The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-16
Nutcracker Drive
 Threatens Germans
(Continued from Page 1.)

barely g miles and narrowing by the hour
 MOselle Crossed
 The Fourth Division, whose tank and motorized infantry task forc- es blazed the way for the Third Army sweep through the Fife Mountains to the middle Rhine a week ago, crossed the Moselle at an undisclosed point due south of Co., blenZ.
 Lep-frogging the bridgeheads al- ready established by the Fifth and 90th infantry divisions on a nine- mile front nine to IS miles south- west of Coblenz, the Fourth plung- ed ahead dozen miles southeast ward.
 The advance apparently carried into the vicinity of the Rhine cros- sing town of St. Goar, and it ap- peared that Pattons veteran tank fighters intended a lightning sweep up the west bank of the river to link up with the Seventh Army.
 Other Third Army infantry forc- es cross the Moselle farther to the southwest to join with the power full forces wheeling southeastward through the Saar on 8 broad front southeast of Trier.
 Dozens of towns and villages in the Saar between the converging Third and Seventh armies were blazing furiously from one of the wars greatest tactical air strikes, including Saarbruecken, ZWet- bruecken, Neunkirchen and Hom- burg.
 Huge areas of the Siegfried line defenses fronting the Seventh Army already had been blasted open by American and British war planes in rolling aerial barrage that began at midnight Wednes- day, an hour before the start o1 the Seventh Army drive.
 Front dispatches and furry o1 excited German broadcasts indi- cated that the entire American half of the Western Front from Duisburg southward to Alsace was on the move in what appeared tt be the start of general Allied of. fensive.
 The U. s. First Army surged for ward a mile or more from it's nar- row bridgehead across the Rhine opposite Remagen and drove ar armored wedge into the town o1 Hovel, astride the ne-Ruhr-Ber- lin superhighway which forms the backbone of the Nazi defenses east of the great river.
 Nazi spokesmen said the Amer ican 18th Army had joined in the battle of the bridgehead, swelling the Yank invasion forces east oi the Rhine to perhaps 180,000 men.
 The Germans also claimed to have smashed a large-scale thrust across the Rhine by U. s. Ninth Army troops in the Dutsburgh area.
 Headquarters had no confirmation of the reported Rhine crossing, anc official dispatches said only that German and Ninth Army patrol. were crossing the river repeatedly in that sector on routine" recon naissance missions.
 "Last Big Push"
 Belief that the Allies Hast biz push" was under way or about tt start was strengthened by word tha a big fleet of American heavy bomb CTS had destroyed the German supreme headquarters at Zossen, 2 miles south of Berlin.
 Upwards of TOO American heavie blanketed the secret Nazi headquar ters under 1.750 tons of high ex plosiyes and fire bombs yesterday il an attack reminiscent of the head quarters busting" raids that pre- ceded the invasions of Sicily, Ital. and Normandy.
 This was the first direct blow a the enemy's supreme headquarters however, and there was even pos sibility that Adolf Hitler might hay been caught in the raid, since h had been reported at headquarter in the Berlin area only few day ago.
 It. Gen. Alexander M. Patch U. s. Seventh Army was out in iron of the new offensive this morning Patch'S veteran infantrymen Wer