A WELL - INFORMED PUBLIC IS AMERICA'S GREATEST SECURITY

. nne XXV Number 19

Newsweek

The Magazine of News Significance

* May 7,1945

FIGHTING FRONTS

Death of Adolf Hitler Climaxes Final Gasps of the Third Reich

Extent of German Defeat 'lied in Allied Rejection of t Surrender Offer

The massive strains of Cotterdiimmer'\\'agum's requiem for a super hero ... super race, ground out over the , burg radio' on Tuesday night. As the

• of the chords that tell of the death of :rri{'d and the twilight of the gods fell r. the announcer spoke: "It is an_Ct'd that our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, ..l£ternoon at his command post in the :o.:hschancellelY, fighting until his last cth against Bolshevism, fell for Ger-

y:':"

_\.£ter a pause the voice went on to unce that only the previous day - r had appointed Grand Admiral Karl enltz, head of the German Navy, to d him. In a moment Doeni.tz hi.m:f took the air with a message to the -rmnns: "My first task is to save the Gd"man people from annihilation by the

vancing Bolshevist army. The military ~ggle will continue only with this aim. ~\.lch and as long as the attainment this aim is being hindered hy the Brit...ud Americans, we shall have to fight gainst them." In his order of the day, ritz demanded discipline and obedi~ .

• -\n era had ended. The greatest con-

ror since Napoleon had died as he had _ ed-by the sword. Never before had a -=~le individual been hated by so many millions. As the word of his death Hashed

the farthest cornets of the earth, an entire world rejoiced. Death for once ~~ ught IT smile to men's lips, a glow to !Den', hearts. That perhaps was the final iurl~nent on the career of Adolf Hitler.

For the FUhrer's passing meant peace.

Even as he died the Allied world waited :he final announcement that the German furees had unconditionally surrendered. _\dmiral Doenitz's pronouncement didn't aL.'"er the fundamental situation. Germany .... as hopelessly, almost finally, beaten, and II< few days previously Heinrich Himrnler, chief of the Gestapo and the SS, had of~ered unconditional surrender to the "_"-ited States and Britain.

The Himmler offer ushered in perhaps the most hectic week of the entire war, The Allied armies were ruthlessly hacking the Reich to pieces. Berlin was being destroyed bit by bit by two Russian armies. The Red Army and -tIle American Army joined hands aCl"(}SS the heart of the Reich. The Fuhrer's fellow dictator, Benito Mussolini met an inglorious and disgraceful end.

The False Dawn: Peace was just around the corner-day after clay, or 50 it seemed. But, as in the last war, peace was fated to arrive only after a false dawn-a fake report of peace that lasted

not long enough for men to become accustomed to the strange idea.

In New York on Saturday night the crowds jammed into Times Square and snatched up extras that proclaimed in black type.: Germany Quits. In Paris. a few GI's and Frenchmen cheered in the chilly pre-dawn air. In London Britons quietly bought up the early-morning editions with the glad tidings. In San Francisco, an electric thrill swept through a meeting of the United Nations conference as a delegate brought in extras with the news.

But the celebrations never really got going. Within a few hours the peace stories were denied. And thereby hung one of the strangest tales of a strange war.

The would-he celebrants were not far from wrong, as it turned out. Peace was just around the corner. The story began a few weeks ago when officers from the Allied Mediterranean Command met, in Switzerland, officers from the German Army in Italy. The conference had the specific purpose of negotiating the surrender of the Nazis in Italy. It was the

82 FIGHTING FRONTS

* NEWSWEEX

THE COLLAPSE OF THE REICH

tip-off on the disintegration of the German Army and the German state+a fact that the mass surrenders to the Western Allies had already made evident.

By last week the High Command and Nazi leaders saw the last shreds of their authority slipping away. Revolution was brewing in Bavaria. The plan to hole up in the National Redoubt had apparently been sidetracked because of Hitler's fanatical determination to defend Berlin against the Russians.

Enter the Count: Under these circumstances, Heinrich Himmler, who for all practical purposes has been the mal ruler of the Reich for months, undertook peace negotiations. His motives were still wrapped in mystery, since he himself was presumably fhe No, 2 War Criminal after Hitle!". There were some indications that he was acting at the request of the German High Command.

At any rate, the negotiations began in Sweden, On Tuesday Count Folke Bernadotte, director of the Swedish Red Cross, flew from Stockholm to Denmark. There he received from Himmler an offer to surrender all the German armies unconditionally, including those in Norway and Denmark-but not including those in the zones to be occupied by Russia. And the surrender was to be to all the United Nations except the Soviet. The count flew back to Sweden Tuesday night and communicated Himmler's offer to the United States Minister, Herschel V. Johnson, and the British envoy, Sir Victor Mallet.

The offer reached London and Washington on Wednesday. President Truman immediately sped from the White House to the Pentagon Building. He wanted to

Doenitz takes up the

talk ' on the telephone with General of the Army Eisenhower at Supreme Headquarters in Paris. Since the White House has no direct telephone communications with SHAEF, the President was obliged to go to the Pentagon.

Both the United States and Britain immediately decided to reject the offer and so informed Moscow. Thursday and Friday were spent checking the authenticity of Himmler's proposals and his claim that with Hitler incapacitated, his own order to lay down arms would be

universally obeyed. The authenticity of the offer was established, but not the ex-

tent of Himmler's authority, .

On Saturday, an announcement from 10 Downing Street, refusing either to confirm or deny the offer, said that unconditional surrender would be acceptable only if made to all three of the great Allies.

The same duy details of the Himmler proposals were relayed to Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. at the San Francisco conference. It was at this point that Sell. Tom Connally, one of the . American delegates, predicted to the Associated Press that unconditional surrender was imminent, thereby setting off false peace celebrations (see page' 77). The illusion was heightened when press and radio men were summoned to the White House.i-apparently for the reading of a proclamation by President Truman. Instead, Truman issued a de nial that the peace rumors had any foundation. The bubble burst.

In the meantime, Count Bernadotte had apparently received instructions to contact Himrnler again, probably with the message that surrender must be to Russia as well as to the United States and Britain, The Count once again flew to Denmark and on Tuesday returned to Stockholm, The Swedish Foreign Office announced that he had brought no new proposals from Himmler and the Count himself denied-for the record at least~ that he had even seen the Gestapo chiel. Nevertheless the last act was nearly over. The question was no longer whether the Reich and its once mighty armies would surrender unconditionally - only when they would do so ..

The Himmler Peace Offer! A Report FrOIn Behind the Nazi Screen

A spectacular j'evetsol in the previous Nazi decision to wage last-ditch fights in va1'iolls parts of Europe waEimplied in Heinrich. Rimmler's peace offe1' to the Allies. NEWSWEEK'S Stockholm. cortespondent sends the [ollouiing; accotlntobtained from a high-ranking diplomat ~of the behind-the-scenes mane'llvers that accounted [or this reoersal.

Germany had for some time been split into two camps, one favoring capitulation to Russia, the other wanting to capitulate to Britain and the United States. Severa] weeks ago leaders of the two camps met at Hitler's Berehtesgaden headquarters, where the Fuhrer opened discussion by proclaiming that he personally was for continuing the fight as long as one single square mile of Reich territory remained in German

.. hands .. The leaders who wished to ca-

pitulate to Britain and America, muong them Field Marshal Heinz Guderian, the Chief of Staff, and Field Marshal Ernst Busch, commander in the north, said that the morale of the soldier on the western front was beginning to crack. If the Russians were let through to the Rhine, they maintained it would mean Cormany's definite annihilation by destroying irreparably the balance of power on the Continent.

- The leaders of the group who wished to capitulate to Russia advocated a defense of the Alpine and Norway bastions, which they argued could be held for several months, Meanwhile RussianAnglo-American relations might worsen by direct contact established when the Allies met on German soil, and through these disputes the Nazis could profit.

Hitler dramaticallv shouted that he would not want to iive to see any ca-

pltulatien, but that after he was dead, the various German Army commanders could capitulate as they saw fit without breaking any vows to him.

At the same time the Nazi fight after defeat was mapped out. Leaders were given instructions to prepare underground cells immediately and to cooperate with Assistant Gestapo Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Plans for the east and west were different .. For the west the orders were for the underground to lie low, provoking 110 disturbances, and meanwhile to work systematically on the dissatisfied elements and to start ' trouble only when the famine conditions could be blamed on the occupation rule and the people began sighing for the good old Nazi clays. In the east the underground was supposed to start operations if and when the Russians began to deport the German population eastward .

'lAY 7. 194.3 *

FIGHTING FRONTS 33

THE COLLAPSE OF THE REICH

) ••••• ~ ••••••• ~ v •

•••• !" •••••

.....

"

Newsw(J(Jk-DeMore.land

The long trails that led from the beaches of Normandy and the foothills of the Caucasus join up .•.

Debacle in Italy: The most spectacular and the most welcome successes came on the unce static Italian front. There the German Army, which for almost two years had fought one of the most skillful and dogged defensive battles of this war, Bnally succumbed.

The capture of Bologna two we ks ago was apparently the stroke that unhinged the divi-

ions under Col. Gen. Heinrich yon Vietinghoff, successor to Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. The Germans lost both the will and the capacity to fight.

The great and ancient cities of Northern Italy fell with bewildering rapidity. Verona, the h'~' to the Brenner Pass, was captured by the American Fifth Army. So was Genoa, where the port was found relatively undamaged, though heavily mined.

Itulian partisans rose in Milan

and Turin and drove out the Germans' before the Allied troops could race up the Po Valley and officially capture the cities. The British Eighth Army pushed rapidly into Venice-a treasure trove of art and one- of the few cities in Italy the Allies have hardly bombed.

The Germans reeled back when they could, Smashed carts, dead horses and o x n, and abandoned ammunition trucks littered the roads of the Nazi retreat. One American unit captured 50 Germans, some drunk, some playing cards, and others asleep. German outfits, pulling out

Victories All Around

The Russian assault on Berlin and the junction of the American and Red Armies were the Iwo climactic events that shook the Reich to its foundations last week. At the same time, how-ver, other Allied armies were waging the last phase of the battle of Cermany on three widely separated fronts. Nearly everywhere the once mighty ,rebrmacht crumbled under the blows.

can Seventh, and American Third Armies il-rst smashed German resistance and then pushed on almost at will through the revolt-ridden towns of Bavaria and Austria. Prisoners poured in at a fantastic rate. On April 28 alone the Third and Seventh Armies passed more than 57,000 one-time Nazi warriors into their prison cages,

The entire Third Army, which had turned south on a broad front after reaching the borders of Czecho-Slovakia, made phenomenal progress. One column rushed along north of the Danube, crossed the Austrian border, and headed for Linz and a junction with the Russians west of Vienna.

Other columns smashed south through rolling hills and magnificent pine forests, sweeping up from small valleys dotted with stone churches and roadside crucifixes.

The American Seventh Army made similar progress. As Bavaria flared into revolt on April 28, opposition to the Seventh virtually vanished.

It took Augshurg and sped down the main highway to Munich. On April 29 American tanks . rumbled through the bomb-shattered streets past the English Garden, past what remained of the Opera House and the Brown House, once Nazi

party headquarters.

It was in what was intended to be the German northern redoubt-a much less defensible region than the southern redoubt-that the Allies ran into their stiffest resistance. Here, in the east. the Russians crossed the Oder River, took Stettin, and then fougbt on to Western Pomerania,

In the \vestern part of this northern pocket the British captured Bremen. But the biggest attack by the 21st Army Group came on the Elbe, below Hamburg. After a "Montgomery barrage," the British forced a crossing and established a firm bridgehead. Ahead lay the Baltic coast.

VICTORY, OFFENSIVE htThe East

••. at the Elbe River at the town of Torgau

of bivouacs to retreat, found Allied columns already rolling down the highways.

On Monday Gen. Mark W. Clark, commander of the Fifteenth Army group, officially announced that the 25 German divisions in Italy "have been torn to pieces and can no longer effectively resist our armies." The Italian campaign as such was over.

Revolt in Bavaria: The same disintegration occurred on the northern borders of the once vaunted Nazi j ational Hedoubt. There the French First, Ameri-

34 FIGHTING FRONTS

NEWSWEEK

THE LIFE OF HITLER: PHOTO ALBUM OF AN ARCH CRIMINAL

EuroPean

Hitler, the corporal, was imprisoned in 1924

As.socia.ted Preyi After his release, the rabble-rouser gained supporters

Iuteruattcuat Black Btar

Made chancellor in 1933, he ruthlessly wiped out opponents, trained fanatic youth, made Mussolini an any

Sigllal Corps from Internatiollill He scared Chamberlain, phmged Germany into war, escaped assassination ill bomb blast July 1944, and viewed the l'ubblein1945

K

t

The German Empire started the first great war with a commanding position in Central Europe

FIGHTING FHONTS

35

The Third Reich already had annexed Czecho-Slovakia and Austria when this war began

J..t their peak of territorial expansion, the Kaiser's armies and their allies straddled Europe and Asia

The crash came in 1918 when the Reich still held great stretches of terrrtory outside its own borders

Hitler's empire at its largest included most of Europe, much of Russia and part of Africa .

,,<the time of collapse the empire Hitler built wrtn sword and whip had been slashed to p.eces

! -1.1" 7, 1945

FIGHTING FRONTS 37

GOTTERDAMMERUNG FOR HIS CAPITAL

Total Death

Berlin, the city where the Nazis ned total war, died a total death this " Under the leadership of Marshals ,-gory K Zhukoff and Ivan S, Koneff, Russians ground the heart of Hitler's

pire in to a vast pile of lifeless rubble hoisted the Soviet flag over the h tag in May Day triumph,

'Cood Night, Everybody!' Berlin

• ad up to the Russians and went down . 'lIe them, The fate of the German capwas sealed when the Soviets launched tr offensive across the Oder River and Germans knew it. Reportedly directed both Hitler and Goebbels, the Nazis to turn Berlin into a Stalingrad, In plan they failed.

Even while the German horne radio to spur Berlin and the rest of unocied Germany to superhuman efforts .;,a the promise of ultimate victory, the ..z.i short wave tacitly admitted that ame was over. On the night of ,:nil 24, the girl announcer signed off in unusual manner, Instead of playing German national anthem twice or :ulating "Heil Hitler!" as has been

t mary, she said: "Good night, good t everybody!" Then the radio went the air permanently.

.\ddl'esses Known: The next day the ians encircled Berlin, From the -th, Zhukoff's troops swung west of the . bypassing Potsdam, the shrine of , ian militarism and the place Fred-

erick the Great chose to be buried. From the south, Koneff sent a spearhead to join them northwest of that famous Berlin suburb, Simultaneously, the soldiers of both commanders hammered Berlin from all directions.

The Germans were tough, but the Russians were tougher. Probably never before had a city been attacked and defended with such ferocity. In most of the streets the Germans had erected barricade behind barricade from the masonry of shattered buildings and overturned streetcars, Russian engineers, riding on tanks and armored cars, breached them one by one. Factories, apartment houses, and office buildings had been turned into strongpoints. Nazi tanks and artillery fired from concealed positions inside eellars and houses, "Each stone of the city, each meter of street is against us," wrote a Russian correspondent. "We have to take them with om blood,"

In the "jungle of stone," as the Hussians called Berlin, "everyone able to hold a gun, shovel, ax, 01' crowbar" fought. Under the covel' of immense artillery ~'tlJd rocket barrages and smoke screens, the Reds edged forward over heavily mined streets, By Russian acC01Ults, many infantrymen carried in their pockets address slips of Germans who had wronged them or their kin, artillery. men asked their observation posts for bearings on the houses of prominent Nazis,

But the going was costly. The German defenders-perhaps as many as 500,000- proved extremely tricky. They fought Cas-

sino-style from the rubble of Berlin. They also gave battle from the roofs and upper stories of houses, frequently holding hostages in their positions, By subway, German detachments sped beyond the for. ward lines, carrying light artillery with them, and suddenly appeared in the rear of the Russians. Red patrols burrowed into the subway tubes and sealed the Nazis off with demolitions, leaving them to die deep underground.

The desperation of their defense paid the Germans small dividends, Exploding shells burst water and gas pipes, and telephone lines festooned the ruins in the streets, Driven from shelter to shelter, the civilians, in an aOgony of despair, looted the food stocks of their neighbors, Fires caused by the incessant explosions raised a continuous pall of smoke over the destroyed city.

The Flag Goes Up: The Reels took district after district of Berlin, seizing the Tempelhof airdrome-formerly EUTOpe's finest airbase=Iate last week. Mile by mile one of the world's largest cities came under the hammer and sickle banner. By April 28 the Germans were penned up in 25 square miles, This area, about one- • thirteenth that of Berlin, centered around th Tiergarten and Unter den Linden, Two days later Russian troops crashed into the heart of the city. Against faltering resistance they fought their way onto Unter den Linden. On May Day the hammel' and sickle hac! been raised over the Beichstag, the Interior Ministry, and the city halL

•• , where Adolf Hitler met his death while directing bis last battle against the invincible Russians

88 FIGHTING FRONTS

HANDS ACROSS THE REICH

Sign.al Corps from Associated Pl'CSS American soldiers (left) extend the hand of fdendship to Russians at Torgau

Junction 011 the Elbe

ln bright sunlight on the banks of the Elbe River, a Russian army which for more than two years had been fighting its way hack from the Volga and an American division which ~lst entered com hat this year brought tho eastern and western armies together last week, As befitted the event, it was uunouuccd simultaneously with pomp and. ceremony by the chiefs ol state of the United States, Great Britain, and Russia.

The Hiver Jordan: The week preeedillg the juncture had been a nervous one for the approaching armies. It was far worse for the Gc:rll1ans caught between the two forces. Chilled to their souls at the thought of falling captive to the Reds, the Germans streamed toward the Arnericans in the hope of being sowed. By the thousands enemy soldiers, civilians, and liberated slave laborers and Allied prisoners jammed the roads lcuding to the Mulde.

That river assumed the proportions ol a J ordun. The Americans allowed only uniformed soldiers to cross over into the promised land. Small American patrols, acting as militury policemen, penetrated no man's land to warn German units to throw down their arms before arriving at the river SOL11elimt'S they ran into a fight; more often, Ibl' (ll{,lllY soldiers greeted them with 1-(rl':l1' [oy.

In great lnmehcs civilians encamped

east of the Mulde and hoped For a magical reprieve from the Russians. They wept, pleaded, and oHerecl brihes; Volkssturmers, who had hustily shed their- armbands to revert to civilians, promptly put them on again in- a successful bid for military uud subsequent prisoncr-of-war status,

The Eyes of Texas: The first meetings of the armies took place on the afternoon 01' April 25. Two 69th Division patrols, 0)'dorcd by radio not to venture further than six miles east of the Mulde, later reported that they had Dever received the message. The first, a 28-mnn patrol led by Lt. Albert Kotzebue of Houston, Texas, went on to the Elbe near the town of Riesa nnd there met infantrymen of the Russian 175th Hegiment and horse-mounted Cossacks at 1,30 o'clock in the afternoon. The sccoud ' American patrol made contact with the Reds in the same vicinity about two hours later.

At 4:40 p.m. that clay, on a ruined bridge at Torgau, Second Lt. William Holxrtson of Los Angeles shook hands with Pvt. Nicolai Ivannvitch Andreyeff of the Russian. 58th Guards Division ill the meeting that the United States, Great Britain, and Russia decided to make official. The next day Maj. Gen. Emil Reinhardt of the 69th Division and Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner, commander of the Fifth Corps, met their Russian countcrparts amid wild fraternization between GI Toes and Uncle Joe Joes.

When Ivan Meets Joe

The Bottled Goods Flow

AI Newman., • WSWEEK war e01",'espoudent, was all hand to a~d his own personal we/come to the Red Al'1ny when it met with the Americans. He sends this Neunuan's-eue-cieu: of the festivities.

Abruptly at the beginning of the week the United States First Army let its guns cool and the resulting quiet after eleven roaring months was ear-splitting. Doughboys rode horses, played ball, and basked under the fruit blossoms in the April sun.

Division and corps headquarters, however, hummed with excitement. Observers' powerful telescopes reported fires and shell bursts ill tilt' low hills east of the Mulde. Radios picked up fragments of conversation in a strange tongue. Green llures were issued to an battalions, as this was agreed OIl as the recognition signal, and all eyes strained for white-banded tanks, another prearranged sign.

The Gaudiest Snafu: The Ilussians were coming and every imaginable precaution was taken to make the linkup of these powerful fighting forces a peaceful one, Consequently, all but a small bridge of guarding patrols were withdrawn west of the Mulde and artillery fire ceased. Then. the gaudiest snafu ill army history

h:lppenecl. -

It began Monday, April 23, when the BUth Division reported sighting a tank with a white band. The patrol sent out discovered the Russian tank to be a mound of earth with a rope lying across it. The next day the Second Division reported a two-way radio communication

with the elusive Russians. '

On Wednesday, patrols were authorized to a depth B miles east of the Mulde, but no farther. At noon I accompanied a reconnaissance force of the 23rd Regiment :IS far as Leisnig, Despite positive reports that the Russians were at Leisnlg, we found none.

After 5 in the afternoon, the 69th reported physical contact \. ith the Russians somewhere between the town of Wurzen and the Elbe River. The patrol was supposedly still out at this extremely indefinite point, so there was nothing for .1 task force of correspondents composed of C. K. Hoclenfield of Stars and Stripes, Russell Hill. of The New York Herald Tribune, and myself to do but take off into enemy country east of the Mulde and find it.

About 15 miles ahead of our lines in thick wood we came over a rise in the road and saw nine enemy so)diers beading toward us 200 yards away. They leaped from bikes and took to cover.

We could nolo turn around, so we went

w

e

e-

it

\lAY 7, 1945

FIGHTING FRONTS 39

HANDS ACROSS THE REICH

.n into them and when we stopped they me out with their harids up. It was a ighty sweet feeling. Hodenfield, who an Army lieutenant is empowered to ac-

ept surrender, disarmed them. We were ut of the mess and continued on the -nain road.

Contact: Before the battalion com-

mand post in Wurzen a German body y twitching in the twilight. It was an gl corpse, because it had no face. The atrol had returned with fOUT Russians

and, seeing them appear to be on eviently the friendliest terms with the _ mericans, this German prisoner had 're ted a rille from a careless GI, tucked the muzzle under his own chin, and pulled the trigger.

The regimental colonel would not let LX members of the press be present to ee our Allies. Presumably, he was scared tilf over the diplomatic possibilities of

the situation, and even more Erightened because not one patrol but two had flagrantly violated orders by far exceeding the 6-mile limit.

GI Ivan; What happened turned out to be far better than any careful plan, because GI Joe met GI Ivan and they adored each other. Among the four Bus-

ians we' were finally allowed to interview that midnight at 69th Division headquarters was a private first class. He had been wounded but was still in fine spirits. While his officers were making highflown statements about brothers in arms, Nicolui Andreyeft gave me some good Russian GI talk. He thought the Red Army was a hell of a fine army. "The Germans send out five' tanks to chase down one Russky soldier," he said. I asked him what he thought of the Germans. "They are uncultured people," Nicolai declared, This, in Russian, is worse than calling them bastards.

Captured Wehrmacht cognac overflowed into the small hours. I wondered at the time how the Russians stoood up to it so well, but in the light of later events I realize the cognac must have tasted like

odu pop to them. There were innumerable toasts to Stalin and the late President Roosevelt and both armies and both countries, and down with the Nazis and to hell with Hitler and the whole Kraut hierarchy, one by one.

The next morning a strong force of correspondents knifed its way through the panicky shreds of the Wehrmacht to the Elbe at Torgau, a turreted old city With a population of 13,000, the scene of Frederick the Great's victory over the Austrians. Torgau, though undamaged, was almost completely deserted because every German who could walk, fly, run, or crawl had got out of there toward our lines on the Mulde. We passed a disapproving bronze statue of Frederick and met our first real, live, roaming Hus 'inns in the

city square. As we were kissed and backslapped, a Russian Airacobra stunted uuttily overhead. One Russian soldier pointed a tommyguu at the sky and let go a joyous burst of fire. It was quite a moment.

Fraternizing, Plain and Fancy: We were escorted to the river bank like visiting commissars. There some plain and fancy fraternizing took place. GI drivers got together with the Russkys, and, as I had long predicted, immediately started photographing each other and swapping souvenirs and insignia,

These keen, rugged, tired, dirty men ill brown uniforms are not as tall as the Yanks, but they are broader, plenty tough-looking, and plenty smart. They fire automatic rifles in sheer exhilaration and it seems always the bullets are Hying somewhere around the Russian camp. Their equipment, except the automatic weapons, does not look as good as ours -less motorization and older artillery. There was not a helmet in evidence in the whole camp.

We were taken across the lOO-yardwide Elba in racing shells. We did the rowing, but in each one a Volga-boatman character insisted on standing up in the stern and steering picturesquely but ineffectually with II long oar.

We walked a quarter-mile through tall grass on the river bank to a Russian battalion command post. Sentries saluted smartly as we passed the outposts, and

officers appeared from all over to add themselves to the triumphal parade. Inside the building there began another long series of toasts and speeches by both sides, understood by practically nobody.

Unfortunately, the toasts were drunk no; in cognac but in red and white vodka in brimming tumblers, bottoms up. From there on events of the day grew rather vague. Maj. Gen. Emil F. Reinhardt of the 69th arrived in mid-afternoon in a shell, on the bow of which some refugee had placed a baby carriage for transport across the river. His opposite Russian number appeared suddenly with a staff.

Once again the same process began and late in the afternoon Yanks staggered down to the river bank. The day wound up with one drunken Russian chasing another, yelling and firing a tommygun. The victim escaped over the hill along with two American Signal Corps officers who showed an amazing foot for the impost of vodka.

By Friday when the corps commanders met there were casualties snoring all over the place and one interpreter tossed his cookies in the middle of a particularly impressive speech and then passed out cold. After this dramatic bit of punctuation, he was dragged oft and stacked up with other corpses, but intelligible conversation ceased though members of both armies continued to shout merrily at each other. Thus in drink and song at Torgau ended long roads from Stalingrnd and Normandy.

•

East meets west and drinks (woman is Ann Stringer, American war correspondent)

40 FIGHTING FRONTS

NEWSWEEK, MAY 7, 1945

THE CAMPAIGN THAT BROKE GERMANY

Classic by Ike

Eisenhower had an enticing opportunity to fumble when the First Army's Ninth Armored Division seized the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Hcmagen. He could have poured troops into this providential bridgehead and immediately attacked the Ruhr from the south. Instead, he sent five divisions across and patiently waited to develop the full force of the offensive.

The Russians claim with truth it was the Red Army which beat the bulk of the Wehrmacht. But the great victory that brought down the Reich was the campaign of the Western Allies that opened in March with the crossings of the Rhine. The credit for the strategy of this campaign belongs to General of the Army Eisenhower. In winning it, he achieved a victory in the classic style. With minimum casualties he attacked and destroyed the bruin of the opposing army-its command and communications. The result was the disintegration of the German Army in the west.

Paralyzing the Brain: Field III01r511al Sir Bernard L. Montgomery had the job of making the main crossings north of the Ruhr, and these could not be effected until masses of materiel, including naval landing craft, moved into position. On

,.

The seven phases uf the Eisenhower strategy that engulfed Western Germany

the night of March 23-24 everything was prepared and Montgomery opened the main show, storming the Rhine with three armi s and extremely low casualties, The next morning. airborne landings employed in a new way helped consolidate the bridgeheads. Instead of securing the bridgeheads themselves as in the airborne operations last fall in Holland the skytroops deployed beyond the Rhine in order to break up German counterattacks.

Thereafter, events moved with dazzling swiftness. Simultaneously, armored divisions swung out of the American Ninth and First Army bridgeheads and encircled the Huhr in an exhibition of blitzkrieg at its best. Inside the trap were snared one German army group and part of another-21 divisiens and thousands of service troops, approximately three times the force the Allies anticipated. Furthermore, they surrendered in hordes rather than stand and fight it out.

Hacking the Body: Thereafter, the Nazis never succeeded in forming a cohesive defense in the west. Far ahead of schedule, the American , inth and First Armies slashed through to the Elbe River and there waited for the Russians to arrive. Marshal Moutgomery sent the Canadian First Army up into Holland and successfully trapped the German 25th Army. His British Second slammed northeast to besiege the Gelman ports of Emden, Bremen, and Hamburg, which would have been needed to supply the offensive if it had moved as slowly as scheduled.

Below the northern sector of the front, Gen. George S: Patton Jr .. '5 Third Army split Germany in two by racing to Czecho-Slovakia. As he came within striking distance of Dresden, he entered the area assigned to the Soviets.

With the brilliant improvisation that had marked his conception and execution of the entire campaign, Eisenhower next turned the powerful Third Army southward to work with the American Seventh and French First, who were slugging it out with the Nazis in the approaches to the National Redoubt. This stroke paid off handsomely. The redoubt and the citadels of Nazism suddenly crumbled.

Wherever the ground forces went, they discovered that the ail' forces had usually been there before them with tactical and strategical bombers. Great areas of the cities the doughfeet assaulted had been battered to the ground long before by the strategic bombers that winged their way from Britain and Italy. Whenever the weather permitted, tactical bombers softened up German strongpoints. In another way too the airmen kept the armies rolling. Fleets of transports brought millions of tons of supplies to the fronts. It all represented the greatest coordination of au and ground assault ever seen.

42 FIGHTING FRONTS

NEWSWEEK, MAY 7, 1945

THE EUij.OPE THAT IS LEFT

Italians in Milan revile the battered bodies of Mussolini and his mistress-

Hunger and Hate

As the Nazis were passing from the scene they left a Europe economically and politically wrecked. Their own country was smashed almost beyond repair. Hunger stalked even the liberated nations, while in Holland bombers had to be used to drop food to avoid imminent starvation on a mass scale. The new violence in Italian politics was symbolized in the degrading scenes that were enacted in Milan after Mussolini's execution. And as a parting gesture the Nazis sent Marshal Petain back to France, by his presence to divide further that already divided country.

'Mussolini Died Badly'

Five thousand screaming men and women of newly liberated Milan last week mobbed eighteen disheveled corpses strewn in the muddy town square-kicked and trampled them, spit at them, cursed them. All the dead were hated Fascists, but one was the greatest and most hated of all. In the filth, with a shattered skull, lay Benito Mussolini,

Since his rescue by German paratroopers in September 1943, Mussol.in.i had led a wraith-like existence in Northern Italy as' a Nazi puppet ruler without power. When the Wehrmacht collapsed, Italian Partisans ran down tile Duce ncar

Assoointea PL't:B.'J Rndlopnoto

Later the bodies swing feet first

Lake Como and captured him and the latest of a long line of mistresses, a young brunette named Clara Petucci.

A Partisan leader who called himself "Eduardo" sent a squad for Mussolini, "Eduardo" described what happened 011 the afternoon of April 28 to James E. Roper of the United Press:

"When he saw the Italian officers com-

ing toward him he thought they had come to free him and he threw his arms happily around the woman. When he was told he would be tried he was shocked. But our men WIder an officer gave them both a trial and condemned them to death . Mus olini and Petacci were shot together at the cottage. When the soldiers were about to shoot, Mussolini cried, 'No! No!' Those were his last words ... Mussol.in.i died badly."

Duce in the Discard: The bodies were all dumped into a closed furniture van for a slow 25-mile haul through pouring rain to Milan, where the Duce once edited a Socialist newspaper. At the Piazza Loreto =recently renamed Piazza Quindici Martiri in honor of fifteen patriot "martyrs" executed there by Fascists-the corpses were unceremoniously unloaded.

Mussolini, clad in a Fascist militiaman's uniform-muddy black boots, gray-green battle jacket, and gray riding trousers with a long red and black stripe-was stretched out at one side. His bald head rested on the breast of the mistress he had met at a beach in 1939 and tried to make into a movie star. Clara, who had lived in a luxurious villa tile dictator built her outside Rome, lay with dark curls falling over her forehead and blood staining her lace-ruflled white blouse. Nearby sprawled the bodies of other Fascists, including Alessandro Pavolini, former Fascist Party Secretary, Paolo Zerbini, former Interior Minister, Fernando Mezzasoma, Propaganda Minister, Francesco Barracu, Cabinet Vice Chairman, and GeoHredo Coppola, Fascist dean of the University of Bologna.

The news of what was in the square sped through Milan. Fifty Partisan guards fired into the air to hold off the huge, crowds that gathered. But the peculiar violence that the sigh t of corpses seems to bring out in Italian crowds aroused the mob. They shoved and yelled in an attempt to attack the bodies. One YOUtl1 got through a kick at the Duce's jaw and the once-famous chin caved in.

Next the mob tied wire around the ankles of the Duce and his mistress, hoisted them head down from the roof of a nearby gasoline station, pulled off Clara's skirt, and reduced what remained of Mussolini's face to an unrecognizable pulp. Finally, the bodies were hauled down and carted off to the city morgue. There they were laid on tilted metal slabs, facing the still derisive crowd. And thus ended the last shameful rites of the man who would be Caesar.

Petain. France's Problem

An old, old man named Henri Philippe Petain stepped out of his smart black Cadillac limousine at the French-Swiss border last week, squared his shrunken shoulders under their unaccustomed oi-

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44

FIGHTING FRONTS

THE EUROPE THAT IS LEFT

vilian clothes, smiled' wanly under his clipped white mustache, and stepped forward stiflly hand outstretched to ureet his onetime 'friend, Lt. Gen. Jos~ph Plerre Koenig, Military Governor of Paris. The Marshal of France had come home from Germany at last.

Koenig ignored the IHlIld which had once gripped that of Adolf Hitler in friendship. A detachment of Cardes H(~publicaines, lined up at attention before the little border station of Los Verrieressous-jougne, held their rifles with muzzles pointing towurd the ground, universal symbol of military disgrace.

Such was the return of the legendary hem of Verdun, survivor of 107 French governments and founder of one of his own, now come to face trial for treason before a court responsible to Gen. Charles de Gaulle, his onetime worshipper and later his bitterly ridiculed enemy.

Perhaps the 89-year-old relic turned a trifle paler at the frigid reception, but his smile remained fixed as he and his middle-aged, unsmiliug wife entered an official car to take them to the Paris train. Unobtrusively, a soldier took over the Cadillac which had carried its cold-fnced owner from Paris to Vichy, from Vichy to imprisonment in Germany, and back through Switzerland. Then he slipped behind the wheel and drove away to deliver the requisitioned cal' to his superiors.

In Paris, Pct.un and his wife (her nosezav of spring Rowers was a bit bedraagled by'this tim:) were escorted to the "101_ year-old Montrouge prison by 50 auto- 1110bUes filled with gendarmes and soldiers. His tilly quarters had shiny new steel bars across its windows. Furnishings included two leather armchairs, a table, two wooden beds covered with wool mattresses, and a tiny mirror. Looking with distaste at the bare white walls, Petain broke silence to make his onl v request. He asked for" photograph 0·1' de Gaulle to use as a pin-up.

Significance.----

The trial in absentia of Petain OJ] charges of treason and dealing with the Germans had been originally set for May 17. It was certain to be postponed until juno or July. For Petain in the flesh was at the least a great embarrassment to tile de Gaulle government and at the most a positive danger. The' old man's return opened afresh all the wounds that the government had been trying to heal, all the tragic division of the country into Vichyites and the resistance movement. Already, resistunce papers called for the Marshal's execution (although the prosecutor said he would not ask for the supreme penalty because of Petain's age) while rightists, unofficially at leust, defended him

The Truth About the Anglo-Vichy Deal: It Didn't Work

Existence of a secret agreement 01' "treaty" between Marshal Henri Philippe Petain and P·rime M·iniste1· Churchill has been minored, and sensational disclosures have been expect<~d at Petain's M'ial, Here is the true story of the Marshals sole attempt £-0 conclude such an agl'eemen-t. Owing to British Imcel'ta-inty cOl1cerning both his motiDes and abiUty to fulfill it, it never went bC!lond the negotiations stage,

In October 1940, shortly after the Caullist-British forces were repulsed from Dakar (Sept. 25, 1940), a French scientist, Prof. Louis Hougier, arrived ill Lisbon and informed the British he bore urgent proposals for Churchill from Petain, His credentials proving authentic, he was sent to London in a British plane.

He carried no other documents. But weeks of conversations with officials of the Foreign Office, War Office, and Admiralty developed proposals which he put in writing, outlining his interpretations of the British and Vichy viewpoints and the measures they might concert,

The gist:

THE IIRlTlsH: They were determined

to go on with the war and felt capable of winning it, but their cause would be greatly aided if the French Empire overseas came back in. Though one British war aim was the reestablishment of French sovereign independence, this might no longer hold if Vichy gave the Germans naval and air bases in unoccupied metropolitan France or overseas.

VlCHY VlEWPOlNT; The French would approve a rising of the overseas empire against the Germans even- thnugh Marshal Petain could not lead it, the maintenance of unoccupied France against German encroachment requiring him to remain in Vichy. But, if the Germans violated their promise ami occupied all France, he would order full resistance, from which transfer of the French Fleet to British bases could be inferred.

CO 'CEBTED MEASURES: The British would supply overseas France on condition that it rise. London and Vichy would set up military and political liaison. The British would gradually lift the blockade. on trade between French North and West Africa and Continental France.

The memorandum, corrected at certain points by British officials, was sub-

Furthermore, the Marshal's return coiucided with tl;(' municipal elections held this week encl. It may have had some effect on the heavy swing to the left, particularly the Communists, that developed in the large cities at least. If the election victories were sweeping enough they might encourage the leftists to make the return of Petain the springboard for at-tacks on tbe de Gaulle government and its moderate policy.

In any event, the trial threatened to take on that explosive quality that has characterized previous French political trials. The Dreyfus case that divided France in the 18f)Os underlined the confusion the trial of Petain might cause. Furthermore, the old man could upset a lot of apple C,lIt8. He could, for example, ask Fleet Admiral Leahy, now Presidential Chief of Staff and formerly American Ambassador to Vichy, to testify on his behalf. He could bring up the treaty he tried to negotiate with Prime Minister Churchill.

Joseph S. Evans JI., NE\vSWEEK>~ cllief European correspondent, cabled that a way out was being considered, "There is a movement on foot among some government officials to have the Marshal declared senile and therefore not responsible for his actions of the last ten years, so that he may be committod to <Ill institution,"

mitted to Churchill, who recorded no objections. Rougicr left London for North Africa, where he submitted it to Gen .. Maximo Weygand, Vichy General Delegate Jot' North Africa. Weygand was noncommittal and Hougier carried it to Petain at Vichy.

The Marshal Is Unprepared: Early in 1941, the British received a letter Irom-Petain. France would sign no peace with Germany as long as Britain remained at war, would refuse the Germans use of the fleet and of air and naval bases in metropolitan France, and would resist German occupation or use of French possessions overseas. But the Marshal was unprepared, either openly or secretly, to order North Africa and Syria to rise.

Uncertain whether Petaiu's main interest was Germany's defeat or dissolution of British-Caullist ties which threatened Vichy's control of France overseas, the British made no reply, Hougier came to the United States, worked awhile with the Vichy Ambnssador, Gaston Henry-Have, then joined the staff of the New York French emigre newspaper, Pour la Victoire, He will shortly publish his memoirs and supporting documents in H book