May 9, 1945; HISTORY'S WORST DEFEAT:

THIS WAS REPORTED TODAY, MAY 9, 1945:

ABILENE, TEXAS. WEDNESDAY MORNING. MAY 9,1945-TWELVE PAGES

Yanks at Davao

Run Into Fight

By The Associated Press

Europe was at peace today but war thundered with relentless fury on widely separated Pacific-Asiatic battle fronts.

Yank doughboys in the southwest Philippines ran into a real -fight in the Davao sector while Australian and Dutch forces expanded their gains on Tarakan island just off Borneo.

Bad weather limited ground operations on bloody Okinawa but U.S. battleships and cruisers threw heavy fire ashore to wreck gun emplacements, artillery and mortars.

Reds Take Towns

In Last Minutes

LONDON, May 8—(AP)— Marshal Stalin announced tonight that Russian troops, in last-hour cleanups of German resistance units, had captured the Saxon capital of Dresden and the Czechoslovak "city .of Olmuetz" (Olomouc) .while

Czechoslovak partisans hoisted ,the free flag of the' republic'" over liberated Prague.

Cease  fire was . ordered in Prague, : in .'flames' from wantonNazi destruction, at 7:25 p. n (London time 12:25 p. m. CWT), although a few Nazi fanatics continued 'to loot and fire the Czechoslovak capital.

Germans' Defeat

History's Worst

PARIS, May 8.—(AP)—Germany bowed today to the most overwhelming defeat ever inflicted upon a nation 11 months and two days after General Eisenhower's armies stormed into France to liberates Europe in Nazi chains.

The final articles of capitulation were to be ratified today in shell-shredded Berlin. A ruined capital symbolic of the fall of the third reich, Prime Minister Churchill announced in London.

The guns of Europe, which through five years, eight months and seven days of unexampled war inflicted possibly 40,000,000-casualties-civilian and military—fell silent officially at one minute after midnight Wednesday (5:01 p.m. Central War Time today.)

Japs Receive

Stern Notice

They're Next

WASHINGTON,- May 8 —(AP)—

President Truman, in words of stern triumph and dedication, proclaimed' defeat

of a-crushed" Germany; today and served grim notice on Japan that her doom was sealed.

Stalin Discloses

Agreed Peace

Signed in Berlin

(AP)— The Moscow radio, announcing the. German capitulation, to the

Russian people' 'for the first .lime, said today that unconditional surrender articles had been signed by the Nazi high command at Berlin.

The announcement, made in behalf of Commander in Chief Stalin but not by the premier marshal personally, said the surrender was signed yesterday by field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel for the German high command, in the presence of Air

Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, American General Carl Spaatz, French General De Lattre Tasslgny and Russlan Marshal Gregory K. Zhukov.

The Moscow radio said that "in honor of the victorious conclusion of the great patriotic war of the Soviet people against the German Fascist invaders and the historic Red Army victory that has been gained and that has been ended bythe complete defeat of the German army which declared unconditional capitulation, May 9 will be a festival of victory."