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Show been destroyed. Since D-Day near-' ly 2,500,000 prisoners have been captured, one-fourth Qf them during dur-ing the twelve days bginning APr'l 10th. hTe debacle in Western Europe is complete. More than 300,000 Germans were captured In the Ruhr pocket as a result of the skillful enveloping drive by the American First and Ninth armies. The bag exceeds the number of Germans captured at Stalingrad and Tunisia. The surrounded Germans Ger-mans put up no fight-to-the-death, they were helpless as a fighting group. I H I1 I I I I I I III I I I I I I I H I I I 111 FORWARD MARCH By H. S. Sims, Jr. lllllllllllllIIIIIIINNIIIIII'lillllliitlllllinilllllllllNIIIINIIIIIlll1lllllllllllllll GERMAN ARMIES IN WEST DESTROYED AND THOSE IN EAST NOW FACE CONCLUSIVE DISASTER The United Nations have won their war against Germany. No longer does the Nazi government control or supply its isolated groups and coordinated strategy has bec0me impossible for tire" Teutons. German armies in Western Europe Eu-rope have been cut to pieces and annihilated by the Anglo-American offensive, directed by General Eisenhower. There have been no strategic retreats or regroupings. The Nazi armies in the West have Defeat In the West Decisive . . This debacle br0ke the back of German resistance in the West. In about five weeks the Allied armies under General Eisenhower, broke through German position, cut down Nazi soldiers and tor the Western defense of the Reich into tatters. Onethird Gf the Greater Reich was overrun and more than a million captives taken. This was more than the estimated strength of the German army on the Rhine. The final campaign in the West began late in February with the Allied armies occupying a line that ran from Arnhem southward along the Meuse and Roer rivers to Luxembourg where it cr0ssed the Mozelle west of Trier, swung southeastward toward Saarbruck-en Saarbruck-en and continued southeastward to the Rhine near Hagunau and then southward along the Rhine to Switzerland. Positions At End 0f April . . . As April came to an end, the Allied Al-lied line was close to Emden, running run-ning eastward slightly below Bremen Bre-men on the Wser and then turning northeastward to the Elbe below Hamburg. Here the line generally followed the Elbe to Dessau, then Southeastward to th Czchoslovak-ian Czchoslovak-ian border east of Chemnitz where it turned southwestward to the Rhine some 300 miles away. Nuremberg Nur-emberg and Stuttgart have been occupied and our soldiers have moved far beyond these cities, armies, after reaching the Elbe The American Ninth and First river paused, according to General Bradley, to prepare f0r the next phase of their operations. The Canadian Ca-nadian and British forces were advancing toward Emden, Bremen Brem-en and Hamburg while the American Amer-ican Third was driving toward Lake Constance and Munich and th borders of Hitlers so-called "national "na-tional redoubt," Red Armies Sc0re Break-Through . . . While the Anglo-American armies ar-mies were destroying: the Nazi inactive on the vital Oder line which threatened Berlin itself. The Soviet armies were not rest ing, however. While building up supply lines and preparing for the all-out drive up0n Berlin, the various var-ious units of the Red army were busy cleaning up the flanks in the Baltic, in Hungary and moving through Austria. In the latter part of April, the long-awaited assault across the Oder and its tributary, the Niesse, began. The First Russian Army, under Zhukoff, which had . been reinforced, captured Frankfort, advanced ad-vanced some fifty miles and began the encirclement of Berlin frQm the northeast. At the same time, the First Ukrainian army, under Koneff, captured CottUus, pushed westward west-ward toward Leipzig and moved rapidly northwestward to encircle Berlin from the south. Both armies a few days, creating a locp that advanced more than fifty miles in encircled thousands of German soldiers between Berlin and the Oder and Niesse river lines. armies in the West, the Red Ar-its Ar-its offensive in February, after ad-my ad-my which ended the first phase of vancing 300 miles from the Vistula to the Oder river, was apparently |