warning that the Americans should not meddle in Czechoslovakia. Soviet signals were unashamedly hostile, if not brutal. In San Francisco, Molotov told a shaken Edward Stettinius, the Secretary of State, that the sixteen Polish negotiators sent to discuss matters with the Soviet-controlled provisional government had been charged with the murder of 200 members of the Red Army.
Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front had received orders to turn south to take Prague. There, the Czech resistance, aided by General Vlasov’s troops in a doomed turnaround, rose in revolt against Field Marshal Schorner’s troops. Churchill had asked the Americans on 30 April to send in General Patton’s Third Army to secure the city before the Red Army reached it, but General Marshall refused. Vienna, Berlin and Prague were all falling into Soviet hands and the whole of central Europe with them. Soviet occupation authorities in Austria had set up a provisional government without consulting the Allies. Breslau, the capital of Silesia, surrendered on 6 May after its appalling siege lasting nearly three months.
Vlasov himself had initially rejected the idea of betraying the Germans at the twelfth hour, but he stood no chance whatever he did. ‘On 12 May 1945, near the town of Pilsen, Czechoslovakia,’ reported the chief of the political department of the 1st Ukrainian Front, ‘tankists of 25th Tank Corps captured traitor of the Motherland General Vlasov. The circumstances were as follows: one of the lieutenant colonels of the 25th Tank Corps was approached by a man from the Vlasov army with the rank of captain who stated, pointing at a car moving alone on the road towards the west, that General Vlasov was in this car. A pursuit was organized immediately and tankists from 25th Tank Corps caught the traitor.’ Vlasov, who apparently attempted to hide under some blankets, was said to be found carrying an ‘American passport in his name’ (an item which may have been added to the list for reasons of anti-western propaganda), ‘his Party card, which he had preserved, and a copy of his order to his troops to stop fighting, lay down their weapons and surrender to the Red Army’. Vlasov himself was flown from Konev’s headquarters back to Moscow. There, boasts were later made of his death under terrible and prolonged torture. On 13 and 14 May, 20,000 of his men were rounded up in the region of Pilsen and sent to specially prepared camps for interrogation by SMERSH.
In the south, meanwhile, the Americans had pushed on eastwards and south-eastwards from Munich, as well as southwards into the Tyrol, but then halted on Eisenhower’s orders. The French had captured Bregenz on Lake Constance. General von Saucken, with the remains of the Second Army, still held out in the Vistula delta on the edge of East Prussia. In Courland, the divisions which Guderian had wanted to bring back to defend Berlin continued to resist, despite heavy bombardment from the Soviet armies surrounding them. And the Kriegs-marine, although short of fuel, continued its evacuations by sea from the Hela Peninsula, as well as Courland and the Vistula estuary. But the most intense activity continued round Prague, with Field Marshal Schorner’s Army Group Centre resisting the attack of three Soviet Fronts.
In the early hours of 7 May, General Jodl, on behalf of Donitz and the OKW, signed an instrument of surrender at Eisenhower’s headquarters at Rheims. General Susloparov, the chief Soviet liaison officer with SHAEF, signed ‘On behalf of the Soviet high command’. Stalin was furious when he heard. The surrender had to be signed in Berlin and it had to be taken by the Red Army, which had borne the brunt of the fighting. To make matters more provoking for him, the Western Allies wanted to announce victory in Europe the next day, because they would not be able to prevent newspapers publishing the details. Stalin, not surprisingly, considered this premature. Despite Jodl’s signature in Rheims, Schorner’s army group in Czechoslovakia continued to resist fiercely, and neither General von Saucken nor the huge force still trapped in Courland had surrendered. But the crowds already gathering to celebrate in London prompted Churchill to insist on an announcement on Tuesday 8 May. Stalin, despite compromising a little, now wanted it to be made at just past midnight, the very start of 9 May, following a full surrender in Berlin.
The Soviet authorities, however, could not prevent their own troops from jumping the gun with their celebrations. Koni Wolf, with the 7th Department of the 47th Army, fiddled with wireless dials for most of the day on 8 May. He picked up the announcement in London and yelled it to his comrades. News spread fast in Berlin. Young women soldiers wasted no time in washing their clothes, while Red Army soldiers went on a frenzied hunt for alcohol. SMERSH officers shouted to Rzhevskaya to get ready for a party. Having been told that she would ‘answer with [her] head’ if Hitler’s jaws were lost, she spent an awkward evening, pouring drinks for others with one hand, while clinging on to the fancy red box with the other. It was a wise decision to entrust the evidence to a woman that night.
For those who had been fighting up to the very last moment, the news was even more joyously received. Those attacking the Twelfth Army’s perimeter round Schonhausen on the Elbe had suffered heavy casualties. Yury Gribov’s battalion lost nearly half its strength on 5 May, when attacking the remnants of the
The writer Konstantin Simonov watched the final drama in Berlin. Late in the morning of 8 May, he lay on a patch of grass at Tempelhof aerodrome, which had now been cleared of wrecked German aircraft. A Soviet guard of honour 300 strong was being drilled in presenting arms again and again by ‘a fat, small colonel’. Zhukov’s deputy, General Sokolovsky, then arrived. Soon, the first aircraft appeared. Andrei Vyshinsky, the prosecutor at the Moscow show trials and now the deputy foreign minister, arrived with a retinue of Soviet diplomats. He was to be Zhukov’s political supervisor.
An hour and a half later another Dakota landed, bringing Air Chief Marshal Tedder, Eisenhower’s deputy and representative, and General Carl Spaatz, the commander of the US Air Force in Europe. Tedder, Simonov noted, was slim, young and dynamic, ‘smiling frequently and somehow in a forced manner’. Sokolovsky hurried to greet him and led his party towards the guard of honour.
A third aircraft landed. Keitel, Admiral Friedeburg and General Stumpff, representing the Luftwaffe, emerged. General Serov hurried over and escorted the Germans round the other side of the guard of honour, in case it might be thought it was there to welcome them too. Keitel insisted on leading the way. In full uniform, holding his marshal’s baton in his right hand, he walked with large strides, deliberately looking straight ahead.
Smart traffic controllers, young women soldiers with berets worn on the back of the head and sub-machine guns slung across their backs, had halted all vehicles to allow the staff cars a free passage to Zhukov’s new headquarters in Karlshorst. The convoy of staff cars churned up thick dust-clouds as Germans watched from side streets and crossroads. Simonov imagined their thoughts as they saw their generals on the way to sign the final surrender.
Just before midnight the representatives of the allies entered the hall ‘in a two-storey building of the former canteen of the German military engineering college in Karlshorst’. General Bogdanov, the commander of the 2nd Guards Tank Army, and another Soviet general sat down by mistake on seats reserved for the German delegation. A staff officer whispered in their ears and ‘they jumped up, literally as if stung by a snake’ and went to sit at another table. Western pressmen and newsreel cameramen apparently ‘behaved like madmen’. In their desperation for good positions, they were shoving generals aside and tried to push in behind the top table under the flags of the four allies. Eventually Marshal Zhukov sat down. Tedder was placed on his right, and General Spaatz and General de Lattre de Tassigny on his left.
The German delegation was led in. Friedeburg and Stumpff looked resigned. Keitel tried to look imperious, glancing almost contemptuously from time to time at Zhukov. Simonov guessed that a rage was boiling within him. So did Zhukov, who also noted that his face had red blotches. The surrender documents were brought to the top table. First Zhukov signed, then Tedder, then Spaatz, then General de Lattre. Keitel sat very straight in his chair, with clenched fists. He threw his head further and further backwards. Just behind him, a tall German staff officer standing to attention ‘was crying without a single muscle of his face moving’.
Zhukov stood up. ‘We invite the German delegation to sign the act of capitulation,’ he said in Russian. The interpreter translated, but Keitel, by an impatient gesture, signalled that he had understood and that they should bring him the papers. Zhukov, however, pointed to the end of his table. ‘Tell them to come here to sign,’ he said to the interpreter.
Keitel stood up and walked over. He ostentatiously removed his glove before picking up the pen. He clearly had no idea that the senior Soviet officer looking over his shoulder as he signed was Beria’s representative, General Serov. Keitel put the glove back on, then returned to his place. Stumpff signed next, then Friedeburg.
