City Takes Report of Death in Stride
Many New Yorkers Skeptical, Others Are Unemotional – Service Men Pleased
By MEYER BERGER
Reports of Adolf Hitler’s death, like the weather yesterday, left New Yorkers cold. They stopped only briefly in the chill rain of the evening rush hour to glance at headlines, to shrug in disbelief, before they dived like moles into the subway.
Skepticism was by far the dominant reaction. There was no cheering, only subdued gloating. The comparative few who discussed the reports aloud seemed to find profane speech most fitting. Eight of ten persons took the attitude: “It’s another Nazi fake,” or, “They’re trying to palm off a Hitler double.”
Though the reports broke here a little before 5 P.M., they filtered as slowly as winter molasses through rain-swept Times Square. A police sergeant from Traffic J moved from Forty-second Street to the Times Tower’s bulletin board at Forty-third Street to verify oral rumor.
Beaded rain dripped from his cap as he stared at the poster: “Hitler Is Dead.” He shook off the rain. He said: “So the bum’s dead, eh?” and, as if answering his own question, he said dully: “What difference does it make now?”
French sailors bitter
Two French sailors read the sign. One turned to sodden civilians grouped near him. He said: “It is the end of the pig. He will roast in hell.” The civilians looked bewildered. They remained silent.
A bobby-socks blonde turned to a friend and repeated the legend on the bulletin board. Her friend tugged at her sleeve to hurry her on. She said: “Too bad he’s dead. He should have been tortured.”
A tall Italian told them: “Do not believe what it says. Believe it when you see a picture of Hitler as you saw Mussolini’s picture yesterday.” The girls moved off without reply.
Skepticism took some amusing turns. A sharp-featured woman told a friend sharing her umbrella: “Don’t believe what bulletins tell you. This morning the bulletin said: ‘light showers today.’”
The appearance of newspaper extras started a sudden flurry. Hoarse cries of “Hitler dies – get that uxtray!” brought surging groups to newsstands and the hucksters’ cries added to the traffic din, but only for a while. Within an hour, extras found few buyers.
Leo Kaplan of 32-15 Forty-first Street, Astoria, Queens, a soldier hit by machine-gun bullets in the Philippines, hobbled across the Square through the downpour. He stopped to say: “If it’s true, it’s the greatest thing I ever heard.”
A mounted policeman, huddled glumly under his rubber cape, waited until the soldier was beyond earshot. He said: “It would have been good news twenty years ago. Late now.” He stared gloomily eastward down Forty-second Street.
The East Side gave no more outward evidence of gloating or belief in the report than did Yorkville, traditional German quarter. The game was general true in all the city’s Jewish districts.
Service men were outspoken. Lieut. Arthur McIntyre of Kansas City, Mo., an air corps man, said in Times Square when he saw the bulletin: “Good riddance.” Sgt. John Eliopoulos of Haverhill, Mass., an Army engineer, remarked bitterly in Pennsylvania Station: “We’d likt to spit on his grave, the—.” He spoke for a group of five.
Joe Ente, who owns a monument yard at 89 Ludlow Street, discussed the report in terms of his trade. He said: “His headstone should be skunk. But he shouldn’t be buried. He will contaminate the good earth.”
Chinatown skeptical
Chinatown took the news gravely, but skeptically, like the rest of the city. Shavey Lee, its mayor, said fervently: “Here’s hoping we can sing the death of Hirohito.”
Commuters bound home through the murky twilight read the scant details of Hitler’s reported end and stared moodily but silently at drear landscape. Out in the Brownsville district of Brooklyn, Joe Sisselman, who works in Hoffman’s Cafeteria at Saratoga and Pitkin Avenues, looked up from a mound of dishes when he heard the report. “Maybe,” he said, “it will save the lives of some of our American kids. For me it comes late.”
His son, Leonard Sisselman, was reported dead in Germany ten days ago. He had been with the Ninetieth Division of the Third Army.
Rabbi Henry A. Schorr of 1100 Grand Concourse, the Bronx, said: “He leaves behind him a ruined and agonized world, the monument to his madness. God save humanity from the seeds of his tyranny and terror.”
Mayor La Guardia was returning from Brooklyn where he had helped to open a city health center, when he was informed of Hitler’s reported death. “That’s the best news I’ve heard,” he shouted into the two-way police radio in his car. “Look for anything to happen now.”
Editorial: The end of Hitler
The German radio announces that Adolf Hitler fell yesterday afternoon in his command post at the Reich Chancellery in flaming Berlin, “fighting to his last breath against bolshevism.” The announcement adds that Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander of the German fleet, has been named as Hitler’s successor, which presumably means as head of the German state and Reich Chancellor.
The Nazis have made lies so much a part of their politics, and the reports about Hitler’s alleged doubles have been so widely spread, that these announcements are bound to leave in many minds the suspicion that the master liar is attempting to perpetrate one last great hoax on the world in an effort to save himself, and perhaps prepare the way for his return at a later and more auspicious time. Yet, whether true or not, the announcement does mark the end of Hitler and the regime that plunged the world into this war and formed the core of the fanatical German resistance which has cost so much Allied blood and effort.
All things considered, there seems to be no good reason to doubt that Hitler is dead, or that he died as the announcement says he did. Logically, he had to die that way, and had he tried to evade his fate, it is difficult to believe that even his most devoted followers would have permitted him to do so. There was always a good deal of opéra bouffe in Italian fascism, and despite its ghastly results for Italy and Mussolini’s own grim fate, both Italy’s wars and the “Sawdust Caesar’s” end were in keeping with fascism’s fundamental character. But the serious-minded, cold-blooded and wholly humorless Germans had exalted Nazism into a religion which proclaimed Hitler not only the Fuehrer of all Germans but also their god, and Hitler loved to refer to himself as the instrument of Providence. He could not have been permitted to die like Mussolini, to be kicked about and strung up by his heels by the same populace which once had cheered him to the skies. He had to die with the cause he lost, and he had to die that way for two reasons. He had to save it from ridicule inherent in the ludicrous contrast between his megalomaniacal pretensions and his catastrophic failure. And he had to perform one last service for that cause by helping to perpetuate the legend which formed the core of Nazi propaganda and by which he rose to power – the legend that he and the Nazis were shining knights in armor fighting for European civilization against bolshevism – “to their last breath.”
And so it seems probable that Hitler fell as he was supposed to fall – in the roar and terror of battle, amid the crumbling walls of his capital, in the Chancellery which he had built as the seat of his world dominion, and at a moment when the conquering Russian armies were planting their victory banners on the scenes of his former triumphs. If so, history will add one particularly sardonic touch in the fate which made Hitler die on May Day – the day on which he used to display his greatest power over the German masses, the very day, in fact, on which his great adversary, Joseph Stalin, was staging a victory parade in Moscow, which Hitler once thought within his grasp.
But equally important is the announcement that Hitler’s successor is to be, not Goering, who was once designated as such, or Himmler, who was supposed to have concentrated all power in his hands and recently made a “surrender offer” to the United States and Great Britain, but Admiral Doenitz, the head of the German Navy. Doenitz is a stanch Nazi, but not politically exposed. He is also the first navy man to become a head of the German Government.
The inference seems obvious. Himmler’s attempt to save himself and the Nazi regime, and even to split the Allies by a surrender offer which Stalin denounces as a “trick,” has failed, and therewith the role of Himmler is finished. That is also attested by the fact that Count Bernadotte, the Swedish intermediary, returned from a new conference with Himmler’s representatives without a new message for the Allies, and by a statement of an American authority in Stockholm that if the Germans want to surrender they must surrender to the Allied commanders in the field – as Marshal Graziani did in Italy. But it is also evident that Germany is finished, and that only the method of surrender remains to be determined. That job now appears to have been turned over to the German Navy, which, in German eyes at least, might appear to be more respectable than the defeated and disintegrated army, whose most noted leaders have been either purged or discredited.
Doenitz himself declares that he will continue the fight against Russia, and there is the possibility that he may attempt to hole up with his U-boats in Norway in an attempt to blackmail the Allies into more favorable terms. But it seems incredible that any German Government would attempt to continue under the leadership of a virtually nonexistent navy a war which the army has already lost. The next few days, perhaps hours, should tell the story.
Soviet Information Bureau (May 2, 1945)
Оперативная сводка за 2 мая
Войска 1-го БЕЛОРУССКОГО фронта под командованием Маршала Советского Союза ЖУКОВА, при содействии войск 1-го УКРАИНСКОГО фронта под командованием Маршала Советского Союза КОНЕВА, после упорных уличных боёв завершили разгром Берлинской группы немецких войск и сегодня, 2 мая, полностью овладели столицей Германии городом БЕРЛИН — центром немецкого империализма и очагом немецкой агрессии.
Берлинский гарнизон, оборонявший город, Во главе с начальником обороны БЕРЛИНА генералом от артиллерии Вейдлингом и его штабом, 2 мая в 15 часов прекратил сопротивление, сложил оружие и сдался в плен.
2 мая к 21 часу нашими войсками взято в плен в городе БЕРЛИНЕ более 70.000 немецких солдат и офицеров. В числе пленных: генералы для особых поручений при начальнике обороны БЕРЛИНА генерал-лейтенант Курт Веташ и генерал-лейтенант Вальтер Шмидт-Данкверт, представитель ставки вице-адмирал Фосс, начальник штаба обороны БЕРЛИНА полковник Ганс Рехиор, начальник штаба 56 немецкого танкового корпуса полковник Теодор фон Дифвинг. Взяты также в плен первый заместитель Геббельса по пропаганде и печати — доктор философии и истории Фриче, руководитель печати доктор философии и истории Клик, правительственный советник доктор философии и истории Хайнрихсдорф. Фриче при опросе показал, что Гитлер, Геббельс и вновь назначенный начальник Генерального штаба генерал пехоты Кребс покончили жизнь самоубийством.
Юго-восточнее БЕРЛИНА войска 1-го БЕЛОРУССКОГО и 1-го УКРАИНСКОГО фронтов завершили ликвидацию окружённой группы немецких войск.
За время боёв с 24 апреля по 2 мая в этом районе наши войска захватили в плен более 120.000 немецких солдат и офицеров. За это же время немцы потеряли только убитыми более 60.000 человек. В числе пленных заместитель командующего 9 немецкой армией генерал-лейтенант Бернгард, командир 5 немецкого корпуса СС генерал-лейтенант Эккель, командир 21 немецкой танковой дивизии СС генерал-лейтенант Маркс, командир 169 немецкой пехотной дивизии генерал-лейтенант Радчий, комендант крепости ФРАНКФУРТ-на-ОДЕРЕ генерал-майор Биль, начальник артиллерии 11 немецкого танкового корпуса СС генерал-майор Штраммер и генерал авиации Цандер. За зто же время нашими войсками захвачены следующие трофеи: танков и самоходных орудий — 304, полевых орудий — более 1.500, пулемётов — 2.180, автомашин — 17.600 и много другого вооружения и военного имущества.
Северо-западнее БЕРЛИНА войска 1-го БЕЛОРУССКОГО фронта, продолжая наступление, с боями заняли города НОЙ-РУППИН, КИРИТЦ, ВУСТЕРХАУЗЕН, НОЙШТАДТ, ФЕРБЕЛЛИН, ФРИЗАК.
Войска 2-го БЕЛОРУССКОГО фронта, развивая наступление, 2 мая овладели городами РОСТОК, ВАРНЕМЮНДЕ — крупными портами и важными военно-морскими базами немцев на Балтийском море, а также заняли города РИБНИТЦ, МАРЛОВ, ЛААГЕ, ТЕТЕРОВ, МИРОВ и крупные населённые пункты АЛЬТЕНПЛЕН, РЕХТЕНБЕРГ, ФРАНЦБУРГ, ТРИБЗЕС, ЗЮЛЬЦЕ, ДАРГУН, ТЮРКОВ, ЯБЕЛЬ, ЦЕХЛИН, ГЕРЦШПРУНГ. В боях за 1 мая войска фронта взяли в плен 5.450 немецких солдат и офицеров и захватили 78 самолётов и 178 полевых орудий.
Войска 4-го УКРАИНСКОГО фронта, продолжая наступление в полосе Западных Карпат, с боями заняли крупные населённые пункты ПАСКОВ, ОРЛОВА, ДЕМБОВЕЦ, ГОРДЗИШУВ, ТУРЗОВКА, ДЛГЕ ПОЛЕ, ВЕЛИКОЕ РОВНЕ, ШТЯВНИК, ПАПРАДНО, МОДЛАТИН. В боях за 1 мая войска фронта взяли в плен более 5.000 немецких солдат и офицеров и захватили 196 полевых орудий.
Войска 2-го УКРАИНСКОГО фронта, продолжая наступление восточнее города БРНО, с боями заняли крупные населённые пункты БРУМОВ, ВАЛАСШКЕ, КЛОБОУКИ, СЛАВИЧИН, ЛУГАЧОВИЦЕ, БРЖАЗУВКИ, УГЕРЕСКИ ГРАДИШТЕФ, НАПАЕДЛА.
На других участках фронта существенных изменений не произошло.
За 1 мая подбито и уничтожено 37 немецких танков. В воздушных боях и огнём зенитной артиллерии сбито 10 самолётов противника.
Налёт нашей авиации на Свинемюнде
В ночь на 2 мая наши тяжёлые бомбардировщики нанесли удар по военным объектам немцев в Свинемюнде. В результате этого удара на территории судоверфей и в порту возникло много пожаров, сопровождавшихся сильными взрывами.
