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

by The New York Times

  At that time another German conquerer, Frederick the Great, wrote in his diary words that might well serve for Hitler: “I have no more authority over the Army. In these days of despair, they will do well in Berlin to think of their safety. It is a cruel misfortune … I have no resources left, and to tell the truth, I count everything lost.”

  Then, as now, the Russian attack spearheads included Cossacks from the Don and the wide Kuban then, as now, Russian guns—although Totleben had only nineteen—sealed the city’s doom. Totleben demolished Berlin’s gun foundry, powder mills and the Potsdam and Spandau munitions factories. Berlin today is being ground to death in like manner.

  German soldier surrendering during the Allied drive toward Berlin, 1945.

  APRIL 26, 1945

  WEREWOLF THREAT ONLY PROPAGANDA

  By GLADWIN HILL

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  PARIS, April 25—The German Werewolf underground menace has turned out so far over considerable areas of conquered territory to be only propaganda, it was learned from high Allied officers today, but possible trouble from un-uniformed Germans in the near future is not being discounted and is being prepared for.

  The effectiveness of the handling of the initial instances of resistance will probably be to a considerable degree the key to the success of the Allies’ whole administration of conquered Germany and its neutralization as a chronic disrupter of International peace. There have been plenty of small individual cases of resistance by Germans behind the front lines. American soldiers have been shot in the dark. Army wires have been cut. Tires have been stabbed. Explosive charges have been set.

  There have also been active battling and sniping as much as thirty miles behind our advance. But few if any of these instances have been traced to anything but individual impulses. The notable instances of battling and sniping generally turned out to have been the work of isolated German regular forces.

  One whole Army group whose territory covers thousands of square miles has not had a single confirmed instance of Werewolf activity. The Germans’ Werewolf campaign, many responsible officers believe, was essentially another eleventh-hour propaganda shot in the dark—although, by the very nature of the situation, almost inevitably bound to bear fruit eventually.

  Thus far the German civilians generally have been docile and obedient. But it is not an informed docility growing out of respect for and understanding of the Allies’ conquest. It is the docility of benumbed, browbeaten people habituated to following orders with little consideration for their origin, lest they be dealt with summarily and fatally by the Gestapo. The time is bound to come, it is realized, when the Germans will become aware that the Gestapo is no longer on their backs and they are dealing with a different authority. They will naturally try to see what they can get away with.

  APRIL 27, 1945

  GOERING ‘RESIGNS’ AS NAZIDOM CRACKS

  By SYDNEY GRUSON

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  LONDON, April 26—Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, founder and commander of the Luftwaffe and second only to Martin Bormann in the plan of leadership under Adolf Hitler, has been relieved of his command, the first of the Nazi hierarchy to fall under the pressure of Germany’s defeat.

  With his air force virtually wiped out, the rotund marshal who once boasted that enemy planes never would fly over Germany has been succeeded by Col. Gen. Robert Ritter von Greim, a 53-year-old senior officer of the Luftwaffe since the beginning of the war. Von Greim was promoted to field marshal on taking over.

  Announcing the news of Goering’s “retirement” tonight, the Hamburg radio said he had asked Hitler to be relieved and that the Fuehrer had granted the request because Goering was suffering from a heart disease that had become acute. Goering, who is 52, had been noticeably out of the German news for the last several months. None of the German broadcasts declaring that Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels remained in besieged Berlin had mentioned his whereabouts and he was believed to have fallen into disfavor because of the Luftwaffe’s annihilation.

  A German ace in World War I, Goering was one of the original old guard of Nazism that took part with Hitler in the abortive Munich putsch. When the Nazis came to power, Hitler gave him the job of reviving the German air force. He founded thousands of glider clubs as the first step in building the Luftwaffe, with which he eventually razed Warsaw and ravaged Rotterdam and tried to blast Britain into submission for the Wehrmacht.

  At the height of the German blitz in 1940 the Germans said that Goering personally led one bombing attack on London. His decision to switch suddenly from destroying Royal Air Force airfields to burn down London is credited with a large part in the saving of Britain. London survived and the RAF, using the fields Goering let alone, inflicted such heavy losses that he called off daylight bombing.

  Goering’s prestige had been declining since the Luftwaffe failed to halt the Allied bombing of Germany. For all purposes it was wiped out two weeks ago when, during a ten-day period, the United States Eighth Air Force destroyed more than 1,700 planes on the ground. It has hardly been evident in the German sky since.

  A familiar subject of cartoonists because of his girth and his love for medals and fancy uniforms, Goering nevertheless was one of Nazism’s best ambassadors among foreigners before the war.

  APRIL 28, 1945

  First Link Made Wednesday By Four Americans On Patrol

  By HAROLD DENNY

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  AT A RED ARMY OUTPOST, on the Elbe, April 27—The United States and Russian armies have met on the Elbe. The Western and Eastern fronts are at last linked up and Germany is cut in two. First contact was made two days ago—at 4:40 P.M., April 25, by a four-man patrol of the 273d Infantry Regiment of the Sixty-ninth Infantry Division and a Russian outpost at the sizable town of Torgau, twenty miles west of our then most advanced forces.

  On the American side the honor of making this historic junction goes to Gen. Courtney H. Hodges’ United States First Army, which forced the Normandy beaches last June and has advanced 700 miles through France, Belgium and Germany to this spot. On the Russian side it goes to Marshal Ivan S. Koneff’s First Ukrainian Army, which has fought its way 1,400 miles from Stalingrad in one of the greatest marches against bitter opposition in all history.

  MEETING SCENE OF JOY

  The spirit in which the American and Russian troops and their local commanders met was worthy of great occasion.

  The Russians received us with openhanded hospitality and our men have responded in kind. From the moment the first American patrol was taken into a Russian forward command post, it has been almost a continuous party.

  There was handshaking and back-slapping among the troops who made the first contacts.

  The Russians laid out front-line banquets of food and vodka and the Americans produced brandy and champagne “liberated” from German Army stores and there were toasts and songs and expressions of hope for the future in which America, Russia and Britain would stand together for enduring peace.

  There is something kindred in the warm-hearted, uninhibited cordiality of the Russians, such as we have met these past three days, and the hearty friendliness of the average GI. Our soldiers and the Russians have got along beautifully thus far. The American attitude in the front line might be summed up in the remark of one jeep driver: “These Russkys are pretty good boys.”

  BRONX SOLDIER IN GROUP

  When our forces and the Russians did meet it was largely accidental—so accidental, indeed, that there was a bit of shooting before the groups that made contact were sure the others were friends and not Germans.

  The American patrol officially credited now by American Army authorities with the first meeting was headed by dusty, young Second Lieut. William D. Robertson of Los Angeles, Calif. He is a rather short but well-built and good-looking lad who before he joined the army was a pre-medical student at the University of California in Los Angeles. With him, a
nd all traveling in one jeep, were Corp. James G. McDonnell of Peabody, Mass.; Pfc. Paul Staub of the Bronx, New York City, and Pfc. Frank P. Huff of Washington, Va.

  The race for the honor of the first meeting was close. Lieut. Albert Kotzebue of Houston, Tex., was first reported unofficially to have reached the Russians near Reisa with a reconnaissance patrol of twenty men in six jeeps at 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon and to have remained with them. But whoever was the first, Lieutenant Robertson and his three men had a first-class adventure greeting the Russians.

  Lieutenant Robertson and his one-jeep army were on duty Wednesday around Wurzen. The Germans had given up without fighting, but fleeing German civilians, liberated prisoners of war and slave laborers were milling about in such numbers that they clogged the roads. Lieutenant Robertson’s captain suggested that he head off the civilians beyond Wurzen to prevent them from entering the town.

  So Lieutenant Robertson set out to clear roads at 10:30 Wednesday morning and went on and on. Fifteen miles north of Wurzen his patrol met thirty freed British prisoners of war who said there were more British prisoners and some Americans up the road. Their hunt for these took Lieutenant Robertson and his men to the substantial town of Torgau on the Elbe. Lieutenant Robertson liberated a number of people in the town, including some who he was told were to have been shot on trumped-up charges of espionage. Thirty of these were found in a German barracks.

  Soviet soldiers from the Fifth Guards Army and U.S. soldiers from the First Army meet on April 25, 1945 in Torgau, on the Elbe River in Germany.

  While Lieutenant Robertson was talking with them he heard small-arms fire near by. The town previously had been heavily shelled by the Russians and the civilians told Lieutenant Robertson that the Russians were just across the river, which at that point is about 150 yards wide.

  Not sure of what reception he might get, Lieutenant Robertson rigged up a flag, attaching it to his jeep on a pole cut from a tree. He got out of the jeep to seek contact with the Russians and then had a brilliant idea. He broke into a German drugstore, got dyes and crudely painted red stripes and a blue field on his flag. Near the river was a castle-like building surmounted by a tower. Lieutenant Robertson and his men climbed to the top of the tower and waved the flag. “Tovarisch!” Lieutenant Robertson shouted—the only Russian he knew—and he waved the flag.

  Lieutenant Robertson could see the Russians with an armored car in the woods opposite. They called something he did not understand and fired colored flares—the prearranged Russo-American recognition signal. The American reply was to have been colored flares, but Lieutenant Robertson had none.

  He tried to explain this in English to the Russians and waved his home made flag again. The Russians then fired two rounds of anti-tank ammunition at the tower. It seems the Germans recently had tried to trick the Russians with an American flag and the Russians were suspicious. Lieutenant Robertson left his flag flying and he and his men hurried out of the tower. Down in the town he found an English-speaking liberated Russian and got him to return with him to the tower and explain to the Russian soldiers they were friends.

  This worked. The Russians came out of the woods and ran down the bank onto a blown-up bridge, whose central spans sagged to the river. Lieutenant Robertson and his men swarmed onto the bridge also and slid down the slanting girders and were the first actually to touch the Russians. A Russian soldier—Pvt. Nikolai Ivanovich Andreeff—got down first from the Russian side, followed by Lieut. Alexander Sylvachko.

  The Americans and Russians pounded each other on the back and shouted “Hello” at each other in the beginning of a celebration of the junction of the two armies, which became uproarious as meeting expanded Thursday,

  Lieutenant Robertson and his men were led to the east side of the Elbe where they were joined by Capt. Vassili Petrovich Nyedoff and in a few minutes by Maj. Anaphim Larionoff, commanding the river post.

  RUSSIANS MAKE A PARTY

  The Russians immediately made it a party. They got out wine, sardines, biscuits and chocolate captured from the Germans. They toasted everybody bottoms up and the Americans and Russians smiled and laughed at each other.

  After an hour or so of this Lieutenant Robertson and his party started back, taking the Russians with them—all eight piled on the jeep. They made the long trip back to the headquarters of the American 273d Infantry Regiment at Trebsen and reported to Colonel Adams.

  Colonel Adams led the whole group back to division headquarters across the Mulde River and introduced the Russians to General Reinhardt. They all conferred far into the night, exchanged information about the disposition of their troops and arranged for General Reinhardt to visit the Russian division commander Thursday afternoon. And meantime they exchanged innumerable more toasts to Premier Stalin, to the President of the United States, to the Red Army and to the American, to the happy Russo-American relationship, to the destruction of fascism and to the lasting peace of the world.

  Meanwhile it had been arranged for the American correspondents—most of whom had had little sleep Wednesday night and little rest for days in which they hunted for the expected junction of the American and Red Armies—to visit the Russian lines. We left regimental headquarters in a long convoy guarded by a jeep mounting machine guns shortly before 8 o’clock Thursday morning and struck out across this No Man’s Land.

  We found a town badly battered, some of its buildings still burning but no Russian troops. We circled the town cautiously and then entered it past a slave labor camp whose inmates waved at us.

  SINGING ONLY SOCIAL SUCCESS

  We drove through a square past a statue of Frederick the Great and stopped in another large square. Then someone shouted and we saw walking almost majestically from the archway of a building a tall young Russian who turned out to be Lieut. Ivan Feodorovich Kuzminski of Kirovograd, commanding the outpost in the city. His men followed him. The American soldiers accompanying us made a rush for them, and in seconds the Russians and Americans were clasping hands, exchanging names and trying to express mutual gratification.

  A score or so of Russian soldiers strolled up and were friends with the Americans instantly. They produced bottles of cognac and champagne “liberated” from German Army stores and rolled out a barrel of German beer and treated the Americans. Several Russian soldiers had accordions and they and our GI’s joined in a songfest—which was a greater social than a musical success, inasmuch as the Americans sang “Swanee River” while the Russians rendered “If There Should Be War Tomorrow,” a Soviet patriotic ballad.

  A Red Army “Wac” walked down the street to join us—Sgt. Anna Konstantivovna Eugenia of Kharkov—and sang another Russian patriotic song of Soviet greetings to the English and American peoples.

  MAY 1, 1945

  Dachau Captured By Americans Who Kill Guards, Liberate 32,000

  By The Associated Press.

  DACHAU, Germany, April 30—Dachau, Germany’s most dreaded extermination camp, has been captured and its surviving 32,000 tortured inmates have been freed by outraged American troops who killed or captured its brutal garrison in a furious battle.

  Dashing to the camp atop tanks, bulldozers, self-propelled guns—anything with wheels—the Forty-second and Forty-fifth Divisions hit the notorious prison northwest of Munich soon after the lunch hour yesterday. Dozens of German guards fell under withering blasts of rifle and carbine fire as the soldiers, catching glimpses of the horrors within the camp, raged through its barracks for a quick clean-up.

  The troops were joined by trusty prisoners working outside the barbed-wire enclosures. Frenchmen and Russians, grabbing weapons dropped by slain guards, acted swiftly on their own to exact full revenge from their tormentors.

  The sorting of the liberated prisoners was still under way today but the Americans learned from camp officials that some of the more important captives had been transferred recently to a new hideout, probably in the Tyrol. These were said to have included Premier Stalin’s son, Jacob, who was captured i
n 1941; the former Austrian Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, and his wife; Prince Frederick Leopold of Prussia, Prince Xavier de Bourbon de Parme and the Rev. Martin Niemoeller, the German Lutheran, who was arrested when he defied German attempts to control his preaching. [Prisoners at another camp liberated by the Americans recently reported that Dr. Schuschnigg had been executed by his guards earlier this month.] One of the prisoners remaining here said that he was the son of Leon Blum, former French Premier.

  Prisoners with access to records said that 9,000 captives had died of hunger and disease or been shot in the past three months and 14,000 more had perished during the winter. Typhus was prevalent in the camp and the city’s water supply was reported to have been contaminated by drainage from 6,000 graves near the prison.

  39 CARS FULL OF BODIES

  A short time after the battle there was a train of thirty-nine coal cars on a siding. The cars were loaded with hundreds of bodies and from them was removed at least one pitiful human wreck that still clung to life. These victims were mostly Poles and most of them had starved to death as the train stood there idle for several days. Lying alongside a busy road near by were the murdered bodies of those who had tried to escape.

  Bavarian peasants—who traveled this road daily—ignored both the bodies and the horrors inside the camp to turn the American seizure of their city into an orgy of looting. Even German children rode by the bodies without a glance, carrying stolen clothing.

  In the wake of the storming Americans the bodies of the trimly-clad German guards lay scattered like tenpins, bowled over as they sought to flee. The highest officers surrendered, waving a white flag, but a Red Cross representative said that the real executives of the camp had escaped the night before.