Trapped Nazis are told to surrender
New York (AP) –
German troops cut off at Cherbourg by the U.S. advance were warned over BBC facilities today that their position was hopeless and that surrender would be their wisest move.
“Any attempt to evacuate you through the coastal waters of Cherbourg Peninsula would be pure suicide,” the Germans were told.
The warning, made in German by a British officer, reminded the Germans that other German troops under command of Col. Gen. Jürgen von Arnim had been trapped by the same U.S. 9th Infantry Division on the Cap Bon Peninsula in Tunisia and had not regretted their decision to surrender.
Estimating their number at 20,000, the speaker said:
I am addressing myself to the German soldiers who have been cut off on the Cherbourg Peninsula.
The warning, as reported to the OWI, then went on to tell the Germans that the American wedge to the sea was being strengthened and that:
The further you are being driven back, the more the pocket in which you are trapped and which is surrounded by the sea on three sides, is being tightened, the more your concentrations of troops and vehicles become vulnerable to bombing and strafing by Allied planes and the destructive fire from Allied naval guns.