The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  Coast Guard landing ships carrying the first wave of American soldiers to invade the beaches of Luzon, Philippines, January 1945.

  A little mortar fire at one point was quickly silenced. During S-day, as the landing date for this operation was named, only a few sneak raiders disturbed the routine of pouring in supplies and men.

  The troops were still on the alert on the beach when General MacArthur waded ashore, but the general started right off in a jeep to find the nearest divisional command post. When the jeep broke down, the general took off across the sand dunes on foot and in a few minutes was firing questions and nodding his head with very apparent satisfaction as the divisional commander reported the progress made.

  JANUARY 20, 1945

  5 ARMIES ON MARCH

  New Russian Offensive Scores 50-Mile Gain Above Carpathians

  By The United Press.

  LONDON, Jan. 20—The Red Army yesterday reached the border of German Silesia, captured the great Polish cities of Lodz, Cracow and Tarnow and hammered thirty-one miles inside East Prussia after advances of up to twenty-eight miles in one of two new offensives opened on the blazing Eastern Front.

  Adding victory to victory, the Red Army was forging a great encirclement of East Prussia as it approached within three miles of the southern frontiers of the Junker stronghold on a sixty-mile front. Simultaneously, the Red Army opened another new offensive in southern Poland, driving fifty miles forward to outflank the city of Nowy Sacz.

  Berlin said that almost 3,000,000 Soviet troops were on the march along a twisting 650-mile front from East Prussia to Czechoslovakia. In one of the greatest days in the Red Army’s history Premier Stalin issued five orders of the day.

  Five Soviet armies, carving out gains of up to thirty-one miles, seized 2,750 localities in East Prussia and Poland and killed thousands of enemy troops fleeing under the lashing blows of Soviet planes.

  ENEMY DEFENSES OVERPOWERED

  Every German river and railroad defense line was being shattered and Russia’s eight-day-old offensive still was gathering momentum.

  Giant Stalin tanks of Marshal Ivan S. Koneff’s First Ukrainian Army reached the border of German Silesia in an unexpected area. Veering northwest from the Polish city of Czestochowa his forces followed the border line for twenty-eight miles and reached the frontier at the Polish town of Praszka, 225 miles southeast of Berlin.

  At the same time other spearheads advanced twenty-eight miles along the Radom-Breslau highway, cutting across the vital north-south railroad linking Danzig with Silesia to take Wielun, which in turn severed the rail line between Silesia and the great Polish city of Posen.

  The Russians crossed the Warta River, a tributary of the Oder, and cut the Danzig-Silesia railroad along a twenty-mile front. A twelve-mile stretch of the Danzig-Posen railroad defense and supply line was shattered between Wielun and Rudniki.

  STEEL CENTERS OUTFLANKED

  The advance to Praszka outflanked by fifty-two miles on the northwest the great German coal and steel-producing centers of Beuthen, Hindenburg and Gleiwitz, the loss of which would be a heavy blow to the German war machine.

  Koneff’s troops approached the border of Germany and its rich Silesian cities along a fifty-five-mile front, and for thirty miles southeast of Praszka they were but three to five miles from the frontier.

  It was troops of Koneff’s army who captured Cracow, ancient capital of Poland Thirty-one miles northwest of the city, guarding the approaches is the Dabrowa coal-mining region, they seized Ogrodzieniec, sixteen miles northeast of Dabrowa and twenty-six miles from Beuthen.

  Cracow, fourth largest city of Poland, with a pre-war population of 259,000 and former seat of the Nazi puppet Government General of Poland, was captured when Koneff’s troops severed the city’s connections with Silesia in an outflanking movement that won them the railroad stations of Zabierzow, Rudawa and Krzeszowice.

  Forty-seven miles east of Cracow, other troops operating south of the Vistula River captured Tarnow.

  South of the Tarnow-Cracow railroad and west of Sanok, Gen. Ivan I. Petroff’s Fourth Ukrainian Army went over to the offensive and, breaking through powerful enemy fortifications, advanced fifty miles along a thirty-seven-mile front in the Carpathian foothills.

  LODZ BARRIER CONQUERED

  Fifty-one miles northeast of the point where Koneff’s army reached the Sile-sian border, Marshal Gregory K. Zhukoff’s First White Russian Army advanced on an eighty-five-mile front south of the Vistula River and captured Lodz, Poland’s second city and its largest industrial center.

  Lodz, a pre-war city of 672,000 persons, was captured in a twenty-four-mile advance. Twenty-nine miles to the north the town of Kutno, on the Warsaw-Berlin railroad, was seized and, between Kutno and Lodz, Zhukoff’s fast-moving spearheads captured Leczyca, 100 miles east of the Polish city of Poznan.

  The capture of Lodz, a great twelve-way road and rail center, and of Cracow collapsed the so-called German “middle European Wall.” The fall of Lodz also left western Poland wide open for rapid conquest by the Russian juggernaut.

  TRANSIT CENTER SEIZED

  Advancing along the south bank of the Vistula River, Zhukoff’s northern wing seized Gostynin, fifty-three miles southeast of the great Polish city of Torun. It also outflanked the Vistula road and rail crossing town of Plock, ten miles to the northeast.

  Plock, on the north bank of the Vistula, also was menaced by troops of Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovsky’s Second White Russian Army which was advancing westward north of the Vistula along a fifty-four-mile front. In a seven-mile gain his troops drove to within twenty-three miles northeast of Plock by capturing Raciaz, on the Warsaw-Torun railroad. A few miles to the north, Radzanow, sixty-one miles east of Torun, was taken in a nine-mile advance.

  Other troops of Rokossovsky’s army were advancing on East Prussia’s southern borders along a sixty-mile front, and, in a twenty-one mile dash they seized the fortress transit hub of Mlawa, seven miles south of the border and pushed the Germans northward to take Dzialdowo, three miles from the frontier.

  Berlin said that Marshal Rokossovsky was attempting to reach the Baltic Sea near Danzig and effect a huge encirclement of East Prussia in conjunction with Gen. Ivan D. Chernyakhovsky’s Third White Russian Army pushing into the province from the east.

  At Dzialdowo, Rokossovsky’s troops were 75 miles south of the Baltic and ninety miles southeast of the former free city of Danzig.

  TILSIT HIGHWAY CUT

  Chernyakhovsky’s army, Marshal Stalin revealed, launched a great offensive in east Prussia five days ago and, crashing through deep enemy fortifications, advanced up to twenty-eight miles along a thirty-seven-mile front.

  Seizing more than 600 towns and villages, his troops cleared almost the entire northeastern corner of east Prussia—an area of about 750 square miles, and were thirty-one miles inside the frontier at the town of Breitenstein. While other spearheads pressed to within four miles southeast of the great rail center of Tilsit by winning Ragnit and cutting the Gumbinnen-Tilsit highway along a nineteen-mile front between Ragnit and Neusiedel, the troops who captured Breitenstein crossed the Inster River.

  JANUARY 21, 1945

  RHINE PUSH BEGUN

  U.S. 1st and 3d Armies Further Compress the Belgian Salient

  By The Associated Press.

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Paris, Jan. 20—The French First Army struck a surprise blow for Alsace’s liberation today with a new offensive on a twenty-five-mile front that rolled up three-mile gains seventy miles south of where American comrades-in-arms battled to save the imperiled capital of Strasbourg.

  The French jumped into the mounting battle, with the fate of Alsace and Strasbourg in the balance, after tank-led German troops drove United States Seventh Army lines back five miles and threatened to undermine American positions in the northeast corner of France.

  FRENCH SURPRISE GERMANS

  The assault, rolling out under the cover of a blin
ding snowstorm from the Vosges eastward to the Rhine in the Mulhouse area, achieved complete surprise and still was pressing forward tonight against that tough German core known as the Colmar pocket from which the enemy was menacing Strasbourg from the south.

  At the opposite end of the 300-mile western front, the British Second Army ran into enemy tanks for the first time, but plowed on three miles into western Germany and the Netherlands appendix, seizing at least six more towns.

  Russian soldiers, with cases of explosives, meet German resistance and smoking ruins in Cracow, Poland, 1945.

  The British cut off a German area five miles by three miles with a pincers movement of two armored columns northeast of Sittard. One British unit attacked eastward from Echt and the other pushed north from Hoengen until the junction was made. More than 400 prisoners were taken by the British.

  The American First Army was methodically tightening the screws on St. Vith, the Belgian highway and rail center four miles from the Reich border through which the Germans must retire.

  THIRD NEARS VIANDEN

  The American Third Army was driving in from the west against stout resistance, and to the east was battling over northern Luxembourg’s snow-clad hills within three miles of Vianden, on the Reich border where Hitler’s legions swept across in the Ardennes offensive.

  A dispatch from the front said there were signs that the Germans were withdrawing into the Siegfried Line as the Third Army pressed on a mile and a half, deepened its Sauer River bridgehead to three miles near the Reich border and moved up to the frontier along a three-mile front on the Our River.

  In the Netherlands, British units of the Canadian First Army lifted the threat to Nijmegen by routing crack German parachute troops from the village of Zitten, six miles to the north.

  TANKS ATTACK BRITISH

  The attack by tanks came east of Echt, seven and a half miles southwest of the German Meuse River stronghold of Roermond.

  While the British under Lieut. Gen. Miles C. Dempsey were slowed here in the push toward the Roer, they were lashing out aggressively to the east and west, using white camouflaged tanks in the snow that blanketed the battlefield.

  They crossed the Meuse unopposed and captured Stevensweert, seven miles southwest of Roermond, as the Germans pulled out under the gathering threat of encirclement from the east. The small German panhandle jutting into the Netherland appendix a few miles to the south was virtually severed as Tommies struck nearly a mile through the fog and seized Saeffelen.

  Two miles to the east another British column plowed a mile and a half through the slush and snow and captured Breberen, three miles inside the Reich.

  JANUARY 27, 1945

  FIRST RED IN BERLIN TO GET $1,000 PRIZE

  Native of Lublin, Now Citizen of U.S., Offers Reward—Also Wants to Aid Stalingrad

  The rapid advance of the Russian armies has given David Kay no end of joy. Yesterday, Mr. Kay, a native of Lublin, Poland, and a businessman with offices at 450 Seventh Avenue, offered $1,000 to the first Russian soldier or unit to enter Berlin.

  His offer was contained in a letter to the Russian Consul General’s office in New York, and a spokesman of the Consul’s office said that the offer would be “accepted as a token of appreciation.” Mr. Kay also offered an extra $1,000 that would start a fund toward the rebuilding of Stalingrad. The spokesman, however, explained that a fund was being raised for that purpose in this country.

  “This may appear to be a strange letter,” Mr. Kay wrote, “but I should like to emphasize that it is written in all sincerity and with the hope that you will cooperate with me.” The letter went on to mention the first offer of $1,000 to start the fund for the rebuilding of Stalingrad, “that it may be the start of a special fund, perhaps a memorial fund in grateful memory to the valiant and successful stand of the Soviet forces in that city.” Then followed Mr. Kay’s reference to the second offer of $1,000:

  “The second check is a prize for the first Russian soldier to enter Berlin. Should it prove impossible to determine who that individual is, then I should like the money to be divided equally among the men comprising the first Russian unit to enter the German capital.”

  Soon after the Allied invasion of France, Mr. Kay offered a $1,000 War Bond to the first American soldier to reach Paris. Since the liberation of Paris, he explained, the authorities have not been able to determine the rightful recipient.

  JANUARY 28, 1945

  LUFTWAFFE AGAIN A MENACE WITH ITS JET-DRIVEN PLANES

  Allies Have No Fighters Which Can Deal With the Latest German Sky Raiders

  By HARRY VOSSER

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  LONDON, Jan. 27—Six months ago the Allied public, rejoicing over the successful achievements of their armed forces on the Continent, was indulging in the comfortable assumption that the much-vaunted German Air Force was no more. “Where is Goering’s Luftwaffe now?” was the question, asked with some sarcasm.

  Today the situation has changed once more. Not only is the Luftwaffe fighter-plane production on the increase, not only is it able to conduct an occasional mass attack such as the recent sortie against Allied airfields in Belgium and Holland, but there is a chance now that it may develop once more into a serious threat to the Allies.

  Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, the Luftwaffe resorted to the employment of the unorthodox, and this, like so many of Germany’s other innovations, has succeeded in temporarily nonplussing the Allies. The jet-propelled and rocket-assisted fighters and fighter-bombers with which the Germans are stiffening their air force are potentially a great danger to us. And if, in fact, the threat doesn’t develop into something more than it is now before the end of the war, it will be only because the Germans have again started with too little and too late.

  BUILT FOR QUICK WAR

  In common with all German weapons, the Luftwaffe was built for a quick war. Design and production of aircraft were frozen to about six standard types to insure uninterrupted output. As the Allied forces grew in size and strength, it became clear to the Germans that they had no chance of ever regaining their lost numerical superiority. Technical superiority of their planes by the production of a revolutionary type of aircraft against which the Allies would at first be powerless was their only hope.

  The Focke-Wulfe 190 was their first effort at gaining the technical lead, and for a while this machine did give them a slight technical advantage over the Allies. For many months, however, it has been clear that the Nazis have given up trying to achieve technical advantages over the Allies by improvements on their regular aircraft and are pinning their hopes on the revolutionary jet planes with hitherto unobtainable speeds of 500 miles an hour or more and rates of climb around 10,000 feet a minute.

  By the end of 1944 the ME-163—the Comet—a rocket-assisted glider-fighter, and the ME-262—the Swallow, a twin-motored, jet-propelled reconnaissance fighter-bomber—were in operation over Germany and the Western Front. Other types of German jet-propelled planes are known to exist, but they do not seem yet to have progressed into the full operational stage.

  Will the Luftwaffe be able to stage a real come-back with these new types? The answer depends to a large extent on whether the Germans will be allowed the time and the opportunities to develop their “jets.” They are already appearing in gradually increasing numbers—mainly the ME-262 over the Low Countries, while the ME-163 is kept for the home defense forces and used for attacking heavy bomber formations.

  It is no secret that we equally possess jet planes. Nevertheless, the Allies, so far as is known, are not producing them in sufficient quantity to provide an effective opposition to the enemy.

  The Allies have successfully, but not generally, used jet planes in the battle against the V-l. Apart from that, we have no indication that Allied “jets” have been pitted against the enemy—or, that, in fact, ours are in any more than a purely experimental stage.

  WHAT ALLIES ARE DOING

  Are the Allies planning increased produ
ction of “jets” to fight the new German weapon? So far there is no known evidence that they are. What are the Allies doing then?

  At present, our main defense seems to consist of attacks on the factories and machine shops engaged in production of jet planes.

  At present, the jet and rocket types of aircraft are encountered only in twos and threes—not in formations—and experts think this method of attack is only a tryout for an entirely new technique of formation attacks on raiding bombers. One thing that pilots and experts are agreed upon is that at present the Allies have no motored plane that can successfully chase a jet.

  Pilots who have succeeded in shooting down this type of plane report that they have caught the German pilot when he has been coasting—that is, between jet-driven bursts of speed—and have gone into action before he has had time to turn on his extra power. It seems to be generally agreed, too, that German pilots are not willing to enter into an air fight, probably because their missions are at present confined to reconnaissance and photographic work.

  ‘JETS’ POSE PROBLEMS

  Of course, before the Germans can operate jet-propelled aircraft in any great numbers, they have many difficulties to overcome. Both the jet and rocket assisted types are difficult to fly and re-quire specially trained top-category pilots. In addition, they are not as maneuverable as the orthodox fighter and have only a short flight duration.