Page 512 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

512 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

four days in order to allow as many military personnel and civilians alike as possible
to flee the sphere of influence of the Red Army. 55 General Walter Bedell Smith,
who, as Eisenhowers Chief of Staff, was responsible for negotiating with the Germans,
still insisted on the terms of surrender as laid down in the Casablanca Conference.
Facing this, Jodl, who did not have authorization for signing an unconditional sur-
render – had no other choice than to send a telegram to Dönitz in Flensburg: “General
Eisenhower insists that we sign today. If not the Allied front lines will be shut to those
persons attempting to surrender individually, and all negotiations will be broken off. I
see no other options but signature or chaos. Request immediate wirelessed confirmation
whether I have the full authority to sign the capitulation. The capitulation can then come
into force. Hostilities will cease on 9 May at 0000 hrs German summer time.” 56
After discussing this issue with his staff in a meeting that lasted until midnight,
Dönitz resigned himself to this situation and authorized Jodl to sign the surrender in-
57
strument. Jodl finally signed the surrender on May 7, 1945 at 0241. Jodl also had to
sign another document in which he, act- ing on behalf of the Dönitz government, was
obliged to sign another surrender instrument at a place and date designated by the Al-
58
lies. At this second ceremony, the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht and Commander
in Chief of Army General Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel as well as the Commanders
in Chief of the Air Force Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff and the Navy General
Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, had to surrender formally to the Allies. This
second surrender ceremony took place in the morning hours of May 9, 1945 in the So-
viet Headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst.
Although the European Advisory Commission had agreed to a draft proposal of
the surrender documents, it was never used. Hence, the surrender of Germany had all
the characteristics of a hastily improvised event. Though Walter Bedell Smith, Eisen-
hower’s Chief of Staff, had been at- tending the meetings of the EAC and thus had cog-
nizance of the surrender document, he created his own surrender document which was
signed by Alfred Jodl on this May 7, 1945. The reason why Smith in the end created
his own version of a surrender document can be explained with a mélange of complex
reasons. Despite the fact that the “Big Three” had agreed to a surrender document, the
agreement became worthless, when France was welcomed as another ally on October
23, 1944. 59

55 See KTB OKW, Vol. IV / 2, p. 1479 – 1481

56 Quoted after Walter Lüdde-Neurath, Unconditional Surrender: A Memoir of the Last Days of the Third Reich

and the Dönitz Administration (Barnsley: Frontline, 2010)., p. 56, the German original is printed in KTB
OKW, Vol. IV / 2, p. 1481
57 See KTB OKW, Vol. IV / 2, p. 1481 – 1482

58 See KTB OKW, Vol. IV / 2, p. 1481 – 1482; further Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in
Western Europe, 1944-1945 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2013)., p. 629; D. K. R. Crosswell, Beetle: The
life of General Walter Bedell Smith, American warriors (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010)., p.
917

59 See Wilfried Loth, “Die deutsche Frage und der Wandel des internationalen Systems,” in Der Zusammenbruch
des Deutschen Reiches: Die Folgen des Weltkrieges, ed. Rolf-Dieter Müller, Das Deutsche Reich und der
Zweite Weltkrieg 10/2 (München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2008), 201–378., p. 274