It was in Reims that Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied expeditionary force in Europe, established his headquarters in February 1945. First installed in Versailles, the “General of the Army” chooses the Marne sub-prefecture in order to follow the front which was heading east of France. Other cities, such as Metz, Liège or Verdun, had also been envisaged by the one nicknamed Ike, but the German counter-offensive launched in the Ardennes will cool the allies.
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At the time, the German capital was occupied by the Soviets and the Anglo-Saxon Allied forces did not want to venture there. Following Several negotiations carried out with Winston Churchill, Eisenhower imposes his Reims HQ and this is where the very first act of German capitulation will be signed, shortly after the Wehrmacht debacle. “I think it is particularly symbolic that surrender was signed in the heart of France, this country where we landed in June and whose armed forces and resistance movements helped us so much” He declares, after the signing of the document, acting the capitulation of national-socialist Germany.
Four days after Hitler’s suicide, on April 30, 1945, the German army stretched. Several bodies of the Wehrmacht successively go to the Americans and the British, Holland, Denmark and Germany. On May 2, the III armed forcese Reich had already ceased the fight in northern Italy and in southern Austria.
For Hitler’s successor, Admiral Dönitz, the objective is to save what can be: namely the three million German soldiers who continue to fight against the Red Army on the Eastern Front, in Courland, in the Delta of the Vistula, as well as in Prague. On May 4, the German Admiral Von Friedeburg, sent by Dönitz, will obtain British Marshal Montgomery A partial capitulation, but Eisenhower will be inflexible and will impose on Germany a total and unable to surrender.
Dönitz bowed and General Jodl, chief of staff of the German high command, signed the capitulation act in Reims, on May 7 at 2:41 am, in the presence of the American general Walter Bedell Smith (representative of Eisenhower), British General Frederick Morgan, British Admiral Harold Burrough and the French General François Sevez, France. On the Soviet side, three high officers take place around the table, with the general underlop, head of the Soviet military mission in France, who will affix the signature of the Soviet Union on behalf. But Stalin will oppose the signing of this first act, not yet concerted with the Allied forces on the common declaration of the winning powers; He will consider that it will only be a unilateral and provisional act. It was then agreed with a new signature, this time final, on the evening of May 8, in Karlshorst, very close to Berlin.
Signed in the middle of the night, the capitulation act of May 7, 1945 was only written in one language: English, to the chagrin of General de Gaulle, chief of the free French forces.
