After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (22 page)

General Eric von Straube was a career soldier, awarded the Iron Cross in the First World War, a divisional and then corps commander in the Second World War and a holder of the Knight’s Cross to the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. Von Straube seemed puzzled by Canadian informality. Before the war, Canada’s army had been made up of about 5,000 regulars and about 50,000 militiamen. By the end of it the armed forces had swelled to over a million soldiers, sailors and airmen – mostly carpenters, farmers, teachers and factory workers, who had trained hard in their new profession and had fought well against the Germans in the last year of the war.

On the return journey, from the back of the jeep, Von Straube tapped Brigadier Roberts on the shoulder and asked him his pre-war profession. Before Roberts could reply, the German general added, in a hopeful tone of voice, that he expected he had been a soldier. Roberts was silent for a moment, recalling the jobs he had drifted through. ‘No, I wasn’t a professional soldier,’ he said. ‘Very few Canadians were. In civilian life, I made ice cream.’

The surrender at Lüneburg Heath meant that Denmark’s war was now over. A token British and American force was flown into Copenhagen a day later, on 5 May, drawn from Montgomery’s army group and a SHAEF military mission, flying in on Dakota aircraft. War correspondent Alan Moorehead was among them:

While the cease-fire was still only a few hours old the aircraft took off – a dozen Dakotas, the fighter escort ranging high and wide on either side. Past Lübeck and Kiel and out over the Baltic. German ships seeing us coming ran up the white flag and turned apprehensively away. Then, one after another, the green Danish islands came into view. Every house on that liberation morning flew the national flag on a pole, the white cross on a red background, and from the air the effect was as if one were looking down on endless fields strewn with poppies.

Over the suburbs of Copenhagen there was at first not much movement in the streets … But then as we came lower they gathered confidence and poured out into the open. A thickening procession of cars and bicycles and pedestrians came careering down the road to the airfield. One after another the Dakotas slid into a landing between stationary German aircraft and drew up in line before the airport buildings. The airborne troops jumped down and with their guns ready advanced on the hangars. The scene did for a moment look slightly ominous, especially as none of us knew what to expect. Armed German guards were spaced along the runways. Two German officers stood stiffly in front of the central office and began to advance towards the landing aircraft. General Dewing, the leader of our mission, met them halfway. In two minutes it was clear: we would have no trouble in Denmark.

By the terms agreed at Lüneburg, the whole of Holland was also free. On Saturday, 5 May, at 5.00 p.m., war correspondents were summoned to witness the surrender of the German commander in Holland, General Johannes Blaskowitz, to the Canadian lieutenant general Charles Foulkes. One of these, John Hodson, recalled:

‘That afternoon we assembled in the empty bar and restaurant of a partly destroyed hotel at Wageningen where the surrender terms were to be formally ratified. The windows were out, brickwork near one window was precarious. Men were busy fixing up a BBC microphone and electric lamps for photographs. The room was dusty and dirty – and a litter of basket chairs were strewn about.’

Both sides had gathered in the Hotel de Wereweld in the centre of town. Trestle tables had been set up in the hotel dining room. Hodson continued:

Proceedings were brisk, but there was nothing grim, no attempt to humiliate … Indeed, at times the atmosphere was rather akin to a business board meeting. The terms held many interesting points. The Germans must accept further orders without argument or comment. The Dutch SS must be disarmed and the Germans be responsible for their behaviour. The Germans would guard all the pumps at the dykes until Allied troops took over. Among General Foulkes’ admirably blunt remarks was: ‘I want to make clear only one person will give orders and that is me’.

Foulkes read out each condition, Blaskowitz showing his approval either by giving a nod or saying ‘understood’. Occasionally the wording of the text was amended or items within it changed. The agreement was signed at 4.04 p.m. and cooperation between victor and vanquished was quickly in evidence – even as Hodson left he noticed that already ‘the Canadian and German staff officers are getting their heads together over the practical details’. Blaskowitz’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Paul Reichelt, produced a map showing the dispositions and strength of the Germans in western Holland. They numbered 120,000.

Under instructions from Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, the Germans were told that they would now receive orders from either the Canadians or the German commander, Field Marshal Busch. Unconditional surrender meant that enemy troops straight away became prisoners of war and were held in camps. That was how the Russians put the surrender into effect at Berlin. But the Lüneburg Heath agreement had created a dual chain of command.

Under the terms of the surrender agreement at Wageningen, which followed that of Lüneburg, General Blaskowitz remained ‘responsible for the maintenance and discipline of all German troops in western Holland’. The Wehrmacht still retained a formidable presence and Dutch civilians were bewildered to see, in the first few days of liberation, ‘armed Canadian troops going up one side of the road and armed Germans going down the other side, neither interfering with each other’.

There were a number of practical reasons for this. Locating German soldiers, guarding and escorting them and then disarming them was tedious and very unpopular work. The enormous numbers of surrendered Wehrmacht troops far exceeded Allied food and manpower resources. Keeping much of the German military structure intact kept the Wehrmacht self-sufficient and reliant on its own food stocks and meant that the Germans could support the Allies in maintaining law and order. And yet its risks were obvious.

To justify it, a rather uneasy legal formula was used. Following further instruction from Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, the 1st Canadian Army announced that surrendering enemy soldiers ‘would not be classified as prisoners of war, but instead be given the status of capitulated troops’. The position of these ‘capitulated troops’ could then be decided through negotiation. Such negotiation could determine whether troop formations were disbanded – and in the intervening period how many of them remained armed.

Montgomery had drifted away from the unconditional surrender policy that was the bedrock of the Grand Alliance. Underlying the technical definitions was an unprecedented alteration of international law. Canadian troops did not now regard their adversaries as prisoners of war but as ‘Surrendered Enemy Personnel [SEP]’, as the 1st Canadian Army made clear:

‘In view of the very large number of German troops now surrendering, commanders are authorized to place such troops in the status of “disarmed German forces”. These German forces will not be characterized as “prisoners of war”. After disarmament these surrendered German units may be kept organisationally intact and to the extent deemed advisable by Allied Command required to administer and maintain themselves.’

These arrangements worked well in practice. At the town of Julianadorp, the Germans marched in fully armed, wheeled into the airfield along one road and halted. Canadian soldiers merely collected and stacked German weapons. German war material was sorted, stored and guarded. Sometimes German formations moved unescorted into designated concentration areas; on other occasions they remained in their own barracks.

However, this situation created real problems internationally. The Soviet Union refused to allow surrendered Wehrmacht units to stay in being and automatically destroyed their equipment. They expected their Western allies to do the same. But the 1st Canadian Army now stated that ‘until further orders all German officers will be permitted to carry a personal weapon’ and that German military police would also remain armed. Recognising the sensitivity of such instructions, it was emphasised that: ‘These weapons will NOT repeat NOT be displayed but will be carried in a pocket.’

This was indeed a liberal interpretation of unconditional surrender. Article 1 of the 1929 Geneva Convention clearly conferred prisoner-of-war status on ‘all persons belonging to the armed forces of belligerent parties, captured by the enemy in the course of military operations’. General Eisenhower was concerned enough to warn Canadian officials that ‘there should be no, repeat no, public declaration regarding the status of German armed forces or disarmed troops’. The Russians got to hear of it anyway. The so-called ‘Stacking order’, whereby Wehrmacht troops were kept in formation and their weapons merely stored rather than destroyed, and in some cases retained for use, would seriously damage relations between East and West in the last days of the war.

The surrender at Wageningen was complete. Throughout its proceedings Lieutenant General Reichelt (General Blaskowitz’s chief of staff) had, in the words of one correspondent, ‘exuded a dignified gloom’. But when one Canadian officer mentioned that the air force had been chasing his headquarters for a long time, the German chief of staff grinned broadly and replied: ‘I know – you got me out of bed twice!’

When Canadian troops finally inspected this headquarters, within the small Dutch town of Hilversum, it was indeed impressive. The command post was a 400-foot-square concrete bunker, with walls 10 feet thick. It was well camouflaged and appeared largely untouched, although the houses around it were smashed and crumbling. Inside were a dozen or so rooms, each with its own office space, a bed and some maps. They were air-conditioned, with fluorescent lighting – and adorned with masses of flowers and Dutch paintings.

With terms with the Germans agreed, on 6 May the Seaforth Highlanders (a regiment of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division) received orders to proceed forward. Although Wehrmacht troop formations were still in existence, the Canadians were now moving into western Holland as liberators. ‘We are now going into Amsterdam,’ the regimental combat journal noted, ‘and will be the first unit to travel into the newly liberated area.’ Over the next few days Canadian soldiers moved slowly towards their newly designated occupation zones, with enthusiastic Dutch crowds swamping their columns at almost every crossroads and roadside stop.

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Bell-Irving, commander of the Seaforth Highlanders, described their entry into Amsterdam: ‘The universal happiness amounted to an ecstasy which I have never seen or even approached in any crowd before. Before this, few of our men could have given a clear reason why they came. But here in Amsterdam, in one day, all that was changed. Every life lost, every long day away from home, had been spent in a good and necessary endeavour.’

Brigadier Geoffrey Hardy-Roberts, chief of staff to General Miles Dempsey, commander of the British 2nd Army, was in the Netherlands on 6 May with the Red Cross Commission. He wrote:

I heard the actual Dutch announcement, ending with the words ‘Nederland is frei!’ Within ten minutes, the streets were full of people and flags with orange streamers were being hung out of all the windows. At first the crowds were quiet, but gradually they began to cheer and sing and as their numbers increased the excitement grew …

They sang for hours on end, the Dutch and British national anthems, Tipperary, marching songs, folk songs, everything that came into their heads. Meanwhile, along the main road to the north, a stream of heavy lorries was lumbering past, carrying food and other supplies, and it was thrilling to think that they would be arriving next morning in towns which it had been impossible to reach until the last few days.

There is absolutely no rowdy behaviour or disorder. They are just irrepressibly happy and it is a joy to see.

Flares, like fairy lights, shimmer between the trees. Seeing liberation at first hand like this, one realizes something of what it means. It is the end of a nightmare. The future of Holland is full of problems … but nothing of this matters at the moment in comparison to the fact that they are free, their country is their own again – and the fear that has hung over them for five years is gone at last.

The German surrender at Lüneburg Heath, following swiftly after that in Italy, prompted a happy telegram from Winston Churchill to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, in San Francisco: ‘More than a quarter of a million Germans have surrendered to our British commanders on three successive days … quite a satisfactory incident in our military history.’

On 4 May the world press announced: ‘Field Marshal Montgomery has won his greatest triumph. He reported to General Eisenhower last night that all the German forces in northwest Germany, Holland and Denmark have surrendered to the 21st Army Group.’ The surrender was to take effect at 8.00 a.m. the following morning. SHAEF had clarified that this was a battlefield surrender, involving the forces facing Montgomery’s army group on its northern and western flanks. It was far more than that. German-occupied Holland and Denmark had also surrendered. More than a million men had been taken into custody.

The press delineated Montgomery’s achievements. The Germans had failed in their plan to split the Allies by offering to the British the surrender of their troops facing the Russians. ‘This offer was resolutely refused by Field Marshal Montgomery.’ Because more than a million men were involved, it was the biggest surrender of the war. And that war was virtually at an end. It was added: ‘The present surrender means the war in Europe is almost over. There are now only two German-held pockets of any size – Western Czechoslovakia and Norway. The others are Dresden and Breslau inside Germany, four ports on the French coast, the Channel Islands, Latvia and a small group in East Prussia.’

The sequence of events had occurred with breathless rapidity.