The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-04-16
218,OOO Prisoners
 Seized In 3 Days
tccntlnued from Page D

Elho e to co miles from Berlin.
 Simultaneously, the German de- fences in the by-paSsed Ruhr pocket collapsed suddenly with the sur render of the enemy corps com mander. Tens of thousands of Nazts were reported quitting inside the pocket, and field dispatches said more than 176,00O captives already were in American hands.
 United Press War Correspondent John McDermott reported that the fighting on the First Army front had lost all resemblance to war.
 Tt is just mass of disorganized Germans, confused and frightened, and not knowing whether to sur- render despite the threats of the Nad party" he wrote.
 Only on the front before Berlin were the Nad lines holding. and the new First Army thrust threat ened to break that resistance in short order.
 With the thunder of battle al- ready rolling back over their wrecked capital, the Nazis turned to fight for their laSt-ditch line along the Elbe with a desperate fanaticism.
 They hurled the American Second Arm0red Division back across the Elbe just north of Magdeburg, 60 miles southwest of Berlin, and ! opened a heavy artillery lombard nlent of the Ninth ArTny's other bridgehead at Barby, IS miles to the southeast.
 But the Barby bridgehead, won by the 83rd Infantry Division Satur- day, was reported firmly established and expanding steadily in spite of raking enemy shellfire that time and again wrecked the American pontoon bridges.
 Veteran tank crews of the Second Armored Division, driven from their own bridgehead late Saturday after 4e hours of furious fighting, bounced back across the Elbe through the 83rd's salient and joined the doughboy attack.
 The combined divisions slugged their way forward four miles or more to positions about 50 miles southwest of Berlin.
 SO-A1ile Front
 Two mroe Ninth army divisions. the Fifth armored and 3Oth infan- try, rammed up to the Elbe river along rfont of more than 50 miles north of Magdeburg and deployed sfor crossing at points as close as s.45 miles from Berlin.
 The fierce German stand before Berlin, however, was being nullified swiftly by the overwhelming sweep of the American First and Third armies advancing into eastern Ger many along a twisting, 200-mile front.
 American First army troops were little more than 30 miles from a Juncture with the Soviet divisions iiassed on the Neisse river.
 They reached the Mulde river just south of Dessau, only 15 miles from the Ninth army bridgehead at Bar by. capturing the biggest junkers aircraft plant in the Reich. Their arnsor and infantry stormed into Halle, 25 miles farther south, and entered the western outskirts of Leipzig, Germanys greatest remain ing military bare.
 It. Gen. George s. Patton's Amer ican Third army outflanked Leip- 1g with 8 mile-an-hour armored drive that all gut enveloped the big textile and communications center of Chemnitz, 38 miles to the south- west.
 A sensational but wholly uncon- firmed report relayed by the Nazi- controlled Scandinavian telegraph bureau in Stockholm sai' Patton's tanks had crashed on 34 miles be- yond Chemnitz to reach Dresden, 53 miles from the Red army lines on the Neiss.
 An equally unduhstantiated Brus- sels radio report said Thisd army troops also had broken across the Czechoslovak border at an undis-