March 20, 1945;

TIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, MARCH 20, 1945:

TITUSVILLE, PA., TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 20, 1945

Ninth Army

Clears Way

For Plunge

Over Rhine

Nazis Blast Bridges

At Mainz, Dooming

Many of 80,000

Still in Saarland

PARIS, Tuesday, March 20.—

Three rampaging' U. S. tank divisions of theU. S. Third Army, -racing up to 15

miles through the toppling Saarland, thrust within 14 miles of Kaiserslauten

yesterday in a bid to crush 80,000 enemy troops in a giant vise and paralyze

any attempted German stand west of the Rhine.

Many of these badly-needed German troops were doomed when the enemy blew two Rhine bridges at Mainz, 12 miles in front of yet another armored division, the TJ.'S. Fourth, which set the stage for the Nazi debacle with ambreak-through along the Rhineland plain.

Two thousand more' Germans were trapped in the western Saar, and hundreds of others were driven to their death in a rain of steel from thousands of TJ. S. warplanes flailing every avenue of retreat Guns and tanks were abandoned and scattered along the hue of flight.

Already driven from more than half the Saarland and Palatinate—their last holdings, west of the Rhine—and routed ;from their final foothold in

northeastern France by the TJ. S. Seventh Army, the'-' .Germans- were faced

with ever greater! peril to their vaunted Rhine line ..farther., north,:.,.

Carrier Craft

Raid Honshu

Second Day

Hit Kobe and Kure,

Other Installations

Around Inland Sea

By the Associated PRESS

U. S.  PACIFIC FLEET HEADQUARTERS,

Guam, Tuesday. March 20.—

Great swarms of carrier planes, firing rockets and bombs, dived Monday on

Japan's leading shipbuilding city of Kobe, its major naval base of Kure and installations around its lifeblood artery, the inland sea, while more than 300 Super-Forts rained 2.500 tons of incendiary bombs on Nagoya.

The carrier planes, operating from a task force of the U. S. Fifth Fleet which has been off Japan for two days, thus shifted their punching power northward to Nippon's heart on Honshu island from the scene of Sunday's. attack on industrial Kyushu island.

The "Monday carrier attack, announced today without elaboration by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, fell upon highly congested centers occupied with husbanding or replenishing Japan's power to wage war at sea.

The Attempt to Kill Hitler:

HIMMLER AND ROMMEL

BACKED BOMB PLOT

Col. von Stauffenberg

Actually Placed Bomb

Under Fureur’s Chair

From one of the : conspirators Louis P. Lochner has obtained a remarkable account of the attempt of last July 20 to assassinate Adolf, Hitler. Lochner, chief of the former Associated Press bureau in Berlin, is again in Germany, expecting to return to the Nazi capital.

By LOUIS P. LOCHNER

Copyright, 1945. by The. Associated