April 25, 1945; Berlin Surrounded:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, APRIL 25, 1945:

FLORENCE, S. C., WEDNESDAY MORNING, APRIL 25, 1945

Patton men Near

Austrian Border

In Stab South

PARIS, APRIL 25, WEDNESDAY

(AP)—Whirling down en Hitler’s. Bavarian Mountain retreat,

three mighty  Allied armies curved 'the tips of a giant pincers within 25 miles of Austria's borders last night.

In the far north, the British opened the final assault on Germany's second port of Bremen, and along the Elbe River valley the Russians drew historic union ever closer to an historic union with the waiting Americans.

Seize Half

Of Burning

Nazi Capital

Total.Isolation of Berlin Near As American Forces Approach to Berlin Historic Junction

On Broad Front

By ROMNEY WHEELER

London, (Wed.), April 25--(AP)—

Two powerful Russian armies joined forces inside Berlin yesterday and seized fully half the are of the burning city which the Germans said now as "practically

surrounded" and entirely cut off from outside aid.

A Moscow communique announced the junction of the First Ukrainian

and First white Russian armies in a single phase of coordinated drives which captured the Sclilcsischer (Sileslan) railway station and all the districts north'

and east of it, within a mile of the center of the city at Untcr Den Linden.

The First White Russian forces of Marshal G. K. Zhuikov simultaneously

executed a great wheeling movement, north and northwest which severed one ' of two railways Icsaing- from Berlin. Co the northwest German jxrchet –and came within two and one-half miles of the other, Moscow disclosed.