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

by The New York Times

  With the signatures of the heads of all the German armed forces appended, this historic document forestalls forever any future German claim that the German Army ended the war unbeaten.

  Keitel, a tall, haughty, gray-haired figure wearing the full-dress uniform of a German field marshal, maintained his Prussian arrogance to the bitter end.

  After he had signed the document and while the Allied chiefs were signing, Keitel made a last-minute attempt to play for time. He beckoned the Russian interpreter to him and began haranguing him, protesting that there was an insufficient time to notify the forces under his command of minor modifications in the capitulation text and asking for another twenty-four hours grace before it became effective.

  He could clearly be heard repeatedly saying to the interpreter: “I insist that you go to the Colonel General—I mean Marshal Zhukoff—and tell him I must demand another twenty-four hours’ respite.”

  The interpreter hesitated and appeared uncertain what to do and finally went and consulted members of Marshal Zhukoff’s staff. As no reply was conveyed back to Keitel, it appeared that the Russians ignored the request. Marshal Zhukoff, medium-sized and stocky, his hair close-cropped and thinning on top, wore a marshal’s full-dress uniform and was a dignified soldierly figure throughout. He spoke only Russian and all the conversation between him and the SHAEF personnel had to be interpreted.

  Keitel and the other Germans, meanwhile, had been escorted to a near-by villa to await the capitulation document. Marshal Zhukoff asked Marshal Tedder to stay behind and confer alone with him. The two remained closeted about a half hour while Marshal Tedder gave Marshal Zhukoff the draft of the capitulation terms, embodying certain changes that the Russians desired. At 5:30 P.M. they came out and Marshal Zhukoff asked Marshal Tedder to give him until 7 P.M. to consider the exact wording.

  A long wait then began. At 8 P.M. Marshal Zhukoff and the SHAEF experts had not yet agreed on the final text. At one point Marshal Tedder was called away to confer again with Marshal Zhu koff. It was not until shortly before midnight that the document was finally completed, typed and presented to the Germans.

  At midnight Marshal Zhukoff gave the word to the delegates to enter the hall for the signing.

  The large, whitewashed hall was brilliantly lighted with Klieg lights, spotlighting the Soviet, American, British and French flags immediately behind the chief Allied delegates. The long tables were arranged like a letter E. Marshal Zhukoff, stern-faced, took the middle seat, with Marshal Tedder and Soviet Assistant Foreign Commissar Andrei Y. Vishinsky and Admiral Sir Harold Burroughs, the Allied supreme naval commander, on his right, and General Spaatz followed by General de Lattre, who had arrived independently from the First French Army.

  Other members of the Allied delegation included American Maj. Gen. Harold R. Bull, head of SHEAF’s G-3, and British Maj. Gen. K. W. D. Strong, head of G-2. The newsmen were escorted by Capt. Harry Butcher, Brig. W. A. S. Turner and Col. Ernest Dupuy of SHEAF public relations.

  The delegates spent several minutes posing for the Russian photographers, who swarmed all over the hall. At 12:07 Marshal Zhukoff arose and read the text of the capitulation document and then ordered the German delegation brought in.

  At 12:10 Keitel walked in, followed by Friedeburg and Stumpff. Keitel, haughty and self-possessed, his face slightly flushed, slammed his marshal’s baton down on the table and took a seat, looking straight ahead, ignoring the photographers. Once or twice he fingered his collar and nervously wetted his lips.

  The Germans sat at a separate table near the door, with four uniformed aides and two Allied interpreters standing behind.

  When Keitel was seated Marshal Tedder arose and said in a cold voice in English:

  “I ask you: Have you read this document of unconditional surrender? Are you prepared to sign it?”

  After the translation Keitel picked a copy of the document off the table and replied in harsh Prussian accent in German:

  Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s chief military adviser in World War II, signing the unconditional surrender to the Allies and Russians in Berlin May 10, 1945.

  “Yes, I am ready.”

  Marshal Zhukoff then motioned to him to come over to the table. Keitel picked up his cap, his marshal’s baton and gloves, slowly and carefully inserted his monocle in his right eye, walked over and sat down to sign in a long scrawling hand the single name “Keitel.”

  The first signature was appended at 12:15 A.M., central European time. There were nine copies to sign, three each in Russian, English and German, of which the Russian and English texts were official for the record.

  As the signing was completed Marshal Zhukoff arose and said coldly in Russian: “I now request the German delegation to leave the room.”

  Keitel arose, snapped together the folder in which he was carrying his copy and marched out haughtily, followed by the other Germans.

  MAY 13, 1945

  SHIFT TO ONE-FRONT WAR BIG PROBLEM FOR ARMY

  By SIDNEY SHALETT

  WASHINGTON, May 12—Now that R-Day—Redeployment Day—is approaching, the greatest movement of men in all military history, dwarfing even the colossal but more gradual build-up for D-Day in Europe, will be staged by the United States Army during the next twelve months.

  On the basis of information made public by the Army since victory in Europe, it seems conservative to estimate that 5,000,000 men—and perhaps 500,000 more—will be on the high seas during the next year, streaming back to the United States from Europe and to a smaller degree from the Pacific, and then out to the Pacific again, with Tokyo their ultimate destination.

  Gen. Brehon Somervell, commanding general of the vast Army Service Forces, has revealed that 3,100,000 men will be withdrawn from Europe in “less than one year.” Some will go directly to the Pacific. Many already have been shipped from Italy to the new one-front war theatre—but the “great majority” will return to the United States for furloughs and then new assignments, or, if they are eligible, demobilization.

  In addition to the 3,100,000 leaving Europe, several hundred thou sand Pacific veterans should be returning to the United States for demobilization. While these movements are under way reinforcements for the Pacific, including European veterans, rested after their furloughs, will be going to the Orient.

  ‘FULL SPEED AHEAD’

  The Army has not disclosed how fast it hopes to transfer its complete forces to the Pacific, but our military leaders have indicated that “full speed ahead” will be the order of the day, limited only by shipping facilities and the availability of Far Eastern bases. We want to defeat Japan as quickly as possible, they grimly emphasize, and the way to do it is to follow Forrest’s axiom of getting there “fu’stest with the mostest.”

  Here is the general pattern of both redeployment and demobilization, as revealed by War Department leaders at a series of conferences since V-E Day:

  REDEPLOYMENT—To be moved from Europe, 3,100,000 troops (400,000 will remain as occupation forces). Movements will take place at this minimum schedule:

  May, June and July—about 845,000 men, or more than 280,000 a month.

  August, September, October—about 1,185,000, or 395,000 a month.

  November, December, January—about 807,000, or 269,000 a month.

  MAY 18, 1945

  JAPANESE FEELERS ON PEACE SPURNED

  WASHINGTON, May 17 (AP)—Individual Japanese in neutral countries are fishing for signs of peace short of unconditional surrender, but thus far no official peace bid has been received from Japan, it was learned today.

  Particularly since the fall of Manila, a number of Japanese have urged neutrals to learn the “real American attitude,” but these Japanese specify only that unconditional surrender is impossible for Japan and suggest no definite terms.

  Asked about reports that the Office of Strategic Services had received a definite Japanese peace bid, officials here familiar with Japanese affairs said they knew of nothing of that kind. They stre
ssed the futility of informal, personal peace feelers, representing as they do no authority from the militarists who still control Japan’s destiny.

  REAL RULERS NOT INVOLVED

  All the evidence in American hands indicates that this element has no self-interest in facing the prospect of unconditional surrender and probably will not face it until Japanese military pride has been brought considerably lower. The Cabinet of Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, the new Premier, is a strong one, composed of some of the empire’s best production experts with emphasis on the development of the war potential in Korea and Manchuria.

  Until a peace bid bears unmistakably the stamp of Japan’ s real rulers it means nothing except possibly to indicate factional and minority trends in Japan, according to the view here.

  While one peace inquiry may have originated with the wealthy classes of Japan and another appeared to have been associated at one stage with the Japanese court, both fizzled out because there was no hint that they represented the intentions of the militarists who run the Government in Tokyo.

  American policy, it is learned, is based on the idea that to give un merited attention to such unofficial feelers would lead Japanese militarists to believe that this country would actually accept a peace short of unconditional surrender.

  Chapter 24

  “NEW AGE USHERED…”

  June–September 1945

  The months after the German defeat left the world in limbo, hoping to build a new order out of the ruins of the most damaging war in history but still waiting for the conflict raging in Asia and the Pacific to end. Following the United Nations’s founding conference in San Francisco in May, the participants moved toward full ratification. In Washington Congress approved the new structure on July 28 during the last of the major wartime summits between the three major Allies. It was held at Potsdam, just outside Berlin, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. Like the previous wartime summits, the Potsdam conference was conducted in complete secrecy, with no reporters present.

  The Times speculated on the uncertainties now dividing the former wartime Allies over the future of Europe and Asia. The one certainty, The Times claimed, was Churchill’s imminent reelection as Britain went to the polls; there was “little doubt” about the British election’s outcome. When Churchill was defeated by Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, The Times conceded some “deep-seated forces” underlying Churchill’s ouster. With Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Stalin was the only head of state at Potsdam who had led his country through the whole war.

  The principal concern at Potsdam was to finish the war. Despite Japanese peace feelers extended via Moscow (which the Soviets denied), those in Tokyo who favored surrender could not defy the die-hard militarists, and feared for the future of the emperor.

  On August 6 the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese port of Hiroshima. The Times had been given exceptional access to the last stages of the bomb’s development. In April 1945 Times science correspondent William L. Laurence had been invited by Brig. General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project (the super-secret program to develop the bomb), to become the project historian. Laurence wrote plenty of newspaper copy, but it was locked in the safe at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee Air Force facility, where he was based. He watched the first atomic test at the Alamogordo, New Mexico airbase in July. On August 4 Groves told The Times that the paper would be given exclusive access when a special, but still secret, event took place. Thus when the first bomb was dropped Times War Department reporter Sidney Shallett beat the rest of the press with a story headlined “New Age Ushered” on August 7. Two days later, Laurence rode in the B-29 that dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.

  Surrender followed quickly, though not only because of the atomic bombs. On September 2 aboard the battleship Missouri, Japanese representatives, some in tears, signed the surrender document. That same day the electric board on Times Square carried the message “Official * * * Truman Announces Japanese Surrender.” The Times later wrote, “This was the hour free men had dreamed of, and for which they had strained and died.”

  Atomic weapons transformed the balance of power in America’s favor overnight. On August 18 The Times announced the issue was how to use that power in a world reduced in many places to a ruined chaos. In Germany a program of “de-Nazification” was established, though it made slow progress. France under Charles de Gaulle’s provisional rule moved toward a new democratic constitution.

  But outside Europe, issues that had been suppressed by war blazed up again after 1945. In the Middle East Arab states sought complete independence and curbs on Jewish immigration; in India Gandhi called for Britain to honor its wartime pledges and grant the nation independence; in Indo-China (later known as Vietnam) nationalists and Communists resisted the return of French rule; China was faced with an incipient civil war once the Japanese Army left.

  Relations between the Soviet Union and the West were still uncertain, but Stalin had ordered an immediate acceleration of the Soviet atomic program. On September 17 The Times reported that a B-29 bomber had been forced down by Soviet jets over Korea. Two days later Soviet ambitions for a controlling hand in North Africa were published. This was not yet the Cold War, but the new age of peace began in an atmosphere of distrust and crisis.

  JUNE 27, 1945

  20 NATIONS PLEDGE RATIFICATION IN ‘45

  SAN FRANCISCO, June 26 (AP)—If given a quick start by the United States Senate, a sufficient number of the other United Nations might ratify the World Charter in time to put it into effect before the end of 1945.

  This was the prospect shown today in a poll conducted at the Security Conference by The Associated Press. Out of the first twenty-six nations to reply to a questionnaire, twenty predicted ratification by their home Governments before the end of the year. None raised any bar to ratifications. Six declined to fix a probable date.

  Assuming Senate approval, as indicated by Senators’ replies to another canvass by The Associated Press in Washington, the feeling expressed by delegates here was that a real landslide of favorable votes by small nations would follow.

  All of the major powers, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France and China, plus twenty-three of the other forty-five members of the United Nations must ratify it before the Charter can become effective.

  The United States, Britain and China, together with eighteen small nations replying to the current questionnaire, already have been placed on the line as probable signatories before Jan. 1, 1946.

  If Russia and France completed the Big Five line-up quickly, the full force of the new world organization almost certainly would go into effect this year.

  Ratification predictions ranged from a “few weeks” in the case of China to “the earliest practicable date” in the case of the Philippines.

  In several instances, as in Britain, Norway, Belgium and Greece, the delegations said that pending elections would govern the date of ratification, but even in these instances a 1945 date usually was given.

  The Australian delegation forecast, given as “unofficial,” was ten weeks. Peru’s prediction was “possibly August”; Cuba and Paraguay said approval would be “speedy”; Norway indicated November; Belgium, December; Honduras named this same month, as did South Africa, with a proviso that final action might go over to 1946; Bolivia said “August or September”; Haiti said “in the next three months”; Luxembourg said “autumn,” and the Dominican Republic said “without delay.”

  JULY 2, 1945

  4,000 Tons of Fire Missiles Bring Ruin to 4 Enemy Cities

  By WARREN MOSCOW

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  GUAM, July 2—In the pre-dawn darkness, American Superfortresses filled the air over Japan this morning, bringing destruction and ruin to four more Japanese cities. The greatest number of B-29’s ever put in the air, from 550 to 600, rained down approximately 4,000 tons of incendiaries on the industries of three cities on the main island of Honshu and one on Kyushu.

 
The targets were Kure, Shimonoseki and Ube on Honshu and Kumamoto on Kyushu, all tasting the incredible heat of the fire bombs for the first time as the B-29 high command went about its business of wrecking Japan’s industrial machine, city by city and factory by factory. Last night, from their bases on Guam, Tinian and Saipan, the planes that took off outnumbered those that took part in the fire bomb attack on Tokyo on May 24. There was little left of the Tokyo target when that raid was over, and the four secondary cities that received the heavier load early this morning were in line for a similar fate.

  There has been a continual stepping up of the number of planes taking part in the attacks. Only a few months back 200 planes in the air set a record. Then came the 300-, 400- and 500-plane attacks. We have promised to the Japanese attacks by 1,000 planes, and once the new bases on Okinawa are in use those promises will become a reality.

  This morning’s attacks bring to twenty-two the number of Japanese cities attacked by the incendiary method. There have been thirty-three incendiary missions, exclusive of pin-point bombing attacks and mining missions. Of the twenty-two cities fired by incendiaries, fifteen are on Honshu and the others on Kyushu.

  U.S. soldiers examine the results of a B29 Superfortress bomb run on the streets of the Ginza district, Tokyo, July 1945.

  JULY 17, 1945

  Editorial

  POTSDAM SECRECY

  Like all its predecessors, the conference of the Big Three at Potsdam is surrounded by secrecy and a strict censorship which bars the press and severely censors whatever press representatives may learn at its fringes. President Truman has expressed himself in favor of brief and generalized reports on the progress of the meeting, But it is evident that such reports will be issued only by common agreement and that they will tell little about the actual negotiations. Since the conference is expected to last three weeks, the world’s patience is likely to be tried as never before.