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VOL. LV, No. 132 ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN FRIDAY, April 27, 1945
PRICE FIVE CENTS
Stettin, Bremen
Taken by
Allied Armies
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Yanks
Seal
off
Brenner
Pass
Reds, Americans
IWill Join on Elbe
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MacLaughlin
Is
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New
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War
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Council President
Fifth Army
Takes Railway
City of Verona
Major Northern Cities
Are Seized by Patriots
By The Associated Press
ROME, April 26.-The U.S. Fifth
Army captured the railway center of
Verona in a lightning 20-mile stab
today, virtually sealing off the Bren-
ner Pass escape route of German
troops in Italy, and Swiss reports
said patriots were seizing control of
all major cities in northern Italy in-
cluding Milan, Turin and Genoa.
Nazi armies south of the Alps a'p-
peared entirely disorganized and
prisoners were being rounded up by
the thousands. A captured German
corps commander, Gen. Von Schwer-
in, who was taken by the British
Eighth Army, said, "I know the situ-
ation for German soldiers in north
Italy is hopeless."
Liberation Committee in Control
(A Partisan-controlled radio in Mi-
lan reported tonight that the Italian
Liberation Committee had taken over
the administration of the whole of
northern Italy, said a British broad-
cast recorded by CBS.)
Fifth Army forces smashed through
the Nazis' formidable Adige defense
line near Verona, and a terse Allied
communique said armored units dri-
ving up the western coast were "at-
tacking toward Genoa" against heavy
fire from mobile and coast defense
guns.-
An Associated Press correspondent
aboard an American bomber said he
cruised as far north as Verona with-
out seeing any sign of fighting and
that the Po valley was a "scene of
utter peace." He saw American tanks
roaring northward between Mantova
and Verona.
Fifth North of Mantova
Headgarters announced that a
flying Fifth Army column had driven
to an area north of Mantova (Man-
tua), which is 20 miles south of
Verona. Verona, lying at the foot-
hills of the Alps, is 75 airline miles
south of Bozano, where the Brenner
Pass proper begins.
Seizure of Verona in effect would
seal off a great part of the German
forces in northern Italy from any
chance of withdrawal into the Nazis'
Bavarian redoubt.
An Associated Press dispatch from
Bern, Switzerland, said that Benito
Mussolini and Roberto Farinacci, for-
mer Secretary of the Fascist party,
had arrived disguised in the Italian
city of Como, not far from the Swiss
border.
Dean Clarence Yoakum
To He Guest of Honor
Dean Clarence S. Yoakum of the
Rackham School of Graduate Stu-
dies and Vice-President in Charge
of Educational Investigation will be
the guest of honor of the Student
Religious Association at Lane Hall
Coffee Hour from 4 to 6 p.m. EWT
today.
Coffee and cake will be served by
Mary Shepard, Allene Gollinken, Al-
ice Sthwaderer and Joyce Siegan.
The public is invited.
Ruth Ann Bales'
Chosen as Head
Of Judiciary
Play Will Have Two
Ioblic Performances
Nora MacLaughlin has been ,elec-
ted as the new president of the Wo-
men's War Ccuncil and Ruth Ann
Bales as chairman of the Judiciary
Council, it was announced yesterday
-t the first performance of Junior
Girls Play in Lydia Mendelssohn
Theater in the League.
Miss MacLaughlin, vic -presi-
dent of Alpha Chi Omega, is gen-
eral chairman of JGP, membor of
Wyvern, junior women's honorary
society. Sh'( has been a member of
the central comnnlttees for Pan-
hel-Assembly Ball, '44, and Frosh-
Soph Ball, '43.
Miss Bales, president of Delta
Gamma, is now serving as junior
member of Judiciary Council and
WAA hockey manager. A member of
Wyvern, she was on Frosh project
central committee and a major at the
USO.
Although yesterday's performance
of "Take It from There" was ex-
clusively for junior and senior wo-
men, two public _performances will
be held, one at 7:30 p.m. EWT
today and the second at 8:30 p.m.
EWT tcmorrow in Lydia Mendels-
sohn Theater.
Tickets for these performances are
now on sale at the theater box office
in the League.
The play will begin promptly to-
day, so that those who have tickets
to Panhel-Assembly Ball may attend
both affairs. Students may attend
the play in their formals.
"Take It from There", which is a
full-length musical comedy, has been
a completely junior project, with
aver 250 members of that class con-
tributing their talents to the play.
The play features a dancing chorus
cf 16, a three-part singing chorus of
2 , and an eight-piece oichestra in-
cluding a harp soloist.
Fhotographers from Life magazine
See NEWS HEADS, Page 5
Swiss Give Up
Petain for Hioh
Tre a son Trial
CONGRESSMEN SEE BUCHENWALD BODIES--Two of the U. S. Congressmen visiting German atrocity
camps, Rep. John C. Kunkel (R.-Pa.) and Rep. Leonard W. Hall (right) .(R..-N.Y.) look at bodies
of German prisoners piled on a truck outside the crematorium at Buchenwald, the Nazi camp near
Weimar. This photo was made by Byron Rollins, Associated Press photographer on assignment with the
wartime still picture pool.
Four Faculty Members Have
Received Federal Positions
Four University faculty members
were granted leaves of absence to as-
sume various federal posts connected
with war work by the Board of Re-
gents in their monthly meeting here
yesterday.
The four professors who have been
granted leaves are Prof. William D.
Robinson, of the medical school, Prof.
H. R. Crane, of the engineering
school, and professors Howard B.
Calderwood and Wolfgang H. Kraus,
both of the political science depart-
ment.
Dr. Robinson, who will be on
leave for 90 days, will serve with
the Army in liberated areas of Eu-
rope as civilian consultant to the
Surgeon-General's Office. Prof.
Crane, who will be on leave the re-
mainder of the sparing term, will do
engineering research for the Navy
at laboratories here.
Prof. Calderwood will assume an
advisory post in the State Depart-
ment at Washington on intenational
organization in the Division of In-
PARIS, April 26-(/P)-Marshal ternationalI
Philippe Petain surrendered to French Affairs. Pr
officials at the Swiss border today to U. S. Strate
await trial in France on a charge of Washington
high treason, for which his sched- leave the re
uled prosecutor announced he would In other 1
ask a sentence of death-with clem- cepted giftst
ency.
The 89-year-old former Vichy Chief
of State was met at the frontier by V-2
Lt. Gen. Joseph Pierre Koenig, com-
mander of the French forces of the2 7
interior at the time of the Normandy
invasion and before. Petain extend-
ed his hand, but Koenig did not re- LONDON,
spond. censorsiip li
The Con-imissar of Dijon and a nearly eight
French guard of 30 men also were that Germa
present _ at the frontier station 'of bombs hadl
Valorbe to form an escort for the seriously w
aged marshal and his wife, who pro- Prime Mi
cceded by automobile to Les Hospi- House of Co
taux-Neufs and there boarded a spe- definitely ha
POLITICAL PRISONERS KILLED:
Ainericcan Negro Vi
Ir GermcrtH ass M
Labor, Health and Social
of. Kraus will serve with
egic Bombing Survey in
. Both men will be on
st of the spring term.
business the Regents ac-
totalling more than $92,-
~oms Kill,
British
April 26-(/P)-British
ifted a partial silence of
months today to disclose
ny's dreaded V-2 rocket
killed 2,754 persons and
ounded 6,523.
nister Churchill told the
)mmons that the attacks
ad ceased
000 headed by a bequest of $54,000
for the Horace H. Rackham Fund.
The Regents also approved plans
for a program that will bring 35
teachers of the blind, many of them
blind themselves, to the University
for a special training course con-
ducted here this summer.
The program given at the request
of the American Foundation for the
Blind, will enroll men and women
to serve as workers to visit blind
persons throughout the country. The
instruction will be given by the In-
stitute of Public and Social Admini-
(See REGENTS, Page 2)
Yank Infantry
Gains Position
Holding Naha
By CLYDE BARTEL
Associated Press War Editor
American 24th Army Corps in-
fantrymen with battleship and cruis-
er gunfire support have secured high
ground positions in the Japanese sec-
ondary pillbox line defending the
city of Naha on southern Okinawa.
Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz said
today (Friday) the Yanks moved
forward to take heights east of the
village of Urasoe Mura while the
naval guns destroyed a number of
Japanese artillery emplacements.
In the Philippines 24th Division
doughboys punched closer to the
Japanese stronghold at Davao City
with a 12-mile advance Wednesday
across southern Mindanao Island,
Gen. Douglas MacArthur reported.
Premier Kantaro Suzuki in Tokyo
urged the Nipponese fighters on Oki-
nawa, only 325 miles south of Japan's
homeland, to use suicidal "human
bullet" tactics against the hammer-
ing Yanks of the Seventh, 27th and
06th Divisions.
But the Americans have taken the
enemy's-first line of defense in the
fighting above Naha, capital of the
Island, and are slugging into the
second line.
Nimitz said that Navy carrier
planes and search aircraft hit Japa-
nese shipping and installations in the
Sakishima group, south of Okinawa;
off the east coast of Kyishu, south-
ernmost home island of Japan; and
at Yap and Wake Island.
Thirty-third Division troops main-
Goering Resigns
Post as Chief
Of Luftwaffe
Acute Heart Illnes
Reason for Quitting
By The Associated Press
LONDON, April 26-The German
Hamburg radio announced tonight
that Reichsmarshal Hermann Goer-
ing had resigned as head of the dy-
ing Nazi Air Force because of an
"acute" heart illness, while a high-
ranking German General Staff mem-
ber captured by the Americans pre-
dicted that Adolf Hitler would die
with his troops in encircled Berlin.
The captured German General-
unidentified in a U. S. Ninth Army
front dispatch but termed "interna-
Russian Troops
Battle Into Breslau
By The Associated Press
LONDON, Friday, April 27-Three
Soviet armies conquered almost two-
thirds of pulverized and encircled
Berlin yesterday, seized the great
Baltic naval base of Stettin and by
Berlin account raced 22 miles west
of the blazing German capital to
within 14% miles of a second immi-
nent link-up with American forces on
the Elbe River.
Simultaneously, Marshal Rodion Y.
Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Ar-
my captured the great armament
center of Bruenn (Brno), second larg-
est city of Czechoslovakia and one of
the last great war production cities
left to the tottering German war ma-
chine.
More Berlin Districts Fall
While four more Berlin districts fell
to the Russians, together with the
great Goerlitzer railroad depot, So-
viet troops far behind the front bat-
tled into the western streets of the
long-besieged Silesian capital of Bres-
lau, Moscow announced.
As a junction between the Red Ar-
my and the American Ninth Army
neared due west of Berlin, another
historic junction was imminent-if
it already had not taken place-
southwest of Berlin.
Moscow's nightly war bulletin dis-
closed that Soviet troops who crossed
the Elbe at Riesa had extended their
bridgehead, capturing Strebla and
Torgauon the water barrier's west
bank only 17 miles from American
First Army positions on the Mulde
river.
Front dispatches from Allied lines
said, however, that American patrols
had struck deep into the territory be-
tween the Elbe and the Mulde.
Compressing a mighty band of steel
around perhaps 500,000 Nazi troops
trapped in Berlin-and possibly
sounding the deathknell-if they are
there-for Adolf Hitler, Propaganda
Minister Goebbels and other high
Nazi officials reportedly caught in
the Russian trap-massed waves of
Soviet armor overran approximately
210 square miles of Berlin's 341,
Moscow's communiques showed.
Put Up Death Struggle
The Nazis, throwing women and
children into the death struggle for
Berlin, admitted tonight that the
doomed German capital was encircl-
ed and conceded that the "front now
runs right through the heart of the
city."
As Soviet assault teams beat back
the German defenders from the
north, east, south and west, Soviet
tommygunners stormed the southern
edge of shell-pocked Templehof air-
drome and incessant Soviet fighter
patrols roared over the smoke-blank-
eted city to forestall the possible es-
cape of Nazi big-shots by air.
U.S. To Adhere
To Geneva Law
'No Change' Indicated
in Prisoner Policy
WASHINGTON, April 26.- (P-
Although there have been "plenty
of instances" of German violations,
the War Department asserted today
its intention to adhere to the Geneva
convention for the treatment of pris-
oners of war.
The department, Brig.-Gen. R. W.
Berry told the House Military Com-
mittee as it opened its study of the
war prisoner situation, has no other
choice.
"The Army's treatment of German
prisoners of war is not a question of
Armuy policy but a question of law,"
General Berry said when committee
members asked if there was any in-
tention to tighten up on treatment
of German prisoners in this country
becausesof Axis abuses of American
prisoners.
In its treatment of an estimated
2,000,000 German prisoners, the Gen-
eral declared, the Army is "firm"
because "those Germans, for the most
part, react to firm treatment."
v
U. S. Third Nears
Austrian Frontier
By The Associated Press
PARIS, Friday, April 27-Heavily-
gunned U. S. Third Army tank col-
umns battled eight miles from Aus-
tria yesterday in a bid for a swift
showdown with last-stand enemy
troops massing at the border, and in
the north the British captured Ger-
many's second greatest port of Brem-
en.
As these blows fell on the north
and south segments of dismembered
Germany, Allied capitals of Europe
buzzed with rumors started by a
Swiss radio report that the Ameri-
cans and Russians had met in the
Elbe River area on "A front of
many miles."
Tight Censorship
Censorship covered American posi-
tions at the reported junction area,
but a front dispatch from the U. S.
First Army told of a patrol moving at
will through German lines between
the Mulde and Elbe rivers.
Bremen fell after a whirlwind as-
sault of two days, and only snipers
remained in the rubble to challenge
the victorious British moving through
the dock area of what once was a city
of 350,000 people.
The ruins of Bremen were captured
by Lt. Gen. Miles C. Dempsey's Brit-
ish Second Army.
Hundreds of slave laborers emerged
from the cellers and shelters and
swarmed over the rubble.
Juncture Awaited
While the world awaited confirma-
tion that the Americans and Russians
had met somewhere near Berlin, Gen.
Patton's U. S. Third Army in ground-
eating strides was 95 miles from a
junction with the Red Army in Aus-
tria that would convert Czechoslo-
vakia into a giant German trap.
In close echelon with the U. S. Sev-
enth and French First Armies, Pat-
ton's forces broke across the Danube
at three points-leaving that river
line shredded along a 180-mile front
and Munich imperiled by three sep-
arate American columns each about
40 miles from the city.
Some 20 divisions in these three
armies were pressing steadily south-
ward, bent on engulfing the Nazi Al-
pine redoubt before the Ss troops
could get set for a stand.
State Prisons
To Be Object of
Three Inquiries
LANSING, April 26-()-Under in-
vestigation by two agencies now, the
Michigan Corrections System is the
target of a third, inquiry voted last
night by the Senate.
At the same time, Garrett Heyns,
state corrections director, revealed he
had ordered four inmates of the
Southern Michigan Prison transfer-
red summaily to the Marquette
Branch Prison, sometimes called "Si-
beria" among convicts.
Heyns would say only the transfers
were for "failure to cooperate with
prison authorities," but there were re-
ports, which he refused to confirm or
deny, that the quartette had refused
to testify before attorney general
John R. Dethmers' investigation of
the Southern Michigan Prison.
A three-member investigation com-
mittee was ordered on the motion of
Senator Ivan A. Johnston, Mt. Clem-
ens
Disney Film
To le Showun
Latin America To Be
Portrayed in Movies
"The Amazon Awakens" and "The
Bridge," films dealing with South
and Central America will be shown
at 7:30 p. m. EWT today in the Rack-
ham Amphitheatre.
"The Amazon Awakens" is a color-
ed film produced by Walt Disney. It
deals with the history, industrial pro-
CAMPUS EVENTS
Today Pan-Hel Assembly Ball at
8:30 in the Intramural
building.
Today Dean Clarence Yoakum
will be guest of the Lane
Hal Coffee Hour at 4 to
6 p. m. EWT.
Today Final tryouts for the
"Soph Cabaret" will be
held from 3 to 5 p. m.
EWT in rooms D and E
on the third floor of the
Womens League.
April 27 The Post War Council
will hold a mock confer-
ence at 2 n. m. in rooms
p1de
IHERIMANN GOERING
resigns as chief of Luftwaffe.
- Associated Press Photo
tionally known and one of the best-
informed members of the German
general staff"--predicted the war
would end within a few days and said
that Goering probably already had
been executed.
The Hamburg station said that the*
portly Goering, whose proud airforce
has been blasted almost to extinction,
had been succeeded by Gen. Ritter
Von Grein who was made a marshal.
The text of the announcement:
"Reichsmarshal Goering who has
been suffering from heart trouble for
GARDELEGEN, Germany, April
26.-(J)-An investigation has re-
vealed that an American Negro pris-
oner of war was killed in the mass
murder of 1,100 political prisoners in
a barn near here.
Officers investigating the circum-
vivors disclosed that he was an Am-
erican Negro soldier known only as
"John" who had been put among the
political prisoners because he had
tried to escape too often.
The prisoners had arrived at Gar-
delegen after the American break-