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Show I VICTORY IN EUROPE ! 1 Germany Forced to Capitulate After Six Years of Fighting; Allies Face Big Job in Pacific Eleven hard and bitter months after General Dwight D, Eisenhower's armies smashed through the ramparts of "Fortress "For-tress Europe" to set foot upon French soil, Germany's once proud wehrmacht, weakened after six years of the bloodiest war in history, bowed the knee unconditionally to the Allied powers. Offered to Russia as well as the U. S. and Britain after earlier futile efforts to split the Allies by approaching the Anglo-Americans alone, Germany's surrender took place at General Eisenhower's headquarters in the little red school- j ll' S JpJ ih; P 1 fJ These nre the men Roosevelt, Truman, Stnlln and Churchill, who were responsible responsi-ble In dlreotlne llie victory against Germnny. Truman, committed to the Roosevelt forcirn relation policies, together with Stalin and Churchill, will direct the United Nations in plans for world's peace. house in Reims, France, at 2:41 a. m., May 7, with Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith accepting Col. Gen. Gustav Jodl's capitulation. capit-ulation. Later the surrender was ratified at Russian headquarters head-quarters in battered Berlin, with Marshal Gregory Zhukov participating for the Reds. Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz's order to German troops to cease firing came as a sort of anti-climax since the bulk of the Nazis forces already had laid down their arms in the face of the Allied avalanche. April 29, 1,000,000 Nazis surrendered in northern Italy and western Austria; May 4, another 1,000,-000 1,000,-000 gave up in Holland and Denmark, and on May 5, 400,000 quit in southern Germany. As the stiff-necked German officers of-ficers formally admitted defeat, neither nei-ther they nor the beaten country's new ministers entertained any illusions illu-sions as to the character of the Allied Al-lied terms, with Foreign Minister Count Ludwig" Schwenn Von Krosigk Kro-sigk telling the people: ". . . . Nobody must deceive himself him-self on the harshness of the terms. . . . Nobody must have any doubt that heavy sacrifices will be demanded demand-ed from us in all spheres of life. . . ." Thus did the European war come to its end six years after the mighty German army, striking at the unprepared un-prepared western powers, rolled through Poland; levelled the lowlands low-lands and France, and then turned back to the east again to challenge giant Russia. As the Germans capitulated, behind them lay the remnants of . a once all-powerful army, which, like Napoleon's, underestimated the vast steppes of Russia, and then found the U. S. and Britain gathering force behind Its back; behind them lay Germany's blackened cities and shattered railway lines, pulverized by Allied Al-lied aerial attacks; and behind them in the ruins of Berlin reportedly re-portedly lay Adolf Hitler's dead body. Because of the anti-climactic nature na-ture of the formal surrender, and also because of the premature announcement an-nouncement of the capitulation days before, some of the edge had been removed from the great event, with the result that the nation accepted ' , ' Kk&t '.f Ov'i GEN. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER "Man of the Hour." the news with restraint. As Germany's Ger-many's fall was substantiated, people peo-ple looked to the east, where the Japs still remain to be defeated and the entire resources of the navy and well over 6,000,000 troops may be needed to assure victory. With America scheduled to take over the occupation of central and western Germany and western Austria Aus-tria in accordance with Allied plans to maintain strict supervision over the country until a thoroughly democratic dem-ocratic administration can be established, estab-lished, U. S. military authorities figure fig-ure on the detention of 400,000 Yanks in Europe. The first big break that signalized Germany's disintegration was the U. S. 1st army's surprise capture of the Ludendorff bridge spanning the Rhine below Cologne, permitting Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges to build up a A PROCLAMATION Here is a partial text of President Presi-dent Truman's victory proclamation: proclama-tion: "The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God's help, have wrung from Germany a final and unconditional uncondi-tional surrender. The western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born free-born men. "Much remains to be done. The victory won In the west must now be won In the east. The whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world has been freed. "For the triumph of spirit and of arms which we have won and for its promise to people everywhere every-where who join us in the love of freedom, It Is fitting that we as a nation give thanks to Almighty God, who has strengthened ns and given us the victory. Now, therefore, I Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby appoint ap-point Sunday, May 13, 1945, to be a day of prayer. "I call upon my countrymen to dedicate this day of prayer to the memory of those who have given their lives to make possible pos-sible our victory." HARRY S. TRUMAN. powerful bridgehead immediately below the vital Ruhr district and on the edge of the rolling plains leading lead-ing eastward to Berlin. As the 1st army's bold move threw the German command off balance, the remaining Allied forces in the west soon poured over the Rhine, last formidable water barrier guard-in guard-in the heart of the rcich. While British Brit-ish and Canadian troops struck out against eastern Holland and the North sea ports, the U. S. Gth army set about reducing the Ruhr valley while one wing of the 1st joined in the attack and another kept step with Lt. Gen. George Patton's famed armored columns dashing eastward across the reich. Meanwhile, the U. S. 7th and the French 1st armies drove into the Nazis' mythical redoubt re-doubt in the Bavarian Alps. As the American and British armies slashed through the German ' positions and. turned to their rearward rear-ward to isolate the enemy into separate sep-arate pockets, the whole enemy's front lost its coherence, contributing contribut-ing to the disintegration of Nazi resistance. re-sistance. With whole groups of German troops entrapped without hope of reinforcement, their defense varied, va-ried, with the majority of the older, old-er, more practical men giving up upon being cornered while younger fanatics carried on in the face of overwhelming odds. Meanwhile, the Russians had drawn up along the banks of the Oder river from the Baltic clear down to Silesia, while still other Red armies thrust eastward through Czechoslovakia and Austria. Once the Russians opened their all-out attack at-tack on Berlin, in the face of the Nazi collapse in the west, the giant pincer was near its close. Twice taken to war in 25 years and twice defeated, with nothing to show but the anguish and suffering suffer-ing of conflict, the mass of the German Ger-man people in American and British occupied territory accepted unconditional uncon-ditional surrender with a stolidity that masked their inner feelings. East of the Elbe river where the Reds stood guard, however, the populace tread in apprehension over fear of reprisal for the Nazis' devastation of Russia in four years of bitter warfare. Previously, many of the people had tried to escape to the west, only to be turned back. |
