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In Europe, Germany surrendered twice, once in Reims (France) on May 7, 1945 to the Western powers and once in Karlshorst (close to Berlin) to the Soviet Union on May 8. Both surrenders were to become effective on May 8, 1945, at 11:01 p.m. Central European Time. This, and the time lag explains why the end of the war is variably given as May 7, 8, or 9.
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I was just reading about this this weekend, in an overview history of the war in Europe, No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945, by Norman Davies. Both the legal aspects of the German surrender, as well as the real-world implementation of the universal ceasefire, were marked by a degree of ambiguity. Here’s a distilled timeline of the surrender, paraphrased from his prose:
April 30, 1945: Shortly prior to his suicide, Hitler appoints Admiral Donitz his successor.
May 4: In Luneberg Heath, Montgomery receives an official delegation, resulting in all German forces in northern Germany laying down their arms.*
May 5: In Rheims, Eisenhower receives a delegation of emissaries from Donitz, who wished to surrender to the U.S. forces. Eisenhower rebuffed them, reminding them our goals were for a general unconditional surrender. The emissaries refused to sign to those terms at that time.
May 7, 0241 hours: The German delegation** signed the prepared document, meeting the Allies’ terms, requiring all German forces*** to cease fighting by 2300 hours on May 8. Churchill and Truman announce V-E Day to be celebrated on May 8.
Here’s what Davies writes of the second official surrender:
“Stalin, however, was having none of it. He judged the Rheims document to be invalid or ‘preliminary’. He wanted the act of unconditional surrender to be made to his own representatives. So another German delegation was obliged to repeat the performance at Karlhorst in Berlin at 2330 hours on the 8th. Due to the difference in time zones, Moscow had already entered the 9th. And Victory Day is celebrated in Russia on 9 May.”
Finally, it’s one thing to have a legal document but another to have a universal ceasefire in actuality:
“Even then the war was not completely over. There had been three surrenders, but no formal armistice and no legal peace. The ceasefire did not hold in all places. Germans and Soviets carried on fighting in Prague. And in all Soviet-occupied countries the NKVD was hunting down a variety of political opponents and freedom fighters. Admiral Donitz, who was technically a POW at large, continued to rule the non-existent Reich until he was arrested in Flensburg on 22 May. In these circumstances, it is difficult to say exactly where and when the Second World War in Europe ended.”
- Presumably this delegation agreed to the terms sought by the Allies: unconditional general surrender.
** Apparently the same one from Donitz rebuffed two days earlier. Strangely, despite his emissaries’ signing this document in his absence, the admiral himself was still leading the Reich and was now considered a POW-at-large, as Davies goes on to note.
***This wording specifying “German forces” is somewhat problematic because of the existence of non-German Axis forces allied with the Germans and of non-German nationals wearing German uniforms (as in the French and Dutch SS volunteer units), although there couldn’t have been many left with fighting capability in the European theater by the time the Germans surrendered. I don’t know if the leader of a military alliance can, in international law, surrender by proxy for all their allied forces, regardless of uniform, whether their allies consent to such a surrender or not. I’m sure this was largely a moot point, though; by the time of Germany’s defeat, the Allied advance had done a pretty thorough job of pacifying all of Europe, despite the odd outbreak of hostilities.