Posted on 02/13/2015 4:25:26 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Yalta Parley Ends (Warren) – 2-3
The Big Three Meeting Again to Make Plans for the World (page 1 photo) – 3
Text of the Big Three Announcement on the Crimea conference – 4-6
War News Summarized – 6
Exiles Keep Silent on Polish Decision (Daniell) – 7
Cleve, Pruem Fall (Daniel) – 8-10
With Our Third Army as it Moves Deeper into Germany (photos) – 9
Red Army Is at Bober River after 16-Mile Gain in Silesia – 11-12
Manila Trap Shut; Luzon is Crossed (Jones) – 12-13
The Philippines: The Handiwork of the Defeated-The Spirit of the Victors (photos) – 13-14
Europe at the Crisis (Baldwin) – 15
Rumanian Premier Bares Unrest; Charges Left-Wing Opposes Him – 15
The Texts of the Day’s Communiques on the Fighting in Various War Zones – 16-17
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/1/13.htm
February 13th, 1945 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Submarine HMS Talent launched.
Frigate HMCS Orkney collided with SS Blairnevis which sank. There is no record of loss of life in this incident. Orkney proceeded to Dunstaffnage, Scotland, for repairs. Orkney was part of Escort Group 25, which was engaged in escorting merchant shipping into Liverpool when the accident occurred. The weather the time of the accident was foul with heavy rain that further reduced visibility. Blairnevis was a new merchant ship, loaded with valuable bauxite. She had to be grounded to avoid her sinking and blocking the swept channel in the Mersey River estuary. Following the collision, Orkney’s repairs lasted until Apr 45 when she proceeded to Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, for a refit to modify her for tropical duty in preparation for the invasion of Japan.
GERMANY: Berlin: General Walther Wenck, Guderian’s chief of staff, is appointed to command the German offensive on Soviet positions east of Berlin.
Berlin: DNB (Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro) the German News Agency announces:
The Establishment of Flying Courts-Martial
(Fliegender-Gerichtstdnde)
With the express permission of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, the Commander of Wehrkries III (Berlin) has made the following arrangements on the establishment and competence of Summary Courts in the area under his
command:
1) Summary Courts for dealing with crimes committed by members of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS will be set up at selected points in the patrol area.
2) Summary Courts will only pass sentences of death or grant acquittals.
Cases that do not call for a death sentence, or require further investigation will be referred to normal courts-martial.
3) Summary Courts will have a Wehrmacht judge as President, and two soldiers as assessors.
4) By virtue of the powers vested in me by RFSS and Commander of the Replacement Army, all sentences passed by a Summary Court are subject to confirmation by me.
5) Such confirmation must be obtained immediately, if necessary over the telephone, so that death sentences can be carried out without delay.
6) Death sentences will be carried out in the vicinity of the Court, normally by a firing squad, but in the case of particularly base scoundrels, by hanging.
British forces clear the Reichswald.
Troops from General Sir Henry Crerar’s First Canadian Army have almost won a desperate hide-and-seek battle for the Reichswald, 50 square miles of close-growing evergreen firs on a hogsback between the Maas and the Rhine river south of Nijmegan. The town of Cleve has been taken by the 43rd Division of Lt-Gen Sir Brian Horrocks’s XXX Corps, after it broke free of a snarlup of tanks and lorries churning around in rain-sodden roads.
Von Rundstedt brought up reserve Panzers too late to prevent the 43rd striking for Goch and Udem. Though held by no more than 10,000 poorly-trained troops, the Reichswald has offered limitless opportunities for the enemy’s assault guns to fire down the rides - or avenues - and for snipers. General Meindl’s First Parachute Army has also provided more hardened opposition as the Allies pressed forward. Some strongpoints were taken only after bayonet charges.
The forest is the Germans’ last strong defensive point in this area, and the Allies’ Operation Veritable to clear the lower Rhine paid a high price to gain it from nine German divisions. But when the Americans attack further south, they will face a greatly weakened enemy.
Private William J. Shapiro of the US 28th Infantry Division, along with another 349 G.I.’s selected for slave labour, arrives at Berga Elster concentration camp 40 miles from Leipzig. He was 19, like most of the rest of the group, he was captured at the Battle of the Bulge. On the first day of the battle, December 16, 1944, Shapiri was knocked unconscious by an artillery shell.
He woke up, vision blurred, at the first-aid station in Clervaux, Luxembourg. No bones were broken. Shapiro lay there watching fellow medics carrying wounded men on litters. It seemed quiet outside. But by evening, German machine-gun fire was audible. Shapiro heard somebody say they were surrounded and must surrender.
“I was groggy,” he recalled, “but I also heard someone say, ‘If you’re a Jewish G.I., throw your dog tags away because there are SS troops here.”
Shapiro, obeying without thinking, threw his dog tags marked with the “H” for Hebrew into a potbellied stove in the middle of the room.
Shapiro walked out of the aid station with his hands above his head. The Germans searched him. They took a gold ring he had been given by his brother for his bar mitzvah. Shapiro was left with an International Red Cross card, that for now, without his dog tags, was his only means of identification. (Personal recollection of William J. Shapiro and Mordecai Hauer, The Lost Soldiers of Stalag IX-B, by Roger Cohen, New York Times, 27 February, 2005)
U-3041, U-4704 launched.
HUNGARY: Budapest, the strongest of Hitler’s “satellite” capitals, fell today to the Red Army after a bloody siege lasting 50 days. The German commander, General Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, was caught hiding in a sewer. According to Moscow, more than 49,000 German and Hungarian soldiers fell in the battle. Hitler made desperate efforts to hold on to the Hungarian capital, sending General Herbert Gilles’s 4th SS Panzer Corps to its relief. Gilles got to within 12 miles of the city, but was then stopped in his tracks. Now, says Moscow radio, “a major obstacle has been removed and the way to Vienna is open.”
The Soviet’s Budapest Group has suffered such high losses that from the end of January it has been recruiting Hungarian PoWs, promising not to send them to Siberia if they joined up. By today twenty independent companies have been formed from 3100 Hungarians.
ARCTIC OCEAN: Whilst escorting the last merchant ship of convoy JW.64 into Kola Inlet, frigate HMS Denbigh Castle is torpedoed by U-992 (Oberleutnant zur See Hans Falke) She is taken in tow but as the torpedo had struck right forward, the bow began to submerge and she had to be beached. Shortly after, she capsized and slid off into deeper water. Location: 69 20N 33 33E. (Alex Gordon)(108)
INDIAN OCEAN: Frigate USS Corpus Christi picked up 15 survivors from the American Liberty ship Peter Silvester that was torpedoed on 6 February by U-862 in position 34.19S, 99.37E. The survivors were landed at Fremantle on the 18th.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: US forces capture the Cavite naval base and Nicholls Field airbase, near Manila.
First US Naval units enter Manila Bat since 1942.
CANADA: The following AP report was released to the newswires: Sinking of a German U-boat, probable sinking of another and attacks on other undersea raiders in North Atlantic battles in which speed torpedoes were launched at Canadian ships were announced here today by Navy Minister Angus MacDonald. He said corvette St. Thomas recently sank a U-boat in the North Atlantic.
U.S.A.:
Destroyer USS Benner commissioned.
USS YMS-433 commissioned.
Destroyer USS Steinaker launched.
Destroyer USS Brownson laid down.
The front of American 3rd Army, opposed by German 7th Army. The front of 3rd Army has shifted north considerably due to the Ardennes Offensive. It had been in Lorraine, poised to attack the Saar. Now it's mostly located in Luxemburg. Again, two divisions of 2nd SS Panzer Corps are identified in reserve/replenishment status. But they are also going east to Hungary.
In the east, we start out with a weather report written on the map:
The translation is: Weather: Cloudy, Heavy overcast, scattered rain and snow showers, temperatures in low to mid 30s, main roads passable but but through traffic will find occasional traffic jams, the surrounding countryside off hardened roads is a quagmire. Riverbanks overflowing.
Here is the front around Kustrin, where 25th Panzer Grenadier Division is fighting to keep open the corridor to Kustrin. "Group Berlin" (I'm sure that's a crack outfit) is fighting to keep the Soviets from establishing another bridgehead across the Oder:
Along the Stargard Axis:
Tax-chick, this is just for you. Not only did they draw little trains on their maps, they drew little boats too. Actually, this is a fairly important notation. It shows that the Germans have evacuated the HQ of 3rd Panzer Army by sea from East Prussia and will now use it to coordinate the defense of Pomerania between Danzig and Stettin. And its an example of the Germans inability to move quickly; Guderian had intended to use the HQ of 3rd Panzer Army, a veteran HQ, to conduct his Stargard counterstroke. What he really wanted was to use real military men to conduct the operation and take it out of the hands of Himmler, who is nominally in command of 11th Army. But it's too far away and will not arrive in time.
And here is another reason why they are moving the HQ of 3rd Panzer Army; 2nd Army has it's hands full with Rokossovsky's drive to the north and there is nothing to control operations between this and the forces of 11th Army around Stargard in the map I posted previously.
________________________________
| Pyle with unidentified Asian children. |
| SAN FRANCISCO – I think it permissible to mention in this column the two big things that have grown out of the column, since so many people ask me about them. They are the book "Brave Men" and the movie, "Story of GI Joe." First for the book. It was almost impossible for you to buy one in late December and early January. That was because of paper rationing. The publishers, Henry Holt & Co., simply couldn’t beg, borrow or steal enough paper. Holts finally succeeded in printing 239,000 in 1944, and they were sold before they were printed. In addition, the Book-of-the-Month Club printed 415,000, which I understand is their biggest first month’s sale in history. (No harm in a little bragging, is there?). On New Year Day the 1945 paper quota opened, and Holts began a new printing of a quarter of a million. They go out to bookstores over the country in monthly driblets of about 75,000, so you should be able to buy the book by the time this is printed. Provided, of course, that you still want it, and if you don’t I’ll send my hatchet man around to chop your head off. *** Holts say the book will pass a million by late spring. The previous book, "Here Is Your War," is part a million and a quarter. Don’t you wish you were a great big wonderful author like me? I finally got around to reading "Brave Men" myself – something which I’ve not yet succeeded in doing to "Here Is Your War." I read it for the purpose of making typographical corrections, and bringing little incidents about the men in it up to date, for later printings. And when I finished, I counted up and found that 15 of my friends in it had been killed just since I came back to America. That many I know of, because their families have written me. Doubtless there are many more that I haven’t heard about. While we’re writing about the book, I want to use this device to thank all the reviewers who were so kind. I had intended writing each one of them a letter, but hell, there are lots of things you intend to do. Old war-time acquaintances, such as Cy Sulzberger and Ira Wolfert and Quentin Reynolds, put a lump in my throat by the nice things they said. And others by people I’ve never known were touchingly beautiful. To every one of you who wrote so feelingly about this book, herewith is my deep gratitude. *** As you know, the book, except for the last chapter, was simply a reprint of the columns I’d sent back to the papers from Sicily, Italy, England and France. No changes were made in them. But in some instances they were reassembled in order to put similar subjects all in the same chapter. This work was done by a vivacious little creature who works for Holts, named Judy Underhill. The other big hands in the publishing of the book were Holt’s employes named Helen Taylor and Bill Sloane, both of whom have become good friends through our slight association in these two books. The title, "Brave Men," was given the book by my boss, Lee Miller, of Scripps-Howard Newspapers. *** First proofs were flown to me in France in early August, and I made and cabled back what corrections I could. I wrote the last chapter in France in August, and cabled it back. By the time I got home the book was rolling off the presses. The very first copy was autographed by all the Holt’s people who work in the Trade Department, and sent to me in Albuquerque. I sent a few copies to friends overseas, gave a few hundred to friends in America and have since autographed about 1000 more around the country. Once I autographed 175 books in 45 minutes. Along toward the end I’d have to stop and think how to spell my name. For years I haven’t known where I am, and now I don’t know who I am. Oh, goodness, oh, goodness me.  Source: Rocky Mountain News, February 13, 1945: from a scrapbook given to Indiana University by Mrs. Henry Schoon. Pictures courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
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It makes me wonder if his Parkinson's was affecting his mind at this point more than has generally been thought.
The bombing of Dresden also began Feb 13, 1945.
Rather stylish little boats, too.
Some German junior officers probably avoided combat by virtue of their ability to draw maps that pleased their superiors.
I've been consistently impressed, too, with the outstanding consistent high quality of the NY Times' maps. Having drawn maps and been a draftsman myself 45 years ago (pre-computers, everything hand-drawn and -lettered), I can testify from experience that they're absolutely first-rate. Really, the opportunity to draw such intricate maps daily may have marked the high-water-mark of some mappers' newspaper careers--they would have been saddened to see the war end, although atlas makers still needed that skill.
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