Site Ed. Note: This fateful week in United States history, one of its most determinative weeks, began with the optimism on all fronts that World War II was coming fast to a close, that the United Nations Organization, for making and keeping the peace into the future, would soon be chartered at San Francisco, at the Conference set to start in just sixteen days. The Russians were inside Vienna; the Americans, British, and Canadians were moving fast toward the Elbe and to Berlin from several directions, with seven Armies crashing into the Reich by the miles on each successive day, as the Germans, even the SS, were fleeing in disarray and demoralization. The Japanese, while beginning to show signs of willingness to oppose on Okinawa, had demonstrated such signs also on Iwo Jima, and thus optimism existed that the fall of Okinawa, too, would soon become a fait accompli, that, with the fall of the Koiso Cabinet and the formation of a more moderate Suzuki Cabinet, the fight, after all, onto the mainland of Japan might not be necessary. The war appeared clearly about to end.

By Thursday night, all of that optimism, all of that swagger and hope for the future, would suddenly be turned to stunned silence amid questions the world over as to whether a new leader in the White House could effect the same results.

The front page reports that the Allies, having in ten days inflicted against the Germans a half million casualties, including the taking of prisoners, had cut the last rail link from Western Holland, trapping the bulk of 80,000 remaining Germans of Army Group H still in that region. Canadians moved eight miles northeast of Zwolle and joined with Allied airborne troops in northeastern Holland at Meppen, ten miles from the Zuider Zee. The Germans exploded dikes and flooded 400 sqaure miles of territory, but the liberation of the region was anticipated to be imminent for the fact that the Germans were broken into two pockets along a 150-mile front from Arnhem to the Ems River.

The British Second and the American Ninth Armies fought within sight of Bremen and Hannover, five miles distant, and to within 50 miles of the Elbe River at Hamburg, within 70 of Magdeburg, also on the Elbe, the last major water barrier before Berlin. Tanks bypassed both Bremen and Hannover, flanking both cities. The Ninth Army was now 128 miles from Berlin with nothing but the Elbe and flat, lightly defended country before it.

The Second Armored Division of the Ninth moved to within twenty miles of Brunswick, aiming at Magdeburg.

Flames were reported from Hamburg, Hannover, Brunswick, and Luebeck, though no bombing operations had taken place in the latter two cities recently, indicative of German demolition at work in preparation for evacuation.

More than 1,250 American heavy bombers, accompanied by 750 fighters, hit ten German airfields and an oil storage depot, all within a 60-mile radius of Munich.

Some 900 RAF heavy bombers hit U-boat pens and oil storage depots at Hamburg, as well as the Blohm-Voss U-boat yards, the latter for the fifth time in a week, as well as the Lutzkendorf synthetic oil plant at Leipzig. Blohm-Voss still employed 17,000 workers and was the most important shipbuilding yard still operating in Germany.

The night before, RAF Mosquitos again struck Berlin.

The day before, Sunday, 1,950 American planes had attacked targets between Berlin and Nuernberg.

On the Eastern Front, the Second and Third Ukrainian Army forces had entered Vienna from three sides and penetrated as far as Schoenbrunn Park in the southern section of the city and Franz Josef railway station in the northern part, 1.25 miles from the city center. To the south, the Russian troops had reached to within a mile of the Ringstrasse. They were within eight to twelve miles of closing off the escape gap on the north side of the Danube. Only one railroad, to Prague, remained open. Other columns had crossed the river east of the city, moving to within sight of Aspern airport. To the west, the Russians captured Neulengbach, 15 miles from Vienna, were within eight miles of St. Poelen, less than sixty miles east of Linz and a hundred miles from Munich.

In Italy, the Fifth Army was moving up the west coast toward Massa, meeting scattered enemy resistance, following the capture of Mount Belvedere, two miles to the south of Massa. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, consisting of Japanese-Americans, resisted enemy attacks to the northeast of Mount Belvedere, clearing enemy pockets south of Monte Folgorito and east of the highway leading to La Spezia. Tank-supported troops of the 92nd Division, comprised entirely of African-Americans, advanced to Porta while capturing Montignoso, two miles southeast of Massa, and Strinato, to the north of Strettola.

The Eighth Army was mopping up an area along the southwest fringes of the Cemacchio Lagoon.

On Okinawa, the Japanese had mounted their first counter-attack, driving the Third Battalion of the 184th Regiment from Red Hill in the southern area of the island. Three American tanks were knocked out by Molotov cocktails, mortar fire and artillery. The enemy was holed up in caves, crags, hills, and ravines within the sector, north of Naha. Backing them up was greater artillery strength than previously encountered during the entire Pacific war, though not equal to the American force. The 24th Army Corps was limited to gains of 200 to 400 yards, seeking the Yonabaru airfield on the east coast, in the center of Nakagasuku Bay, about one mile away. Along the west coast of the island, infantry captured two villages on Saturday, then were limited to a 200-yard advance on Sunday.

In northern Okinawa, the Marines, facing light opposition, cut off Motobu Peninsula.

Following Argentina's March 27 declaration of war on the Axis, the United States formally resumed normal diplomatic relations with the formerly Axis-supporting country. Nineteen other American republics likewise recognized Argentina. It was yet determined whether Argentina would be allowed to participate in the San Francisco Conference or would be permitted to join the United Nations organization, once founded.

The series of photographs on the front page shows the gaunt and lean faces and emaciated bodies of American prisoners-of-war, liberated from the German prison camp at Limburg. In just three months, these men had withered away nearly to skeletons.

On the editorial page, "New System" again discusses the South Carolina Legislature's determination to adopt a new system of liquor control by the State, having examined the systems in place in North Carolina, Virginia, and New York, choosing to adopt much of the New York system. The North Carolina and Virginia systems had monopolistic control by the State. The new South Carolina system closed nearly half of the existing liquor stores and streamlined its requirements for awarding licenses only to reputable persons, as it had been previous to the streamlining.

"Censorship, Plus" disagrees with the advice provided by the Office of Censorship that radio and newspapers should refrain from discussing the intentions of Russia with respect to Japan, however erroneous the advice; finds it overbearing, going beyond mere matters of troop movement and the like, such logistics always having been regarded as part of the proper ground of voluntary censorship. But, discussion of the prospect of Russia entering the war against Japan, in light of Russia's denunciation of the 1941 neutrality pact the week before, could not lead to such a compromise in logistical, strategic, or tactical security, even tactile security.

Inferential speculation on the matter no doubt pervaded the High Command in Japan anyway and American press speculation would not upset or add fuel to it.

"The Underpinning" comments on the role of the farm in North Carolina as the bedrock upon which rested the economy, despite industrial growth. And it was also the farm, specifically the tenant farm, which was causing a low ranking of the state in all areas of social and economic indicia, from education to income to health.

"A Pair of Buckners", on the 80th anniversary of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, discusses the father of Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., commander of American Army infantry forces on Okinawa. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr., had commanded 15,000 Confederates at Fort Donelson in Tennessee in February, 1862, when General Ulysses Grant led 12,000 Union troops into the valley of the Tennessee River, first taking Fort Henry, then coming to Fort Donelson.

Though outnumbered, General Grant, a failed farmer, bill collector, and shop proprietor, demanded of General Buckner Unconditional Surrender. General Buckner, who had known Grant at West Point, found it necessary, because of the "overwhelming force" at Grant's command, "to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms" proposed.

From that point forward, Hiram Ulysses Grant was known as Unconditional Surrender Grant, which he ultimately took to Appomattox.

The term had been adopted by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at Casablanca in January, 1943. Since, it was being applied to every town and city captured or liberated in North Africa, in Sicily, in Italy, in Germany, on every island liberated in the Pacific.

And, now, ironically, the son of the General who had submitted to these "ungenerous and unchivalrous terms" was leading the fight to exact Sam's same again on Okinawa.

By Thursday night at 7:00 p.m., Washington time, a new President, largely unknown to the American people, save in brief biographical sketches printed the previous summer when he was nominated as the President's vice-presidential running mate, himself a failed haberdasher in 1922, would take the oath of office and announce his intention to continue his predecessor's policies as Commander in Chief, taking up the mantle of the fallen Leader, to fulfill that commitment to tender the final assertions of Unconditional Surrender to both Germany and the Empire of Japan, to be accomplished during the ensuing four months, arguably the most eventful and vital four months of modern humanity.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky, to become Vice-President under President Truman in 1949, engaging in colloquy with Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, on Thursday to become, as president pro-tempore of the Senate, its new presiding officer in replacement of Vice-President Truman, anent the constitutionality of the proposed work-or-fight legislation.

Drew Pearson reports that new Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace had been studying the work of former Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who had served in that capacity under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. Mr. Wallace had found him the best organizer ever in the position and was consulting with one of Mr. Hoover's chief advisers at the time, Dr. Julius Klein.

Marquis Childs suggests that life in Washington would not be the same without James Byrnes, who, in varying capacities, as a Congressman, Senator, Supreme Court Justice, and Administration officer, for the previous two and a half years sitting as "assistant President" as War Mobilizer, following a brief stint as Economic Stabilizer, had held a central role in the Federal Government for 30 years.

Samuel Grafton discusses the importance of unity among the Big Three to infuse meaning to the San Francisco Conference, as made evident when a dispute among them had arisen regarding the seating or not of the Soviet-backed Lublin Government of Poland, as well as the difference over voting, whether the U.S. was to allow, as agreed tentatively at Yalta, the Soviets to have three votes and the British Empire six, to the U.S. one, the latter having forfeited the three-vote counter-balance to the Soviets.

Yet, as to the areas of disagreement thus far, neither side was pushing apart the fissure to the point of an ore chasm in Allied unity.

Mr. Grafton urges that realization of the notion that disagreement regarding minor issues undermined the prospect of peace in the post-war world would be the keystone for establishing and maintaining that peace.

Russia, it was plain, he adds, was not going to be a shrinking violet at the peace table; it insisted on playing the Fat Man. That behavior would continue and the United States might as well become inured to the attitude, even if properly not satisfied with every one of Russia's proposals.