Sebastian P. Breit's Blog, page 4

America 'hid Russia's WW2 massacre'

America deliberately helped Russia cover up one of its most infamous Second World War atrocities to gain favour with Stalin, new documents suggest.



More than 22,000 captured Polish officers and other prisoners were systematically murdered in the Katyn forest on the western edge of Russia in 1940.



Three years later American prisoners of war sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of the massacre after seeing rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the forest, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.



Their testimony might have lessened the tragic fate that befell Poland under the Soviets, some scholars believe. Instead, it mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power. The long-held suspicion is that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not want to anger Russian leader Josef Stalin, an ally whom the Americans were counting on to defeat Germany and Japan during the war.



Documents now released lend weight to the belief that suppression within the highest levels of the US government helped cover up Soviet guilt. The evidence is among about 1,000 pages of newly declassified documents that the United States National Archives is releasing and putting online. The most dramatic revelation so far is the evidence of the secret codes sent by the two American POWs - something historians were unaware of and which adds to evidence that the Roosevelt administration knew of the Soviet atrocity relatively early on.



The Soviet secret police killed the 22,000 Poles with shots to the back of the head. Their aim was to eliminate a military and intellectual elite that would have put up stiff resistance to Soviet control. The men were among Poland's most accomplished - officers and reserve officers who in their civilian lives worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or as other professionals. Their loss has proven an enduring wound to the Polish nation.



In the early years after the war, outrage by some American officials over the concealment inspired the creation of a special US Congressional committee to investigate Katyn.



In a final report released in 1952, the committee declared there was no doubt of Soviet guilt, and called the massacre "one of the most barbarous international crimes in world history." It found that Roosevelt's administration suppressed public knowledge of the crime, but said it was out of military necessity. It also recommended the government bring charges against the Soviets at an international tribunal - something never acted upon.



One Katyn expert, Allen Paul, author of "Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth," said they were "potentially explosive." He said the material does not appear in the record of the Congressional hearings in 1951-52, and appears to have also been suppressed.



The historical record carries other evidence Mr Roosevelt knew in 1943 of Soviet guilt. One of the most important messages that landed on FDR's desk was an extensive and detailed report Winston Churchill sent him. Written by the British ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile in London, Owen O'Malley, it pointed to Soviet guilt at Katyn.

Illustrious Carreers: Sir Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Lee


We all know the great Christopher Lee for playing villains in movies like "The Lord of the Rings," "Revenge of the Sith" and cheezy classics like "The Wicker Man."

But before he donned the cape of Dracula he was a real-life hero with the Royal Air Force during World War II.

Sir Christopher Frank Caradini Lee, CBE, CStJ was born on May 27, 1922. His mother was a well-known Edwardian beauty and his father, Geoffrey Trollope Lee, was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 60th King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

Lee volunteered in 1939 to fight for the Finnish forces during the Winter War against the Soviet Union. He was, however, issued winter gear and was posted on guard duty but was kept at a safe distance from the Russians.

According to Lee’s autobiography, he and his fellow Brits were only in Finland for two weeks and never saw the Russian forces. In 1941, Lee enlisted with the Royal Air Force to serve in World War II. After eye problems forced Lee to drop out of training in South Africa, he ended up in North Africa as a Cipher Officer. He spent the remainder of the war working in intelligence - something suited to his intellect, I might add -, including his work as an Intelligence Officer with the Long Range Desert Group.

The LRDG was a reconaissance and raiding unit of the British Army and, according to German Afrika Corps Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, “caused us more damage than any other British unit of equal strength.”

Lee ended up in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a special forces unit whose missions dealt with espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines. Being a member of the unit, also known as The Baker Street Irregulars, Churchill’s Secret Army, and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, suggests pretty strongly that Lee worked as a spy.

When World War II drew to a close, Lee retired from the military, having achieved the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He then joined the Rank Organization where he trained as an actor. Film roles followed, and the rest, as they say, is mustache-twirling history.

The Other September 11

The core of Darmstadt after the war.


On the night between September 11/12 the No. 5 Bomber Group of the Royal Air Force attacked the city of Darmstadt in one of the most devastating attacks of the European air war. The target area was basically the densely populated medieval core of the city. Beginning at 23:55 hours the attack by 234 bombers took about half an hour.




The raid was to incorporate a new technique where, instead of bombers
flying along a single path across the target, the bombers would bomb
along a fan of paths over the city. The intention was to deliberately
spread the bombload. After the "ordinary" bombardment by high explosives around a quarter million stick-type incendiary bomb were dropped to set the now open houses on fire. The attack had been meticulously planned, incorporating data stored with British insurance companies regarding the danger and likelyhood of fires in the pre-war years.




The majority of those seeking refuge in cellars - unless they had already been killed by debris during the attack - suffocated or burnt to death in them. An escape was impossible as the firestorm above developed temperatures in excess of one thousand degrees centigrade, hot enough to set the tar covering the streets on fire.




The attack cost the lives of 11,500 people, the vast majority of which were old people, women and children. Around 20% of the victims were below the age of sixteen years, the ratio of men to women was 1 to 1.81. The RAF's bombing cost the lives of ten percent of Darmstadt's population and made more than 50% homeless.




The attack destroyed a staggering 99% of the Old and Inner City, amounting to around 80% of Darmstadt's total buildings. Targets of military or economic importance - the indsutrial area in the town's west side, the railway and the railway station or the barracks at the Kavalleriesand in the south of  Bessungen - received no damage.




Darmstadt held no military or industrial value to the German war effort. Bomber Command knew this.

Bataan Death March Survivor Recalls Burials and 'The Skull'

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For Dick Cooksley, the nightmares from that most trying and lethal time of his life still linger: slogging through island jungles in the dreaded Bataan Death March, watching as some of his fellow soldiers and friends were beheaded by their Japanese captors.



But Cooksley, now 92 and living in Arizona, survived it all — three long years of enemy captivity in seven different camps.



This week, nearly seven decades after his release, the retired Army captain received long overdue recognition of his suffering: the Bronze Star Medal.



In his understated manner, the old soldier told the Los Angeles Times that he was proud to stand before fellow soldiers and politicians to receive the medal Tuesday in Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.



“It was something I had coming and I finally got it,” he said of the medal, which was presented by U.S. Rep. Ron Barber.



The medal was awarded after a friend of Cooksley’s contacted Barber's office, saying the Bronze Star Medal should have been presented much earlier.



In the brief but emotional ceremony, Barber said Cooksley’s time in captivity was “a period of cruelty,” lamenting that the former captain had not received the medal during his 20 years of Army service. The oversight was unfortunate, Barber said, saying now it has been made right.



“I hope he [Cooksley] will forgive us for taking too long,” Barber said, calling the honor of bestowing the medal “incredible.”



Cooksley, who lives in Bisbee, Ariz., told The Times about life as a POW, including the death march, which some experts say claimed the lives of 10,000 U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war.



He said he helped bury hundreds of U.S. soldiers a day for a month because of the brutality of the Japanese. Later in the war he and other selected POWs were shipped to Japan to work in various activities supporting the Japanese war effort. He also recalled being on a vessel in a 15-ship convoy, each craft carrying about 900 POWs, most were sunk by American submarines after they left the Philippines; leaving several ships, including his to make it to Japan.



He said the worst time was in a camp led by a Japanese commander the captives nicknamed “The Skull.”



“He liked to chop heads,” Cooksley told The Times. “He made you dig your own grave, then he chopped off your head and kicked your body into the hole. I saw it happen too many times.”



Cooksley ended his captivity in a copper mine in northern Japan.



“Somebody decided to check this out and they found out we had something coming,” he said of his Bronze Star. “I think most of us old World War II POWs are finally getting recognized.”



Cooksley said he retired from the military in 1960, and spent years as an official with the Boy Scouts of America. He said he was proud that as a POW survivor he could testify in the late 1940s against some of the Japanese who were found guilty of maltreating American POWs.



Being a soldier runs in this family, he told The Times. His father served in World War I and his three sons served in Vietnam, Cooksley said.



Asked how he survived those cruelties of so many years ago, Cooksley said: “It just wasn’t my time.”

US Expects South China Sea Tensions to Rise

Brunei (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that her talks in China this week were useful despite highlighting sharp differences between Washington and Beijing over key international issues from Syria's civil war to territorial disputes in the South China Sea.



"Even when we disagree — believe me we can talk very frankly now — we can explore the toughest issues without imperiling the whole relationship," Clinton said in Dili, East Timor, a day after she met President Hu Jintao and other Chinese officials in Beijing.



Clinton was criticized in official Chinese media during the visit, and she exchanged blunt words with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi over how to end the bloodshed in Syria. She and Yang also pointedly disagreed over the South China Sea, where the Obama administration fears tensions stoked by nationalism will continue to rise over competing claims between China and its smaller neighbors, some of whom have their own overlapping claims.



"As was evident yesterday, there is a huge amount going on where the United States and China need to consult," Clinton said, citing Iran and North Korea as well as Syria and the South China Sea.



She said she personally and the U.S. were "not going to shy away from standing up for our strategic interests and in expressing clearly where we differ."



China is resisting a push by the U.S. and other countries for U.N. sanctions against Syria to put pressure on President Bashar Assad's regime, saying the civil war there must be resolved through negotiations. Beijing also wants to negotiate several territorial disputes over the resource-rich South China Sea individually with its neighbors, rejecting the speedy implementation of a code of conduct to prevent clashes and multilateral negotiations that the U.S. advocates.



A senior U.S. official traveling with Clinton from East Timor to Brunei, a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations that has claims in the disputed waters, said Washington believed that there would be a period of higher tensions for some time to come "no matter what" progress may be able to be made.



"This is the new normal," the official said. "I think we have to be prepared for more tensions on these matters." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss internal administration's assessments.



The United States has said the peaceful resolution of South China Sea disputes is in the U.S. national interest, mainly due to maritime security and the safety of international shipping. However, speaking next to Clinton on Wednesday, Yang said the disputes were no one's business but the "directly concerned" countries.



Clinton said Thursday that "the mark of a mature relationship, whether it is between nations or between people, is not whether we agree on everything — because that is highly unlikely between nations and people — but whether we can work through the issues that are difficult."



She said it was important for the U.S. and China to talk ahead of a number of international gatherings, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this weekend in Vladivostok, Russia, the U.N. General Assembly and the East Asia Summit.



Clinton is winding down an 11-day, six-nation tour through the Asia-Pacific. After stops in the Cook Islands, Indonesia, China, East Timor and Brunei, she heads to Russia on Friday for the APEC forum.

Sino-Japanese War Footage

Conspiracy Time: Pearl Harbor

A Gallup poll in 1991 showed that 1 in 3 Americans believed that President Franklin Roosevelt knew about the eventual attack on Pearl Harbor beforehand, and allowed it to happen in order to coerce the Congress and public to support entry into the then-European War. It was the 50th anniversary of a Gallup poll in 1941 that showed 84% believed the President did all he could to prevent war. Despite a plethora of declassified documents to the contrary, many Americans today still believe that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise. Many of these documents are difficult to locate at sources deemed "credible" by the public unless you already know what you are looking for, in which case it is an easy search. I cannot begin to reveal to you every piece of information contained in those documents or witness statements, but I will show you some of the most pertinent pieces.

First, a series of deciphered messages back and forth from Japanese and American parties in the months leading up to the attack. Most of these messages are from the Japanese to their fleets and back. I found them housed at the Fordham University website, but they can be found in many places on the web. These messages largely consist of Japanese scouting or recon. Fordham is careful to note that some of the text in these messages was not known until after the attack. I'll debunk that in a moment.

From: Tokyo To: Pearl Harbor Attack Force Date: 2 DEC 1941

"Climb Mount Niitaka."

This was the message that would tell the fleet commander to open sealed documents that would give him his orders.

From: Adm. Nagumo To: Pearl Harbor Attack Force Date: 3 Dec. 1941

1. "It has already been ordered to go to war on 8 December, but so critical has become the situation in the Far East that one can hardly predict was would not explode by that time. So far no new information on Hawaii area received and also no indications of our Task Force being detected. But since the enemy intention is naturally far beyond prediction, strict attention will directed to meet any unexpected encounter with an enemy."

2. "It is intended that this force will operate as scheduled even if war breaks out before 8 December.."

In that message, Admiral Nagumo was the Japanese Navy’s carrier strikeforce commander, and the Pearl Harbor Attack Force was the fleet en route to attack on December 8 in Japan (December 7 in the U.S.)

A Letter from Lt. John Leitweiler, Commander of Station CAST, and Corregidor to Lt. Lee W. Parke, Chief, and Japanese Cryptography Section, U.S. Navy November 16, 1941 states that his team is current and complete in deciphering all current interceptions from the Japanese. His team was kept steadily busy, but they are able to keep up. It is this letter that allows us to be confident that the code breaking was moving efficiently. Even more importantly, however, is the fact that the letter very clearly indicates that the Chief Parke was vehemently and frequently trying to force poor methods upon his teams of sharing upon his teams, seemingly in an effort to disrupt the efficient operations. Leitweiler goes on to admonish his superior for trying to force these much slower techniques upon him (Page 1, Page 2.)

The Hawaiian office of the American Red Cross received enormous amounts of supplies just days before the attack on Pearl Harbor despite public conversations of peace and isolationism by Congress and the American people as found in the Hawaii War Records department. Why were these supplies sent to Pearl Harbor if the base was considered the most unlikely of attack points? Because, as noted above on December 3, we already knew the attack was going to happen. Further, a letter from Helen Hamman, daughter of Don C. Smith, to President Clinton in 1995 sought to clear up a fight to posthumously change the ranks of the Pearl Harbor commanders. Don Smith served as Director of the War Service for the Red Cross. His daughter related:

“. . . Shortly before the attack in 1941 President Roosevelt called [Smith] to the White House for a meeting concerning a Top Secret matter. At this meeting the President advised my father that his intelligence staff had informed him of a pending attack on Pearl Harbor, by the Japanese. He anticipated many casualties and much loss, he instructed my father to send workers and supplies to a holding area at a [port of entry] on the West Coast where they would await further orders to ship out, no destination was to be revealed. He left no doubt in my father's mind that none of the Naval and Military officials in Hawaii were to be informed and he was not to advise the Red Cross officers who were already stationed in the area. When he protested to the President, President Roosevelt told him that the American people would never agree to enter the war in Europe unless they were attack [sic] within their own borders.”

Finally, let’s look at the “McCollum Memo” that was provided to F.D.R. on October 7, 1940, some 14 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was declassified in 1994. The memo outlines 8 specific steps to soliciting a Japanese attack that would serve as an entry point into the war for the Untied States. Each and every one of these steps was carried out before the attack. Those 8 steps were:

1. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.

2. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.

3. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.

4. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.

5. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.

6. Keep the main strength of the U.S. fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.

7. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.

8. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.
All of this information was declassified after the Gallup poll that shows 31% of Americans believe that Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack, so I should expect that the number today would be higher. Even so, many people will argue loudly that it is a theory and that there is no evidence to support the proposal that FDR. used the attack on Pearl Harbor as a way of getting the U.S. into a war that he repeatedly argued in the Washington that we needed to be in. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone can view these presented facts and argue anything other than an invitation to war was presented from FDR to Hideki Tojo.

taken from Polymic.

The Forgotten Russo-Japanese War of 1939

From May to September 1939, the USSR and Japan fought an undeclared war involving over 100,000 troops. It may have altered world history.



In the summer of 1939, Soviet and Japanese armies clashed on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier in a little-known conflict with far-reaching consequences. No mere border clash, this undeclared war raged from May to September 1939 embroiling over 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks and aircraft. Some 30,000-50,000 men were killed and wounded. In the climactic battle, August 20-31, 1939, the Japanese were crushed. This coincided precisely with the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939) – the green light for Hitler's invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II one week later. These events are connected. This conflict also influenced key decisions in Tokyo and Moscow in 1941 that shaped the conduct and ultimately the outcome of the war.



This conflict (called the Nomonhan Incident by Japanese, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by Russians) was provoked by a notorious Japanese officer named TSUJI Masanobu, ring-leader of a clique in Japan’s Kwantung Army, which occupied Manchuria. On the other side, Georgy Zhukov, who would later lead the Red Army to victory over Nazi Germany, commanded the Soviet forces. In the first large clash in May 1939, a Japanese punitive attack failed and Soviet/Mongolian forces wiped out a 200-man Japanese unit. Infuriated, Kwantung Army escalated the fighting through June and July, launching a large bombing attack deep inside Mongolian territory and attacking across the border in division strength. As successive Japanese assaults were repulsed by the Red Army, the Japanese continually upped the ante, believing they could force Moscow to back down. Stalin, however, outmaneuvered the Japanese and stunned them with a simultaneous military and diplomatic counter strike.


In August, as Stalin secretly angled for an alliance with Hitler, Zhukov amassed powerful forces near the front. When German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Stalin unleashed Zhukov. The future Red Army Marshal unveiled the tactics he would later employ with such devastating effect at Stalingrad, Kursk, and elsewhere: a combined arms assault with massed infantry and artillery that fixed the enemy on the central front while powerful armored formations enveloped the enemy’s flanks, encircled, and ultimately crushed him in a battle of annihilation. Over 75 percent of Japan’s ground forces at the front were killed in combat. At the same time, Stalin concluded the pact with Hitler, Japan’s nominal ally, leaving Tokyo diplomatically isolated and militarily humiliated.



The fact that the fighting at Nomonhan coincided with the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was no coincidence. While Stalin was openly negotiating with Britain and France for a purported anti-fascist alliance, and secretly negotiating with Hitler for their eventual alliance, he was being attacked by German’s ally and anti-Comintern partner, Japan. By the summer of 1939, it was clear that Europe was sliding toward war. Hitler was determined to move east, against Poland. Stalin’s nightmare, to be avoided at all costs, was a two-front war against Germany and Japan. His ideal outcome would be for the fascist/militarist capitalists (Germany, Italy, and Japan) to fight the bourgeois/democratic capitalists (Britain, France, and perhaps the United States), leaving the Soviet Union on the sidelines, the arbiter of Europe after the capitalists had exhausted themselves. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was Stalin’s attempt to achieve his optimal outcome. Not only did it pit Germany against Britain and France and leave the Soviet Union out of the fight – it gave Stalin the freedom to deal decisively with an isolated Japan, which he did at Nomonhan. This is not merely a hypothesis. The linkage between Nomonhan and the Nazi-Soviet Pact is clear even in the German diplomatic documents published in Washington and London in 1948. Recently revealed Soviet-era documents add confirming details.



Zhukov won his spurs at Nomonhan/Khalkhin Gol – and thereby won Stalin’s confidence to entrust him with the high command in late 1941, just in time to avert disaster. Zhukov was able to halt the German onslaught and turn the tide at the gates of Moscow in early December 1941 (arguably the most decisive week of the Second World War) in part by deploying forces from the Soviet Far East. Many of these were the battle-tested troops he used to crush the Japanese at Nomonhan. The Soviet Far Eastern reserves – 15 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 1,700 tanks, and 1.500 aircraft – were deployed westward in the autumn of 1941 when Moscow learned that Japan would not attack the Soviet Far East, because it had made an irrevocable decision for southward expansion that would lead to war with the United States.



The story of Japan’s road to Pearl Harbor is well-known. A part of that story that is not so well-known is that memories of their defeat at Nomonhan figured in Japan’s decision for war with the United States. And the same Tsuji who played a central role at Nomonhan was also an influential advocate for southward expansion and war with America.



In June 1941, Germany invaded Russia and in the early months of the war inflicted such crushing defeats on the Red Army, many believed the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. Germany urged Japan to invade the Soviet Far East, avenge the defeat at Nomonhan, and seize as much Soviet territory as it could swallow. But in July 1941, the United States and Britain had imposed an oil embargo on Japan that threatened to starve the Japanese war machine. To avert this, the Imperial Navy was determined to seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. The Netherlands had been conquered a year earlier. Britain was fighting for its life. Only the U.S. Pacific Fleet stood in the way. Many in the Japanese Army, however, were keen to attack the U.S.S.R., as Germany was urging. They wanted to avenge the defeat at Nomonhan while the Red Army was being smashed by the blitzkrieg. Japanese Army and Navy leaders debated this issue at a series of Imperial War Conferences.



In the summer of 1941, Col. Tsuji was a senior operations staff officer at Imperial General Headquarters. Tsuji, a charismatic and forceful spokesman, was one of the Army men who backed the Navy position that led to Pearl Harbor. General Tanaka Ryukichi, Chief of the Army Ministry’s Military Service Bureau in 1941, testified after the war that, “… the most determined single protagonist in favor of war with the United States [was] Tsuji Masanobu.” Tsuji later wrote that his experience of Soviet fire-power at Nomonhan convinced him not to take on the Russians in 1941.



But what if there had been no Nomonhan Incident, or if it had ended differently, say in a stalemate or a Japanese victory? In that case, the Japanese decision to move south might have turned out very differently. A Japan less impressed with Soviet military capability and faced with choosing between war against the Anglo-American powers or joining Germany in finishing off the U.S.S.R., might have viewed the northern course as the best choice.



If Japan had decided to attack northward in 1941, that could well have changed the course of the war, and of history. Many believe that the Soviet Union could not have survived a two-front war in 1941-1942. The Soviet margin of victory in the Battle of Moscow, and at Stalingrad a year later, was excruciatingly thin. A determined Japanese foe in the east might have tipped the balance in Hitler’s favor. Furthermore, if Japan had moved against the Soviet Union in 1941, it could not also have attacked the United States that year. The United States might not have entered the war until a year later, under circumstances in Europe far more unfavorable than the actual grim reality in the winter of 1941. How then would Nazi domination of Europe been broken?



Nomonhan cast a long shadow.


from The Diplomat.

Danzig, 4:45 AM

Tonight, seventy-three years ago the Second World War in Europe started with the German attack on Poland. The bombardment of Polish fortifications on the Westerplatte has become an iconic image linked to the war's beginning.

WWII bomb detonated in Munich, Germany

 



Emergency crews in Germany detonated a Second World War bomb in Munich today because the 550-pound American ordinance couldn’t be safely defused.



The resulting explosion sent a fireball into the sky, shattered windows, started fires and left a crater in the middle of the road, BBC said.



Construction workers found the unexploded bomb three feet underground as they tried to demolish a local bar.



About 2,500 people evacuated their homes Tuesday night as crews worked.



“I run a hairdressing business,” Damla Sahin told The Telegraph. “I haven't been inside yet. We are not allowed in because there is still a danger that the building could collapse. All our windows have fallen out and the door has been split in three.”



The bomb disposal unit tried to defuse the weapon, but because it used a chemical fuse, they decided the safer option was a controlled detonation.





Fire crews placed hay bales around the area to control the concussion, but those caught fire and ignited a few small rooftop fires.



“Almost all the window panes in the immediate area were destroyed,” bomb expert Diethard Posorski told Spiegel Online.



WWII-era munitions aren’t uncommon in Germany.



Munich officials estimate 2,500 bombs are underneath the city from the 1939-1945 conflict in Europe.



Tens of thousands of bombs likely dot the German countryside, Spiegel Online said.