For contemporaries of all persuasions, the spring of 1945 would be remembered for its strange blend of hope and fear: some Germans still held hopes for the ‘final victory’ ( Endsieg) and now faced fears that the victors would wreak terrible revenge, while others nurtured long-held hopes for the final surrender and ruination of the Nazis’ ‘Third Reich’ and feared that, although so close, they may not live to see it. The long end of the Second World War took many weeks and was experienced in very different ways. But for many people, particularly in western and southern regions, the war had already ended. Although the Wehrmacht troops had already formally capitulated to General Eisenhower in Reims, France, some 22 hours earlier, Joseph Stalin insisted that the act be repeated in the German capital under Soviet command – a sign of his mistrust of the western Allies and his desire to underscore both his own role and the symbolic power of holding such a ceremony in Berlin (which had, after all, fallen to Soviet, not American troops).Ĭhief of the OKW, Wilhelm Keitel, General Stumpff, and Admiral von Friedeburg at the signing of the declaration of surrender in Berlin-Karlshorst on © DHM FightingĪfter a total of 2077 days of war, the guns now fell silent in Europe. World War II officially ended – on European soil at least – on, when, shortly after midnight in the Berlin district of Karlshorst, Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW – Armed Forces High Command), sat at a table with representatives of the Luftwaffe and the German navy at his side, and signed the declaration of unconditional surrender of all German armed forces while the Soviet Supreme Commander, Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, observed events from further up the table. Thomas Jander, Head of Documents at the DHM and the man behind the curatorial intervention ‘Deported to Auschwitz’, writes about the long drawn-out process that led to the ceasefire in Europe by taking a special look at the personal history of one Holocaust survivor, Sheindi Miller-Ehrenwald. Over those few months, the war would claim countless more victims. And yet the war would, indeed, drag on and it ultimately took another four and a half months before the final shots were fired. When the year began, anything less than an Allied victory was now inconceivable – Allied superiority was by this point too great, and the German military, what remained of it, lay in tatters. Surviving Spring: The Long Final Days of WWII in Europeġ945 was the last year of the Second World War.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |