Daily Bread for 5.7.14

Good morning.

We’ll have a mostly cloudy but warm day in the Whippet City, with a high of seventy-four.

On this day in 1945, Germany surrenders unconditionally:

…the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France.

At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. But General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces, those fighting in the East as well as in the West. If this demand was not met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the enveloping Soviet forces. Jodl radioed Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, Hitler’s successor, with the terms. Donitz ordered him to sign. So with Russian General Ivan Susloparov and French General Francois Sevez signing as witnesses, and General Walter Bedell Smith, Ike’s chief of staff, signing for the Allied Expeditionary Force, Germany was-at least on paper-defeated. Fighting would still go on in the East for almost another day. But the war in the West was over.

Since General Susloparov did not have explicit permission from Soviet Premier Stalin to sign the surrender papers, even as a witness, he was quickly hustled back East-into the hands of the Soviet secret police, never to be heard from again. Alfred Jodl, who was wounded in the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, would be found guilty of war crimes (which included the shooting of hostages) at Nuremberg and hanged on October 16, 1946-then granted a pardon, posthumously, in 1953, after a German appeals court found Jodl not guilty of breaking international law.

On 5.7.1932, a discovery in Janesville:

1932 – Illegal Distillery Discovered in Janesville
On this date Rupert E. Fessenden, Rock County’s chief deputy, discovered the largest ever illegal liquor distillery in southern Wisconsin. The distillery was found on the old Frances Willard estate south of the Wisconsin School for the Blind. Ironically, Willard was one of the founders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. [Source: Janesville Gazette].

Imagine if Rock County had not found that illegal operation: Janesville might have lost its GM plant, been saddled with lying officials, and beset with scheming businessmen telling tall tales to advance dubious development schemes. Thank goodness those things didn’t happen…

Here’s Puzzability‘s midweek game:

This Week’s Game — May 5-9

Cine-Ma

It’s a Mom-and-Popcorn operation this Mother’s Day week. For each day, we started with the title of a movie and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for letters that spell out the word MOTHER. (Those letters may appear elsewhere in the title as well.)

Example:

***M**  O*  T**  HE*R*

Answer:

Crimes of the Heart

What to Submit:

Submit the movie title (as “Crimes of the Heart” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, May 7

MO*T*  ***H**  ***  **E  ****   *R***