Eisenhower.ĭönitz hoped negotiations would buy him time to get as many German people and troops as possible out of the path of the advancing Russians.
He quickly deputised Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations staff of the Armed Forces High Command, to negotiate the surrender of all German forces with General Dwight D. Dönitz was doomed not to rule a new Germany, but rather to orchestrate its dissolution. Hitler had designated Karl Dönitz, a naval admiral and ardent Nazi, as his successor in the event of his death. But it was still unclear how the military or political surrender signing would be orchestrated by the time Adolf Hitler died by suicide in a Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, and his dictatorship reached a bloody end. Due to warring ideologies, tussles between the Soviet Union and its allies, and the legacy of the First World War, Germany actually surrendered twice.Īs an Allied victory looked more and more certain in 19, the United States, U.S.S.R., France, and the United Kingdom bounced around ideas on the terms of a German surrender.
Or did it happen on May 9 in Berlin instead?īoth are true. On May 7, 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in Reims, France, ending World War II and the Third Reich.
