Nazi Germany Surrenders, May 7, 1945

On this day in 1945, Gen. Alfred Jodl, representing the German High Command, signed a document unconditionally surrendering all German military forces, to take effect the following day, thereby all but ending World War II in Europe. The signing ceremony took place at Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) at Reims, in northwestern France.

Although at the time of the surrender virtually all of Germany was under Allied control, German forces still occupied western Netherlands, Denmark, much of Norway, as well as western and central Czechoslovakia. German and Russian troops fought on in the East for most of the next day.

Initially, following instructions from Grand Adm. Karl Donitz, Hitler’s successor, Jodl offered to surrender all forces fighting the Western Allies. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, threatened to break off negotiations unless the Germans agreed to a complete unconditional surrender to all the Allies on all fronts.

Eisenhower told Jodl that he would order western lines closed to German soldiers, thus forcing them to surrender to the advancing Soviets on the Eastern Front. Jodl sent a radio signal to Donitz in Flensburg, a remaining enclave on the Danish border, informing him of Eisenhower’s ultimatum. Shortly after midnight, Donitz sent a signal to Jodl authorizing the complete and total surrender of all German forces.

Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, signed for SHAEF while French Gen. Francois Sevez and Soviet Major Gen. Ivan Susloparov signed as witnesses. The Kremlin called for a second four-power surrender ceremony, which took place May 8 in a former German Army engineering school in the Berlin district of Karlshorst. (It now houses the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.) May 8 was declared Victory-in-Europe (V-E) Day, a day still celebrated as a public holiday in some European countries, including Russia.

Though not one of the conspirators, Jodl had been injured in the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. An Allied tribunal sitting in Nuremberg found him guilty of war crimes. He was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946. In 1953, a German appeals court found Jodl not guilty and granted him a posthumous pardon.

President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a formal cessation of hostilities between the United States and Germany on Dec. 13, 1946. A conference in Paris, held in February 1947, ended with the signing of peace treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland, countries that at various times during the war had aligned themselves with Nazi Germany as the Axis Powers.

The Allied military occupation of West German territory formally ended on May 5, 1955, with the recognition of the Federal Republic of Germany as having “the full authority of a sovereign state.” That treaty ended the military occupation of West German territory, although the three Western occupying powers — the United States, Great Britain, and France — retained their military rights in West Berlin until 1994.

SOURCE: WWW.HISTORY.COM