The camp held 32,000 emaciated, unshaven men and 350 women, jammed in the wooden barracks. Prisoners said that 7,000 others had been marched away on foot during the past few days. The survivors went wild with joy as the Americans broke open their pens, smothering their liberators with embraces.
Bodies were found in many places. Here also were the gas chambers—camouflaged as “showers” into which prisoners were herded under the pretext of bathing—and the cremation ovens. Huge stacks of clothing bore mute testimony to the fate of their owners.
A French general was slain last week as he walked toward a truck, believing that he was to be evacuated, prisoners reported. They said that Elite Guards had shot him in the back.
The Americans stormed through the camp with tornadic fury. Not a stone’s throw from a trainload of corpses lay the bleeding bodies of sixteen guards shot down as they fled.
American troops discover the bodies of prisoners after liberating the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, 1945.
In the mess hall of the guards’ barracks, food was still cooking in the kitchen. One officer was slumped over a plate of beans, a bullet through his head. Nearby was a telephone with the receiver down and the busy signal still buzzing. Outside the power house were the bodies of two Germans slain by a Czech and a Pole working in the engine room.
The main part of the camp is surrounded by a fifteen-foot-wide moat through which a torrent of water circulates. Atop a ten-foot fence is charged barbed wire.
When Lieut. Col. Will Cowling of Leavenworth, Kan., slipped the lock in the main gate, there was still no sign of life inside this area. He looked around for a few seconds and then a tremendous human cry roared forth. A flood of humanity poured across the flat yard—which would hold a half dozen baseball diamonds—and Colonel Cowling was all but mobbed.
RESCUED BY SOLDIERS
He was hoisted to the shoulders of the seething, swaying crowd of Russians, Poles, Frenchmen, Czechs and Austrians, cheering the Americans in their native tongues. The American colonel was rescued by soldiers, but the din kept up.
Flags appeared and waved from the barracks. There was even an American flag, although only one American was held there. He is a major from Chicago captured behind the German lines when he was on special assignment for the Office of Strategic Services.
The joyous crowd pressed the weight of thousands of frail bodies against the wire, and it gave way at one point. Like a break in a dam, the prisoners rushed out, although still penned in by the moat. Three tried to climb over the fence, but were burned to death on the top wires, for the current still was on.
Two guards fired into the mass from a tower, betraying their presence. American infantrymen instantly riddled the Germans. Their bodies were hurled down into the moat amid a roar unlike anything ever heard from human throats.
Inside the barracks were more than 1,000 bodies—some shot by guards in a wild melee last night, others victims of disease and starvation.
The bodies of Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci (center), his mistress, hang from the roof of a gasoline station in Milan after they had been shot by anti-Fascist forces while attempting to escape to Switzerland.
MAY 1, 1945
Inglorious End of A Dictator
By Wireless to The New York Times.
MILAN, April 29 (Delayed)—The degradation to which the bodies of Mussolini, his mistress, Clara Petacci, and his fascist followers were subjected this morning did not end in the muddy gutter.
Soon after 10 A.M., six of the corpses, including Mussolini’s and Signorina Petacci’s, were hung by the feet with wire from an exposed steel girder of a former gasoline station a few yards from the original dumping point. Black-lettered white signs bearing their names were plastered above them. Later the bodies were cut down and taken to the morgue, where a crowd gathered all over again, and men, women and children climbed fences to get a final look.
An inspection of the bodies revealed a delicate square gold lock et that Signorina Petacci had worn. Outside, in the lower right corner, it bore initials and the inscription: “Clara—io sono te, tu sei me [Clara—I am you, you are me].” It was signed “Ben” and dated April 4, 1939, and April 4, 1941—presumably when Mussolini met Signorina Petacci and when he gave her the locket.
No funeral plans had been set tonight and there was some talk of an autopsy on what was left of the dictator. Frankly, it was not much, for the crowd had kicked his face out of shape.
MAY 3, 1945
GERMANS CAPITULATE IN ITALY AND AMERICAN FORCES ENTER CITY OF MILAN
2 GERMAN OFFICERS SIGN CAPITULATION
By Wireless to The New York Times.
ADVANCED ALLIED HEADQUARTERS, Italy, May 3—Among the six correspondents chosen by lot to record the ceremony of the Germans’ surrender in Italy was Sgt. Howard Taubman of The Stars and Stripes, a former music critic for The New York Times. His description was printed in the Army newspaper as follows:
The signing of the surrender terms took exactly twelve minutes. Hundreds of thousands of enemy troops and thousands of enemy-held square miles were forfeited in a room 18x25 feet. The signing was conducted with rigorous simplicity and swift military precision.
The German lieutenant colonel, Col. Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff Scheel’s representative, was tall and had blonde receding hair and a wisp of a moustache. His eyes were pale and he looked as if he were trying to mask all feeling. He looked like the Hollywood version of a Prussian officer.
The German major, Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff’s emissary, was short, dark and intense-looking. His face had a high color, as if he could be short-tempered. There was less cool dignity in him, but he had an air of more sup pressed tension. Several times when a photographer came too close to him he waved his hand with an imperious gesture, but then hastily restrained himself. He looked his role, too—that of spokesman for the thoroughly Nazified Elite Guard troops.
BOTH SMARTLY DRESSED
Both Germans were in civilian clothes, smartly dressed as if out fitted on Bond Street or by Brooks Brothers, but even in these peace able get-ups they did not seem like men who would win friends and influence people easily—with or without force.
Lieut. Gen. W. D. Morgan, standing behind a chair at one end of the conference table, began the proceedings by saying, “I understand that you are prepared and empowered to sign the terms of a surrender agreement. Is that correct?”
The tall Prussian colonel replied, “Ja.” General Morgan repeated the question to the major, who did not understand English. The translator put the question in German and the major said: “Jawohl.”
General Morgan went on: “I have been empowered to sign this agreement on behalf of the Supreme Allied Commander—the terms to take effect by noon of May 2, Greenwich mean time. I now ask you to sign and I shall sign after you.”
The Prussian colonel sat down and signed his name hastily on five copies. The major followed him. It took them two minutes to surrender for their commanders. General Morgan sat down at the other end of the table and signed as the Allies’ officers standing near him looked on. It took him one minute.
MAY 2, 1945
HITLER DEAD IN CHANCELLERY, NAZIS SAY ADMIRAL IN CHARGE
By SYDNEY GRUSON
By Cable to The New York Times
LONDON, May I—Adolf Hitler died this afternoon, the Hamburg radio announced tonight, and Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, proclaiming himself the new Fuehrer by Hitler’s appointment, said that the war would continue.
Crowning days of rumors about Hitler’s health and whereabouts, the Hamburg radio said that Hitler had fallen in the battle of Berlin at his command post in the Chancellery just three days after Benito Mussolini, the first of the dictator, had been killed by Italian Partisans. Doenitz, a 53-year-old U-boat specialist, broadcast an address to the German people and the surviving armed forces immediately after the announcer had given the news of Hitler’s death.
First addressing the German people, Doenitz said that they would cont
inue to fight only to save themselves from the Russians but that they would oppose the western Allies as long as they helped the Russians. In an order of the day to the German forces he repeated his thinly veiled attempt to split the Allies.
RADIO PREPARES GERMANS
Early this evening the Germans were told that all important announcements would be broadcast tonight. There was no hint of what was coming. The standby announcement was repeated at 9:10 P. M., followed by the playing or excerpts from Wagner’s “Goetterdaemmerung.”
A few minutes later the announcer said: “Achtung! Achtung! In a few moments you will hear a serious and important message to the German people.” Then the news was given to the Germans and the world after the playing of the slow movement from Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, commemorating Wagner’s death.
APPEALS FOR COOPERATION
Appealing to the German people for help, order and discipline, Doenitz eulogized Hitler as the hero of a lifetime of service to the nation whose “fight against the Bolshevik storm flood concerned not only Europe but the entire civilized world… It is my first task,” Doenitz added, “to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. For this aim alone the military struggle continues.”
Clinging to the line of all recent German propaganda, reflected in Heinrich Himmler’s reported offer to surrender to the western Allies but not to Russia, Doenitz said that the British and Americans were fighting not for their own interests but for the spreading of Bolshevism. He demanded of the armed forces the same allegiance that they had pledged to Hitler and he assured them that he took supreme command “resolved to continue the struggle against the Bolsheviks until the fighting men, until the hundreds of thousands of German families of the German east are saved from bondage and extermination.” To the armed forces he described. Hitler as “one of the greatest heroes of German history,” who “gave his life and met a hero’s death.”
MAY 3, 1945
Goebbels and Fuehrer Died By Own Hands, Aide Says
By Cable to The New York Times.
LONDON, May 3—A deposition by Joseph Goebbels’ chief assistant that both the German propaganda chief and Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in Berlin was given to the world early today by Red Army forces after they had occupied the capital of the crumbling Reich. Hans Fritzsche, Goebbels’ deputy, was quoted in the Soviet communiqué as having reported also the suicide of General Krebs, who was disclosed to have been appointed Chief of the German General Staff in place of Field Marshal Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, lately believed to have been backing Heinrich Himmler’s peace bid to the Western Powers.
The statement of Fritzsche, who was captured in Berlin with a large assortment of defense chiefs, added another version of the Fuehrer’s demise to two already given—that he had died in battle and that he had succumbed to cerebral hemorrhage.
Suicide seemed more in character for Goebbels, whose brilliant mind was as twisted as his club foot. Administrator for the defense of Berlin as well as Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda, he had announced that he would remain in Berlin and kill himself rather than live in a Germany dominated by “Bolshevist terror.”
A cynical propagandist who set out without scruple to warp the mind of a whole nation, he was the great intellect of the Nazi party, a Catholic-bred, university-trained Rhinelander. A Nazi since he first heard Hitler speak in 1922, he was largely responsible for the hypnotic hold his party fastened on Germany. There had been none of his finesse and assurance in the recent German propaganda broadcasts.
Adolf Hitler in Berlin, some ten days before he committed suicide in the last hours before the Russians captured the city.
President Truman announced at his press conference today that Adolf Hitler was dead.
This Government, the President said, has received information to this effect on the best authority possible. He added that he personally was convinced it was true.
The President’s announcement came unexpectedly. He was asked for comment on the death of Benito Mussolini and the reported death of Hitler.
It meant, of course, he replied, that the two principal war criminals would not have to come to trial, that this was now a fact.
“Does that mean that official confirmation has been received that Hitler is dead?” he was asked.
It was then that he made his announcement and said he was glad. He was next asked if Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, who has proclaimed himself Hitler’s successor, was on the list of war criminals. The President replied in the negative. He did not discuss the matter further.
MAY 3, 1945
JACKSON WILL HEAD WAR CRIME COUNSEL
By LEWIS WOOD
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, May 2—Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson of the Supreme Court has been appointed by President Truman as the chief counsel of the United States in preparing and prosecuting charges against the leading war criminals of the Axis powers. Already, President Truman stated in making the announcement, Justice Jackson has assembled a staff from the War, Navy and other departments and preparations are under way, although the details of the military court before which the criminals will appear have not yet been arranged.
The trials in which the associate justice will take part will be held before an international military tribunal to be set up by the Allies.
Justice Jackson accepted the assignment in a statement in which he promised “no delay” on the part of the United States in the prosecution of those “who have thought it safe to wage aggressive and ruthless war.” However, he added that he would pursue his task in a way “consistent with our traditional insistence upon a fair trial for any accused.”
Those who will face the court, the President indicated, will be the men primarily responsible for atrocities and war crimes, not the lesser officials who personally carried out orders.
Pursuant to the Moscow Declaration of Nov. 1, 1943, all war criminals against whom there was enough proof of specific atrocities would be tried in the countries where the crimes took place, the President stated. The persons to be taken before the international tribunal will be “major war criminals and their principal agents and accessories,” whose offenses have no specific geographical base.
The President’s statement indicated that this Government expected the court to complete its work between the prospective adjournment of the Supreme Court on May 28 and its resumption in October.
MAY 3, 1945
U.S. LIEUTENANT TAKES RUNDSTEDT
Marshal, Called Ablest of Foe’s Chiefs By Eisenhower, Urges Reich to Yield
By Wireless to The New York Times.
PARIS, May 2—Field Marshal Gen. Karl von Rundstedt, Germany’s “high priest of strategy” whom Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower considers the ablest German commander that he has encountered, has been captured by the American Seventh Army in Bad Tolz, twenty-three miles south of Munich, it was officially reported today.
[The Americans also captured Field Marshal General Hugo Sperrle, former commander of German air forces on the western front accused of directing the London blitz, and Field Marshal Gen. Maximilian von Weichs, commander of German armies in the Balkans, The Associated Press reported.]
Rundstedt, who has been an officer for fifty-three years, was captured by Second Lieut. Joseph Burke, a tank commander who was on his first battlefield assignment since receiving his commission in the field three weeks ago. Rundstedt’s son and aide, Lieut. Hans Gerd von Rundstedt, was captured with him.
Rundstedt was under medical treatment in Bad Tolz when it was overrun by the 141st Regiment of the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division last night. The marshal, his wife and their son had finished dinner and were expecting the Americans in the morning. The retired German leader had been in Bad Tolz for some time undergoing treatment. He is 70 years old.
‘READY TO SURRENDER’
According to Herman Jobe, an American private who drove Rundtstedt away—preliminary reports did not give his destination—Rundstedt “seemed ready to s
urrender.” Rundstedt retired on March 13, the day after he last saw Adolf Hitler, after one of the most remarkable military careers of modern times. An old man in the military sense and already retired at the outbreak of the war in 1939, he returned to uniform to lead Army groups to victory in Poland, France and Russia.
Even at the end he was dangerous. Less than five months ago he broke through the American lines in the Ardennes with two armies and smashed for the Meuse River. The offensive was halted after hard fighting, but von Rundstedt had succeeded in forcing General Eisenhower to divert the American Third Army from its assault on the Saar to the flank of the Ardennes bulge and thus brought the operations on the Cologne plain to a close.
Tall, erect and spare, von Rundstedt is a Hollywood casting office’s dream of a Junker general.
MAY 4, 1945
RANGOON CAPTURED IN LIGHTNING DRIVE
Capital’s Fall Heralds Early Burma Liberation
By The United Press.
CALCUTTA, India, May 3—The capital city of Rangoon fell to the British Fourteenth Army today, and the three-year war to liberate Burma from the Japanese was virtually at an end.
A special communiqué early today announced that British forces who fought through hundreds of miles of steaming jungles and across rugged mountains from the India border were storming the ancient city from two sides. Its capture was announced a few hours later.
The Japanese defenders—once estimated at 30,000—were believed to have fled into the delta country around Rangoon or across the narrow Gulf of Martaban toward Indo-China. In recent days the Japanese military forces in South Burma have disintegrated and the British drive on Rangoon was made at lightning speed.
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 143
