THE WAR IN REVIEW
THE WAR IN REVIEW THE continent of Europe was shaking convulsively in the last spasms of the bloodiest struggle in its war-ridden history. The Third Reich was in shambles, its mighty armies...
...He placed the number of Japanese killed at 21,269...
...For the past several weeks he has been trying to obtain entry into Switzerland for himself and his mistress, an Italian movie actress...
...This week the UP was having the last laugh...
...But most of all, it waited for word of the fate of the biggest name of them all, Adolf Hitler...
...There were reports that reinforcements were being moved in to bolster the German position...
...His body, along with that of his paramour, was taken back to Milan, a city where he once edited a Socialist newspaper...
...However...
...Juncture In Austria Reports of the whereabouts and fate of Goebbels and Goering were equally confusing...
...UP Gets Revenge An AP correspondent covering the San Francisco conference had been tipped off by U. S. delegate Sen...
...Millions of extras were on the streets and the nation was well into the victory celebration before President Truman announced that the report was without foundation...
...He was arrested, immediately tried, and shot...
...Germany's "man of destiny, was variously reported dead, dying, in flight, or in hiding...
...The aged Marshal had returned to France via Switzerland...
...Benito Mussolini, the swaggering braggart of Italian fascism, lay dead on a heap of fascist corpses in the streets of Milan...
...The people to whom he had once promised a return of the glories of the ancient Roman empire, tore at his squat, stocky body, kicked it, and spat upon it in a wave of the sordid type of lawlessness II Duce himself had taught them...
...Last week, Partisans in northern Italy learned that he was living in a cottage near the Swiss border with his mistress...
...His offer of unconditional surrender to American and British forces was flatly rejected...
...One week before the Armistice was signed the United Press flashed to the world the announcement that Germany had surrendered...
...The Pacific war made none of the dramatic developments that crowded into the headlines from Europe...
...Hard, bitter fighting continued on Okinawa, with heavy losses on both sides...
...Highlight of the week was a repetition of one of the great fiascos that marked the closing days o; the last war...
...mid-week it was apparent that the Germans planned a death stand in the ruins of the city...
...The Third Reich was in shambles, its mighty armies shattered, its government crumbling, and its leaders captured, killed, or in hiding...
...Admiral Chester Nimitz announced that American casualties on the island and those near by had reached 11,413...
...History had repeated itself, but this time the premature announcement was carried by UP's bitter rival, the Associated Press...
...Newsmen, especially those employed by rival services, have never allowed the world or the UP to forget that horrible blunder...
...During the week British airforces raided Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, blasting it to bits...
...The dramatic end of II Duce came during the same week that Allied forces all but concluded the long and bloody conquest of Italy...
...Adolf Hitler...
...Further to the south, however...
...American troops still stood at the west bank of the Elbe River, virtually immobilized by Moscow's insistence on free rein in all territory east of that river...
...Placed under arrest soon after the fall of his government in 1943, Mussolini had been rescued by German parachutists and carried off to northern Italy where he established a new fascist regime...
...Tom Connally that Germany had surrendered...
...The AP's blunder was preceded by several dramatic but indecisive developments in Europe...
...Petain, Laval, And Deat Meanwhile, Marshal Henri Petain, 89 year old French hero of World War I who headed the Vichy government during Nazi occupation of France, was back in his native land under arrest...
...Himmler needed no reminder that Russia was in the war...
...AP officials didn't bother to check the report with Washington officials, but opened all trunks and fed the report to their member papers...
...After 6 years of war that had shak- en the foundations of world civiliza-tion, the last act of the bloody fascist tragedy was drawing to a close...
...At mid-week the world watched excitedly as the great names of recent history trickled back into the news...
...The last stand of the Reich had been placed in the brutal hands of Heinrich Himmler...
...American airpower roamed the Pacific at will, smashing and scattering enemy convoys and hitting land installations as far north as the Japanese homeland...
...Waiting at the border for permission to enter Switzerland this week were Pierre Laval and Marcel Deat, 2 of France's most notorious collaborationists...
...Anxious to score a world scoop...
...Hermann Goering, fat number 2 Nazi and the man who once promised the German people that they would never be bombed from the air, was relieved of his command of the defunct German airforce because of an "acute heart ailment.'' At mid-week he was reported to be either dead or in flight...
...3rd Army forces were slashing down the Danube toward a juncture with Russian troops driving up from Vienna...
...There in the public square, with 17 of his party followers lying in a heap nearby, he made his last public appearance—hanging by his heels beside the 25-year-old Italian beauty he had sought to elevate to stardom by dictatorial decree...
...The last act of the great drama brought a series of dramatic events that kept the world in a constant state of excitement...
...Mark Clark, commander in the campaign, announced the virtual end of the struggle, saying Nazi power has now been crushed except for scattered fighting in isolated pockets...
...From him came the first offer of surrender this week...
...Sawdust Caesar's Last Appearance Most sensational story of one of fascism's leading characters came in the dispatches telling of the death of Benito Mussolini at the hands of a Partisan firing squad...
...He flashed the tip to his office...
...Petain, who claimed that he had been a prisoner of the Germans in Germany, was being held by the French to await trial for high treason...
...Russia, he was advised, is also at war with Germany and the offer must be made to all 3 powers...
...the Gestapo butcher...
...The world waited expectantly for the formal announcement that the struggle had ended...
...Settling back into another period of anxious waiting, the country watched with quiet amusement as the United Press took the revenge for which it had waited for more than a quarter of a century...
...The Nazi capital was being hammered into dust as the Red Army sought to wipe out the last pockets of resistance there...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
