Crusade in Europe

by Dwight D. Eisenhower

  I had already told Montgomery to accept the military surrender of all forces in his allotted zone of operations. Such a capitulation would be a tactical affair and the responsibility of the commander on the spot. Consequently, when Admiral Friedeburg returned to Montgomery’s headquarters on May 4 with a proposal to surrender all German forces in northwest Germany, including those in Holland and Denmark, Montgomery instantly accepted. The necessary documents were signed that day and became effective the following morning.34 When Devers and Montgomery received these great surrenders they made no commitments of any kind that could embarrass or limit our governments in future decisions regarding Germany; they were purely military in character, nothing else.

  On May 5 a representative of Doenitz arrived in my headquarters. We had received notice of his coming the day before. At the same time we were informed that the German Government had ordered all of its U-boats to return to port. I at once passed all this information to the Russian high command and asked them to designate a Red Army officer to come to my headquarters as the Russian representative in any negotiations that Doenitz might propose. I informed them that I would accept no surrender that did not involve simultaneous capitulation everywhere. The Russian high command designated Major General Ivan Suslaparov.35

  Field Marshal von Kesselring, commanding the German forces on the western front, also sent me a message, asking permission to send a plenipotentiary to arrange terms of capitulation. Since Von Kesselring had authority only in the West, I replied that I would enter into no negotiations that did not involve all German forces everywhere.36

  When Admiral Friedeburg arrived at Reims on May 5 he stated that he wished to clear up a number of points. On our side negotiations were conducted by my chief of staff, General Smith. The latter told Friedeburg there was no point in discussing anything, that our purpose was merely to accept an unconditional and total surrender. Friedeburg protested that he had no power to sign any such document. He was given permission to transmit a message to Doenitz, and received a reply that General Jodl was on his way to our headquarters to assist him in negotiations.

  To us it seemed clear that the Germans were playing for time so that they could transfer behind our lines the largest possible number of German soldiers still in the field. I told General Smith to inform Jodl that unless they instantly ceased all pretense and delay I would close the entire Allied front and would, by force, prevent any more German refugees from entering our lines. I would brook no further delay in the matter.

  Finally Jodl and Friedeburg drafted a cable to Doenitz requesting authority to make a complete surrender, to become effective forty-eight hours after signing. Had I agreed to this procedure the Germans could have found one excuse or another for postponing the signature and so securing additional delay. Through Smith, I informed them that the surrender would become effective forty-eight hours from midnight of that day; otherwise my threat to seal the western front would be carried out at once.

  Doenitz at last saw the inevitability of compliance and the surrender instrument was signed by Jodl at two forty-one in the morning of May 7. All hostilities were to cease at midnight May 8.37

  After the necessary papers had been signed by Field Marshal Jodl and General Smith, with the French and Russian representatives signing as witnesses, Field Marshal Jodl was brought to my office. I asked him through the interpreter if he thoroughly understood all provisions of the document he had signed.

  He answered, “Ja.”

  I said, “You will, officially and personally, be held responsible if the terms of this surrender are violated, including its provisions for German commanders to appear in Berlin at the moment set by the Russian high command to accomplish formal surrender to that government. That is all.”

  He saluted and left.

  Chapter 22

  VICTORY’S

  AFTERMATH

  UNDER THE TERMS OF THE SURRENDER DOCUMENT the heads of the German armed services were required to appear in Berlin on May 9 to sign a ratification in the Russian headquarters. The second ceremony was, as we understood it, to symbolize the unity of the Western Allies and the Soviets, to give notice to the Germans and to the world that the surrender was made to all, not merely to the Western Allies.1 For this reason we were directed to withhold news of the first signing until the second could be accomplished.

  In order that American and British newsmen could have the full story of the Reims surrender, we invited a number to be present at the ceremony. In accepting the invitation they agreed to withhold publication until the story could be officially given out under the agreements among the Allies. One American reporter published the story before the release hour, which infuriated other newsmen who kept faith. The incident created a considerable furor, but in the outcome no real harm was done, except to other publications.2

  The Western Allies were invited and expected to participate in the signing at Berlin, but I felt it inappropriate for me personally to go. The Germans had already appeared in the Allied Headquarters to accomplish their unconditional surrender and I thought the ratification in Berlin should be a Soviet affair. Consequently I designated my deputy, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, to represent me at that ceremony. It was difficult business to make all the detailed arrangements concerning timing, the numbers and classifications of individuals allowed to attend, and the routes to be followed by our planes over Russian-occupied territory. However, these were accomplished and Tedder kept the appointment, accompanied by two or three planeloads of officers, enlisted men, Wacs, and press representatives.3 Some months later I saw in Moscow a movie film portraying the highlights of the Berlin ceremony. No mention was made in the film of the prior surrender at Reims.

  My “Victory Order of the Day” looked forward with hope to co-operative solutions of postwar problems. After thanking the troops and the home fronts for their unfailing support I said:

  The route you have traveled through hundreds of miles is marked by the graves of former comrades. Each of the fallen died as a member of the team to which you belong, bound together by a common love of liberty and a refusal to submit to enslavement. Our common problems of the immediate and distant future can be best solved in the same conceptions of co-operation and devotion to the cause of human freedom as have made this Expeditionary Force such a mighty engine of righteous destruction.

  Let us have no part in the profitless quarrels in which other men will inevitably engage as to what country, what service, won the European war. Every man, every woman, of every nation here represented has served according to his or her ability, and the efforts of each have contributed to the outcome. This we shall remember—and in doing so we shall be revering each honored grave, and be sending comfort to the loved ones of comrades who could not live to see this day.4

  We had no local victory celebrations of any kind, then or later. When Jodl signed we merely went to bed for some much-needed rest, to get up the next day and tackle the multitude of tasks that followed upon the cessation of hostilities. Thereafter, however, all our work was done in the satisfying knowledge that the carnage in Europe had ended. Our problems were difficult but we were spared casualty lists.

  The most intricate and pressing of our immediate problems was redeployment.

  Ever since 1941 the global strategy of the Allies had insisted upon defeat of Germany before undertaking an all-out concerted offensive against the Japanese. The German surrender on May 7 marked the accomplishment of the first and greatest Allied objective.

  Now it was time to turn with all speed to the second. Throughout the world Allied forces were released for operations against the oriental end of the Axis. Russia was still officially at peace with the Japanese but, according to the information furnished us, Generalissimo Stalin had told President Roosevelt at Yalta that within three months from the day of the German surrender the Red Army would join in the attack against Japan.

  Against divided hostile forces more than one leader of the past has successfully employed mobility and surpr
ise to concentrate his own forces first against one isolated portion of the enemy and, after defeating it, turned with overwhelming power to the destruction of the second. Never before, however, had this simple method of war been applied on a scale broader than continental in scope. But the conception was just as correct globally as it was locally, and the Allied leaders responsible for its application in World War II were not dismayed because the planned redeployment against the second enemy involved the transport of millions of men and unlimited quantities of equipment from Europe halfway around the world to Japan.

  Russian redeployment meant the shifting of large forces from west to east over the long Trans-Siberian Railway. Because only the one railroad system was available, that task was laborious and would take time to accomplish. But for the Western Allies the transfer of their European armies and air forces to the Asiatic theater was a stupendous undertaking, involving hundreds of ships operating over sea routes ten thousand miles long.

  As early as February 1945 we had begun to develop plans to accomplish this move. There was continuous consultation between members of my staff and the War Department. By V-E Day, schedules, priorities, and organizational preparation were sufficiently advanced for us to begin the mass transfer to the Pacific.

  Several factors made still harder a problem that was at best a very complex business. Adequate strength had to be maintained in Europe for the occupation of conquered Germany. The immediately critical requirements in the Asiatic theater were for service units, while our own need for these same units was more acute than ever before if we were speedily to accomplish the shipment of combat divisions to the Far East. Even greater difficulty grew out of our policy of equalizing the burdens of combat service among the millions of individuals in the command.

  On the day of the surrender there were, in the great Allied Force, more than 3,000,000 Americans under my command. This force included sixty-one U. S. divisions, all except one of which had participated in actual battle.5

  Men with the longest battle service were to be assigned to occupation duty or sent home; others were to go on to the Pacific. Many of our divisions were veterans of eleven months’ continuous fighting, while some, among them the 1st, 3d, 9th, 36th, and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 82d Airborne and 2d Armored Divisions, had entered the war in the Mediterranean campaign. The older ones had fought with only brief interruptions for two and a half years. The 34th Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions, still in the Mediterranean theater, had done likewise.

  To make necessary adjustments required wholesale transfers from many of the veteran divisions and the filling up of vacancies by men with shorter battle service. At the same time we had to be extremely careful to preserve the efficiency of units; to have sent to the Pacific whole divisions of near recruits would have been senseless.

  The individual soldier’s eligibility for duty or discharge was determined by an elaborate point system, based on credits for length of service, length of time overseas, decorations, parenthood, and age. Application of the system was tedious, but probably no better plan could have been devised to accommodate the conflicting considerations of fairness to the individual and the efficiency of units. An added difficulty arose when the War Department found it advisable to change the “critical point” score. This created additional work, to say nothing of confusion and some discontent.6

  Our administrative machine in Europe had to be thrown into reverse. Bases, fields, depots, ports, roads, and railways were geared up to push men and supply forward into the heart of Germany. They had, figuratively, to face about and begin operating in the other direction. Supplies and munitions were scattered throughout western Europe and through much of Italy and northern Africa. These had to be collected, inventoried, packaged, and shipped. Speed was the primary consideration.

  So vast and urgent was this single undertaking that we set up a special headquarters with no other responsibility than to guide, supervise, and expedite the movement. That headquarters was formally established on April 9, a full month before the German surrender.7

  Because of his unequaled experience in the handling of vast bombing campaigns, General Spaatz was relieved from duty in our theater and sent to the Pacific. An experienced army commander was also desired in the Far East. General Hodges, whose First Army had accomplished its final task in Europe when it reached the Elbe, was selected. He was not only completely competent and experienced but, among our army commanders, could be earliest spared from our theater. He departed from the battle front for the Pacific, by way of the United States, before the surrender date in Europe.

  This problem, big as it was, did not by any means comprise the bulk of the work devolving upon the American forces and responsible commanders. With the end of hostilities the Western Allies had to begin making arrangements for breaking up the great combat force into its national elements. The governments had rejected my repeated recommendation that the Western Allies occupy their portion of Germany on a unified basis. My plan was considered politically inexpedient, although I urged that, since occupation would be a residual task of the war and would require armies of the Western Allies for its accomplishment, there could be no reasonable objection to the maintenance, in western Germany, of the same Allied organization that had attained victory. The question was, however, clearly a political one, and our governmental leaders believed that my plan would be subject to unfortunate misinterpretation by the Soviet Union.8

  Separation meant that we had to sort out all our complicated and highly integrated staffs, organizations, and procedures in order to meet the new requirements of national administration and responsibility. Almost all French and some British supply depended upon American stocks and facilities. With the anticipated end of Lend-Lease, detailed accounting systems had to be established in order to handle this work on a business instead of a war basis.

  Military government had quickly to be installed over the recently overrun sections of Germany. Add to all this the never-ending volume of administrative detail incident to the control of the vast Allied Force in the West and it is easy to understand the remark of an overworked staff officer who said: “I always thought that when the Germans finally surrendered I would celebrate by going on a big binge. Now I’m taking aspirin every day—without the fun of looking back on the binge!”

  We were so preoccupied in the daily grind of work that we were largely unaware of the enthusiasms sweeping our own countries.

  My own failure to estimate popular reaction was typical of many others. Shortly after the German surrender it occurred to me that 1945 would mark the thirtieth anniversary of the graduation of my classmates and myself from West Point, and I planned a brief and private celebration for those of us who were serving in Europe. I believed that we could fly to the United States, spend one day at West Point’s graduation exercises, and be back on duty in Germany with a total absence of only three days. I thought that by doing this quietly no one in the United States except people at West Point would know about it until we were back again in Frankfurt. I developed a high-pressure enthusiasm for the project and suggested that each of my twenty classmates in Europe should send a secret message to his wife asking her to meet him for a one-day reunion at West Point.

  While I was planning to carry out this idea we received word from Washington that, because circumstances prevented American units in Europe from returning to the United States to appear in the traditional parades of victorious troops, General Marshall wanted me to pick representative officers and enlisted men for return in groups of some fifty each, for a short tour of our country. He felt that through these representative celebrations America would have a chance to pay tribute to her fighting men in Europe.

  These orders knocked my personal scheme out of the picture. I think that all the men who were selected to go home to participate in the series of celebrations during the month of June 1945 experienced a feeling of amazement and astonishment at the enthusiasm with which they were greeted.

  For every man the expe
rience was inspiring and heartwarming. The generosity, cordiality, and hospitality poured out upon those groups by the people of the United States were overpowering. For me, it was a far cry from the modest one-day reunion I had so hopefully planned for a June day at West Point. The interlude was a happy one; but a quick return to the grind of work was inescapable. During the months succeeding V-E Day I went to various European capitals for similar celebrations, among them London, Paris, Brussels, The Hague, and Prague; other invitations I found it impossible to accept. My later visits to Moscow and Warsaw did not involve “victory celebrations.”

  At the Moscow Conference attended by Secretary Hull in 1943 it had been agreed among the three principal Allies to establish immediately a European Advisory Commission in London. This body was to begin the study of postwar political problems of Europe and to make appropriate recommendations to the governments.9

  Beginning early in 1944, the Commission worked in London and agreed on recommendations for future surrender terms for Germany and upon national zones of occupation, along with machinery for joint control. The United States military adviser to the Commission, Brigadier General Cornelius Wickersham, later became my deputy in organizing the United States group of the Control Council.10

  Under the protocols developed by the European Advisory Commission each of the four Allies was to be responsible for the occupation of a portion of Germany and the military government of that country was to be entrusted to a quadripartite council, to be composed of the four military commanders, with a co-ordinating committee to assist them. The control authority was to include, also, groups of officers and civilians with specific missions relating to the disarmament and demobilization of the German armed forces, political and economic affairs, legal, financial, and labor questions, and other activities in military government of a conquered country.11