RUSSIANS BORE INTO BERLIN, SWING NORTH; REACH THE ELBE CLOSE TO AMERICAN LINES (4/24/45)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 4/24/45 | C.L. Sulzberger, Roman Karmen, Drew Middleton, Virginia Lee Warren, Lindesay Parrott, more

[EternalVigilance]

~ US soldiers examine a pile of shoes that had belonged to prisoners stacked against a wall in the Flossenbuerg concentration camp.

The original caption reads:
"When troops of the 90th Infantry division, Third U.S. Army, captured Floss, Germany, six miles from the Czechoslovakian border, another Nazi concentration camp passed out of existence. The camp, fenced off with electrical barbed wire, contained 16,000 sick and starved inmates, including 400 cases of typhus. Originally, the enclosure confined 60,000 political prisoners and military prisoners-of-war of all nations. It was estimated that 1,400 a month died of starvation after which their remains were burned by Nazi guards. Before the Germans fled to rear areas all inmates able to walk. These pictures were taken April 24, 1945, after entry of American forces into the town."

Date:Tuesday, April 24, 1945
Locale:Flossenbuerg, Germany
Credit:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Joseph Eaton
Copyright:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
[Photograph #51025] USHMM Photo Archives

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Somewhere in that pile are likely the shoes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Can't help but wonder if there are any Christians in this generation who could even come close to filling them?

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~ The American flag flying at half mast in Buchenwald.

Date: Thursday, April 19, 1945
Locale: Buchenwald, [Thuringia] Germany Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Robert Pettit
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
[Photograph #23060] USHMM Photo Archives

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Picture ~ Recently liberated American POWs wave as they leave their camp. The original caption reads: "American prisoners of war, recently liberated by a combat command of the US Fifth Armored Division, wave as a truck takes them from Tangermunde, Germany, where they were held to the rear. The soldier, second from the right seated in the back end of the truck takes a captured German sword with him."

Date: 1945
Locale: Tangermunde, [Saxony-Anhalt] Germany
Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Joseph Eaton
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
[Photograph #51166] USHMM Photo Archives

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Child survivors walking out of the Auschwitz children's barracks, soon after liberation 1945.

Credit: United States Holocaust memorial museum website

[Hebrews 11:6]

Although my father fought in the US Army in Europe, I wasn't yet even a gleam in his eye, so beyond my junior high school history courses I was largely ignorant of WW2 detail* until tenth grade (1963), when my history teacher recommended The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He said a girl I knew had read it in three days during the previous year, staying up all night; with a challenge like that, I was in. The photos you post amplify what I read then.

* Although I do remember a ditty going around in third grade, to the tune of Jiminy Cricket's Whistle While You Work:

Whistle while you work
Hitler was a jerk
Bit his weenie
Made it teeny
Then it didn't work

[EternalVigilance]

My Dad was a little younger, and served in Korea.

[Vermont Lt]

I recall the same one, except it was “Mussolini bit his weenie, now it doesn’t work.”

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Parents must have stamped that one out before my time. lol...

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Fibber McGee & Molly - April 24, 1945 - Hitching a Ride to the Elks

http://otrcomedy.blogspot.com/2013/04/fibber-mcgee-molly-april-24-1945.html

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Pfc. Mickey Rooney rallies the troops of the 44th Division of the U.S. Seventh Army on April 1, 1945.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/memorial-day-special-famous-veterans-uniform-gallery-1.1084748?pmSlide=1.1084730

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http://rememberww2.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-24-1945-heinrich-himmler-offers.html

April 24, 1945

Heinrich Himmler offers surrender

Ignoring the orders of Adolf Hitler, Himmler makes a secret surrender offer to the Allies, provided that the Red Army is not involved. The offer is rejected; when Hitler hears of Himmler’s betrayal, he orders him shot.

[henkster]

Himmler’s behavior in the last months of the war was particularly vile. In a regime filled with monsters, Himmler set a low standard for loathesomeness.

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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/los_banos_the_forgotten_raid.html

April 24, 2015
Los Banos: the Forgotten Raid

This year is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of many World War II detention camps. One camp’s liberation that received very little attention was at Los Banos in the Philippines during February 1945. Bruce Henderson has written a gripping, detailed account, Rescue At Los Banos. It tells how the American military daringly raided the camp, rescuing over two thousand civilian prisoners, many of whom were from the United States. American Thinker interviewed the author about the mission.

After Japan swept across the Philippines and quickly occupied it, many men, women, and children were trapped and were not able to escape. They were then imprisoned with a merciless and cruel guard, Sadaaki Konishi, assigned as camp commandant. Meager food rations were reduced to the point of starvation, even though there was plenty of food available, since the camp itself was located in an area of great agricultural productivity. As the Japanese began losing the war, the mistreatment of the prisoners grew proportionally. In fact, many of the internees after the rescue looked like Holocaust victims, little more than skeletons. Henderson believes many of the abuses of the Japanese guards and camp commanders were “systemic. They were raised in a very strict militaristic society. Konishi was basically a sadistic person who had a deep hatred for Westerners. It was as if he made it his personal crusade to mistreat the civilians. He was known for saying to the prisoners, ‘you will be eating dirt before I am done with you.’”

After General Douglas MacArthur became aware of the camp conditions he assigned the 11th Airborne Division to a dangerous rescue mission of going deep behind enemy lines. It was a deadly race against the clock since many feared that the ditches the Japanese were digging would be used to bury the prisoners alive. The author told American Thinker, “This assignment from MacArthur required the coordination of a three-pronged attack of deploying troops by air, land, and sea. It had to be carried out in darkness, with a Japanese infantry division, ten thousand strong, lurking just down the road. The odds against success were steep and the risks were enormous, but the young American paratroopers and Filipino guerrillas responded with unparalleled courage in their heroic efforts to save the prisoners. The rescue was run like clockwork. It was as if Murphy’s Law was suspended for twenty-four hours. Everything came together with the key being the actionable intelligence gained.”

Along with giving a detailed account of the mission, Henderson uses personal interviews, diaries, correspondence, memoirs, and archival research to explain the prisoner’s life and attitude at the camp: their selflessness with regard to other prisoners, and the courage displayed in overcoming hardship, deprivation, and cruelty. Henderson thinks the stories of heroism should be highlighted, since it is important to understand “how people react in the face of danger and adversity. How they are able to persevere with self courage and sacrifice.”

Henderson also explained why this rescue received very little publicity. “It was all but buried and was relegated to page twenty-seven in the newspaper. The big reason is that it took place on the same day the flag was raised over Iwo Jima.”

The author wonders if it could happen today. As with the Bin Laden raid, this mission needed speed, surprise, and everything to be in sync including actionable intelligence. Yet, in some ways this was a more difficult task since there were civilians involved and not just a few but over two thousand.

In the book Rescue At Los Banos Bruce Henderson is able to publicize one of the most daring raids in military history. He shows how good succeeded over evil. This is a reminder that calculated risk is sometimes necessary and that leaders must be as brave in making the decision as those they would send on the mission.

The author writes for American Thinker. She has done book reviews, author interviews, and has written a number of national security, political, and foreign policy articles.

[EternalVigilance]

http://www.gazzettadelsud.it/news/english/138945/-Liberation-Day-means-freedom-for-all—says-Mattarella.html

‘Liberation Day means freedom for all’ says Mattarella
April 24, 2015

Rome, April 24 - WWII Liberation Day on April 25 means “freedom for all Italian citizens,” President Sergio Mattarella said Friday. Liberation Day, which marks the day in 1945 when Italy was freed from Nazi-Fascist rule, “is a celebration of freedom and hope” and a “reminder of sacrifice”, he said. “The Italian Resistance showed the world the Italians’ will for redemption, after years of dictatorship,” Mattarella added in an interview with La Repubblica newspaper editor Ezio Mauro. He added that although “there is no longer the need to regain the values of freedom, democracy, social justice”, the right to democracy is “the entire country’s heritage” and “it must be defended every day”. The president suggested that the term “resistant” apply to the military who refused to enlist in Fascist brigades and all persons who aided Jews, military allies, along with partisan” A postwar tradition has seen Liberation Day as celebrating the moment when a divided Italy rallied behind Resistance leaders to raise the country from the ashes of Fascism and recover a patriotic honour forged in the 19th-centry unification of Italy, the Risorgimento. Mattarella commented that the Fosse Ardeatine site, a commemoration to 335 Romans killed by Nazis in 1944, was a reminder “that we can never let our guard down on strenuous defense of human rights, on the democratic system”. The date of Liberation Day was chosen by convention, as it corresponds to the day Milan and Turin were liberated by the Americans, on April 25, 1945. This was also the day when the National Liberation Committee of Upper Italy (CLNAI) officially proclaimed the insurgency in a radio announcement, announcing the seizure of power by the CLNAI and the death sentence for all Fascists (including Benito Mussolini, who was shot three days later). By May 1, all of northern Italy was liberated, including Bologna (April 21), Genoa (April 23), and Venice (April 28). The liberation put an end to twenty years of fascist dictatorship and five years of war. It symbolically represents the beginning of the historical journey which led to the referendum of June 2, 1946, when Italians opted for an end to the monarchy and the creation of the Italian Republic, which was followed by the adoption of the republic’s Constitution of Italy in 1947.