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

by The New York Times

  Allied pilots have confirmed that these jet machines are not easily thrown about in the air and pilots who have found themselves placed in combat position with either the “Swallow” or the “Comet,” say they can easily turn inside them, as they are no good at quick turns.

  The Allies believe that the Germans have not been able to produce and bring into operation as many jet machines as they would like because their aircraft industry is so dispersed to avoid bomb damage. They are still in the position of being forced to rely on tried types because of the urgent requirements of the Luftwaffe on both home defense and tactical work.

  JANUARY 29, 1945

  NEGRO UNIT AT BASTOGNE

  969th Field Artillery Battalion Filled Heroic Role

  WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (AP)—The 969th Field Artillery Battalion, with Negro enlisted men manning its 155-mm. howitzers, has fought all the way from Normandy to Bastogne.

  The War Department reported today that the battalion stuck to its guns and helped beat off waves of German attackers at Bastogne, where for a time American forces were isolated in the German breakthrough push.

  In the heaviest fighting at Bastogne all except the actual cannoneers fought infantry fashion, taking thirty or forty prisoners.

  The battalion set up its guns under the direction of the 101st Airborne Division, to which it was attached. Enemy tanks and infantry approached. With the help of a few scattered tanks, the battalion poured out fire that held the enemy at bay. Casualties became heavy before the tide turned with the appearance of supply planes and armored forces from the south.

  FEBRUARY 8, 1945

  PATTON OVER RIVER; WIDE FRONT ABLAZE

  By CLIFTON DANIEL

  BY Wireless to The New York Times.

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Feb. 7—The coordinated attack by two American Armies against the Siegfried Line broadened to a front of seventy miles today when four divisions of Lieut. Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army renewed their eastward thrust and burst over the German border at ten places beyond the Luxembourg frontier.

  American infantrymen, who had already been thrusting into the Siegfried Line to the north, meanwhile drove clean through the main permanent defenses of the last remaining zone of the Siegfried Line in two places, one on the Olef River southwest of Schleiden, the other only three miles from Pruem, vital road junction in Germany southeast of St. Vith.

  Allied advances had left a fat salient bulging as much as fourteen miles into our lines along the Luxembourg frontier, and the Third Army forces struck a series of determined blows today to flatten that bulge. Striking across the distended Sauer and Our Rivers, which mark the German border, they pushed into Germany as much as a mile in one place and an average of a half mile elsewhere.

  Broadening of the offensive brought a total of at least twelve divisions into the attack on the Siegfried zone between Echternach in the south and Schmidt in the north, a distance of seventy miles. Beyond Schmidt and around Aachen the Westwall has already been effectively reduced, and the American Ninth and British Second Armies are standing along the Roer River awaiting developments while the methodical attack proceeds toward the Siegfried Line and, incidentally, toward the dams that control the Roer’s level.

  Although a dozen divisions are now battering away at the Westwall or moving up to within range of it, these forces are only a token of the total that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower can swing into action at a chosen moment. This moment seems to await developments in the Siegfried Line battle.

  In the interim the former German salient jutting into the high Vosges south of Mulhouse dwindled today until it was nothing but a slender bridgehead across the Rhine, east of Colmar and Mulhouse.

  At the northern end of the front on which two American armies are attacking, the forces bearing south from Bergstein into one of the thickest parts of the Westwall are unable to move across the Kall River toward the biggest of the Roer dams because of mines and small-arms fire spewing out of Siegfried pillboxes.

  To the south and west, however, the Seventy-eighth Division with the aid of tanks managed to drive 1,000 yards farther northeast along the valley floor toward Schmidt, stubborn strongpoint of the Siegfried system. Its infantry is now within rifle range of the village, which is 500 yards away.

  Just a thousand yards northwest of Schmidt, which also guards Schwammenauel dam, other Seventy-eighth Division troops edged into the outskirts of Kommerscheid. How thickly studded the defenses are in this area was demonstrated by the fact that in its slight advances of the past few days the Seventy-eighth Division has already captured 159 pillboxes, most of them defended. In this area the pillboxes, painted green to match the evergreen woods, are blended into the terrain on twisting roads and steep valley walls.

  The line of the new Third Army advance into Germany begins southwest of Brandscheid, at the northern side of Luxembourg, and stretches south to the Echternach area. Generally, the drive seems to be aimed not only at the Siegfried Line, but at a useful communications network lying beyond it and centered on the hubs of Pruem in the north and Bitburg, seventeen miles to the south. The attack went forward at points on a twenty-two-mile front.

  Doughboys of the Sixth Armored Division, leaving the division’s tanks on the west bank, crossed the Our River in three places two and a half miles northeast of Dasburg, which is due east of Clerf, and advanced a half mile beyond the river. The Seventeenth Airborne Division, spanning the river due east of Clerf, also advanced a half mile against small-arms fire from the Dasburg area.

  At 3 A.M. the Eightieth Division, after an hour and a half of artillery preparation, moved over the Sauer River two miles northwest of Bollendorf, which is four miles northwest of Echternach, and units of the same division crossed the Our at two points and speared forward a half mile due east of Diekirch, where the Our joins the Sauer. They entered Bettel, northeast of Diekirch.

  FIFTH GETS OFF FIRST

  The Fifth Division moved off earliest of all at 1 A.M. and caught the first counterattack. Its thrust was made across the Sauer at three points northwest of Echternach. It extended into Germany for a mile after a counterblow against one of its crossings had been beaten off.

  The crossings were accomplished despite the swift current and high water. Fire from the opposite bank, which was guarded by a thick tangle of barbed wire, sank some of the assault boats on swirling streams.

  French First Army forces, including an American corps, meanwhile were making a clean sweep of the Colmar pocket south of Strasbourg. Remnants of the German forces in the Vosges were being swept into prisoner cages. Along the Rhine American forces overran Neuf-Brisach, on the northern side of the German bridgehead, yesterday, and pushed five miles south of that town. All territory west of the Rhone-Rhine Canal, which parallels the Rhine, was cleared by the American Twenty-eighth Division and the French First Armored Division. A bridgehead established across the canal at Ile de Napoleon, in the south, by the French Ninth Colonial Division, was extended toward the Rhine today.

  All that is left to the Germans west of the Rhine now is a strip five or six miles wide and ten miles long up to the Rhone-Rhine Canal. At the rate at which they are evacuating by ferry and pontoon bridges they will not hold that long.

  The western zone along the German border has been effectively penetrated along a forty-five-mile stretch from a point north of Aachen to a point due east of Malmedy. The attack now proceeding is against the second zone, which is based roughly on the Olef River at Hellenthal, Schleiden and Gemuend and then continues north into Huertgen Forest along both sides of the Roer River, into which the Olef runs. The main part of this line was cracked, if not broken, today with the crossing of the Olef at Hellenthal.

  FEBRUARY 13, 1945

  Text of the Big Three Announcement On the Crimea Conference

  WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (AP)—The text of the report on the Big Three conference in the Crimea, released at the White House today, follows:

  REPORT OF CRIMEA CONFERENCE

&
nbsp; For the past eight days, Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain; Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, and Marshal J. V. Stalin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, have met with the Foreign Secretaries, Chiefs of Staff and other advisers in the Crimea.

  The following statement is made by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the President of the United States of America and the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the results of the Crimean conference:

  The “Big Three” at the Crimea Conference, 1945.

  THE DEFEAT OF GERMANY

  We have considered and determined the military plans of the three Allied powers for the final defeat of the common enemy. The military staffs of the three Allied nations have met in daily meetings throughout the conference. These meetings have been most satisfactory from every point of view and have resulted in closer coordination of the military effort of the three Allies than ever before. The fullest information has been interchanged. The timing, scope and coordination of new and even more powerful blows to be launched by our armies and air forces into the heart of Germany from the east, west, north and south have been fully agreed and planned in detail.

  Our combined military plans will be made known only as we execute them, but we believe that the very close-working partnership among the three staffs attained at this conference will result in shortening the war. Meetings of the three staffs will be continued in the future whenever the need arises.

  Nazi Germany is doomed. The German people will only make the cost of their defeat heavier to themselves by attempting to continue a hopeless resistance.

  THE OCCUPATION AND CONTROL OF GERMANY

  We have agreed on common policies and plans for enforcing the unconditional surrender terms which we shall impose together on Nazi Germany after German armed resistance has been finally crushed. These terms will not be made known until the final defeat of Germany has been accomplished. Under the agreed plan, the forces of the three powers will each occupy a separate zone of Germany. Coordinated administration and control have been provided for under the plan through a central control commission consisting of the Supreme Commanders of the three powers with headquarters in Berlin. It has been agreed that France should be invited by the three powers, if she should so desire, to take over a zone of occupation and to participate as a fourth member of the control commission. The limits of the French zone will be agreed by the four Governments concerned through their representatives on the European Advisory Commission.

  It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and nazism and to insure that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world. We are determined to disarm and disband all German armed forces; break up for all time the German General Staff that has repeatedly contrived the resurgence of German militarism; remove or destroy all German military equipment; eliminate or control all German industry that could be used for military production; bring all war criminals to just and swift punishment and exact reparation in kind for the destruction wrought by the Germans; wipe out the Nazi party, Nazi laws, organizations and institutions, remove all Nazi and militarist influences from public office and from the cultural and economic life of the German people; and take in harmony such other measures in Germany as may be necessary to the future peace and safety of the world. It is not our purpose to destroy the people of Germany, but only when nazism and militarism have been extirpated will there be hope for a decent life for Germans, and a place for them in the comity of nations.

  REPARATION BY GERMANY

  We have considered the question of the damage caused by Germany to the Allied Nations in this war and recognized it as just that Germany be obliged to make compensation for this damage in kind to the greatest extent possible. A commission for the compensation of damage will be established. The commission will be instructed to consider the question of the extent and methods for compensating damage caused by Germany to the Allied countries. The commission will work in Moscow.

  UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE

  We are resolved upon the earliest possible establishment with our allies of a general international organization to maintain peace and security. We believe that this is essential, both to prevent aggression and to remove the political, economic and social causes of war through the close and continuing collaboration of all peace-loving peoples.

  The foundations were laid at Dumbarton Oaks. On the important question of voting procedure, however, agreement was not there reached. The present conference has been able to resolve this difficulty.

  We have agreed that a conference of the United Nations should be called to meet at San Francisco, in the United States, on April 25, 1945, to prepare the charter of such an organization, along the lines proposed in the informal conversations at Dumbarton Oaks.

  The Government of China and the Provisional Government of France will be immediately consulted and invited to sponsor invitations to the conference jointly with the Governments of the United States, Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As soon as the consultation with China and France has been completed, the text of the proposals on voting procedure will be made public.

  DECLARATION ON LIBERATED EUROPE

  The Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States of America have consulted with each other in the common interests of the peoples of their countries and those of liberated Europe. They jointly declare their mutual agreement to concert during the temporary period of instability in liberated Europe the policies of their three Governments in assisting the peoples liberated from the domination of Nazi Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite states of Europe to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems.

  The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice. This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter—the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live—the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived of them by the aggressor nations.

  To foster the conditions in which the liberated peoples may exercise these rights, the three Governments will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state or former Axis satellite state in Europe where in their judgment conditions require (A) to establish conditions of internal peace; (B) to carry out emergency measures for the relief of distressed peoples; (C) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people; and (D) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.

  By this declaration we reaffirm our faith in the principles of the Atlantic Charter, our pledge in the Declaration by the United Nations and our determination to build, in cooperation with other peace-loving nations, world order under law, dedicated to peace, security, freedom and the general well-being of all mankind.

  A new situation has been created in Poland as a result of her complete liberation by the Red Army. This calls for the establishment of a Polish Provisional Government which can be more broadly based than was possible before the recent liberation of western Poland. The Provisional Government which is now functioning in Poland should therefore be reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad. This new government should then be called the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.

  M. Molotoff, Mr. Harriman and Sir A. Clark Kerr are authorized as a commission to consult in the first instance in Moscow with members of the present Provisional Government and
with other Polish democratic leaders from within Poland and from abroad, with a view to the reorganization of the present Government along the above lines. This Polish Provisional Government of National Unity shall be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot. In these elections all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates.

  When a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity has been properly formed in conformity with the above, the Government of the U.S.S.R., which now maintains diplomatic relations with the present Provisional Government of Poland, and the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America will establish diplomatic relations with the new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity and will exchange Ambassadors, by whose reports the respective Governments will be kept informed about the situation in Poland.

  The three heads of Government consider that the eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon Line, with digressions from it in some regions of five to eight kilometers in favor of Poland. They recognize that Poland must receive substantial accessions of territory in the north and west. They feel that the opinion of the new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity should be sought in due course on the extent of these accessions and that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should thereafter await the peace conference.

  FEBRUARY 14, 1945

  Editorial

  THE CASE OF POLAND