Evening star., 1944-09-04
BY GAULT MCGOWAN.


HEADQUAR TERS, FIRST
UNITED STATES ARMY.-Ger-
many is licked and our victori-
GUS troops are chasing disor-
ganized and beaten hodgepodge
of decimated regiments back into
the outposts of the Third Reich
from which they emerged so vain
gloriously and confidently in 1910
But the only guy who won't admit
1t is Adolf Hitler.
Since August IA I have been
watching the sullen and disorgan-
ICED rabble that is all that re-
mains of the once-proud goose
steppers who flee in shuffiing dis
may from the Paris where once
they strutted so regally back along
the line of the Marne, back be-
hind the Meuse, into the forest of
Argonne, and into the recesses of
the Maginot and Siegfried lines in
the vain hope of being able to
make a stand somewhere.
Saw City Captured.
AS the first accredited correspond
ent to 1t. Gen. Joseph Pierre
Koenigs French Forces of the In
terror, I watched the American at
tack on Chalons-Sur-Marne and
saw our troops, aided by the FFI,
assault and capture the city while
dismayed Germans fed before them
under cover of night.
Now I have returned to head
quarters to transmit my dispatches
on the greatest campaign in his
tory. Our terms to Hitler are un-
conditional surrender. and only that
prevents military demand for an
armistice. Hitler has sworn that
this time the home front won't
collapse first, as it did last time
and Himmler and his Gestapo are
seeing to it that 1t doesn't. The
last time the German Army claimed
that it was never defeated They
claimed that the home front COL
lapsed first on them.
Despite the drastic bombings OF
German cities, the destruction o1
thousands of German homes and
buildings and the anxiety of the
German people to see the end o1
the war, the Gestapo won't let
them demonstrate for peace or raise
q questioning voice against their
Fuehrer's interchangeable wisdom.
Nantes Are Falling.
The result is that the Germans
are now witnessing for the first
time in their third European cam
palgn in 10 years a, resounding
thrashing administered to their
armies. Mantles of Frederick the
Great. Won Blucher and Won Moltke
and the much-quoted Won Clause
witz are dropping in tattered shreds
about the shoulders of Hitler's yes
men generals, and instead of that
surrender which the situation
plainly shows should come now
from the head of the German state
day after dayebrings pitiable, patchy
surrenders of groups and regiments
and remnants of divisions as our
swiftly moving columns outf1ank
them, encircle them, and mop them
up
The problem of what to do about
German militarism is being settled
daily by the advance OF our troops
We are no longer fighting German
generals but the Gestapo and Nazi
politicians and propagandists.
Front line German troops-that
Is, the battered remnants of the
rear guard-and division and corps
commanders have no illusions left
as to the possibility of continuing
the war much longer, but orders
from Berlin are to fight on and
hang on and gain time until the
Fuehrer plucks more secret weap-
ons" from his inspirational quiver
and retrieves the Nations fallen
fortunes with some spectacular
throw of his oracular dice.
Political Problem Now.
German soldiers may surrender
or die all the way back to Berlin,
but until they drop dead within
sight of the Fuehrer's dug-in bat