After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (41 page)

The children were very much in people’s minds. Some had suffered the terror of bombing and the V1 and V2 rockets. Some had been evacuated – and then later returned to their homes. Now they represented hope for the future. Shirley Cheves, who spent her childhood in wartime Lincoln, was also smartly dressed for the party she attended. ‘I wore my red parachute silk dress with the blue and white braid,’ she said proudly, ‘and we all had our picture taken together.’ A teacher in Thornaby-on-Tees observed: ‘People have gone to great trouble to give enjoyment to their children – red, white and blue dresses (I see three beautifully made from bunting). Decorated tricycles, toy motor cars …’

Mollie Panter-Downes wrote: ‘It was a day and night of no fixed plan – each group danced its own dance, sang its own song, and went its own way, as the spirit moved it. The most tolerant people on VE Day were the police, who simply stood by, smiling benignly, while soldiers swung by one arm from the lamp posts and laughing groups tore down hoardings to build the evening’s bonfire.’

Later that evening floodlights were switched on all over London. One woman, an office worker who lived on the Edgware Road, returned home that night after a party and wrote in her diary:

I came back and went up on our flat roof, from which my husband and I had so often watched fires flaring up in a ring around London We had seen explosions, listened to the sounds of bombs, planes and guns during the ‘Little Blitz’ of spring 1944. We had watched the buzz bombs with their flaming tails careering over the houses before the final bang. And now there were floodlit flags and lights in the windows. It all seemed too good to be true.

As I looked up at the sky, fireworks began to crackle around the horizon and the red glow of distant bonfires lit up the sky – peaceful joyous fires now, in place of the terrifying ones of last year. Towards midnight the fireworks reached a climax and there were more fires on the horizon. It was a warm, starlit night but just after midnight a streak of summer lightning joined the other illuminations and strangely enough, looked rather like a V sign flashing in the sky.

Yet not all Europe was peaceful. As Prague fought for its survival, uprisings had begun in other parts of the Czech lands. The country was awash with insurgents, retreating Germans and advancing Red Army troops. On 8 May South African POW Dave Brokensha was in a marching column in Czechoslovakia. Brokensha had been captured at Tobruk and then held in a prison camp near Dresden. As the Red Army approached the men had been evacuated south, across the border. The column of over 700 POWs – in a no-man’s-land between US and Red Army forces – was mistakenly bombed and machine-gunned in three sorties by Russian dive bombers and fighters. Brokensha received a hand wound, but it was not serious. A small group – Brokensha among them – managed to escape the column and walked through a desolate landscape, littered with corpses and dead horses. The following day they at last managed to reach the safety of the American lines.

Supreme Allied Command was now honouring its commitment to the second surrender ceremony in Berlin. The delegation of Western Allies had reached Karlshorst in the early afternoon. It had been decided that Eisenhower would be represented by Air Chief Marshal Tedder. But before the delegation had set off, Eisenhower took further action to repair the breach with Russia. He sent an urgent recommendation to both the American and British governments, along the following lines:

With reference to the message from the Russian High Command [the one objecting to the initial surrender] forwarded to both governments, referring to the possibility of the Germans continuing to fight against the Russians after the agreed upon hour for the cessation of hostilities, I recommend as a matter of urgency that both governments send a message along the following lines to the Russian High Command:

The unconditional surrender of Germany was made jointly to Russia and to the Allied Forces and any continuation of hostilities, after the agreed upon hour for cessation, is an offence jointly against Russia and the western allies. Consequently, if any sizeable bodies of German forces make any such attempt, they will no longer have the status of soldiers.

You may be assured that General Eisenhower will, under such circumstances, continue to co-operate closely with the Red Army, looking toward the elimination of such bodies and operating along such lines as may be indicated to him as desirable by the Russian High Command. We do not accept that any German forces may continue to fight against the Red Army without in effect fighting our own troops also.

I think that some such assurance as this would be beneficial – particularly in view of the fact that it seems inescapable that the announcement [of VE Day] must be made today by Britain and America, and which the Russians feel should be postponed until tomorrow, the 9th.

This was Eisenhower at his best – proactive, clear, firm and generous. There is little doubt that this reassurance eased the tension between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

As Eisenhower took this precaution, Field Marshal Schörner was broadcasting his own response to the Rheims signing:

Soldiers of Army Group Centre, false rumours are being spread that the Reich’s government is willing to surrender to the Anglo-Americans and also the Soviet Union. This is an evil lie – and one that must never undermine our will to resist, which is directed implacably against the east. Loyal to the orders issued by Admiral Dönitz, the fight against the Bolsheviks will continue until all Germans are safe. The struggle in the west, however, is over. But there can be no question of surrender to the Bolsheviks – that would mean death to all of us.

With these false rumours about capitulation, the Red enemy is trying to undermine our resistance. It is all a propaganda trick. Standing proud and upright, we continue our sworn duty. Neither the few cowards and traitors in our own ranks, or the slogans of the enemy, can break our power.

The undefeated troops of Army Group Centre will fight on heroically!

Still it was the same Nazi fanaticism, replete with the same dangerous lies. But this would be Schörner’s last broadcast. A Red Army specialist unit had moved into Czechoslovakia and was tracking the movements of his headquarters. Colonel Vasily Buslaev’s fast armoured reconnaissance troops had located Schörner and his army staff in the town of Zatec by monitoring its transmissions. They wanted to disrupt Army Group Centre’s organisation and, if possible, capture Schörner himself. Buslaev’s men launched a surprise attack. They captured nine generals, a host of officers and documents and equipment, but there was no sign of Schörner. One of the German generals said contemptuously: ‘He slipped away with his Czech-speaking adjutant, changed into civilian clothes and went off to try and find the Americans. There will be no more heroic stands from him.’

On 8 May President Truman celebrated his sixty-first birthday. He had made the American victory announcement from the Radio Room of the White House at 9.00 a.m. east coast time.

‘This is a solemn but glorious hour,’ Truman began. ‘I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness it. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered … The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.’

The president struck a sombre tone. ‘Our rejoicing is sobered and subdued by a supreme consciousness of the terrible price we have paid to rid the world of Hitler and his evil band … We must work to finish the war. Our victory is but half-won. The West is free, but the east is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese. When the last Japanese division has surrendered unconditionally, only then will our fighting job be done.’

Nevertheless, the mood in Washington was a happy one. Major Keith Wakefield of the Australian Military Mission remembered that ‘the lawns around the Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson monuments were teeming with joyous people’. In New York there were scenes of celebration in Times Square throughout the day – and ticker tape came down on the crowd. In Louisiana, Anne Ralph recalled being on a train ‘and hearing bells ringing as we went through the little towns … I didn’t know what was going on until the train stopped and someone told us the war in Europe had ended. In New Orleans people were literally dancing in the streets. They were singing, dancing, jumping in and out of fountains. It was like the Mardi Gras – and just this incredible sense of relief that part of our war, anyway, was finished.’

In San Francisco a young journalist named John F. Kennedy filed a dispatch on VE-Day to the
New York Journal.
The paper noted that as a navy lieutenant in the Pacific he had been decorated for bravery against the Japanese and that he was the son of former ambassador to Britain Joseph Kennedy. In ‘A Serviceman’s View’, John Kennedy noted that San Francisco had taken VE-Day in its stride.

‘This city overlooks the Pacific and to the people here “the war” has always been the war against the Japanese,’ Kennedy began. ‘The servicemen who crowd the streets have taken it calmly. The war in the Pacific is the only war that most of them have ever known – and when you have just come home from long months of fighting and are returning to the war zones in a few days, it is difficult to become excited about “the end of the war”. Victory for them is a long way off.’

But then Kennedy addressed the United Nations conference. Here, he believed, news of the end of the war in Europe would act as a stimulant to all the delegates convened there. And he spoke perceptively about Russia:

The question of the Soviet Union had dominated the conference. Molotov’s work was about done. He leaves the other delegates divided in their attitude toward him and the entire Russian policy. Some are extremely suspicious, while on the other hand, there is a group which has great confidence that the Russians in their own strange and inexplicable way really want peace.

The arguments of these delegates boil down to this: It starts with an assumption that a nation can usually be depended upon to act in its own best interests. In this case, Russia needs peace more than anything else. To get this peace, she feels she needs security. No-one must be able to invade her again. The Russians have a far greater fear of a German come-back than we do. They are therefore going to make their western defences secure. No governments hostile to Russia will be permitted in the countries along her borders. They feel they have earned this right to security. They mean to have it, come what may.

At Allied Supreme Headquarters, General Dwight Eisenhower sensed that he had mastered the storm. Others would have lacked his patience, humility and integrity. Eisenhower confided his inner thoughts about this sudden crisis in the Grand Alliance to his friend and patron General George Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army:

A group of my representatives, headed by my deputy supreme commander, have just departed for Berlin to sign, in company with Marshal Zhukov, the formal instrument of military surrender. The meeting, completely concurred with by the Russians, finally relieves my mind of the anxiety that I have had due to the danger of misunderstanding and trouble at the last meeting [the Rheims surrender signing].

This anxiety has been intensified by very skilful German propaganda that was inspired by the German desire to surrender to us instead of the Russians. All the evidence shows that the Germans in the east are being paid back in the same coin that they used in their Russian campaigns of 1941 and 1942 and they are now completely terrified – individually and collectively – of Russian vengeance.

If it is true, as alleged, that the head of the Associated Press Bureau here broke the pledge of secrecy under which he was permitted to witness negotiations, and in addition, used commercial lines out of Paris merely to get a scoop for his company, then he was guilty of something that might have had the most unfortunate repercussions, involving additional loss of American lives.

To be perfectly frank, the last four days just passed have taken more out of me and my staff than the past eleven months of this campaign. However, as noted above, I am at last reasonably certain that in so far as hostilities are concerned, the Russians and ourselves are now in complete understanding and the meeting today should be marked by cordiality.

But there was one last problem – the alteration of the original treaty (signed at Rheims) by the provision of an additional clause concerning the immediate surrender of German weapons and troops. The Germans were justified in asserting that the original text was the one binding under international law. When Field Marshal Keitel was given a copy of the new surrender text, at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, this crucial interpolation was heavily underscored and a note in the margin stated ‘New!’

Keitel made it clear to Zhukov that he would not sign the revised surrender terms unless further clarification was provided. He stated:

The basic modification was the interpolation of a clause threatening to punish troops who failed to cease fire and surrender at the time provided. I told the interpreter that I demanded to speak to a representative from Marshal Zhukov, as I would not sign such an interpolation unconditionally.

I explained that I was objecting because I could not guarantee that our cease fire orders would be received in time, with the result that the troops’ commanders might feel justified in failing to comply with any demands to that effect. I demanded that a [further] clause be written in that the surrender would only come into force twenty-four hours after the orders had been received by our troops; only then would the penalty clause take effect.

About an hour later Zhukov’s representative was back with the news that the Marshal had agreed to twelve hours’ grace being given.