On the night of May 8th 1945, representatives of the victorious Allies finally received the official surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany, in a former army officers’ canteen, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst.

Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who had led the 1st Belorussian Front into Berlin in April 1945 would attend on behalf of the Supreme High Command of the Soviet Red Army, with Marshal Arthur Tedder of the Royal Air Force, representing the Allied Expeditionary Force.

Three representatives of the armed services of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) had arrived earlier in the day from the western German city of Flensburg by plane – when finally met by the Allied representatives at 10pm they would engage in over two hours of deliberations until the instrument of surrender was finally signed at 00:16 on May 9th (Central European Time).

This meeting would take place only six days after the end of the Battle of Berlin – on May 2nd 1945 – when Commander of the Berlin Defence Area, Helmuth Weidling, had organised the surrendered of the city with Soviet General Chuikov. 

Conspiciously missing from all of these events was the leader of Nazi Germany – Adolf Hitler – who had ended his life in his Führerbunker on April 30th.

Hitler’s absence would not be the only remarkable detail to this momentous historical event. In-fact, none of the notorious Nazi Party personalities would partake in the surrender process.

Instead it would be the military leaders; Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of the General Staff of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht); General-Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine); and Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) – who would sign the definitive act of unconditional surrender.

General Keitel signs the Instrument of Surrender.

My Photos from my visit April 2024

The final page from the Russian version of the surrender document....von Friedeburg, Keitel and Stumpff.
Followed by.......Tedder, Zhukov and witnessed by Spaatz and de Lattre de Tassigny.