U-Boats Ordered To Their Bases

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 109, 10 May 1945, Page 5

U-Boats Ordered To Their Bases

Received Wednesday, 10.50 p.m. LONDON, May 8. U-boats will return to their bases or show the white flag of surrender, says the Press Association’s naval correspondent. During recent months they have been operating close to British shores.

Germany possesses 200 to 300 of which about one-third were probably at sea when the capitulation was announced. They are mainly based on Norway whereto they are expected to return, but those which are far from their bases will presumably surface and run up the surrender flag. The Allied naval authorities will take over the Germans’ two remaining cruisers, the Prinz Eugen and Nuremburg at Copenhagen. There are also a few destroyers at Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen. Squadrons of the British Home Fleet will proceed to these ports to ensure that the surrender terms are carried out while British warships will temporarily take over the administration of other German ports. It is expected that all the German forces will obey Admiral Doenitz’s instructions. German troops in the field at the time of the capitulation numbered about 1,500,000 men.

General Sevez, after describing in the Pans paper Figaro, how he signed the German surrender document at Rheims on behalf of France, added: “The negotiations were prolonged. We talked all day and part of Sunday night. The Germans frequently telephoning Admiral Doenitz and we similarly contacted the heads of our Governments. Field Marshal Jodi when all was over seemed like a man in a trance.’'

The Belgrade radio announced that the last big Yugoslav city in German hands, Eagrab, has been liberated. NEARING END IN CZECHOSLO VAXIA

The Patriot-controlled Prague radio stated that the cessation of hostilities yesterday was ordered by the comma n-

der of the German troops in Bohemia and Moravia.

General Patton’s army was rolling across Czechoslovakia when the cease fire was ordered at 8 a.m. on Tuesday. The frontline troops four hours later were still unaware of the cease fire, says Reuter’s correspondent with the Third Army. Tanks of the Fourth Armoured Division who are under radio silence may be the last to know that the war is over.

Likewise, the Germans were unaware of the cease fire and are fighting along the road from Piisen toward Prague and most of the southern end of Patton’s 150-mile front running from Czechoslovakia south towards Austria 2000 S.S. troops are battling against the Eightieth United States Division southwest of Linz.

Elsewhere the Germans are surrendering. Everywhere they are driving themselves into the American lines in their own lorries and marching in in columns under white flags. Nearly 300,000 German troops have started their long march from Denmark In mile-long columns they are moving along the main roads transporting their luggage in home-made vehicles, wheelbarrows and even peramublators. The Germans before their departure burned all their papers and blew up their stocks of hand grenades. They will leave all their weapons on the border. It is officially announced from Cairo that the Germans in the Dodecanese have surrendered.

The Paris radio reports that French forces occupied the forts of La Rochelle and Lorient without resistance. There was opposition during the occupation of St. Nazaire.

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