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A French post card depicting the German surrender at Reims from a painting by Lucien Jonas for the Musee de l' Armee in Paris.
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Seventy-five years ago today on May 7, 1945 representatives
of the German High Command signed articles of unconditional surrender to the Allies
at a French school house in Reims used as the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF).
It had been apparent for weeks that the German position was
hopeless. Pressed on all sides, the Soviets were about to take Berlin when Adolf Hitler committed suicide
in his bunker leaving Grand Admiral Karl Donitz as his successor
as President of the Reich. Dönitz
realized his only duty was ending the war as quickly as possible on the best
possible terms for Germany. He
immediately began back channel negotiations.
Meanwhile
German armies began surrendering regionally.
German forces in Italy lay down arms on May 1. Berlin surrendered on May 2 and two separate
armies north of Berlin capitulated.
On May 4 Field
Marshal Bernard Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of all
German forces in Holland, Northern Germany, Denmark and all naval
forces in the area. General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedberg, acting on
orders from Dönitz initially offered surrender
to Western allies alone leaving the option for his troops to turn
around to face the Russians.
Montgomery coldly refused leaving the Germans no other choice by
surrender.
The same day
troops in Bavaria, the state whose mountains were once considered
as a fallback position for a drawn out campaign of guerilla
resistance, surrendered. From the Channel
Islands—held by Germany even after the Normandy Invasion—to Prague
one after another German forces capitulated.
Dönitz was
informed that any surrender had to be conducted by a representative of
the German High Command. This was
because the Allies did not want a repeat of the Armistice of the First
World War which was signed by the government, not the military leading to
the charge that the Army had been “stabbed in the back,” a key propaganda
point when Germany re-armed.
On May 6
Dönitz dispatched Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the German General
Staff to Reims with orders to offer surrender to Western forces
only—exactly the same terms turned down my Montgomery two days earlier. Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D.
Eisenhower harshly excoriated Jodl and bluntly demanded unconditional
surrender to all allies or face continued prosecution of the war. Informed of the terms, Dönitz wired his
consent.
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Celebrating
after the German surrender at Reims were General Ivan Susloparov, General
Walter Bedell Smith, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Royal
Air Force Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder.
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At 2:41 local
time Jodl signed the Instrument of Surrender. Eisenhower pointedly and as an intended snub
did not personally accept or sign for the Allies assigning his Chief
of Staff, the brusque General Walter Bedell Smith, to be principal signer for the
Allies. Also signing was General Ivan Susloparov, Soviet liaison to SHAEF. Susloparov signed before
he could get full authorization from his government so it was understood
that a second surrender would be signed with the Soviets on the Eastern front. French
Major General François Sevez signed as the official witness.
The surrender of all hostile forces was
set for May 8, 11:01 pm Central European
Time. Shortly after midnight on May
8 the second surrender signing was conducted at the seat of the Soviet Military Administration in
Berlin. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, of the Soviet
High Command was the principal Allied signatory and was joined by British Air Chief Marshal Arthur William Tedder,
as Deputy Supreme Commander SHAEF.
American Lt. General Carl Spaz, Commander of United States Strategic Air
Forces
in Europe; and General Jean de
Lattre de Tassigny of the First French Army were
witnesses. Signing
for the Germans were Admiral
Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy; Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff of the Luftwaffe; and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces also
signing on behalf of the Army. The
signing was completed fifteen minutes after midnight.
By the terms
signed in Rheims, fighting had already ceased just over an hour earlier.
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When the news of the surrender broke there were joyous street celebrations like this one in London.
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News of the end of the war in Europe broke on May 8, with spontaneous celebrations erupting
across Europe and North America. Street
celebrations in Britain and France were especially jubilant.
President Harry Truman announced the end of the war in a
somber broadcast with the words that “Flags of Freedom fly all over Europe
today,” while reminding listeners that the war against Japan continued. The
knowledge that a long bloody war against Japan might still stretch ahead with
American troops taking most of the casualties in a final assault against the home
islands somewhat restrained
celebrations in this country.
This knowledge also haunted many allied
troops in Europe, who knew that they might be shipped to the Pacific.
Indeed some Air Force and Naval units were almost immediately
re-directed and some of the crack U.S. Airborne,
Infantry, and Armored divisions which had been in the thick of fighting for
months were slated for re-assignment, as were many individual G.I.s whose
units would be dissolved.
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Isolated German units continued to surrender for about a week.
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Not all fighting ended on May 8. Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner of the Army Group
Centre fought on in Austria and Czechoslovakia, but the Soviets turned
all of their considerable might against him and by May 15 ceased all offensive
operations with mop up in
Czechoslovakia completed.
The last battle in the war took place on May 15 in Slovenia and the last shots were fired
on the Dutch island of Texel where Ukrainian prisoners of war had rebelled against the German
occupiers on April 5 and kept up a guerilla campaign against them. The German garrison had simply been forgotten in the shuffle and was afraid
if they surrendered to the Ukrainians they would be executed en masse.
A final bit of business was dissolving the German Government under Dönitz. The Allies had concentrated so hard on
getting the armed forces to lay down their arms that they had neglected to
demand that civil authority be transferred to them. Worse, they had neglected to outline how a military
occupation would work. On May 28 a
rather junior British officer was dispatched to the town of Flensburg to read to Dönitz
Eisenhower’s edict dissolving the government and arresting all of
its members.
In the
meantime, local commanders took charge where they were. On June 9 the Allies officially signed a Declaration
Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority by
Allied Powers taking over civil authority at all levels in occupied
Germany.
Details of
the shape of the occupation—and of the post war world—were agreed to at
the Potsdam Conference by Truman, British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill (replaced after this agreement was reached at the Conference by Clement Attlee
when Churchill stunningly suffered an election
loss) and Soviet leader Josef
Stalin. The agreement divided Germany,
and its capital of Berlin in zones of
Allied control.
On December 13, 1946 President Truman finally declared that hostilities between the United States and Germany had ceased.
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The less dramatic and nearly forgotten final official end to World War
II with the signing of Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to
Germany in 1990. Seen Left to right: Roland Dumas (France), Eduard
Shevardnadze (USSR), James Baker (USA),
Mikhail Gorbachev (USSR), Hans-Dietrich Genscher (FRG), Lothar de
Maizière (GDR) and Douglas Hurd (United Kingdom).
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Yet the war was not technically over. Even after the establishment of the German Federal Republic (West Germany) as a U.S. ally and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1949, the U.S. felt it
needed the fiction of an official
state of war to maintain authority
for stationing troops in
Germany.
Congress adopted a resolution
declaring a formal end to hostilities in 1951.
Official occupation continued until 1955 when the West German government
was given full sovereignty.
In September 1990, more than 45 years after the surrender
the Four Powers—the U.S., Britain,
France, and the U.S.S.R—finally signed a Treaty
on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany with both German Federal
Republic and the German Democratic Republic which allowed the two German states
to unite, which they did on October
3, 1990. The war was finally, officially over.
