Site Ed. Note: Although the news of Hitler's death would not hit the streets until the late editions the following day, resulting in a sold-out Extra of The News, this Walpurgis Night, 1945 would go down in history as the last day, for all intents and purposes, of the war in Europe, even if fighting and death went on for a couple of more weeks, even a week beyond the official pronouncement of V-E Day, one week away.

Hitler, Hamburg radio would report the next day, and his newly taken wife, long-time mistress Eva Braun, would, based on accounts from within the Fuehrerbunker, take a cyanide capsule and then die by a single gunshot wound to the temple during the afternoon hours, Hitler pulling the trigger of his own Luger. Their corpses were then burned and buried in the courtyard outside the entrance to the bunker.

Herr Doktor Goebbels and his wife, Magda, would likewise commit suicide by cyanide, but not until the following day. Magda Goebbels would murder her own six children. Their corpses would also be burned and buried in shallow graves outside the bunker.

Thus ended the twelve-year Third Reich, set to last, in Hitler's words, a thousand years—presumably according to his reading of the Book of Revelations.

Thus fulfilled a prediction made by W. J. Cash on the editorial page of September 1, 1939, upon receipt of the news of the German invasion of Poland to start the war.

Or, did it?

Thus also ended the Holocaust, born of Hitler's Mein Kampf of 1923, appealing to every dunderpate's feeling of nationalism and emotionalism regarding people of a different race or religion, finding no Africans in their midst, stressing the one group most visibly identifiable, Jews, on which to place the burden of the nation's ills, to try to construct as a rallying point for renascence of Germany from the ashes and humiliation of defeat in World War I and the emasculation and economic woes following it, the collective scapegoat, the Jewish bankers, who supposedly had deliberately started World War I and caused Germany's downfall for economic gain, thus the responsibility lying with any and all Jews, thus the right of all Aryans first to humiliate with impunity, then to label, then to beat and kick and segregate with impunity, to place into slave labor, and, finally, as a necessary consequence of the prior rationalized conduct and inability to sustain the millions thus imprisoned in work camps, to kill any and all Jews, to get even with regard to perceived wrongs which had to be the fault of someone.

And in so doing, the result was the ruin of all of Germany, nearly every major city now lying in complete desolation with millions of their civilian inhabitants dead and millions more dead within the Wehrmacht.

But Hitler and Goebbels, who had started the ball rolling, with most of their primary henchmen to follow, either by suicide or execution, were now dead, Hitler this date, Goebbels the next.

Or, were they?

Josef Stalin reported to President Truman and new British Prime Minister Clement Atlee at the time of the Potsdam Conference during the latter half of July that he did not believe Hitler had committed suicide but had escaped the Fuehrerbunker alive.

We think the argument, and it is only that, that Hitler escaped, flew in a plane to Denmark or Norway or somewhere else, boarded a U-boat and managed then to make it to safe harbor in South America, usually attributed to Argentina, the most Axis-friendly nation outside Europe, or Antarctica or somewhere, is an improbable one. First, it would stand to reason that someone would have photographed Hitler or that the FBI, aware of reports for a decade of supposed Hitler sightings, could have, through use of U.S. embassies and, after 1947, the CIA, as well as British intelligence, tracked down such a notorious war criminal, even had he substantially changed his appearance.

Obviously, Osama bin Laden, even with the benefit of modern technology not available in 1945 or through most of the 50's, took more than a decade of diligent search and nearly a decade following the attacks of September 11, 2001, to find and kill. But, there was no pretense in his case of death before the fact. And Hitler was not a cave dweller or survivalist.

Moreover, the fact that the Germans announced the death of Hitler, when it would have been serving of the survival of the Nazi mentality to have maintained the idea of Hitler's escape, underscores the probability of the death having been as those in the bunker, such as Hitler's personal secretary, Traudi Junge, described it.

Still, there was the report which had surfaced on Saturday from captured Lt. General Kurt Dittmar which predicted that within a few days Hitler would either be killed or commit suicide. But, General Dittmar did so, from his vantage point in the Ruhr, with the knowledge that Russian armies were closing in on the Reichstag and that Berlin was about to fall. Thus, his forecast amounted to not much of a prediction. He also knew that the most fanatical of Hitler's generals were prone to commit suicide rather than face being captured; Hitler, the grand master of avoidance of humiliation in defeat, was a fit candidate for choosing that self-imposed end, the felo de se.

There was also the report on Friday of Herr Bartholdy, Hitler's double, who was slated to die on the barricades fighting as the vainglorious Hitler, while Hitler in fact made his escape from the legend he had created.

And the doppelganger was found on May 2, shot in the head at the Reichstag, the Russians who first discovered the body believing him to be Hitler. Was this a deliberate ruse to buy Hitler more time to effect escape?

The previous week, there had been conflicting reports of Hitler's whereabouts, whether he had fled to Berchtesgaden for a last stand or had already left the country for Denmark, Norway, or Switzerland.

Furthermore, though Hitler had purged the ranks of the military of many of his enemies after the July 20 plot, he could not eradicate practical sensibility in the minds of many Germans who realized that the war was lost, that Hitler's persistence in fighting was dragging the country into complete annihilation without any rational justification. Thus, that a German, even a dedicated Nazi, might have decided to end the Fuehrer's life, to bring an end to the war, is not wholly beyond the pale of speculation.

But what about Goebbels and his wife, who wrote a letter explaining the suicides to her remaining son? Their corpses were positively identified by the Russians.

Did someone kill Hitler, perhaps at the direction of Heinrich Himmler, on Friday or Saturday, leading to Himmler's apparent tender on Saturday of unconditional surrender? one unacceptable for its reportedly having been made only to the United States and Great Britain, omitting the Soviet Union.

Yet, all of these scenarios are but speculation with no fact to back them up, only scattered and varying news stories from questionable sources, fueling the speculation and rumor.

Even the more recent discoveries, honorable in intent though they are, with regard to Hitler's supposed remains maintained in Russian custody, finding that the skull fragment long attributed to Hitler is more probably that of a woman, younger in years than Hitler, does not dispute the possibility that it was Eva Braun's skull, buried along with Hitler and thus incapable of segregation, even if the bullet hole in the fragment would then prove inconsistent with the eyewitness accounts of the aftermath of the suicide, indicating that Braun died only of cyanide. The remains of both Hitler and Braun were disinterred shortly after discovery and moved into what became East Germany, remained through the Cold War in an unmarked grave and then were disinterred again and cremated, with certain fragments maintained in storage in Russia, the most prominent being the skull fragment. But, assuming that the skull fragment was not Hitler's, the determination is still inconclusive as disputing the original suicide scenario and burial outside the bunker. It only implies that with disinterment and reinterment, and final cremation of the two skeletons, a fragment remained of Eva Braun, not Hitler, and that Hitler had shot her--in their final acting out of the last scenes of Gotterdamerung or Romeo and Juliet or Pyramus and Thisbe, or something else grossly misunderstood.

The cold fact remains that no one, with any credible and indisputable proof, a signature on a document attesting an event occurring after 1945, a photograph, a recording, etc., which might firmly attest to Hitler having survived the war, has ever surfaced in 67 years. While not impossible, it is not likely that he survived beyond April 30, 1945.

Some supposed witnesses who claimed to have tended to Hitler during the period 1945 through 1962 in Argentina were not chary about stepping forward and admitting the association during the past 20 years or so. Why would not Hitler have desired, by leaving behind definite proof of his survival, to have it known after his death that he had foiled all attempts of the Allies to capture him alive and had lived comfortably for years afterward?

Positive identification also has been made of teeth in Russian custody as matching X-rays of Hitler's teeth made in 1944, proving, if accurate, his death without question.

Those who plotted from within against Hitler, we note again, should not be seen as good guys. All of the German military leaders willingly participated in starting and maintaining this war, in the military build-up which led inexorably to it. Had their spirit been moved to oppose the first serious vestiges of anti-Semitism, had their spirit been moved by the madness of Germany which Hitler was stimulating even in the 1920's, then they should have acted to eliminate this menace much earlier, before Munich, following the annexation of Austria, should never have been complicit in his coming to power in the first place. They went along in starting a world war and were equally culpable, therefore, attempts by history to whitewash that culpability to a degree, notwithstanding.

Hitler and a band of lunatics calling themselves National Sozialists could not start the war alone. Nor could they alone have begun the pograms against Jews, ultimately leading to the deaths of the six million in the camps. It took Germans, "good Germans", participating in this insanity which became Nazi Germany.

That said, it is not an indictment of all Germans of the time. There were those who fled Nazi Germany early and late and worked against it from without. There were those who stayed, who simply were afraid to speak out and suffer the penalty of imprisonment or death, and that is an understandable human trait, even if we would like to see it as weakness. There were also those who were mere adolescents and children swept into the insanity.

We do not live in a culture in which to print something against the Government, to say something nasty about the President, to say something nasty about his political party, would result in an immediate and physical reprisal, either imprisonment or death.

So, while we would like to judge all Germans for not being able to stop it, that also necessarily includes the victims who were incapable of stopping it, even if most of the Jewish population was incapable of finding refuge out of Germany while they were still provided the opportunity to emigrate. They were not safe anywhere in occupied Europe, and none of the other countries still free from the Nazi boot heel, notably the United States, would afford substantial refuge.

But the military clique of Germany, the privileged Junkers who had helped Hitler gain power in 1933, could have stopped it. They chose not to do so until it was too late. For, in the end, Hitler's view of a Germany in control of all of Europe and finally the world, appealed to their sense of dignity and pride after the defeat of World War I. Otherwise, they would have stopped it before it ever became a reality. Without the military apparatus, Hitler and his minions could never have done anything but engage in isolated acts of thuggery.

Whatever the case in the realm of speculation, Hitler and Goebbels, history records, were dead this date, by their own hands, Walpurgis Night, 1945.

The front page reports that Heinrich Himmler was about to tender another offer of unconditional surrender, directed to all of the Big Three heads of State, including Russia, omitted from a previous tender reported on Saturday. Prime Minister Churchill was said to be standing by to make an address to Commons on Tuesday, May Day. The story being heard was that only the details of the surrender had yet to be resolved and that the following day might bring the announcement of V-E Day. Speculation was that a determination of whether commanders in Denmark and Norway would lay down their arms was holding up the final surrender. But there was no longer speculation about whether negotiations of surrender were in fact ongoing.

Even if not officially yet declared for another week, even if the fighting would sporadically go on in pockets for another two weeks, the war effectively ended this date.

In Berlin, Russian tanks had moved into the Tiergarten, the central park of Berlin, and fighting was taking place within the ruins of Unter Den Linden and toward the Reichstag district just to the north of the Tiergarten. Moscow reported the fall of the capital to be imminent. The Russians were expectant of a May Day victory in the city.

The Ninth and First Armies joined the Russians at two new locations between Berlin and Leipzig, virtually surrounding all German troops between Berlin and the Elbe in a pocket 85 miles long. The 125th Cavalry of the Ninth Army, which had waited on the Elbe for two weeks while the Russians were taking Berlin, effected the contact at 7:30 a.m. at Apollendorf, three miles west of Wittenberg, while the First Army joined with the Russians within Wittenberg. Other Ninth Army units were only ten miles from the Russians on the Elbe north of Magdeburg at Rosenhagen, 85 miles northwest of Wittenberg. Some 4,500 Germans had surrendered the night before during a six-mile advance of the Ninth from the bridgehead northeast of Zerbst, captured Sunday.

The Third Army was about to effect junction with the Russians also, both armies advancing on Linz in Austria, the Third of General Patton from the east, the Third Ukrainian of Marshal Feodor Tolbukhin from the west.

Five divisions, the 45th, 42nd, 3rd, and 4th, plus the 20th Armored, of the Seventh Army were within Munich, within two miles of the heart of the city, having entered from the north and west. Following intense early enemy resistance from anti-aircraft batteries being used as artillery, by 7:00 p.m., the Germans were staging only light to moderate fighting.

Wes Gallagher reported that a secure lane of traffic had been established across Europe to provision the Russian armies, cutting off the necessity of resort to thousands of miles of supply lines from the East.

The First and Ninth Armies on the Elbe were freed from operational duties to begin occupational chores, although no definite assignment had yet been made public.

It was being speculated that the Germans might make a last stand in occupied Denmark and Norway, requiring perhaps new amphibious operations to reach them.

At Kiel, German marines, reminiscent of the end of World War I, were reported to have mutinied when ordered to report to Hamburg to resist the British Second Army. SS guards were unsuccessful in quelling the disturbance.

The 42nd and 45th Divisions had liberated Dachau concentration camp, freeing its remaining 32,000 prisoners. Among the imprisoned at Dachau, reported to have been recently transferred, were Josef Stalin's son, captured on the Russian front in 1941, former Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg and his wife, and the anti-Nazi Protestant Pastor Martin Niemoeller. One of the prisoners freed claimed to be the son of former French Socialist leader and Premier Leon Blum.

It was reported by prisoners that 9,000 internees had died of starvation or disease during the previous three months and 14,000 others had died during the course of the winter.

The 14th Armored Division had freed 110,000 Allied prisoners of war, including 11,000 Americans, from Stalag 7A outside Mossburg, the largest German prisoner-of-war camp. The bulk of the prisoners were Britons, Canadians, Australians, Poles, New Zealanders, Russians, Yugoslavs, and French. There were also among them some war correspondents.

In Italy, General Mark Clark, commander of the Fifteenth Army Group, announced the virtual end of the campaign, as the 442nd Regiment of the Fifth Army entered Turin to find it already under the control of the Partisans. He stated that the 23 divisions of Germans remaining up until the beginning of the previous 23-day campaign to take Northern Italy had been decimated by the Fifth and British Eighth Armies. Only scattered fighting continued. Some 120,000 German prisoners had been captured and thousands of others were still being processed.

The Fifth Army had reached the Swiss border, with Milan and Genoa brought under Allied control, and the Eighth Army, having taken Venice, were about 70 miles from junction with the Yugoslav Army on the Adriatic Coast.

Some desperate German fighting was still taking place north of Lake Garda near the Brenner Pass, but enemy lines were disorganized.

The Yugoslav Army of Marshal Tito had captured Trieste, prompting Italian concerns that the port would be taken from Italy at war's end. There was also question as to why the French were marching into northwestern Italy when it had been freed by Italian partisans and there was no longer any German front in Italy. The Committee for National Liberation for Messina Province expressed the hope that any effort to take Trieste or other Italian territories would be "decisively prevented".

Well, with the obvious fighting spirit exhibited throughout the war out of Italy, who among the Allies could have protested that sentiment?

Perhaps, General Patton might have wished to explain it to them by telephone.

An attack on the hospital ship U.S. S. Comfort by a single Japanese kamikaze raider while it evacuated wounded, some 50 miles south of Okinawa, had angered the troops fighting for Naha on Okinawa. The ship had been heavily damaged, with 29 persons killed, including six Army nurses and five medical officers, 33 wounded, and one missing. The ship was unarmed.

The total American casualties thus far on Okinawa through Friday were reported as 11,413, 1,847 killed, 9,140 wounded, and 420 missing. The Army accounted for 1,527 of those killed and the bulk of the wounded, the rest being Marines. Navy totals were not provided.

The Japanese had attacked American Naval forces off Okinawa with 200 planes during a fourteen-hour period beginning at noon Saturday, causing damage to ships of the Fleet. Fully 104 of the planes had been shot down.

On Okinawa, the 27th Infantry Division captured the northern half of Machinato Airfield, 2.5 miles north of Naha. The Seventh Infantry took heights overlooking Yonabaru Airdrome on the east coast of Okinawa.

In Burma, the British had advanced 24 miles in 24 hours to reach to within 38 miles of Rangoon.

The report hit the front page regarding Mussolini's death on Saturday, along with the grisly picture of his corpse and that of his mistress and five other Fascists summarily executed with them by the Partisans, hanging upside down from the awning of the Esso station in Milan. The report indicates that 17 Fascist leaders, including Marshal Rodolio Graziano, had been shot during, or shortly after, the execution of Mussolini at Guilano De Messergere, near Como, on Saturday afternoon.

The bodies had been brought to Milan from the village on Sunday and laid out for public viewing on the Piazza Quidici Martiri, where the milling crowd beat, kicked, and spat upon the corpses, until they were finally hoisted into the air on the service station.

At San Francisco, the Big Three were experiencing another crisis of disagreement regarding the issue of governance of Poland. Tied in with the issue was the request of the Latin American nations that an invitation to the conference be extended to Argentina for its having in late February declared for the Allies, denouncing its former support for the Axis. Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov was said to be in favor of allowing Argentina to attend, provided an invitation would be extended also to the Soviet-backed Lublin-Warsaw Government in Poland. The American and British delegations were in opposition to the proposal.

Brazil and Chile, members of the conference Executive Committee, had determined to move to add Argentina to the list of invited nations, along with White Russia and the Ukraine, both members of the Soviet Union. The Russians supported this move.

It was unclear whether the motion with respect to Argentina would be withdrawn to avoid the confrontation between the Russian delegation and the Americans and British.

On the editorial page, "Third War Plans" reports that Walter Winchell had sent to every member of the American delegation at San Francisco a copy of The Plot Against the Peace, by Michael Sayers and Albert Kahn, an excerpt from which The News had printed the previous Monday. The book pertained to the plan of the German General Staff to continue to fight the war and undermine the peace during the ensuing twenty years, hoping that the people would ultimately find unpalatable any economic and political system except National Sozialism, laying the groundwork for World War III.

There had already been attempts to assassinate General De Gaulle and Marshal Tito and an assassination of Egypt's Premier Pasha at the point he had declared war on the Axis. Ten anti-Nazi prisoners of war in German camps in the U.S. had been murdered by the terrorist league known as Fehme. Several mayors operating for the AMG in occupied cities of Germany had been assassinated, notably the Mayor of Aachen.

Fully 987 stock companies in Spain were controlled by German capital. Some 2,000 companies in Spain had German directors, with affiliates in North and South America. Following the ouster from Stalingrad of the German armies, many German companies, such I. G. Farben, Zeiss-Ikon, A.E.G., and Siemens, had smuggled their capital reserves into Sweden by registering patents there.

Revealed atrocities in Poland at Treblinka, where an estimated 870,000 or more men, women, and children were systematically murdered through the end of 1943, and Majdanek, where an estimated 75,000 or more were murdered until its Russian liberation July 22, 1944, had been deliberate attempts of Germany to emerge from the war "economically and biologically" superior to its neighbors. Likewise was the massive looting of Europe.

The piece expresses the hope that the delegation in San Francisco would take the time to read this critical book.

"Five Midwives Yet" reports of there being still five midwives at work in Charlotte. They were not, suggests the editorial, responsible for the high infant mortality rate of the South. The number of midwives statewide had been reduced by half in the previous decade and the remaining midwives had received training in childbirth techniques.

"Howdy, Strangers" reports that among the seven candidates for Mayor, none were originally from Charlotte. Mayor Baxter, the incumbent, as pointed out by Dick Young on Saturday, hailed originally from Boston.

"Mr. Pauley's Job" reports that the former treasurer of the National Democratic Committee, Ed Pauley, had been appointed to become U.S. Ambassador to the Allied Reparations Commission, replacing President Roosevelt's appointee, Isador Lubin, who remained as Mr. Pauley's assistant, to become Minister. The two would determine the American policy toward Germany and Japan as to how they were to be treated post-war, whether stripped of industry or not. Mr. Pauley had stated his belief in "hard terms" for Germany but did not elaborate as to whether "hard" meant that term as used by Secretary Morgenthau and President Roosevelt or by Secretary Stettinius. Nor was it clear where he stood on resumption of trade with Japan in such war-essential commodities as oil and scrap iron.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record finds Representative Jack Anderson of California asking plaintively what was to become of the Pacific islands, not just the former Japanese mandates provided Japan after World War I, but also the former possessions of the Allies, such as Tarawa. After the war, it might not seem very essential, but the island in the Gilberts had proved quite essential as a stepping stone in the Pacific war in late 1943. Tarawa, he explains, had been a British possession prior to the war.

Drew Pearson writes of the wounded from Okinawa, Saipan, and Guam coming into San Francisco Bay aboard hospital ships and being transported onto trains for distribution among the various West Coast hospitals.

He next reports on the Army's preparation of a new film to go along with the newly completed "Two Down and One to Go!", explaining to the G.I.'s why they would be needed in the Pacific war after winning the European war. The chief of Army psychiatrists, Colonel William Menninger, brother of Dr. Karl Menninger, had stated that the prime concern at this stage of the war was morale, that he expected numerous AWOL soldiers following the victory in Europe. It was a prime reason why the Senate Military Affairs Committee had declined to provide G.I.'s with a 30-day leave in between service in Europe and their transfer to the Pacific. Col. Menninger had stressed that excessive celebration of V-E Day would contribute to the lowering of G.I. morale and increase the likelihood of AWOL soldiers.

Mr. Pearson concludes with more observations of the conference: that, instead of national anthems, the orchestra had played at the opening, "Lover, Come Back to Me" and various martial music such as "Give Me Some Men, Some Stout-Hearted Men"; Edward Stettinius had obtained the penthouse suite of the Fairmont Hotel for his living quarters, plus the 4th and 5th floors for his offices, a yacht, and a private dining room at the Pacific Union Club, albeit the latter only provided for one week; the Norwegian delegation had thus been squeezed out of the Fairmont; the Russians were concerned regarding the safety of Foreign Commissar Molotov, worried that Trotskyites might try to assassinate him, thus had expressed consternation over the failure to assign him a particular seat, which they had wished to inspect prior to the opening ceremonies at the Opera House. Mr. Pearson remarks that the Secret Service had been as thorough in security inspections with President Roosevelt during his overseas travels, inspecting "all windows, doorways, etc."

Samuel Grafton reports that on April 24, the Argentine Government had issued an order forbidding citizens from celebrating the fall of Berlin. The people would be forbidden from even entering the streets, treating it as a day of mourning.

Marquis Childs writes of the philosophy of the Big Lie of Hitler working in reverse when applied to the concentration camps. He remarks that some in the United States still viewed the reports as propaganda for the Seventh War Loan drive. Thus, it had been wise for the State Department to take a group of Congressmen and editors inside the camps to see the human degradation and death for themselves.