TRUMAN ASKS WORLD UNITY TO KEEP PEACE; 7TH IN NUREMBERG; SOVIET PUSH REPORTED (4/17/45)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 4/17/45 | Frank L. Kluckhohn, John MacCormac, Milton Bracker, Olle Ollen, Tillman Durdin, Hanson W. Baldwin

[EternalVigilance]

16 and 17 April 1945 Liberation of Zeumeren

http://www.voorthuizenliberation1945.nl/index.php?page=zeumeren

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http://www.flickriver.com/photos/johntewell/sets/72157626073571941/

"What Lies Ahead for the Philippines" April 17, 1945

[EternalVigilance]

Pipe Major R. Stoker and Sgt. T. Allen, Essex Scottish Regiment, Groningen, Netherlands, 17 April 1945.

Bandsmen of The Essex Scottish Regiment’s pipe band, Groningen, Netherlands, 17 April 1945. (L-R): Drummer Dave Reid, Pipers K. Kenney and Tom Coulson, Drummers Bob Moorhouse and Bob Turkington, Piper Archie Beaton, Drummer Hec Stroud. (Besides the P.M., several pipers of this band wear beards.) Groningen, Netherlands April 17, 1945.

The Essex Scottish Pipe Band parades over the Canal Bridge captured by the Unit during the fighting in the Town of Groningen, Holland on the 15th.of April 1945, the day following the action.

http://pipesforfreedom.com/webtxt/0507THE_ESSEX_SCOTTISH_REGIMENT.htm

[EternalVigilance]

April 17, 1945, Groningen. This wee lassie never heard sweeter music in her life (Pipe band of the Essex Scottish, P. M. R. Stocker).

[EternalVigilance]

Helmet of the Essex Scottish, showing their McGregor Tartan Decal. This was one of the first items in the collection of Menno Huizinga (R.I.P.) who as a young boy did witness the liberation of Groningen and wrote several books about it.

[laplata]

RIP Ernie.

[EternalVigilance]

http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/DthRovlt.html

The Churchill Society
London

Winston Churchill

HOUSE OF COMMONS

17th April 1945

The Greatest Champion of Freedom

My friendship with the great man to whose work and fame we pay our tribute today began and ripened during this war. I had met him, but only for a few minutes, after the close of the last war, and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September 1939, he telegraphed, inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters if at any time I felt inclined. Having obtained the permission of the Prime Minister, I did so. Knowing President Roosevelt’s keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs, and about the various actions, including especially the action of the Plate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.

When I became Prime Minister, and the war broke out in all its hideous fury, when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and, to me most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him These messages showed no falling-off in his accustomed clear vision and vigour upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which, of course, was greatly increased after the United States’ entry into the war, comprises, to and fro between us, over 1700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages, and the majority dealt with those difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of Heads of Governments only after official solutions have not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our nine meetings - at Argentina, three in Washington, at Casablanca, at Teheran, two at Quebec and, last of all, at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact, during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House, or at his home at Hyde Park or in his retreat in the Blue Mountains, which he called ‘Shangri la’.

I conceived an admiration for him as a statesman, a man of affairs, and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook, and a personal regard and affection I must say; for him beyond my power to express today. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but added to these were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is, indeed, a loss ... a bitter loss to humanity ... that those heart-beats are stilled for ever.

President Roosevelt’s physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, of will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife, whose high ideals marched with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out today in all fullness.

There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the prewar world with far more prescience than most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all his power such precautionary military preparations as peace-time opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment’s doubt, as the quarrel opened, upon which side his sympathies lay. The fall of France, and what seemed to most people outside this Island the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and, above all, of the Londoners, kindled fires in American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell’s victories; all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him ... the apprehension widespread in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. It was in February that the President sent to England the late Mr Wendell Willkie, who, although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt as he did on many important points. Mr Willkie brought a letter from Mr Roosevelt, which the President had written in his own hand, and this letter contained the famous lines of Longfellow:...

Sail on, 0 ship of State!

Sail on, 0 Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

with all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power, and for all the purposes of the war effort to make us, as it were, a much more numerous community. In that autumn I met the President for the first time during the war at Argentina in Newfoundland, and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter, and which will, I trust, long remain a guide for both our peoples and for other peoples of the world. All this time, in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washington, Japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United States, and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success.

I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding on the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Teheran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see. But at Yalta I noticed that the President was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him, but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a faraway look in his eyes.

When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the President is to sign maybe a hundred or two State papers with his own hand every day, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him ‘he had finished his mail.’ That portion of his day’s work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who side by side with ours are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his! He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him. In the days of peace he had broadened and stabilised the foundations of American life and union. In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left hand she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany, and with her right, on the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan. And all the time ships, munitions, supplies and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.

But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice, to which so much of his life had been given, added a lustre to this power and pomp and warlike might, a lustre which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. For us, it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.

[EternalVigilance]

Amen.

[EternalVigilance]

Clipped from The Winnipeg Tribune, 17 Apr 1946, Wed, Page 21

http://www.newspapers.com/clip/279170/vogt_norman_in_memory_of_killed_in/

[EternalVigilance]

http://www.stalag-viiib.com/content/pow-diaries-1945-april-17-1945-jhhallam-stalag-viiib

P.O.W. Diaries

April 17 1945

J.H.Hallam
Stalag VIIIB

Tuesday 17 April 1945

Much warmer night, there is a lot of activity around here. Planes strafe aerodrome few miles away this morning. More of our boys brought to the village last night. Had bread and jam for our breakfast and a cup of tea. I got a short ration of soup today. The weather is quite close. We have been laying in the sun all day: we had our tea —— 1 slice of bread and jam outside. No news. I feel a little browned off today.

[EternalVigilance]

http://radio.cz/en/section/news/friday-70th-anniversary-of-most-deadly-wwii-air-attack-on-plzen

Radio Prague

Friday 70th anniversary of most deadly WWII air attack on Plze

Friday is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of a railway marshalling yard in Plze by British aircraft. Some 624 people were killed in the attack on 17 April 1945, though some estimates suggest that the real figure was 850. Alongside the rail yard, factories and around 120 houses were hit in the bombing raid. It was the heaviest and most deadly attack on the West Bohemian city in the course of WWII.

[ex-snook]

April 19
On the morning of 19 April, the 232d infantry was located about 10 miles west of Nurnburg, with the mission of protecting the 42d Infantry right (south) flank. The First Battalion was located in Gonneredorf, which it had taken against light opposition. The Second Battalion was located in Zantendorf which was captured after hours of hard fighting. The Third Battalion was located in Cadolzburg, which had fallen the night before only after very stiff resistance had been overcome. The Regimental CP and special units were also established in Cadolzburg.
As the advance of the 222d and 242d Infantries on Furth progressed, this regiment was ordered to continue its advance to the southeast, echelon-ed to the right rear of the other two regiments to protect the division’s open right flank. The First and Second Battalions were ordered to continue the attack to the southwest, with the First Battalion passing through the Third Battalion and advancing in the left {north} portion of the regimental zone. The Third Battalion was ordered to remain in Cadolzburg in regimental reserve. The First Battalion advanced against light resistance and seized its objective in the vicinity of Bronnamburg. The Second Battalion met stiffer resistance, and after heavy fighting seized it’s objective in the vicinity of Bronndorf. Upon the capture of their objectives, these two Battalions took up temporary defensive positions to protect the Division right flank.

At this point in the attack of the U.S. XV and XXI Corps on the city of Nurmberg, the city was practically surrounded. The 42d Division was closing in from the west and northwest. The Third Division as closing in from the west and northwest. The Third Division was attacking the city from the north. cThe 45th Division had encircled the city from the east and was now attacking the city from the east, southeast and south. This left the trapped Germans only one avenue of escape, that being through the 42d Division area slightly east of the positions of the 232d Infantry. The Third Battalion was ordered to move east from its position in Cadolsburg and cut the escape route from Nurnberg. As the Third Battalion was minus Company L, Company A was attached for the operation. The Third Battalion cut the escape route by taking up positions Company I in Muhlhof, cutting the main highway from Nurnberg south to Munich. Company K took positions in the vicinity of Ober Weihersbuck cutting the escape route to the southwest. Company A took up positions in the vicinity of Asback, cutting the railroad and escape route to the west.

As the pressure of the attacks of the remainder of the 42d division, the 3rd and 45th divisions increased, the encircled Germans attempted a withdrawal to the south in the main highway to Munich. Their attempt failed due mainly to the heroic action of Company I, who, although greatly outnumbered, short of ammunition, and with no help in sight, held its positions and inflicted heavy casualties on the retreating Germans. This action aided greatly in the fall of the city of Nurnburg and the destruction of its defenders.

---

I’d like to add this. In the approach to Nurnburg the platoon leader of A Co [that I had been with] was killed. Back in the States, the age 18 and 19 [me included] called him ‘Big Stoop’ after some comic page character. In Marseille after we landed, he told me to get a haircut. In Alcase battles the A company [minus me] retreated after the enemy Norwind attack. During the retreat, he single handed helped throw guys over a barrier when they couldn’t make it. After that, no more Big Stoop, he was called Lieutenant. When he got shot, he meant so much to the company that they charged the area where the shot came from. It was the only honor they could give him. Years later I toured the war areas. With a friend from Co A who was there when he got shot, we went to his grave at Saint-Avold cemetery. I told him I got that haircut but I’m pretty bald now. Saint Avold is the largest American cemetery in Europe.

[henkster]

Not much of a situation left to report.

[ex-snook]

Thanks for your postings. Most interesting.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Thank you for that poignant addition.

[colorado tanker]

The subject of the Alsos group also came up last November. They were a top secret unit of the Manhattan Project, charged with determining how far Germany had gotten in building an atomic bomb.

After Normandy, they roamed liberated Europe going to known research centers and interviewing people with knowledge of nuclear research. They found some uranium and shipped it out.

They hit the mother lode when they got a tip that some prominent scientists were in Strasbourg. They followed the troops in and found a secret lab at the hospital grounds. One scientist was captured but a treasure trove of documents was uncovered.

To the relief of the very small group in the know, they could report that the Germans had not been able to develop a practical method to enrich uranium in the quantities needed to build a bomb. Germany did not have nuclear weapons and would need a lot longer time that they had left to make one.

[colorado tanker]

President Truman will get a full briefing on the Manhattan Project from Sec. Stimson and Gen. Groves on April 24.

There is some speculation he may have guessed something big was going on because earlier he had asked about large expenditures the purpose of which was not stated and he was warned not to pursue inquiries. If so, I've not read about any confirmation by Truman.

[iowamark]

Truman became famous with the “Truman Committee” investigating alleged corruption and waste in the war effort. He was thus able to separate himself from the corruption reputation that he had gotten from the Kansas City Pendergast machine.

I have read that he heard about the atomic bomb project and also heard that many believed that it was nonsense and would never work. Truman was ready to denounce it as a huge waste of money if it failed.

[colorado tanker]

The Pendergast machine was notorious. They actually paid contractor buddies to pave a creek.

On the other hand, the machine is generally credited as the genesis of Kansas City jazz. The cronies of the machine were so awash with cash the nightclubs they patronized could afford to import the best musicians.