Wednesday, March 20, 2013

March 19, 1945

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, MARCH 19, 1945:

WAR AT GLANCE
March 19, 1945
WESTERN FRONT:
Third and Seventh army drives threaten 80,000 Germans in Saarland with double entrapment; Americans e x p a n d Rhine bridgehead, where collapsed Ludendorff span is termed repairable;
Germans reported withdrawing from Dutch sector north of Nijmcgen.
EASTERN FRONT:
Soviets push westward on Baltic coast after fall of Kolberg; tighten pressure to seize Stettin and Oder's mouth to set up spring drive on Berlin.
PACIFIC FRONT:
Japan bombed Sunday and today by hundreds of carrier planes and 350 Superfortresses, with airplane and steel plants at Nagoya and on Kyushu main targets; Americans advance on Luzon; planes hit Japanese positions around Bagnio.
ITALIAN FRONT:
Limited to patrol raids.




ST. JOSEPH, MICH., MONDAY, MARCH 19, 1945.

VIEWS HANGING
FILMS TO PEP
SELF FOR END
Fuehrer Left Mentally Unbalanced
By July Bombing
Louis P. Lochner has obtained a remarkable account of last July's attempt on Hitler's life directly from one of the participants. Lochner, who was chief of the former Associated Press bureau in Berlin, is again in Germany hoping- to return soon to the Nazi capital)
BY LOUIS P. LOCHNER
Copyright, 1945, by Associated Press
BONN, Germany, March 19 (AP)
—A man who is a fugitive from German authority because he was implicated in the July 20 bombing attempt on Hitler's life has told me that the fuehrer, fully aware that the war is lost, now peps himself up from time to time watching movies
showing the purging of generals and, nobles who died tor their part in the past.
My informant, who gave a complete story of the bomb plot, is a man I have known for years and, whose integrity and veracity I have a firm belief.
This man, because he has been hunted, has not seen his home since July and has changed sleeping quarters constantly to avoid detection.
He desires even now, when under allied rule, to have his name withheld because he has numerous relatives beyond the Rhine.
Here is his story:
Fate Fails Plot The bomb attempt failed because Hitler did not receive his officers
in a concrete bunker July 20, but in a wooden shed to show Mussolini and high Italians he was not afraid of air raids. The Italians were scheduled' to attend a ceremony incorporating remnants of the fascist army into the Wehrmacht.
The bomb's effectiveness had. been calculated on the assumption that the explosion would occur in a much smaller room than where Hitler at this time sat. The bunker,
with concrete walls, was to heighten, the impact of the blast.
Secondly, it failed because at the moment of the explosion. Hitler stepped to a cupboard to look for a magnifying glass. The bomb had. been placed under his chair.
Hitler Badly Hurt
Even so, Hitler was badly hurt. His hearing apparently has been, impaired permanently. His right arm was injured, but nursed back to health by Professor Gohrband, noted Berlin physician. He also suffered some burns.

U. S. 3RD, 7TH
ARMIES BATTLE
TO CLOSE TRAP
Disorganized Nazi Columns
Ripped to Shreds by
U. S. Warplanes
PARIS, March 19 (AP)—
An estimated 80,000 Germans ran for the Rhine today in desperate daylight
retreat under p e r f e c t strafing weather which turned the northern half of the Bavarian Palatinate into a slaughter ground and the rich
Saarland into a death trap.
Swift tank and infantry columns of the Third and Seventh Armies surged within 15 miles of each other between St. Wendel and the Zweibruecken areas of the Saarland and within 42 miles of a junction farther west in the Palatinate.
Tanks shot within 14 miles of Mainz on the bend of the Rhine.
THis was the last debacle west of the Rhine and the German First and Seventh armies were losing terrific numbers of men and machines in their rout.
Threaten 5 Great Cfties
Lt. George S. Patton's Third Army  threatened the great Rhine valley cities of Mainz, Frankfurt on the Main, Weisbaden, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim.
His assault troops crashed into St. Wendel, closing all but the eastern
end of a death box 25 miles long and 15 miles wide along the whole Saar line.

JAPS REELING
AFTER RECORD
TWO-DAY RA!D
Superforts Batter Nagoya
Anew, Carrier Planes
Blast Kyushu
GUAM, March 19 (AP)—Hundreds of carrier planes and probably 350 Superforts—flying an cstimanted 300-plus sorties — bombed
Japan with more than 5000 tons of incendiaries and high explosives
Sunday and Monday. The giant B-29's, paying a predawn return visit to Nagoya to finish up the destruction started just one week ago, loosed 2,500 or more tons of incendiaries on Japan's sixth largest city and principal airplane manufacturing center.

WAR AT GLANCE
March 19, 1945
WESTERN FRONT:
Third and Seventh army drives threaten 80,000 Germans in Saarland with double entrapment; Americans e x p a n d Rhine bridgehead, where collapsed Ludendorff span is termed repairable;
Germans reported withdrawing from Dutch sector north of Nijmcgen.
EASTERN FRONT:
Soviets push westward on Baltic coast after fall of Kolberg; tighten pressure to seize Stettin and Oder's mouth to set up spring drive on Berlin.
PACIFIC FRONT:
Japan bombed Sunday and today by hundreds of carrier planes and 350 Superfortresses, with airplane and steel plants at Nagoya and on Kyushu main targets; Americans advance on Luzon; planes hit Japanese positions around Bagnio.
ITALIAN FRONT:
Limited to patrol raids.

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