Wednesday, May 2, 1945

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, May 2, 1945

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, had announced that all German land, air, and sea forces in Italy and southern and western Austria had surrendered, effective at noon local time, 8:00 a.m., EWT. The capitulation was signed Sunday afternoon at Caserta by Col. General Heinrich Von Vietinghoff-Scheel, German commander in the southwest theater, and by Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Wolff, supreme commander of the SS and police in Italy, in the presence of American, British, and Russian officers. It permitted the Allied troops of the Third Army to penetrate to within ten miles of Berchtesgaden without opposition.

President Truman hailed the victory as indicative of the need for all Germans now to face the fact of surrender, that "only folly and chaos" could delay the general capitulation everywhere of the German armies.

The President sent to Congress recommendations that it cut appropriations to the Maritime Commission for the building of ships by almost 7.5 billion dollars, that it cut 80 million from appropriations to eight war agencies, and abolish the Office of Civilian Defense.

Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander of the German Navy, as continued on an inside page, had assumed the role of Fuehrer in Germany in the wake of the news which had broken the previous afternoon at about 4:30 EWT, via Hamburg radio, that Hitler was dead. There was no indication that Doenitz would do anything but fight on, asking for the support of all German military commanders and the Nazi Party. Thus far, however, only the Norwegian commander, General Franz Boehme, had declared his allegiance to Doenitz, urging that all German forces fight on as a "fanatic community".

In Norway, the Government of Vidkun Quisling, the notorious Nazi sympathizer who sold out Norway in 1940 and thus had his name stick in the annals of history as the very meaning of "traitor", had resigned. Quisling had sent his Foreign Minister, Stoeren, and Dr. Werner Best to Copenhagen to consult with the Swedish diplomatic delegation there for the purpose of undertaking the surrender of both Norway and Denmark.

General Boehm, however, decried the action as being without authority and insisted that only the Wehrmacht could determine whether to surrender German forces in Norway.

In Denmark, Nazis returned to their battle stations after hearing from Doenitz, having previously prepared for surrender. It was unclear what would occur.

It was reported from the Baltic port of Rostock, captured by the Russians this date, that German sailors had rioted in the face of a Russian push.

Doenitz announced the death of Hitler as having occurred April 30, and claimed that he had passed to the Admiral the mantle of authority as Fuehrer. He stated that Hitler died a "hero's death", within the Fuehrerbunker at the Reichstag, as Russians stormed the building. He was to the end, contended the Admiral, a fighter for the German people against Bolshevism.

Speculation ran that Hitler, in poor health since the explosion in the July 20 plot, may have suffered a stroke. No report mentioned his suicide. There was no report on Herr Doktor Goebbels, who had committed suicide on May 1.

Admiral Doenitz dismissed Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop and replaced him with Count Lutz Schwerin-Krosigk, Finance Minister under Franz Von Papen and Von Schleicher, immediately preceding Hitler's reign. The move prompted speculation that Doenitz might have done so to afford a more palatable representative for tendering peace offers to the West. Yet, no mention was made of any intention to surrender.

The Russians in Moscow immediately labeled the announcement of Hitler's death as another Nazi trick to enable Hitler's escape. And, indeed, Stalin continued to believe that such had occurred until his own death in 1953.

When the news was announced the previous afternoon, nighttime in Germany, it was introduced by a playing of Wagner's Gotterdammerung, followed by Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, commemorating the death of Wagner. Then came the lamentation of Admiral Doenitz, followed by the German national anthem and the Nazi rallying song, "Horst Wessel Lied".

And, actually, he did.

During the broadcast, a "ghost" interfered with the transmission at the point when the Admiral described Hitler's death as "heroic", shouting, "This is a lie."

And, of course, it was.

Hitler was 56 years old, about the only thing about him which wasn't a lie.

The battle for Berlin was reported to be nearing its conclusion as the remaining German garrison had been compressed into the narrow Government quarter and there separated into small pockets. The Red Army flag now flew from the Reichs-Chancellery building in which Hitler had perished, following an artillery assault on the Chancellery for three continuous days and four nights.

Nazis trapped within the Tiergarten had sought to break out through sewers and tunnels but had been repulsed.

Nevertheless, for the second successive night, German planes had managed to drop supplies to the German defenders and they did not appear to want for ammunition.

The Russians deepened their penetration into the Wilhelmstrasse.

Moscow announced that 120,000 Germans of the Ninth Army had been killed or captured southeast of the capital following their encirclement by the Soviet armies.

The British Second Army had made substantial gains north of the Elbe, nearly cutting off Demark and Schleswig-Holstein from Germany, as German troops sought refuge within Denmark, fleeing Luebeck, reached by the British, cutting the northern German pocket in two. The Allied forces were within 40 miles of the Russian armies at Rosenhagen. American infantry and 82nd Airborne troops were fighting alongside the British in the north.

The Seventh Army was fighting through the Alpine passes to within ten miles of the Tyrol capital of Innsbruck and within twelve miles of the Brenner Pass.

The 141st Regiment of the 36th Infantry Division of the Seventh Army had captured, at a field hospital in Bad Toelz, 25 miles south of Munich, Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt. The former commander of the Western Front, who had planned the Ardennes offensive of mid-December, declared it to be senseless for Germany to continue the fight. He had been staying in a house adjacent to the hospital with his wife and sons. He stated that he had last seen Hitler alive on March 12. A Swedish report had indicated that Hitler had become enraged over the defeats at the Western Front and tore away Von Rundstedt's shoulder ornaments, hurling them in his face.

The Third Army was thirty miles from Salzburg and 44 miles from Berchtesgaden, having captured Hitler's birthplace at Braunau the previous day. Tanks were within 18 miles of Linz and less than 40 miles from juncture with the Russians at Amstettin.

The 84th Division of the Ninth Army had made fresh contacts with the Russians north of Magdeburg, in the areas of Wittenberg and Arneburg, about 60 miles northwest of Berlin.

The RAF destroyed or damaged 1,297 German vehicles on the roads between Berlin and Luebeck during the previous 24 hours, a near record haul. The planes also knocked out 33 Luftwaffe fighters.

It was reported that negotiations were ongoing between the Canadians and the Germans in Holland for their surrender.

An inside page carries a photograph of Elizabeth Volkenrath, SS guard of Ravensbruck, Auschwitz, and Belsen, a hairdresser in civilian life, turned torturer. She would be executed by the British for her war crimes, along with numerous other SS guards, male and female, at Hamelin prison in December. Her name, in this instance, seemed to befit her temperament.

A story also appears indicating that the controversy with respect to the French First Army occupation of Stuttgart, in contravention of the orders of Supreme Allied Headquarters to vacate the occupation zone and allow the U.S. Seventh Army into it to enable use of the city's communications facilities to promote the advance of the Allied forces, had been resolved by compromise. For now, the French were allowed to stay to avoid confrontation. The issue had been the French demand for control of the Rhineland and their desire that the delegations at the San Francisco Conference accede to the demand.

Whether the filler following the piece, re the penchant of Napoleon and Josephine for bathing in a mixture of crushed perfumed strawberries and milk, has anything to do with the matter, we leave to the reader to determine.

From Madrid, it was reported that Generalissimo Francisco Franco had little use now for his fellow Fascist, Pierre Laval, former head of Vichy, who sought asylum in Spain but was denied. He and two Vichy Cabinet ministers landed at Barcelona but were immediately ordered to leave and provided just enough gas to make the neighboring frontier. Laval had sought asylum in both Liechtenstein and Switzerland, but he and his entourage had likewise been refused in those countries.

Japanese broadcasts provided greater detail of the Allied invasion of Borneo, indicating that 5,000 troops had come ashore at Linkas on Tarakan, just off the coast of Borneo, at 6:30 a.m. the previous day.

On Mindanao, the 34th Division had moved to within six miles of Davao, the capital, and taken Darong airstrip and Dallao airfield, having already on Friday taken Padada airfield south of Digos.

Whenever they get the Darite airfield, we shall tell you right away.

In San Francisco, as continued on an inside page, all of the preliminary wrinkles with regard to the structure of the leadership of the United Nations Charter Conference itself had now been worked out, but issues remained with regard to the voting arrangement on the Security Council, whether each of the permanent members would have a unilateral veto.

Associate Editor Burke Davis reports at some length on the findings of a professor at Johnson C. Smith University that cotton stalk pulp to produce paper would only result in an inferior grade, more expensive to produce under the technology of the time, when compared to paper made from pine wood pulp. The "stalk paper", however, had been used to produce cardboard, A-grade writing, blotting, and wrapping papers.

On the editorial page, "Dead or Alive?" finds it inconsequential if Hitler were truly dead, that it would be nice to see him dancing at the end of a rope, but, if the account was accurate, there remained the solace that he had cowered before the Russian guns and taken the easy way out. It speculates on how the nether world might have greeted him in ghoulish array.

But, it continues, if he were still alive, then it was important because he could continue as a symbol for Nazi Germany. He could conceivably exist incognito within the underground or in neutral territory. So, it would be important to gather proof of his demise.

It was imperative to recognize that men like Hitler still thrived and would into the future plague the world. He should be remembered as he was in the days when he was an "amusing German marionette", provoking laughter, not as his regal personage swaying power over nations. He should be remembered as a murdering beast, not as the defeated paranoiac of his last days.

The fact that the West had waited too long to crush him, before he achieved the power he did over Europe, had to be borne in mind by Britain and America into the future.

The fact of his reign must not be forgotten, even if, suggests the editorial, it would likely be so, just as the Fascist reign of Franco was being quickly forgotten by the British, treating him as "an internal affair"—which Hitler had also been prior to 1938-39.

"Russian Encore" suggests that some of the older confreres at San Francisco must have felt a little haunted when Secretary Stettinius and the Latin American delegations had managed to defeat the Russians and agreed to seat Argentina at the conference. There were delegates present who remembered how things had gone in 1919-20 when the League was being debated in Paris and its efficacy had slipped away. They would not have been puzzled by Russia's position in wishing to keep out a Fascist Government.

The move hearkened back to 1931 when, after Japan invaded Manchuria, it was allowed to remain within the League. It drew forth memories of the League having ignored the pleas of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia when asking for aid against the invading Italians, and the League had waited a year and a half to put forth weak sanctions, long after the slaughter was complete and Ethiopia absorbed into the Italian sphere. And the older delegates must have recalled also Munich.

While admitting Argentina to the conference perhaps seemed to the casual observer to be a trifling matter, to those who remembered, "it tolled the tragic bells of the past". The Russians, having fought against the Fascist hordes on their own soil all too recently, could not forget, even if Mr. Stettinius and the "Good Neighbors" to the south could.

"Out of Order" reminds that the First Amendment protects all citizens, even the "nutsy fringe", and applies not only to prevent Congress but also the states from making any such prohibited restrictive laws.

It raises the issue in reference to the Charlotte Optimists Club, which had proposed that Jehovah's Witnesses be barred from the use of any "public building or ground" within Charlotte or Mecklenburg County for purposes of assembly.

The editorial properly finds the suggested restriction wholly out of order and violative of the First Amendment, preventing interference with peaceable assembly.

"Freedom is a jealous mistress. She does not allow that public privileges be bestowed or withheld according to the views of an applicant. That way lies a sort of genteel tyranny."

That the group or individual is disliked in a community has no bearing on the issue, indeed requires that the protection of the Constitution be afforded the more.

At a time when the entire world had been beset by dirty little Fascists who had usurped to themselves the idea of determination as to what could be said, what could be read, what could be published, and thus turned the world into a bloody collective fighting on the most primitive level to accomplish these prescriptions, those wise people of 1945 knew whereof they spoke and wrote with respect to this most critical of freedoms.

They did not speak or write once in defense of the Second Amendment.

We fear that in 2012, much of the United States, bred and brainwashed on too much television-speak, has completely lost sight of what that precious First Amendment freedom means, and the fact that it has nothing to do with network corporate censors who are little more than little Fascist numbskulls with their greasy little palms outstretched, seeking thus to offend as few as possible, while in fact offending everyone who believes in freedom.

Check yourself should you be one of those helpless individuals who cheers when some person is fired or skewered publicly merely for asserting an unpopular opinion or using some word or words which some idiot thinks are offensive to some other idiot somewhere or to "children". Always behind those contentions is a political agenda akin to Adolf Hitler's. Damn them to their faces whenever, wherever you see it or hear it. Then the little Hitlers can never get a foothold.

"After the Duce" writes of Il Duce's corpse being hung high from the Esso station in Milan. It recalls his words, uttered 15 years earlier to "worshipping millions": "We step over the corpse of liberty!"

The Caesar of modern times was now consigned to his infamous grave in ignominy, spat upon by his own people.

Italy, itself, was divested of its would-be empire in North Africa, also of Trieste, which it had stolen from Austria, and was no longer welcome at the conference of nations.

Il Duce was the symbol of its notorious past; Trieste, of its future. Trieste had been held by Austria since the 14th century until Italy grabbed it following World War I. It now was in the hands of the Yugoslavs of Marshal Tito and, the piece hopes, it would there remain.

Italy, meanwhile, struggled to prepare for a brighter future.

A piece by News reporter Pete McKnight presents the only interview conducted by any journalist of Admiral Georges Robert between his departure from his position as High Commissioner of Martinique and his return to France in August, 1943. He had responded in writing to Mr. McKnight's inquiry at the time with a letter of some 5,000 words, explaining his actions in remaining loyal to Vichy and the policy set in place by Marshal Petain, who had just voluntarily surrendered to France to stand trial for treason rather than be tried in absentia while still in Germany.

While the death penalty was to be sought against Marshal Petain, the hero of Verdun in World War I, in deference to his age of 89, the chief prosecutor had already announced that he would recommend clemency.

The letter had never been published until this time because the Navy in 1943 had requested that it be withheld.

Admiral Robert sets forth his case, insisting that he had acted in accord with Marshal Petain to preserve France from being entirely occupied by the Germans so that some semblance of French order might be preserved, that it was not to assist the Nazis but rather to allow the vestiges of France to remain intact through the war, that there might be continuity of French society afterward. It was the reason, he insisted, that Petain had acted as he had and why he did not go to Algiers in late 1942 when the Allies invaded North Africa.

He explains further that France was peculiarly situated on the Continent with respect to Russia so that it had good reason to fear Communist domination after the war. The United States and Great Britain were protected by virtue of their geographic position.

The Admiral believed that two factors would be decisive in postwar France: the disunity among the Petainists, Giraudists, DeGaullists and Communists, as well as the old political parties; and the military supremacy of the Russians on the Continent.

So it was that he and Marshal Petain had sought to effect union among the French, to have a foundation in place among youth and the physically healthy which could, after the war, be strong and understanding enough to resist Communism.

Drew Pearson reveals that on April 27, President Truman had a meeting at the White House in which he told Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew, Undersecretary of the Navy Bard, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, and Federal Economic Administrator Leo Crowley, that the previous policy of President Roosevelt adopted during the fall would remain in effect, that a hard peace would be dealt to Germany, stripping it of any possibility of future industrial development of implements of war, the taking over of the German educational system, and banishing from the school texts all references to Nazism. The occupation would be a long one.

President Roosevelt had added his own wrinkle to the program, originating with Secretary Morgenthau, that no military music be allowed in Germany for a decade, on the premise that it stirred nationalistic emotions. Instead, the music of Wagner, Beethoven, Strauss, etc., would be the staple.

We might suggest, however, a little less stress on the Wagnerian imagery.

Mr. Pearson next discusses the announcement at San Francisco by Senator Tom Connally on Saturday that there was peace in the European war, based on the report that Heinrich Himmler had tendered a peace proposal to the U.S. and Great Britain. Senator Connally had continued to perpetuate the rumor even after President Truman had expressly denied its authenticity. Mr. Pearson posits that the reason for Senator Connally's heedless brashness had been his competition with Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan to achieve the spotlight in the American delegation, thus far dominated by Senator Vandenberg, even looming large over Secretary Stettinius.

The column then turns to the subject of the War Crimes Commission in London and the elimination from it of the American representative, Herbert Pell, who had favored summary execution without trial of the top 100,000 Nazis. The British had sought his ouster for the position and obtained it through the State Department, leaving no American representative at present on the Commission, despite the passage of several months since Mr. Pell's ouster.

Finally, he relates of President Truman's conversation the previous week at the White House with Foreign Commissar Molotov, telling him bluntly that he expected Russia to live up to its commitment made at Yalta to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, to include in the Lublin Government of Poland representatives of the Polish government-in-exile in London. The President had suggested that Commissar Molotov speak with Secretary Stettinius about the issue during the conference in San Francisco.

Marquis Childs also discusses the purveying of the Saturday rumor of peace having supposedly broken out, the rumor having been leaked by the United Press initially. The White House had helped to fuel the rumor by first announcing that the President would shortly make a "proclamation", implicitly suggesting that he would announce peace. At first, President Truman had apparently placed some stock in the reports and had to be disabused of them by General Eisenhower.

Mr. Childs adds to previous reports on the tender by Himmler of unconditional surrender that he had also claimed that he could deliver Hitler's dead body with the peace, but only to the Western Allies.

Mr. Childs remarks that such rang of an old Nazi trick, that one of Hitler's rumored two doubles would simply be delivered up by Himmler as the "dead Hitler". Thus, it would not have been prudent to place any trust in Himmler's offer.

Again, under the heading "Anything Goes", the editors provide a quartet of humorous stories from the past:

The rules of Mt. Holyoke College from circa 1837, are set forth, requiring, among other quaint strictures, that any young woman who wished to be admitted to the institution be able to kindle a fire, wash potatoes, repeat the multiplication table and at least two-thirds of the catechism. She would also have to walk a mile everyday unless "a freshet, earthquake or some other calamity" should intercede to prevent it.

A couple of snippets from the American Mercury, when H. L. Mencken had been its editor, are included, regarding the reading habits of dogs, and the general habits of field mice.

An old woman stopped by customs at the Ulster frontier, told the agent that she had nothing to declare, that in her bottle was only holy water. The agent found it to be whisky, whereupon...

And, Review of Reviews found "[t]he concealed power of desire for romance" was shown by the dramatically increased sales of five-cent reprints of the classics issued by E. Haldeman-Julius, only after they were properly re-titled to reflect the desires in fiery pyres of the public in straits dire and funambulistically high-wired.

Whether, incidentally, a spicy sequel to "None Beneath the King Shall Enjoy This Woman" was titled, "None Beneath the King Shall Enjoy This Woman in Red Under the Rose With You, Her, and Everyone Else Who Were Off the Wall", we couldn't rightly say.

The late Will Rogers is quoted, ominously at this time, as having said, "Americans never lost a war or won a conference."

Going back to the inside page of this date which we presented yesterday, we refer you to "The Red Badge of Courage", both the book and the movie.

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