5th January 1942
In Copenhagen, the German Plenipotentiary Cécil von Renthe-Fink is invited to Christian VIII's Palace first thing in the morning for “urgent discussions on matters of mutual interest”. On arrival, he is met by both the King and the Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning. There, he is invited to surrender the German forces in Denmark to the Danish government and told that if he does not the Danish government will take “military action” to remove them from Danish soil. He is given until 6am tomorrow to reply.
Wavell warns I Corps (Cunningham) to prepare invest Berlin, while the remaining troops are to head for the Polish border as fast as possible. The Corps artillery will be left with Cunningham's men, partially because of the petrol situation and partially because he is by far the most likely to need it.
In early evening the Humber armoured cars belonging to Recce Platoon, 2 Royal Sussex make contact with elements if II Corps just outside Prötzel. This in theory completes the encirclement of Berlin, although in practice the forces to the east of Berlin are largely patrols rather than a continuous line.
The improving petrol situation allows Alexander's men to start moving again, albeit much more slowly than has been possible for First or Fourth Armies. They slowly start to push south and east into much more broken, wooded terrain against resistance which varies from desultory to non-existent.
Meanwhile, the French advance has picked up even more speed, thanks largely to their supply situation being far better than that of the British. Frankfurt and Stuttgart are both surrounded and entered by patrols, who find little but bed sheets hanging from windows and deserted streets to greet them.
Meanwhile, the rest of the forces are advancing as fast as they can towards their real objectives. The northern force surrounding Frankfurt splits in two, with Touchon's men wheeling left towards Fulda and the British 2nd Army. At the same time Giraud's men head eastwards towards Würzburg, following the valley of the river Main for the most part due to heavy snow on the higher ground. To the south, Requin's men head towards Göppingen, with the intention to reach the Danube at Ulm shortly afterwards. Going here is much slower, due to a combination of the heavily urbanised terrain and the French forces on the right flank having a much poorer allocation of motor transport than those on the left which have been carrying the main effort of fighting the war to date. This is planned to change, with four full armies slated to be transferred to the south to support the occupation of Bavaria, but already lots of bets are being placed as to whether this will ever happen before the end of the war.
Work begins on the Beauharnois plant to install 500MW of additional generation capacity to the existing dam (which was designed from the start in anticipation of additional turbines being fitted), and to reinforce the high voltage power lines to Montreal to take the increased power output. This work is expected to be finished by September.
This is officially needed for the new war industries being built around Montreal which will require a great deal of additional electricity in the near future, and an expected postwar economic boom. These will all be connected by a new high-voltage spine being built along the St Lawrence, and the expansion is in fact mainly intended to support the new uranium enrichment plant to be built there.
