This instrument of surrender was signed on May 7, 1945, at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims by Gen. Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the German Army. At the same time, he signed three other surrender documents, one each for Great Britain, Russia, and France.
The unconditional surrender of the German Third Reich was signed in the early
morning hours of Monday, May 7, 1945 at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF) at Reims in northeastern France. Present were representatives
of the four Allied Powers—France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and
the United States—and the three Germany officers delegated by German President
Karl Doenitz—Gen. Alfred Jodl, who had alone been authorized to sign the
surrender document; Maj. Wilhelm Oxenius, an aide to Jodl; and Adm. Hans-Georg
von Friedeburg, one of the German chief negotiators. Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell
Smith, SHAEF chief of staff, led the Allied delegation as the representative
of General Eisenhower, who had refused to meet with the Germans until the surrender
had been accomplished. Other American officers present were Maj. Gen. Harold
R. Bull and Gen. Carl Spaatz.
After the signing of the Reims accord, Soviet chief of staff Gen. Alexei Antonov
expressed concern to SHAEF that the continued fighting in the east between Germany
and the Soviet Union made the Reims surrender look like a separate peace. The
Soviet command wanted the Act of Military Surrender, with certain additions
and alternations, to be signed at Berlin. To the Soviets, the documents signed
at Berlin on May 8, 1945, represented the official, legal surrender of the Third
Reich. The Berlin document had few significant changes from the one signed a
day earlier at Reims.
For more information, see Milestone Documents in the National Archives,
“Germany Surrenders” (Washington: National Archives Trust Fund Board,
1989), pp. 5–6, 8–9.
