Woo hoo!! FReepers unite to defeat the godless America-hating Marxists!! [FReepathon XXXVII]

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May 7, 1945

Transcript of Surrender of Germany (1945)

Only this text in English is authoritative

ACT OF MILITARY SURRENDER

We the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command all forces on land, sea and in the air who are at this date under German control.

The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German military, naval and air authorties and to all forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on 8 May and to remain in the positions occupied at that time. No ship, vessel, or aircraft is to be scuttled, or any damage done to their hull, machinery or equipment.

The German High Command will at once issue to the appropriate commander, and ensure the carrying out of any further orders issued by the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and by the Soviet High Command.

This act of military surrender is without prejudice to, and will be superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on behalf of the United Nations and applicable to GERMANY and the German armed forces as a whole.

In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender, the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and the Soviet High Command will take such punitive or other action as they deem appropriate.

Signed at RHEIMS at 0241 on the 7th day of May, 1945. France On behalf of the German High Command.

JODL
IN THE PRESENCE OF

On behalf of the Supreme Commander,
Allied Expeditionary Force.
W. B. SMITH

On behalf of the Soviet High Command
SOUSLOPAROV

F SEVEZ
Major General, French Army
(Witness)

Public Domain U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
2:45 a.m. German surrender of 7 May 1945 in Rheims, France.

(Top) – German officers sign unconditional surrender in Rheims, France. Col. Gen. Alfred Gustav Jodl, Chief of the Wermacht (between Major Wilhelm Oxenius to the left and Generaladmiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg to the right) signing the German Instrument of Surrender at Rheims, France
(Bottom) – Allied force leaders at the signing.

Col. Gen. Alfred Gustav Jodl, Chief of the Wermacht and Chief of Staff to Fuehrer Karl Doenitz. Under Jodl's signature were those of Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, chief of staff to the Supreme Allied Commander; General Ivan Suslaparov, head of the Russian mission to France who was authorized by Moscow to sign on behalf of Soviet forces, and General Francois Sevez of France.

Stars and Stripes

Many say the war ended on May 8. Russia disagrees
By Slobodan Lekic
Stars and Stripes
May 7, 2015

... The collapse of the three principle Axis members — Germany, Japan and Italy — began on April 27, 1945, when Italian partisans captured fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress and executed them, hanging their bodies upside down at a gas station in Milan. Two days later, German officers arrived at the headquarters of the British army near Naples and surrendered Nazi forces in Italy, handing over nearly 1 million prisoners of war to the Allies.

On April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his fortified bunker deep below his bombed-out offices in Berlin, and two days later the German military surrendered the capital to the advancing Soviet army.

After Hitler’s death, his designated successor, navy commander Adm. Karl Doenitz, assumed power as head of an administration known as the Flensburg Government in northern Germany, which initiated the overall German surrender.

Doenitz sent a representative, Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg to the headquarters of British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery near Hamburg with instructions to surrender all German forces in northern Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. After two days of negotiations, the two sides signed the articles of surrender on May 4.

On May 6, Doenitz sent his army commander, Gen. Alfred Jodl and von Friedeburg to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s supreme Allied headquarters in Reims, France, to negotiate the surrender of all the German forces. Instead, the German officers were received by Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, who refused to negotiate and demanded an unconditional surrender.

“The German aim … was to stall for a few days in order to have time to move as many German troops and refugees as possible from the path of the Russians so that they could surrender to the Western Allies,” historian William L. Shirer wrote in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” his seminal study of Hitler’s empire.

“But it was in vain. Eisenhower saw through the game,” Shirer wrote. Eisenhower instructed Smith to inform the Germans that “unless they cease all pretenses and delays” he would close the entire Allied front to prevent any more Germans from fleeing the Soviets.

Jodl and von Friedeburg consulted with Doenitz, who realized he had no choice and told them to accept Eisenhower’s demand. They returned to Reims on May 7 and signed the surrender documents effective at 23:01 hours the following day, May 8.

But Soviet leader Joseph Stalin insisted that the surrender be confirmed in Berlin, the heart of Hitler’s empire. Since the Soviets had done most of the fighting and had suffered the overwhelming majority of Allied casualties, Stalin wanted Marshal Georgy Zhukov, as the representative of the Soviet Supreme Command, to accept the surrender, rather than the Soviet liaison officer at Eisenhower’s headquarters.

The other Allies agreed. They wanted the top German field marshal sign rather than a subordinate general, in part to avoid a repetition of the end of World War I, when a German civilian opposed to the war signed the armistice rather than the senior military commander. That led to allegations that the German army had been “stabbed in the back” by feckless politicians, an accusation repeated by Adolf Hitler during his rise to power.

A multinational delegation from Eisenhower’s headquarters, including U.S. Gen. Carl Spaatz, flew to Berlin on May 8 to sign the final document along with Zhukov and the supreme commander of all German forces, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.

Stars and Stripes

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