How It Ended

Germany's unconditional surrender was signed in a humble trade school of once-conquered, now liberated France.

In that plain red building in Reims, Supreme Commander Eisenhower had established advanced headquarters. To it came the German negotiators, headed by Colonel General Alfred Jodl, last chief of staff of the dissolving German Army, and General Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeberg, last commander in chief of the dissolved German Navy.

Eisenhower himself did not receive them. They did their talking to his chief of staff, brilliant Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith, and officers of the Russian, British and French armed services. The final discussions went on through the afternoon and evening: there were endless technical details to be set down, mainly to guarantee the orderly transmission of surrender instructions throughout the shattered German military machine. Finally, at 2:41 a.m. on May 7, at a long wooden table, in the bare, map-walled "war room," the surrender was signed.

Then, and only then, were the German envoys escorted down the hall to meet General Eisenhower. Sternly he put the question: did they fully understand the terms they had signed? Would Germany carry them out? They answered yes.

At the signing, Jodl had spoken the last words for Germany. Ramrod-stiff, in a voice that choked and almost broke he said:

"With this signature the German people and the German armed forces are, for better or worse, delivered into the victors' hands. In this war, which has lasted more than five years, both have achieved and suffered more than perhaps any other people in the world. In this hour I can only express the hope that the victors will treat them with generosity."

For Germany the war had ended, not with a bang but a whimper. It was a strangely quiet end to the final breath-taking week in which the German disaster had snowballed to an avalanche.

In that week Adolf Hitler's death had been announced, Berlin had fallen after twelve days of hideous street fighting. German armies had surrendered piecemeal, at a rate that staggered the imagination: an estimated 1,000,000 troops yielded up to Field Marshal Alexander in Italy, perhaps another million to Field Marshal Montgomery in north Germany, possibly 400,000 to General Devers in Austria.

The last confused, useless fighting in Europe was along the eastern front, where some panicky fanatics fired wildly at the dreaded Russians, and in Czechoslovakia, where patriots had risen to battle German troops for the capital city of Prague. There, a day after the overall surrender, a few last-ditch Nazis were still shooting, burning and looting.

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