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April 27th, 1945 (FRIDAY)

UNITED KINGDOM: Submarine HMS Teredo launched.

Berlin: Hitler's optimism evaporated today. Wenck has been stopped 15 miles short of Berlin and a breakout attempt by General Busse's trapped Ninth Army has been foiled while the Russians inexorably occupy Berlin, house by house, street by street, looting and raping as they go. Tonight the garrison is penned into a corridor three miles wide and ten miles long running east/west across the city. The SS rules there by way of instant execution.

Hitler announces, "On the occasion of my death Ferdinand Schorner will take command of the German Army. (Gene Hanson)

Berlin: General Weidling's diary (90) courtesy of Russ Folsom: 

At 0500 hours, after a violent bombardment and with very strong air support, the Russians attacked on both sides of the Hohernzollerndamm. Defence Zone HQ was under heavy fire. The account for the sins of past years had arrived.

The Potsdamer Platz and Leipzigerstrasse were under heavy artillery bombardment. Brick and stone dust hung in the air like a thick fog. The car in which I was driving to General Barenfanger (1) could only make slow progress. Shells were bursting on all sides. We were showered with splinters of stone. Near the Castle (2) we halted the car and walked the last part of the way to the Alexanderplatz.

Everywhere the streets were full of craters and broken brickwork, and streets and squares lay desolate. To reach cover from a Russian heavy mortar bombardment, we had to cross the Alexanderplatz to the Underground in short rushes. In the spacious, two-level Underground station the populace had taken refuge. Masses of scared people were standing and lying packed together. It was a shattering sight....

During the day we lost both Tempelhof and Gatow airports, and that put a stop to the landing of airborne supplies. Although an emergency landing strip had been prepared in the Zoo, only small machines could land there. (3) By the 28th we could no longer use this landing strip because of deep shell-holes. In my afternoon situation report I spoke of the sufferings of the population and the wounded, and about everything I had seen  with my own eyes during the course of the day.... 

Bergen-Belsen: Leaders of communities near concentration camps, including Belsen and Buchenwald, are being forced to see for themselves the horrors in their own backyard: the souvenirs of human skin; half-burnt and sometimes part-cannibalized corpses. At Belsen, where hundreds still die each week, town mayors protest that they knew nothing, in spite of continuous transport activities to this transit camp. At Buchenwald, 1,000 women marched in singing, but left in tears.

Elbe: A momentous announcement, revealing that Allied troops advancing from the west have linked up with the Russians on the river Elbe, was released simultaneously in London, Moscow and Washington this evening.

In a short broadcast, Churchill spoke of the "inflexible resolve" of the Allies "to fulfil our purpose and our duty". Stalin read his message on Moscow radio and paid tribute to "the valorous troops of our Allies." Truman said "the great triumph of Allied arms" was a tribute to the courage and determination of Franklin Roosevelt.

The official version of the meeting places it at Torgau yesterday afternoon, when news cameramen were present to show American and Russian troops shaking hands on a wrecked railway bridge, and the commander of the US 69th Infantry Division, General F. E. Reinhardt, clasping hands with an unidentified Russian general of the 58th Guards Division.

In fact the first meeting had occurred on 25 April, when a US patrol, led by Lt. Albert Kotzebue of the US 69th, spotted a solitary Soviet cavalryman near the village of Stehla. A few hours later, Lt. William Robinson met other Soviet soldiers at Torgau. In a radio message to his command post Kotzebue reported: "Mission accomplished. Making arrangements for meeting between commanding officers." The message ended with two significant words: "No casualties." - a reflection of western fears that a meeting with the Russians might lead to clashes.

With Hitler's Reich now slice in two, the end must be fast approaching. Roads are filled with ex-PoWs, German soldiers and civilians pushing handcarts, all trekking west to escape the Russians.

In the run-up to the Elbe, the American patrol passed through villages where white sheets hung from windows and faces hovered behind lace curtains. In Torgau they encountered wandering slave labourers, German nurses and a dozen or so men carrying piano accordions; others were wheeling carts loaded with tinned food. Further along, the Americans came to scores of Germans queueing up to loot a store.

NORWAY: U-1231 sails on her final patrol.

FINLAND: The last German forces leave Finland around Kilpisjärvi, the north-western most tip of Finland.

ITALY: US forces liberate Genoa, Italy which has been controlled by partisans.

Dongo: Russell Folsom on the capture of Mussolini. The former dictator is travelling north from Como with a number of his "Salo Republic" Fascist toadies and their hanger-ons, only to meet up with a German column also heading north commanded by Luftwaffe Flakartillerie Lt. Hans Fallmeyer at Mennagio. Seeking the safety and anonymity of the larger group, Mussolini and his followers joined the Germans. As far as I know, there were no explicit orders by higher command for Lt. Fallmeyer or his unit to escort or protect the Duce from the partisans or the Allied forces during this general scramble north to the Tyrol. Unlike the rescue operation by Skorzeny from the Gran Sasso in 1943, Mussolini was this time very much on his own, and his meeting and joining of the German column was apparently, entirely coincidental. The column was stopped at a Partisan roadblock at Masso, where Lt. Fallmeyer negotiated passage with the leader of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, Count Pierluigi Bellini delle Stelle (aka: "Pedro"). It was there agreed that all Italians among the column would be left behind with the partisans before the Germans were allowed to move out. At this point Fallmeyer surreptitiously suggested to Mussolini that he should bury himself in a German private's greatcoat and pull a steel helmet over his head and continue on with the column.

This ruse worked briefly until the next roadblock at Dongo, where Mussolini was discovered, apparently by the mis-match of the incongruous red-stripe on his grey riding trousers with the German private's coat.  Partisans arrest Mussolini. Urbano Lazzaro, the Partisan leader halts a German truck in the village of Dongo and discovers Il Duce in disguise.
"His face was like was and his stare glassy, somehow blind. I read there utter exhaustion, but not fear," Lazzaro says in his memoirs.
"Mussolini seemed completely lacking in will - spiritually dead."

Under such circumstances, Lt. Fallmeyer was in no way either able or obligated to fight for the Duce's continued freedom. He had done what he could, and left the rest to what was most assuredly (in his self-interested view concerning the safety of his men) an internal "Italian affair" between the partisans and the former dictator.

Lazzaro, a member of the largely Communist 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, then found Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci, and high officials of his rump fascist republic hidden in the retreating column of Nazi troops heading for Switzerland.

JAPAN: Off Okinawa, kamikaze aircraft sink the U.S. freighter SS Canada Victory and damage the destroyer USS Ralph Talbot (DD-390), destroyer escort USS England (DE-635) and high-speed transport USS Rathburne (APD-25). Japanese demolition boats are also active damaging a large support landing craft [LCS(L)] and the destroyer USS Hutchins (DD-476); another boat is sunk by an infantry landing craft (rocket) [LCI(R)]. Japanese shore batteries damage the heavy cruiser USS Wichita (CA-45).

SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC: Admiral Berkey leads a squadron of 3 US cruisers and 6 destroyers in bombarding targets on Borneo, near Tarakan.  These will continue through the 30th.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Baguio on Luzon is taken by US forces.

AUSTRALIA: Frigate HMAS Diamantina commissioned.

U.S.A.: Henry Ruhl is executed by gas chamber at Wyoming State Penitentiary for murder on a government reservation.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: Frigate HMS Redmill is attacked by U-1105 (Oberleutnant zur See Hans Joachim Schwarz) and loses her stern and propellers, but is able to be towed to Londonderry where she is paid off and not repaired. Location: Irish Sea 25 miles NW of Blacksod Bay at 54 23N 10 36W. There are 22 casualties. (Alex Gordon)(108)

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(1) General Erich Barenfanger - according to Read and Fisher in "THE FALL OF BERLIN," Hitler had promoted Lt. Colonel Erich Barenfanger, who had acted briefly as his deputy during the one day he had personal command of the Berlin garrison defences before appointing Weidling. The thirty-year-old Barenfanger, a holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak leaves and Swords, and a keen member of the SA since 1933, was now a major-general, and was given command of defence sectors A and B." James O'Donnell, in his seminal work THE BUNKER, mentions an apparition appearing on the Humbolthain on the 2nd of May to the members of SS-General Mohnke's "escape group." There they saw before them a "host" of new "Tiger Tanks" and "artillery pieces" arrayed around the Flak-tower, as if "on Parade." The young General Barenfanger was allegedly seated in the turret cupola of one of these "Tigers."

(2) The "Castle" - probably refers to the Hohenzollern Palace from the Wilhelmine era in the same area near the Alexanderplatz, which Berliners may have called "The Castle" - ( not sure about local idiomatic descriptions of the time.)

(3) Emergency airstrips in the Zoo/Tiergarten - Though airdrops of supplies to the encircled garrison of Berlin were made or attempted from April 25th to April 29th from Rechlin airbase - no "emergency airstrip" that I know of existed in the Tiergarten proper. General Weidling may have been alluding to the "emergency air-strip" on the "Ost-West Achse" (east-west axis) boulevard (which runs through a section of the Tiergarten), starting at the Brandenburg Gate and leading to the Siegesaule or Victory Column.