On the evening of 1 May 1945, German radio announced that Hitler had fallen “fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism”. It did not say that he had killed himself. His successor as head of state was Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, the commander of the navy, who was at Plön in Holstein and later moved to the naval academy at Mürwik, near Flensburg on the Danish border. Dönitz’s aim in the days that followed was to end the war in the west as quickly as possible while continuing to fight in the east, so that as many soldiers and refugees as possible could reach British and American lines.

The Dönitz government

Dönitz learned of his appointment by radio from the bunker on the evening of 30 April, without being told at first that Hitler was dead. He appointed Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, the long-serving finance minister, as head of a caretaker cabinet, and dismissed Himmler. Keitel and Jodl, who had run the armed forces high command from outside Berlin since 22 April, joined him in the north.

The strategy was the one the German high command had followed in the last weeks of the war: to hold the front in the east and give ground in the west. Millions of German soldiers and civilians were still east of the Elbe, in Mecklenburg, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria and Courland, and Dönitz wanted to gain time for them to move west. He also hoped, without much reason, that the Western Allies might be persuaded to accept a separate surrender.

Partial surrenders

The German forces in Italy had already surrendered. An agreement signed at Caserta on 29 April by representatives of General Heinrich von Vietinghoff and SS General Karl Wolff took effect on 2 May, ending the war in Italy and parts of Austria. On 3 May Dönitz sent Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, his successor as commander of the navy, to Field Marshal Montgomery’s tactical headquarters on the Timeloberg, a hill near Wendisch Evern on Lüneburg Heath.

Friedeburg first offered to surrender the German armies retreating from the Soviets in Mecklenburg. Montgomery refused to accept the surrender of forces fighting the Red Army, but he agreed to accept the surrender of all German forces facing his 21st Army Group: in northwest Germany, including the Frisian Islands and Heligoland, in the Netherlands and in Denmark. Friedeburg went back to Flensburg for authority and returned the next day. At 1830 on 4 May, in a tent on the Timeloberg, the German delegation signed. The surrender took effect at 0800 on 5 May.

Other surrenders followed. On 5 May German Army Group G surrendered to the U.S. 6th Army Group at Haar near Munich, and the German commander in the Netherlands, General Johannes Blaskowitz, confirmed the surrender of his troops to the Canadians at Wageningen. Each of these surrenders was local. None of them ended the war.

SHAEF at Reims

Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) had moved from Versailles to Reims in February 1945. Its forward headquarters occupied the Collège Moderne et Technique, a modern red-brick technical school near the railway station that the Americans called “the little red schoolhouse”. Eisenhower’s office was on the second floor, above the war room, whose walls were covered with operational maps of the front.

Eisenhower had made his position clear in advance. He would accept only the unconditional surrender of all German forces on all fronts, simultaneously, to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union together. Any German approach for a separate surrender in the west would be refused. The Soviets had been told this, and a Soviet liaison officer, Major General Ivan Susloparov, head of the Soviet military mission to France, was attached to SHAEF.

Friedeburg and Jodl

Friedeburg arrived at Reims on the evening of 5 May, still hoping to arrange a partial surrender in the west. Eisenhower refused to see him. His chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, told Friedeburg that there would be no negotiation, and showed him the operations maps in the war room. Friedeburg said he had no authority to sign a general surrender. Dönitz then sent Jodl, the chief of the operations staff of the armed forces high command, who reached Reims on the evening of 6 May.

Jodl also tried to gain time. Eisenhower’s answer, passed through Bedell Smith, was that unless the Germans signed, he would close the Western front to German soldiers and civilians trying to cross it. That threat, which went to the heart of Dönitz’s strategy, was decisive. Jodl asked Dönitz for authority to sign; Dönitz, describing the terms as extortion, gave it in the early hours of 7 May. The Germans obtained one concession: the surrender would take effect at 2301 Central European Time on 8 May, about 44 hours after the signing, which gave German units more time to move west.

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The night of 6–7 May at SHAEF

0241, 7 May

The signing took place in the war room at 0241 on Monday, 7 May 1945. Jodl signed for the German High Command, with Friedeburg and Jodl’s aide, Major Wilhelm Oxenius, beside him. Bedell Smith signed for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force; Susloparov signed for the Soviet High Command; and Major General François Sevez of the French army signed as a witness. Among the Allied officers present were the British Admiral Sir Harold Burrough, Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan, General Carl Spaatz and Air Marshal James Robb.

The act was short, a single page. Germany surrendered unconditionally all forces on land, sea and in the air under German control, to the Supreme Commander and to the Soviet High Command simultaneously. A separate article provided that a more formal surrender instrument might follow. After signing, Jodl asked to speak, and said that with this signature the German people and armed forces were, for better or worse, delivered into the victors’ hands.

Eisenhower, who had refused to meet the Germans until they had signed, then received Jodl and Friedeburg in his office and asked them, through an interpreter, whether they understood the terms and would carry them out. They said they did. Afterward Eisenhower posed for photographers with the pens used for the signing, recorded a short statement for newsreels, and sent a one-sentence report to the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

“The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.”

Susloparov had signed without having received instructions from Moscow, which arrived too late. The Soviet government regarded the Reims document as a preliminary act. The Soviet chief of staff, General Alexei Antonov, told SHAEF that the surrender should be signed again in Berlin by the supreme commanders of the German armed forces, before the Soviet High Command, because continued fighting in the east made the Reims surrender look like a separate peace. Eisenhower agreed. The story of that second ceremony is told in Chapter 8.

The scoop

Seventeen reporters had been taken to Reims to witness the signing on condition that they hold their stories until the Allied governments made a simultaneous announcement. The announcement was delayed to allow time for the Berlin ceremony. On the afternoon of 7 May, after German radio at Flensburg had itself broadcast the news of the surrender, Edward Kennedy of the Associated Press telephoned the story to London. SHAEF suspended him and the AP’s operations in the theater, and the AP later dismissed him. In 2012 the Associated Press formally apologized for its treatment of Kennedy.

The Surrender Museum

The school is now the Lycée Roosevelt. The war room, with its wall maps, the table and chairs used at the signing and the arrangement of the room as it was on 7 May, has been preserved as the Musée de la Reddition (Surrender Museum), run by the city of Reims. The museum also has displays on the liberation of Reims in August 1944, SHAEF and the press, and the uniforms and equipment of the period.

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The Musée de la Reddition today

Sources and further reading

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