THE GERMAN SURRENDER IN MAY 1945

THE END OF THE WAR

World War II ended in Europe with the surrender of the German Armed Forces (the Wehrmacht) in May 1945. It marked the conclusive collapse of the Nazi’s despotic rule. Complete military and political defeat of the “Third Reich” was the overriding war goal of the forces allied against Germany.

German military defeat rapidly accelerated in summer 1944. On June 22, the Red Army initiated a major offensive from which the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front was not able to recover. Two weeks before, on June 6, western Allied troops had landed in northern France in a gigantic operation. The Germans were then faced with a war on two fronts. Starting in October 1944, warfare took place on German territory. On April 25, 1945, U.S. and Soviet units met at the river Elbe near Torgau.

Berlin was seized by the Red Army. In mid-April the so-called Battle of Berlin began. After bitter street fighting with many casualties on both sides the German capital surrendered on May 2, 1945.

THE END OF THE WAR IN BERLIN

On April 21 Soviet units crossed Berlin’s eastern border and advanced toward the city center. Inside the suburban railway line circling the city they encountered stubborn resistance. The ten-day house-to-house fighting resulted in a high number of casualties. The dead amounted to some 80,000 Red Army members, and on the German side some 20,000 soldiers and 30,000 civilians.

Already on April 24 Colonel General Bersarin was appointed Soviet state commander of Berlin. His first headquarters were the officers‘ mess of the Karlshorst army engineering college, but in early May he and his staff relocated to Friedrichsfelde.

Bersarin immediately organised a provisional food supply and the repair of infrastructure. He also saw to the establishment of a new city administration and cultural life. In his commands he attempted to prevent attacks, looting and rape by Soviet soldiers.

The military commanders who had been appointed in the individual city administrative districts were assisted by exile communists, the so-called Ulbricht Group, who had been flown in from Moscow. In the beginning of July the four victorious powers took over their respective sectors in Berlin.

FIRST SIGNING OF THE SURRENDER IN REIMS

Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945 in Berlin. He had previously appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. In view of the hopeless military situation, Dönitz attempted to negotiate a partial surrender to Great Britain and the USA. He sent Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command, to Allied headquarters in the French city of Reims.

However, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower regarded this as an attempt to rupture the agreement among the Allies and insisted on an immediate and unconditional surrender to all Allied troops. Dönitz had to give way, and in the early morning hours of May 7 the unconditional surrender of the entire German Wehrmacht was agreed in Reims.

In an additional protocol, all participants agreed that the surrender was to be ratified by higher-ranking German military officers in a second act.

In order to assure an immediate cease-fire, U.S. President Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the surrender on the next day. It went into effect on all fronts on May 8, 1945 at 23.01 Central European Time.

SECOND SIGNING IN BERLIN

The second act of surrender was formally the more important part of Germany’s complete surrender. This was because in Reims the signing on the German side had not been performed by generals with actual power of command over the Wehrmacht. For that reason, especially the British feared that the German military leadership could try to shift the blame for the lost war – as it had in fact done at the end of World War I.

The surrender was ratified at Soviet Headquarters in Berlin. As the representative of the Soviet High Command, Marshal Georgiy Zhukov had set up his staff headquarters in Karlshorst, an eastern district of Berlin, in an undamaged former Wehrmacht “pioneers” (engineering) school. To this location he invited the representatives of the victorious Allied forces, which now also included France. The Commanders in Chief of the three branches of the German Armed Forces were also summoned to Berlin.

ARRIVAL IN TEMPELHOF

On May 8, 1945 all those who participated in the act of surrender met at Tempelhof airport.

On the side of the Allies, Soviet State Secretary Wyschinski landed first in the morning. At noon followed British Air Marshal Tedder and the commander of the American long-distance flight forces, General Spaatz. During the afternoon General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, the commander-in-chief of the French Army also arrived.

The German delegation was flown in with an American aircraft from Flensburg, where the last government of the German Reich under Admiral of the Fleet Dönitz had withdrawn.

Soviet soldiers received all the guests at Tempelhof airport and brought them across the destroyed inner city to the virtually undamaged residential area of Karlshorst.

PREPARATION FOR THE SIGNING

At short notice the formal hall of the former officers‘ mess of the army engineering college had been prepared for the event. In addition to the primary participants, numerous journalists, members of the alliied military staffs, translators and temporary workers were present.

The ceremony was however delayed by several hours. A Russian version of the document, which until then was only available in English, had to be prepared and there was debate about stylistic modifications. The necessary coordination via radio further delayed this process. The content of the document signed the day before in Rheims remained however unchanged.

In addition, a French flag was missing at the front end of the hall. Only the Soviet, British and American flags had been put up so a French flag had to be improvised and augmented with available cloth remnants.

In the end, it was midnight before all preparations could be completed.

ACT OF MILITARY SURRENDER ON 8/9 MAY

It took up to around midnight for all parties to gather for the anxiously awaited signing. On May 9 around 0.45 a.m. the German Commanders in Chief of the Army, Navy and Air Force – Field Marshal Keitel, General Admiral von Friedeburg and Colonel General Stumpff (who represented Supreme Commander Field Marshal von Greim) – signed the surrender document, which was dated May 8. Keitel also had the High Command over the German Armed Forces (OKW).

Then Air Marshal Tedder and Marshal Zhukov signed the document for the Western Allies and the Soviet High Command, respectively. U.S. Air Force General Spaatz and French General de Lattre de Tassigny signed as witnesses.

The entire ceremony took about 45 minutes. No political statements were made. There was only the matter-of-fact signing.

After the German delegation had left the room, Zhukov delivered a brief speech. The banquet which followed lasted well into the morning hours.

SURRENDER DOCUMENT

MEMORIES

„The photographers and cameramen go crazy. They jump up on the tables, pressing their bellies against the shoulders of the generals and shoot, shoot, shoot … One of our cameramen brushes against the head of an American admiral with his camera. The admiral, obviously accustomed to the hectic activities of correspondents, laughs good naturedly and waves him aside: ‘Okay!’ But our stewards, who are not used to such behavior, would really prefer to show the poor fellow the door.“

Translated from: Konstantin M. Simonow, Kriegstagebüche, 2 vols., Berlin/DDR 1988, vol. II, p. 805

„With a hostile glance at the presidium Keitel quickly rose from his seat; he then lowered his eyes, slowly picked up his marshal’s baton from the table and approached our table with hesitant steps. His monocle fell off, swinging from its cord, and his face was covered with red spots. … After signing, Keitel rose, put on his right glove, and attempted to assume a strict military posture. He could not manage it, and quietly returned to his table.“

Translated from: Georgi K. Shukow, Erinnerungen. und Gedanken, 2 vols., Berlin/DDR 1983, vol. II, p. 363

„And suddenly all the tension in the room dissipates. It disappears as if everyone had been holding his breath for a long time and then at the same moment finally let it flow out of his lungs. A general sigh of relief and exhaustion fills the room. The surrender is confirmed, the war over.”

Translated from: Konstantin M. Simonow, Kriegstagebüche, 2 vols., Berlin/DDR 1988, vol. II, p. 807

„An hour later we returned to the room where the surrender had been signed, to find it all fully laid out for a large-scale banquet – and that meant six hours at least. There were bottles beside each plate – red wine, white wine, champagne, vodka, and brandy – as lethal a loading as one can imagine. It was not surprising that there were a number of alcoholic casualties. I was glad to note that none of them was British.“

From: Arthur Tedder, With Prejudice. The War Memoirs of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, London 1966, p. 686

„The banquet ended in the morning with singing and dancing. Here the Soviet generals were simply unbeatable. In the end I, too, could not resist, felt young again, and performed a Russian folk dance.“

Translated from: Georgi K. Shukow, Erinnerungen und Gedanken, 2 vols., Berlin/DDR 1983, vol. II, p. 364

REACTIONS

The surrender of the German Wehrmacht in May 1945 meant the end of the war in Europe. But World War II itself ended only with the surrender of Japan at the beginning of September 1945.

After the German surrender was announced on May 8, people worldwide celebrated the victory over German Fascism. There were spontaneous parades of jubilation in many cities. Such was the case on May 9 in Moscow, where the surrender was announced only after the signing in Berlin-Karlshorst.

The official end of the war in Europe, however, did not mean the end of the suffering. Armed conflicts continued in Eastern Europe well into the 1950s, primarily against Soviet hegemony. The consequences of the war were enormous across the entire continent. Many regions were devastated. Hunger and hardship prevailed almost everywhere. The war claimed 60 million victims. The Soviet Union alone lost more than 27 million people, including approximately 14 million civilians.

Although the material damage could be repaired little by little over the course of the following years, the physical and psychological impact of World War II affects people and societies up to the present.

“Yesterday morning something unforgettable happened. The Germans agreed to a complete, unconditional surrender. This was reported briefly but solemnly in the newspapers.”

Diary entry for May 10, 1945 by Vladimir Gelfand, of the Red Army. Source: Wladimir Gelfand, Deutschland-Tagebuch 1945–1946. Aufzeichnungen eines Rotarmisten, Berlin 2005, p. 85

“On May 8 we got the good news that the war was over and that Germany had surrendered, precisely three years after the destruction of the ghetto in Žaludok. Everyone was very excited, except for us, the few refugees in the city. For us and in us a tragedy slowly unfolded. We walked around aimlessly among the celebrators. I myself was extremely worried. Would I find any of my family alive at all? I had received no answers to the letters I had written during all that time, and in the meantime four months had already gone by since the liberation of my homeland. My fears increased with every moment.”

Moshe Beirach, a Jewish partisan. Source: Aus dem Ghetto in die Wälder. Bericht eines jüdischen Partisanen 1939–1945, Frankfurt a.M., p. 184 f.

“A few days after our return, shooting broke out in the evening just as in the worst days. My whole body began to tremble. All during the war I had held out wonderfully, always staying calm, only packing what was absolutely necessary when we fled to the cellar. Now, I thought, the war front is here again. The Germans are coming back. It is all going to start again. I threw whatever I could get hold of indiscriminately into my backpack. There are no words to describe how terrible I felt. Then someone called up from the courtyard: ‘The Russians are staging fireworks!’ They were firing in the air with whatever they had to shoot with – fireworks – peace fireworks.”

Memories of a woman from Prenzlauer Berg, quoted in: Antonia Meiners, Berlin 1945. Eine Chronik in Bildern, Berlin 2005, p. 70

LEGENDS AND FACTS

After 1945 the Cold War influenced the assessment of the two acts of surrender in Reims and Berlin-Karlshorst. Each side cultivated its own view of the historic events. Misinformation and legends have been persistently retained up to the present time.

• The German Wehrmacht surrendered to the Western Allies on May 7 in Reims and to the Soviet Armed Forces on May 8 in Karlshorst

Both acts took place before representatives of all the Allies, in other words, the British, U.S. and Soviet Armed Forces, with representatives of the French Armed Forces serving as witnesses.

• No surrender was signed in Reims but rather a preparatory protocol. The actual act of surrender took place on May 8 in Karlshorst.

The surrender in Reims was legally binding. The Soviets also saw it that way, but kept quiet about it during the Cold War.

• Stalin’s refusal to recognize the Reims surrender and his official protest led to a second ceremony in Karlshorst for the benefit of the public.

Already in Reims, the German delegation signed a supplementary protocol which specified ratification of the surrender by the commander in chief of the Wehrmacht and the supreme commanders of the three branches of the armed forces. Particularly the British insisted that the signature of the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command, Alfred Jodl, an officer without the power of command, be reinforced by the signatures of those with the power of command.

• Disputes among the Allies about the wording of the text led to a delay in signing until after midnight.

The delay in signing from the afternoon of May 8 to midnight had technical reasons: in Reims only an English language document had been signed. The transmission of the Russian translation was initially incomplete. The signing took place at about 0.45 a.m. Central European Summertime. According to Western European Time it was 23.45; according to Moscow time it was already 2.45 of the next morning. May 9, the date on which the surrender was announced in Moscow, is considered there as marking the official end of the war in Europe.

KARLSHORST AS A MUSEUM LOCATION

In 1967 a museum opened at the historic location of the end of the war. After 1945, the Soviet military had continued to use the former officers‘ mess. The so-called surrender museum had primarily in mind members of the Soviet military who were stationed in the German Democratic Republic. But it was also open to the general public.

With the departure of Soviet/Russian troops, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Russian Federation agreed in 1994 to retain the museum’s location, but to fundamentally revise its content.

The new museum opened in May 1995. It was supported by a registered society in which the initial membership consisted of German and Russian institutions. In the following years the World War II museums in Ukraine and Belarus were added.

Ever since Russia massively expanded its war against Ukraine in breach of international law on February 24, 2022, the museum has been confronted with principle questions: What could be an acceptable institutional foundation in the future? Which conceptional and substantive adaptions are required? A critical analysis of these questions continues with high priority.

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Museum Berlin-Karlshorst
Director: Dr. Jörg Morré
Concept: Dr. Babette Quinkert
Curators: Margot Blank, Dr. Jörg Morré, Dr. Babette Quinkert
Exhibition graphics: Christine Kitta
Translation: Susan Giegerich