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Kurt Dittmar Predicted End In Few Days
by Kenneth L. Dixon
One of
Germany's best known generals, Kurt Dittmar, surrendered to American 30th
Division, surrendered to American 30th Division infantrymen at the Elbe,
Wednesday arid said he expected the war to end in a few days.
Internationally known as one of the best informed members of the the
general staff, GENERAL DITTMAR, said he believed Hitler would die in
Berlin and Reichsmarshal Herman Goering possibly already had been
executed.
Further, the captive said:
The war's turning point came last June in
Normandy, when the Germans failed to beat back the channel invasion.
Politically, economically and physically the Reich has been doomed since
July 20 , the day of the plot to assassinate Hitler failed. Had the
Wehrmacht seized control, he said, surrender would have been engineered
somehow in time to avert complete destruction.
After crossing the Elbe in a rowboat under a while flag the general
asserted German causalities had been too great to make continued
resistance possible.
General Dittmar had crossed the river to arrange for evacuation of wounded
civilians, but after being advised by Major General Hobbs, division
commander, the unconditional surrender was his demand, the General
later chose imprisonment, sending for his 16-year old son to surrender
with him.
He said the only thing holding remnants of the German army together as the
presence of the Gestapo storm troopers and SS troops who, he predicted
would scatter quickly upon the fall of Berlin or the death of Hitler.
No Place For Hitler
Although disclaiming knowledge of the whereabouts of Heinrich Himmler, he
said Hitler still remained in Berlin, from where he had just come.
He said the fuehrer would stay there until he was killed or committed
suicide - mostly because there was hardly any other place to go. |
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New Order For Old Hickory As 30th Occupies
By ERNIE LEISER, Stars and Stripes Staff Correspondent
WITH 30th INF. I., Possneck, June 4.
You'd never know this was the same outfit,
except for the shoulder patch.
In the old days the 30th hollered when it was given a five or ten mile
front to hold. Some of the hardest fighting was for a strip maybe two
miles wide.
Today, the Division front is something over 50 miles wide and between 10
and 30 miles deep. That makes more than 1,000 square miles the
five-starred veterans are holding, but no one's hollering,
In the old days luxury living consisted of a cellar instead of a water
cooled foxhole. Today, every Joe in the outfit lives in a house, most of
them sleep in good German beds and living rooms become made-to-order day
rooms complete to a library of the latest Volkssturm pamphlets on approved
methods for use of the panzerfaust.
No Reason for Discomfort
Some strangely sage guy with a lot of brass figured it out this way.
"There's no reason why my men should live in discomfort if it can
be avoided, and it can avoided if the German's* double up to make
room for their 'guests'.
Weird things are going on at headquarters Lt. Col.. Harold Hassenfelt of
Oconto, Wis., Division G-3, used to chain-smoke after night, while he
worked out details of the next attack. He's still working out plans, but
today his plans include just enough military training to keep the doughs
hand in at their trade. They also include a couple of
afternoons, and Sunday off each week, a goodly amount of training time for
athletics and such, and guided tours of scenic spots in the division's
zone.
New Headaches for G-4
Lt. Col. Stewart Hall of Newark, N. Y.,
used to knock himself out figuring how, where, when and what the Krauts
were going to do, in his job as G-2. Today, he has a new set of headaches
screening and supervising gradual discharge of 31,000 PWs at Plauen, and
firing and arresting all German officials in the area whose records are
not kosher.
The G-1 ad AG used to worry about
causalities. Now they sweat over the point system. And G-5, the
original forgotten man, is now a big dealer, with the most
responsibilities - and the least men - in the division. His military
government teams are running the show, with the division troops to lend
moral conviction to their orders,
In the old days everyone in the division had a bath, a shave and a lot of
sleep. Today, Old Hickory men look clean and shiny, their uniforms
are three shades lighter from washing and a few dude officers have even
pulled crumpled pinks out of the bottom of their barracks bag.
There's even a rumor that everyone's going to start wearing go-to-hell
caps.
They look altogether different around here these days, not really happy, -
except the 85-plussers - but between ten and 60 years younger. They
look as though they've forgotten a lot of unpleasant things. |
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Town Succumbs As All 1st Bn Fights
WITH THE 30TH INFANTRY DIVISION, Germany
A town in the path of the First Battalion,
119th Rgt., was so strongly defended that even those who do not usually
fight as infantry grabbed rifles and got on the line to help crush the
resistance.
Using Panzerfausts as artillery, and making the best of houses for machine
gun positions, the Germans put up a good fight for the town whose crooked
and narrow streets made the use of tanks impossible.
According to S/Sgt Arthur Floyd, Norline, N. C., cracking this town made
the going easy on the rest of the drive.
While tank destroyers cleaned out the houses on the flanks, S/Sgt Floyd
picked off Germans from the battalion observation post as they ran from
the houses attacked by the TDs.
When the battalion S-2 was ambushed end wounded while reconnoitering a
route for tanks to come up, Pfc Nathan Kuperstein, Mauldin, Miss., stayed
to give first aid, while Pfc William Lord, Lebanon, Penna., killed two
Germans in order to break out of the ambush for help.
Captain Allen S. Hubbard, Jr., Colebrook,
Conn., rescued the wounded officer and his companion with a small task
force which he had organized.
More than 600 prisoners were taken in the town after the Germans realized
it was useless to fight on. |
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30th's Vital Part In Halting Germans During
Battle Of Bulge Hidden By Early Censorship
By Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune
When the Germans broke through in the
Ardennes, the press camps in the 1st and 9th Armies were agitating for a
"release" policy like that adopted in General Patton's 3rd Army. In the
3rd Army, for more than a month before the German counter-offensive,
correspondents were permitted name any unit as soon as it was in combat.
The 1st Army had a "rolling release" of five days - divisions might be
cited five days after they entered action. The 9th Army had a
ten-day rolling release, cable correspondents accordingly could never
identify the soldiers in any current action.
The soldiers didn't like it, they were always asking correspondents. " Why
doesn't our division ever get headlines ? We're doing the fighting, aren't
we ?" The correspondents didn't like it, they were being forced to
blur their stories in manner which seem to them to have nothing to do with
military security. The censors on the spot didn't defend the policy
but they had their orders. Correspondents committees visited the
commanding generals to protest and understood that the high command was
asked to make the Patton rule general.
In a few cases individual units were "released". And then, on Dec. 17, at
the beginning of the German push, a new blanket of censorship was imposed.
No division was to be identified. Accordingly, the public has no awareness
of the decisive role played by certain units of magnificent American
fighting men in turning the Germans from their objectives.
The curtain was first lifted with the relief of Bastogne - by men from
General Patton's Army, and the whole world now knows the story of the
paratroopers of the 101st, who said "Nuts" when the German asked
them to surrender, and radioed to their own commanders that yes they were
surrounded, but they were paratroopers, and they had never been taught to
fight any way except surrounded.
Marshal Montgomery next lifted the veil when he referred the defense of
the hinge at Eisenborn, and cited the heroic qualities of the Americans of
the 2d, 1st, 30th, 82nd and 7th armored Divisions, who held the northern
flan. Censorship had blanked their stirring record. However belated, they
should have their due. But for their stand the world would never have
heard of Bastogne.
For the German aim was to drive northwest to the strategic American supply
depots in the Liege region and toward the incomparable port of Antwerp, it
was their hope to capture Aachen on the way, as a "Christmas present for
Hitler." Bastogne was south of the intended main German line of advance.
Through the first five days of the German movement the northern prong of
their advance seemed more menacing than the southern. But the northern
prong was first stopped and then lopped, and the German push was diverted
into the "strategic wilderness" about Bastogne. Bastogne was an important
junction point on the southern route, and no one would wish to minimize
the courage of its defenders. But it was a junction on a long, roundabout
route, made important because the direct northern route had been denied
the Germans.
The men of the famous old "Indian Head" Division, the 2d Infantry held the
hinge. They had been feeling their way, pillbox by pillbox, toward the
headwaters of the Roer river in the week before the German offensive
began. Lt. Colonel William D. McKinley, of San Antonio Tex.,
grandson of the former President, was leading the 1st Battalion of the 9th
Infantry in that effort and was in imminent danger of being cut off on the
morning of Dec. 17.
At 7 a. m. that morning 2d Division headquarters was alerted that the
Germans had broken through a green division on its right and were coming
in. At 8 a. m. six German tanks were visible within eight hundred
yards of General Walter D. Robertson's command post. But he was
ready. He sent Pvt. Tony Lauent, of San Antonio, through the mess
halls, like a horseless Paul Revere, shouting to every cook, orderly and
truck driver to got his gun and shoot. He had stalked about directing
emplacements of tank destroyers. He had communicated with Colonel McKinley
on his outer flank. By 10 a. m., four of the six tanks had been knocked
out, one of them by Sergeant Melvin Brown, of Mount. Vernon, Tex., a mess
cook, and another by an unnamed inventive lad who threw a can of gasoline
out of a second-story window onto a tank passing beneath, setting it
afire. When the general sent word to the commanding officer of the 1st
Battalion of the 38th Infantry that tanks were headed his way, the colonel
replied: "You don't have to tell us. We can spit -on them." And they did
with bazookas.
By mid-afternoon the general reluctantly
moved his command post two miles- to the west, as he had been ordered to
do in the morning. He had been just too busy to do it at the time, his
aides explained. They were quite proud of their general. In fact the 2d
Division felt it had stopped the Jerries, that it knew how, and was ready
to do it again. I visited them on the 20th, but the censor would let me
write nothing about them at the time, except that men of a certain unit
had done something somewhere.
Next day Louis Azael, of "The Baltimore News-Post", and I visited the 1st
Division, a great group of fighting men who had just begun to enjoy their
first rest since D-Day, when the German offensive called them back into
line alongside the 2d Division. They felt that they were the boys Who had
stopped the Germans at Malmedy.
Next in line were the hardened fighting men of the 30th the Old Hickory
Division. They had been pulled out of the 9th Army line above Aachen
on Dec. 17 and had swung south into instant fighting action. They
cut their way down through the forest to Stavelot and blew the bridge over
which the northern German spear was beginning to pour its armor. The
censor cut out my dispatch about the blowing of that strategic bridge--a
feat which later led to the capture of sixty German tanks and a hundred
other armored vehicles, out of gas. Maybe the Germans didn't know
the bridge was blown, the censor opined. But the next day "Stars and
Stripes" came up from Paris
with the story. The fact had been released at supreme headquarters
to correspondents, some of whom had never seen the front. Things like that
drive field correspondents wild.
When the 30th carne down to the Ambleve River at Stavelot it buttoned up
with the
82nd Paratroopers, Coming in from the south. Like the 102d, of Bastogne
fame, these were veteran Jumpers with experience in Tunis, Sicily, Italy,
Normandy and Holland, now thrown in to meet the emergency. The
censor would not let us name them or identify the spot where they first
swam a wire across the river to link with the 30th to the north. Yet
that encircling action, leading to the to lopping off of the northern
German spearhead, was as decisive as Bastogne.
The work of the 7th Armored made it possible. That bunch of crisis men had
started south at dawn on Dec. 18 and by night had swung around the tip of
the German advance arid were moving into the gap between the two German
prongs. They held St. Vith for three days, then began pulling west,
screened by the 82nd Paratroopers. Day after day, through that
bitter week, they were reported surrounded.
Communications were pretty much disorganized
that week, no one at Army headquarters seemed quite sure where the 7th
Armored men actually were. When three correspondents located them, on Dec.
24, they indignantly denied that they had ever been surrounded. "We were
just fighting on all sides," their told us. It was their fighting on all
sides which made it possible to cut the northern prong, and when the 7th
Armored pulled back north of Manhay the fight for Bastogne was sharpening.
Censorship rules prevented our naming of those great divisions in those
days. It
grieved us and hurt the fighting men. For no one at the front thinks
himself as belonging to an "Army". An infantryman swears by his division
and sticks to it, his division may be transferred from one army to
another--the 2d Division, for instance, landed in the first Army, fought
its way into Brittany in the 3rd Army, besieged Brest as part of the fifth
Army, and returned to the first army at Luxemburg. What the
infantryman cares about is the record and honor and fame of his division,
and when it
gets no recognition he feels he gets none. Mention of an army means
nothing to him.
Now that Marshal Montgomery has named the divisions that held the northern
hinge, America should know and honor them. The heroes of Bastogne were not
alone, they fought as part of a great army. Some day the story of
scattered units which came through the German lines after their
headquarters had been overrun can also be told. Some day the story of the
9th Division and the German parachutists will be told. Doubtless there
were other great stories along the southern flank of which we in the first
and 9th Army press camps were unaware.
We saw the wild high morale of the units on the northern flank, we could
not tell who the men were, who fought there and too many died, died. We
could not even name the towns where they bled. We know that censorship at
such a moment had its justifications. But we knew, too, that among the
other unfairness of war the vagaries of censorship rank high. It erases
from public consciousness and sometimes even from the records of history,
some of the greatest and most significant acts of heroism of the war. By
the same token, it casts an unfair spotlight on a few. And wars are won by
teamwork. |
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Civilians and Youthful Fanatics Defend City
by Wes Gallagher
MAGDEBURG,
(AP)--The ancient city of Magdeburg was in American hands Wednesday night
after the last fanatical Hitler youth and sullen civilian resistor had
been captured or burned to death by flame-throwing tanks.
Troops of the American 30th (Old Hickory) Division seized the city, and
discovered considerable art treasures and $28,000,000 worth of German
currency and silver.
Part of the city still was burning from
the latest Allied air attacks as the U. S. 9th Army's 2nd Armored and 30th
Infantry divisions gathered in about 1,000 soldier defenders of the town.
They killed considerable numbers of Hitler's juvenile warriors and
civilians who had turned rifle and bazooka fire against the Americans.
Guerrilla Weapon
This was the first time that civilians have been caught using the bazooka
weapons -
Panzerfaust - in large numbers. Apparently the Germans were trying
to turn the Panzerfaust into a guerilla weapon.
Flame-throwing tanks were brought into the town Wednesday morning and what
resistance was left quickly disintegrated. American casualties were
light despite the extensive use of the Panzerfaust.
The civilians are as sullen as any yet encountered in Germany.
"We found plenty of civilians sniping and
fighting with soldiers," said Maj. Harry Zeien of Fessenden, N. D., of the
2nd Armored Division.
Bomb Damage
Only a fraction of the normal population
of 306,446 was left in the city proper, which was badly destroyed by air
attacks on the Krupp tank factory, aircraft works, synthetic oil plant and
docks.
The business and cathedral section of the
city along the Elbe River were most completely destroyed.
The Germans blew the rail and highway bridges across the Elbe in the final
retreat Tuesday night.
South of the city the Germans launched a counter-attack against the
division bridge-
head with about a battalion of infantry and a few tanks, but were beaten
off with
heavy losses.
The rest of the front was quiet.
During the day, German artillery fired air bursts over Magdeburg but with
little effect.
Doughboys and a young lieutenant of the 2nd Armored Division, who were cut
off when their bridgehead south the city was wiped out four days ago,
returned to the American lines Wednesday, reporting that the German
civilians are so sick of the war and so anxious to get on the good side of
the Americans that they helped the three men back across the river.
They also reported that a German army deserter who had been wounded on the
eastern front actually scouted a path for them to come back across the
river. |