Saturday, March 30, 2013

March 30, 1945; FALL OF DANZIG:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, MARCH 30, 1945:



RACINE, WIS., FRIDAY AFTERNOON, MARCH 30, 1945.
2 Armies Race
Toward Junction
In Northeast
With U. S. First Army—(AP)
Spearheads of the First army reached Faderbarn today and drove on with virtually no opposition.
The armored drive now has carried more than 125 miles in five days. Reports  from leading elements were running at least 8 1/2 hours behind actual advances.
Only a 65-mile gap remained between advance elements of British and American armor.
PARIS —(AP)—
The American First and Ninth armies drove powerfully forward today toward a junction northeast of the Ruhr that would seal off Germany's greatest and last large arsenal and up to 40,000 enemy troops among its ravaged factories.
Security blackouts hid new advances.
The First army shot forward so fast its spearheads lost contact with headquarters. The Germans said one armored column had reached Bad Windungen, 20 miles southwest of the great rail center of Kassel, 170 miles
from Berlin.
By-Pass Industrial Cities.
The Ninth army broke loose overnight in a race along the northern rim of the Ruhr, bypassing most of the great industrial cities of the valley.
The British Second army appeared to be veering northeastward toward the great ports of Hamburg, Bremen and Wilhelmshaven.
The whole onsurge , on the 21st army group front in the north was in high gear front the Muenster plain to the Odenwald. Infantry alone tramped 18'miles forward in a. day, and tanks still were, running unchecked along clear roads.
On every sector, supreme headquarters said officially that advances
were going well.


Stalin Announces Fall of Danzig,
Soviet Tanks Push Near Vienna
LONDON.—(AP)
Russian troops have thrust over the Austrian | frontier, Moscow dispatches said,
and Marshal Stalin announced a 31-mile advance north of the Danube in a twin thrust upon Vienna.
Danzig, where the first shots of the war were fired, fell to Russian forces and 10,000 prisoners were taken, Stalin announced. The Germans already had announced loss of the former free city on the Baltic.
While Marshal Feodor Tolbukhin's tanks penetrated into the hills inside Austria, threatening to lay siege to Vienna, Stalin announced that Marshal Rodion
Malinovsky's forces north of the Danube had broken across the Nitra river, capturing Komarno, Ersekujvar (Novy-Zamky), Surnay, Komjaty, Verebely (Vrable) and Poerful.
Gain on 34-Mile Front.
The advance was on a 34-mile front from the broken Hron river defenses in Slovakia, and brought the Russians up to or across the Nitra on a 27-mile front to within 49 miles of Bratislava. Komarno is on the north bank of the Danube opposite the captured stronghold of Komarom. Ersekujvar is on the west side of
the Nitra, and Surany and Komjaty are in a line to the north along the banks of the Bitra. Verebely is 11 miles southeast of the stronghold of Nitra on the railway from Levice.
British Ships
Join Assault on
Ryukyu Isles
GUAM—(AP)—
A powerful British task force has joined the mighty American assault on the Ryukyu Island approaches to the Japanese homeland which the navy announced
today is continuing.
Fleet guns and carrier planes poured heavy shells and bombs for the seventh straight day on strategically important targets around Okinawa, Japan's Ryukyu bastion which Tokyo says is expecting American landing parties any time now.
(Berlin radio quoted Tokyo as saying 150 American Super-Fortresses attacked Tokyo this morning with a new type of incendiary bomb, starting numerous fires. The Berlin broadcast, not confirmed by Allied sources, was heard in London.)
The British task force, which included the battleship King George V and the carrier Illustrious, operated as a unit attached to Adm. Raymond A. Spruance's Fifth U. S. fleet.
Japs Attack Warships.
It became the first element of the royal navy to strike an offensive blow so close to Japan in this war, and the first part of the British fleet to undertake such operations
at extreme long range.

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