitler was personally responsible, for atrocities committed at concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau and elsewhere.
Surprised at news
He said Heinrich Himmler’s SS was in charge of the camps and “carried out orders directly from the Fuehrer.”
Other German state departments and authorities were powerless to interfere with the orders, Goering said.
He said he didn’t know what Hitler expected to gain from the brutalities practiced at the camps. For a long time, Goering said, he and other Germans had dismissed reports about the camps as Allied propaganda.
“I was greatly surprised when I learned the facts,” he said.
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