Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Second White Russian Army had captured Stettin, 70 miles northeast of Berlin, as the Russians advanced 19 miles beyond the Oder, having crossed both the eastern and western sections. Fighting continued on the southern fringes of Stettin.

Another Soviet Army moved 23.5 miles from Nauen to Ravenow, 14.5 miles from American lines of the Ninth Army, west of Berlin.

Wes Gallagher reports that artillery shells of the Red Army were occasionally hitting a mile or two east of the Elbe at Arneburg, 48 miles northwest of Berlin, opposite the location of the Ninth Army on the west bank of the river, the point to which it had withdrawn to accommodate Russian demands on April 13 that the Red Army be allowed to storm and take Berlin. Otherwise, the Elbe remained quiet. The Americans had ceased shelling the east side of the river after Germans appeared with flags of surrender. Mr. Gallagher reports long lines of soldiers and civilians as far as he could see in fields leading to the woods on the other side of the river. Among this throng of people, there were also American soldiers who had been taken prisoner and managed to escape.

In Berlin, German resistance was weakening in the face of constant Russian artillery fire on the heart of the city, hitting targets from Tempelhof airport to the Tiergarten to the Reichstag sector. Fighting was ongoing in the streets of the industrial districts in the northwestern part of the city, Tagel and Siemensstadt. Still, nearly everyone in the city was resisting, according to a Russian war correspondent, even if many flags of surrender were now flying from windows throughout the beleaguered capital.

Many of the Russian soldiers were in possession of Berlin addresses to which they intended to pay a visit to settle personal vendettas. One, for instance, had escaped internment as a slave laborer, was now fighting with the Red Army and looking for his former boss, a manufacturer named Ernest Blanker. Another sought to free his interned sisters. Another wanted revenge for his dead brother, another for his dead wife.

Young German girls were reported by Hamburg radio to have joined in the fight to defend the city. Hitler and Goebbels, by contrast, remained in the Fuehrerbunker, urging the girls to fight.

Nazi soldiers disguised as priests and school teachers had infiltrated behind Russian lines.

The Free German Press reported from Stockholm that a carefully coached former Plauen grocer, August Wilhelm Bartholdy, would die in the place of Hitler as his doppelganger, sent "to die on the barricades", as spring had come 'round. He would create an heroic legend surrounding Der Fuehrer, while Der Fuehrer went underground. He not only resembled Hitler but had been trained to speak like him as well. His "heroic death", the report said, would be filmed by Hitler's long-time photographer, Hoffman, along with agents of the propaganda ministry.

And, of course, there would be a doppelganger, whose corpse for a time fooled the Russians and Americans after the capture of the Reichstag, a man who resembled Hitler having been found in a fountain above the Fuehrerbunker, with a bullet hole through the center of his forehead. Presumably, this man was Herr Bartholdy, who, apparently, in the end, chose to die a less romantic death than that slated for him.

We shall explore a bit next week the persistent rumors that Hitler managed to escape Berlin and lived somewhere for several years hence. It is an absorbing subject, if winding up as a bit of a whirlpool into which to try to delve.

On the Western Front, the British Second Army captured the ruins of Bremen, clearing the entire city except the dock area and Burger Park. The 52nd and Third Divisions had captured 5,000 prisoners since the day before. Opposition had suddenly dissipated and was gone completely by mid-afternoon. The worst obstacles were the liberated foreign laborers who ran through the streets, fortified by inebriants.

Bremen had been built on the profits from American trade with Germany, being the leading import center for tobacco and cotton, American trade accounting for a third of its billion-dollar trade volume. It had also been the leading port for German immigration to the new world. Bremen had been a center for trade since the days of Charlemagne.

The British also moved to the Elbe at all points in its sector southeast of Hamburg. The British, together with the American Ninth Army, now controlled 200 miles of the west bank of the Elbe, from Hamburg to Dessau.

The Canadians reached Kritsum, several miles northeast of Emden, withdrawing their two bridgeheads over the Maas River south of Utrecht.

The Third Army closed to within 41 miles of Munich on the north and northwest, beyond outflanked and bypassed Regensburg, and sent tanks into the Danube Valley to within 27 miles of Berchtesgaden. The 11th Armored Division drove nine miles southeast to the vicinity of Furholz, 8.5 miles from the Austrian frontier. The Germans, however, were spotted massing along the Austrian border for a determined last stand.

Other divisions of the Army moved east into Czechoslovakia, capturing Eger.

The Seventh Army advanced to within 8.5 miles of Austria, about 40 miles from Augsburg, 30 miles from Munich, and a hundred miles from the Russian forces.

The French First Army captured Waldsee, 21 miles from Friedrichshafen.

All three armies, the Third, Seventh, and French First, had crossed the Danube along wide fronts, all aiming toward the Bavarian redoubt.

RAF planes of the Fifteenth Air Force out of Italy hit the German redoubt at Freilassing the previous night.

In Italy, Italian patriot forces were taking control of the major cities within Northern Italy against German and Fascist garrisons either fleeing or surrendering. Reports stated that Milan had offered to surrender, that Mussolini, who had been in Milan, had fled incognito to the Swiss border, arriving at Como, already said to be in partisan hands. Genoa had reportedly surrendered to the patriots. Uprisings were indicated as occurring within Turin, Gallarate, Legnano, Novaro, and Varese.

The Fifth Army moved over the Lombard Plain, to less than 25 miles from Verona in the foothill approaches to the Brenner Pass.

On Okinawa, the Tenth Army troops fighting before Naha had cracked the outer defenses of the Japanese "Little Siegfried Line" and were fighting within the secondary line. Major General John Hodge predicted that fighting would become easier for the capital henceforth.

On Mindanao, the 24th Division had advanced 18 miles toward Davao, 57 miles distant.

A raid of 250 B-29's struck eight airdromes on Kyushu and Shikoku in Japan, airfields from which the Japanese had launched air attacks on American positions on Okinawa.

Marshal Henri Petain arrived at Vallorbe, Switzerland, at 4:37 p.m., to surrender to French officers on pending charges of high treason. The trial was to proceed otherwise without the presence of the 89-year old former hero of France. The prosecutor of the case, Andre Mornet, stated candidly that while he would ask for conviction and the death penalty for Marshal Petain, he would also seek clemency based on the age of the defendant.

And, that is the way things would occur.

At the San Francisco Conference, the Russians intended to raise before the steering committee this date the issue of the three U.S.S.R. demanded General Assembly votes, which included separate votes for the Ukraine and White Russia. It had been the hope of the other foreign ministers that Russia might be dissuaded from interjecting this issue.

The executive committee member nations for the conference were named. Comprised of eleven members, it included the Big Four, France, Iran, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico.

On the editorial page, "The Time is April, '45" provides a chronology of the invasion of Russia by Hitler's legions June 22, 1941 and thereafter, their steady forward pace until the intervention of two major events in the fall stopped them just miles from Moscow, an early winter beginning in early October, and, on November 5, the signing by the United States of a billion-dollar Lend-Lease contract with Russia.

"Danger Sign" remarks on the dangerously high farm land prices caused by the war boom in the economy, leading speculators to start to buy up farm land, which could, in turn, lead to another depression, a repeat of the spiral which transpired following World War I. The American Bankers Association warned against such rampant buying, but the piece suggests that speculators would likely not be restrained by such caveats.

"Two Extremes" finds it unfortunate that a Southern attitude prevailed against making permanent the Fair Employment Practices Committee, heretofore a committee appointed by the President as a wartime power, aimed at equal opportunity and pay among the races in wartime industry under contract with the Government.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record quotes from a War Department warning to the troops overseas regarding Fascism at home and abroad, as inserted by Representative Adolph Sabath of Illinois.

Drew Pearson discusses, in follow-up to his column of the previous day, the change in policy with regard to Germany in the wake of President Roosevelt's death. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau had in the fall put forth a plan to de-industrialize Germany, to prevent it from engaging in future warfare, a plan ultimately favored by President Roosevelt and the War Department. The State Department, by contrast, had favored a soft peace, with the industrial machinery of Germany left in place to build a peacetime economic base, favored by American interests desirous of return to German soil to re-establish pre-war trade and industry.

Another great source of suspicion among the Russians had arisen with regard to the OSS and its deployment of members of prominent families in positions where they could influence U.S. policy in Germany at the close of the war. The list included the son of Andrew Mellon, Paul Mellon, members of the Houses of Morgan, Du Pont, Armour, and Astor. Also on that list was Allen Dulles, to become Director of the CIA, brother to John Foster Dulles, who was an adviser to the Republican delegation to the San Francisco Conference and had been Thomas Dewey's chief foreign policy adviser during the 1944 campaign, of course to become Secretary of State under President Eisenhower.

These men tended to discuss matters in terms of the next war in Europe and building up Germany to ward it off—the same lines used by John Foster Dulles prior to the war, even if Allen had claimed that he cringed at his brother's statements at the time in spring and fall, 1939.

"This is the kind of underlying suspicion which must be killed immediately and permanently if the machinery of San Francisco is to bring about permanent peace."

Marquis Childs reports of the enthusiasm in Washington regarding the decisiveness of President Truman. When meeting with Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and Secretary of State Edward Stettinius on the issue of treatment of the islands in the Pacific following the war, he had heard each position, War and Navy favoring deferring any decision on the islands until after hostilities ceased, State favoring creation of trusteeships as proposed by President Roosevelt, allowing the United Nations to use the air and port facilities of the islands. President Truman then determined decisively that the delegation to San Francisco should discuss the form which the trusteeship would take but would not discuss the particular territories to be subject to the plan.

Dorothy Thompson discusses the San Francisco Conference from the perspective of London, where, she reports, the Dumbarton Oaks proposal had its supporters and detractors. Supporters were more likely to be conservatives, praising the plan for avoiding hypocrisy, facing the realities of the world situation. Whereas the old League had sought in vain to prevent all warfare, the new League would not pretend to settle conflicts between the major powers, but would prevent minor wars from erupting. The Economist found this approach sound and realistic.

Samuel Grafton writes of the polar opinions on the San Francisco Conference, that, on the one hand, Americans believed it ought settle all international issues, on the other, shuddering whenever an issue arose that it might seek to settle.

"It is nobody's fault, but the effect is like the one we sometimes get on a Saturday afternoon in November, that all of America is playing football."

He further suggests that a successful conference would weaken any further resistance by the Germans and Japanese. As the enemy would be watching not only the news from the conference but also the Allied reaction to its developments, it would be wise not to react too loudly to temporary setbacks in agreement at the conference, thus emboldening the enemy to fight on.

Mr. Grafton offers that the conference would not be static but an ongoing process, different at each stage, as the delegates became more familiar with one another through the weeks. There would be more disagreement at the beginning, more agreement at the end.

Finally, he notes that the American people would go through a process of change from the conference, dissolving for the nonce their old distrusts of Britain and Russia, awaiting the outcome.

He took solace in the fact that Franklin Roosevelt had helped set the date for the conference, that the President had possessed confidence that it would work out.