Nazi Resistance in Chaos
German Soldiers Rain in as Prisoners as the Hitler Myth Goes to Valhalla
By HANSON W. BALDWIN
The remnants of an army whose tread once shook the world were surrendering by the thousands yesterday as the end of organized German resistance rapidly approached.
The announcement of Adolf Hitler’s death on Tuesday was accompanied and followed, either by coincidence or as a natural resultant of that announcement, by a wave of capitulations, extending from Denmark to Italy. A Hitlerian myth was born, but the German soldier, in military exremis, may no longer consider himself bound by the personal oath of fealty to Hitler ever since 1938:
“I swear by God this holy oath, that 1 shall unconditionally obey the Fuehrer of the German Reich and People, Adolf Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Army, and that I am ready as a brave soldier to give my life at any time for this oath.”
Armies broke Germans
But the German soldier has now been told there is no longer a flesh-and-blood Hitler, that strange psychological link which has kept the Germans fighting long after the hour of defeat has now been broken. It was broken in Italy even before the announcement of Hitler’s death, for there the bloody, tired and sweating men of the Fifth and Eighth Armies, who have endured the snow and biting cold of the Apennines for two long winters, the mud and freshets of the mountain spring and the endless battle against nature and against man, have won a smashing and dramatic blitzkrieg. In a campaign of less than a month they had broken, by last Sunday, the German troops that for so long held the mountain ramparts, and unconditional surrender terms were signed even before Hitler’s death was announced. There has been no more startling victory in this war than the sudden drive that smashed the vaunted German Army of Italy. It is fitting that the first great break in the protracted battle of the pockets that the Germans had hoped to wage was forced by the gallant veterans of the Apennines.
The surrender of Col. Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff-Scheel, German commander in chief in the southwest, and of all the forces in Army Group C apparently affects the greater part of the Alpine redoubt area. Most of southern Austria was included in the German commander’s area, according to the announcement from Italy. If so, and if General Vietinghoff-Scheel can command the obedience of his troops, the so-called Southern redoubt, already imperiled by the rapid advances of the French First Army and the American Third and Seventh Armies, has gone. Moreover, the position of German Army Group E, Col. Gen. Alexander Loehr, commanding, which still holds part of northwestern Yugoslavia, is now exposed to flank attack from Italy.
What has become of the strong German forces that have been opposing the Russians west of Vienna is not clear. It is possible that these troops, together with General Loehr’s remnants, may yet try to retire into the mountains around Salzburg for a last-ditch fight.
But the germ of surrender is in the air, and yesterday was the blackest day of the war for the Germans.
Moscow announced Berlin’s fall; there were piecemeal local surrenders in Denmark; and there were intimations of a forthcoming surrender in the Netherlands. Rostok fell to the Russians in the north and the British cut off the Danish Peninsula from the rest of the Reich.
So many and so concerted were the surrenders or the intimations of them that it appeared possible that whatever German Government remained had told the field commanders to use their own judgment or to make piecemeal surrenders in the field to the Western Allies, while continuing the fight against the Russians.
The three major “standouts” in the pockets that now remain are Norway, whose commander yesterday swore loyalty to Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, successor to Hitler; Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia, and the eastern Austrian-northwestern Yugoslav area. Apparently, there is also a large German enclave still in Latvia, but this has not been mentioned in reports from either side for some time.
Japanese totter in Burma
The good news was not confined to Europe. British amphibious and airborne landings on either side of Rangoon and the swift British armored advance from the landward side, which already has resulted in the capture of Pegu, dominating the last major Japanese escape route to the east, mean very clearly the beginning of the end of the Japanese short-lived reign in Burma. And it may be a quick end, although the enemy may try to hold a perimeter defense of the important port city, and will probably also use its buildings as fortresses, as the Japanese did in Manila.
The rapid British progress in Burma in recent weeks has been due to several causes. The British have emerged from the jungles and into the open plains of the south, where they could use their mechanized superiority to the full and run rings around the Japanese. Second, the Japanese in Burma were greatly weakened by their losses and defeats at Imphal, North Burma and Mandalay and they have made little attempt to replace those losses. Third, the Japanese have been pulling some troops eastward out of Burma into Thailand and French Indo-China, recognizing that the game was up.
But the British successes since Meiktila have been entirely their own doing, as far as ground forces are concerned; they have had no help, the communiqués make clear, from either Americans or Chinese.
As the campaign of Burma ends, the campaign of the Netherlands Indies opens favorably. Australian and Netherland troops have invaded Borneo in what is the first of a long-drawn-out series of amphibious actions and sporadic land fighting. This campaign is likely to be fought chiefly by the Australians and Dutch on the ground, with American air and sea support from the north and east and with the British joining in later on against Sumatra from the west.