Field Marshall Montgomery (right) and von Friedeburg (behind microphones) signing the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath, 4 May 1945. Wikipedia. Click here for more information about the life of von Friedeburg.
By Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
On May 4, 1945, German Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, arrives at British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s headquarters at Lüneburg Heath with German plenipotentiaries. A few hours later, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces, announces that “Field Marshal Montgomery has reported to the Supreme Allied Command that all enemy forces in Holland, northwest Germany and Denmark, have surrendered.” The U.S. Seventh Army takes Innsbruck and Salzburg, in Austria, and nearby Berchtesgaden, in Germany, which is still smoking after the RAF raid of a few days earlier. In the Pacific, Japanese kamikaze planes hit 14 Allied ships off Okinawa, sinking four.
The Battle for Castle Itter, about 38 miles northeast of Innsbruck, Austria, takes place on May 5. The “strangest battle” of the war, as it comes to be called, is the only action where American and German soldiers fight as allies. They are aided by high-level, French political prisoners being held at the castle. The motley force — 16 American troops (tankers and infantrymen, including two officers), a Waffen-SS officer (whom the prisoners had befriended), 11 Wehrmacht POWs (an infantry officer and 10 artillerymen) and 14 prisoners — holds off an assault by two artillery-supported companies of Waffen-SS troops ordered to take the castle and kill the prisoners and any other occupants. The seven-hour battle ends with the arrival of the U.S. 142nd Infantry Regiment, with tanks in support. A number of the SS soldiers are killed, around 100 are captured and the rest are scattered into the surrounding forest. The castle’s defenders suffer one dead (the Wehrmacht officer) and four wounded. Denmark is liberated by the Allies. Col.-Gen. Johannes Blaskowitz, the German commander-in-chief in Holland, surrenders at a ceremony in the small Dutch town of Wageningen in the presence of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The first British victory salvo of the war is fired at 3 p.m. at Field Marshal Montgomery’s headquarters. Amsterdam is liberated. Gen. Eisenhower announces the capitulation of German Army Group C, which was covering the front from Linz, Austria, to the Swiss frontier. The U.S. Third Army takes Karlsbad, Germany, and Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, and prepares to drive towards Prague. In Prague, a civilian uprising begins, aided by defecting units of the German-allied, anti-Bolshevist Army of former Soviet general Andrey Vlasov. The U.S. freighter SS Black Point — the last Allied vessel attacked by a U-boat — is sunk within sight of land off Point Judith, Rhode Island; 12 crewmembers die, 35 others are rescued. One of some 9,000 balloon-borne bombs launched from Japan starting in November 1944 lands in Oregon and kills five children and an adult woman on a picnic near Lakeview, in the central southern part of the state. Theirs are the only known deaths from enemy attack on the mainland of the U.S. during the war.
On May 6, German Waffen-SS soldiers fire on a crowd celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands in Amsterdam, killing 22 people. From Berlin, Axis Sally — Mildred Gillars, an American engaged to a German citizen — delivers the last episode of her “Home Sweet Home Hour” propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.
German Chief-of-Staff of the Armed Forces High Command, Gen. Alfred Jodl, representing Reich president Grand Adm. Karl Dönitz, signs Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union at 2:41 a.m. on May 7, at Gen. Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France. All military operations are to cease at 12:01 a.m. (GMT) on the 8th of May.
A cease-fire takes place at one minute past midnight on May 8. It is V-E Day, as the Allies celebrate Victory in Europe. After radio appeals to the Allies early in the day for protection against heavy German shelling, the Prague Resistance reaches an agreement with the Germans for the capitulation of the city. The U.S. 4th Armored Division, approaching from the west, stands fast in light of the announced cease-fire. Soviet troops, approaching from the east, continue to battle German forces in an around the Czechoslovakian capital. In North Africa, nationalists and French forces clash in Algeria. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Algerian Muslims and over 100 French citizens die in violent confrontations over the next 20 days. From Washington, D.C., President Truman warns Americans that the war is only half won.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Armed Forces High Command, repeats the German unconditional surrender signing on May 9, this time at Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s Red Army headquarters in Berlin. In Moscow, Stalin announces the end of the war against Germany. A British naval squadron arrives in the harbor of Copenhagen to receive the surrender of the remains of the German fleet. Off France, in the English Channel, the German garrison in the Channel Islands agrees to surrender to British troops after five years of occupation. The surrender terms are signed aboard the destroyer HMS Bulldog, which is moored off St. Hellier, Jersey. In the Aegean, German forces in the Greek islands surrender. In Syria, tensions between French troops and locals explode into open fighting.
The first German U-boat to surrender, U-239, puts in at the Royal Navy base at Isle of Portland, England, on May 10. Soviet forces are now in control of Prague after five days of fierce street battles between the Germans and Red Army troops and Czech partisans comes to an end. Over 5,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting. Seven years after he was forced to flee, Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš re-establishes his government in Prague, with the first order of business being the arrest, trial and execution of those convicted of collaboration with the Nazis.
On May 11, the Soviet Prague Offensive comes to an official end with the liberation of Czechoslovakia’s capital city, the last major European city to be freed, although the war is already over. In Croatia, German troops continue to resist against Yugoslavian forces.
The war in New Guinea continues, with Australian troops attacking Wewak on May 12. In Czechoslovakia, Lt. Gen. Andrey Vlasov, a highly decorated Soviet commander who defected to the Nazis to form the anti-Bolshevist Russian Liberation Army, is captured by the Red Army about 25 miles southeast of Pilsen. (Vlasov will be brought to the Soviet Union, tried, convicted and executed for treason on 1 August 1946.) The U.S. government orders a suspension of Lend-Lease supplies to the U.S.S.R.
Rear Adm. Erich Brüning, commander of the Kriegsmarine’s Schnellboot (“fast boat”) forces, arrives at Felixstowe, England, on May 13 to sign the unconditional surrender of all vessels under his command. In Norway, Crown Prince Olav, some members of the exiled government, and the head of the Allied mission, Gen. Sir Andrew Thorne, arrive in Oslo.
U.S. Army Air Forces B-29s firebomb Nagoya on May 14, the heaviest raid on the Japanese homeland so far, with 3,500 tons of bombs being dropped. The raid destroys the Mitsubishi Works. In Europe, Radio Vienna announces the re-establishment of the Austrian Republic — the Anschluss (annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany) is declared null and void. In Scandinavia, the Norwegian resistance movement (Milorg) is officially disbanded. In the U.S., horse racing resumes after being banned in January because of wartime concerns over the amount of manpower and resources being used by the racing industry. On this day, 30,000 people turn out at Narragansett Park in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to watch the races.
On May 15, after considerable confusion on the part of the Allies as to what should be done with them, Axis-allied Croatian forces that escaped Yugoslavia and surrendered to British troops in Austria are handed over to Tito’s Partisans who, without delay, proceed to massacre them and any who were deemed to collaborate with them. In all, a minimum of 70,000 persons, and possibly as many as 250,000 people, including women and children, are killed. In Burma, nationalist leader Aung San joins the Allied drive against the Japanese, his former allies.
German submarine U-234 surrenders at the U.S. Naval Base at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on May 16. One month earlier — on April 16 — she had departed Norway and was en route to Japan with an extremely important cargo, which included technical drawings, an Me-262 jet fighter in crates, 550 kg of U-238 uranium ore for atomic-bomb development, several high-ranking German officers and technological experts, and two Japanese officers. When Kptlt. Johann-Heinrich Fehler received the cease-fire orders on May 4, he decided to surrender to the Americans, rather than to the Canadians, being in a relatively equal position to do either. Still at war with the U.S., the two Japanese officers commit hara-kiri (ritual suicide) rather than surrender. British forces liberate Alderney, Channel Islands.
Two U.S. Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers bomb Kyushu, the third-largest of Japan’s five main islands, on May 17. In the Philippines, the U.S. Army’s 43rd Division captures Ipo Dam and its reservoir that is Manila’s main water source. French troops land in Beirut, Lebanon, to reassert colonial control.
