Victory in Europe Day: 80th anniversary

While declaring war in 1939 was a straightforward matter, arranging the German surrender would prove somewhat more complicated, writes Allan Mallinson

On 3 September 1939, two days after the Germans invaded Poland, the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, made an announcement on the BBC: “This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

On 29 April 1945 General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF), signalled the war’s stuttering finale in his weekly intelligence summary: ‘The German army is dying the slow death of a thousand pockets. In the east, the capital was invested and a great part of it stormed: territory and command finally lost all semblance of unity when the advancing Russians joined up with the Western Allies on the Elbe.’ Yet there was no sign of actual surrender. Hitler was still alive in his bunker under the shattered Chancellery building in Berlin: who but he could give the order?

A fortnight earlier Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, commanding the 21st Army Group comprising the 2nd (British) and 1st (Canadian) armies, had received a message via the Dutch Resistance that the Germans, cut off in a huge ‘pocket’ in western Holland by the advance of the 2nd Army into Germany and the Canadians to the Zuider Zee, were prepared to discuss ways of feeding the 3.5 million civilians who were facing starvation there. The Germans had flooded the polders and sent livestock and railway rolling stock east across the Rhine, exacerbating the unusually severe weather conditions in December and January, when canals and rivers froze, further hindering transport of what food there was.

Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, whom Winston Churchill once described as “the only real man among the governments-in-exile in London”, had written to both King George and President Roosevelt asking the Allies to help ameliorate the ‘Hongerwinter’. Stockpiling of food for Holland began in Britain and newly liberated Belgium, and planning for the famine relief began in Montgomery’s headquarters. Towards the end of April Eisenhower authorised Montgomery, who was universally known as ‘Monty’, to meet representatives of the German military government in what remained of occupied Holland. Monty told his chief of staff, Major-General Freddie de Guingand, to ‘get agreement for the immediate entry of food and also to sound the enemy as to the possibilities of the capitulation of the German forces in Holland’. A school at Achterveld, 30 miles south-east of Amsterdam, was chosen for the meeting, just inside the Canadians’ lines. On 28 April the Germans arrived at the rendezvous in cars flying white flags. The delegates were blindfolded and taken in jeeps to the school, where de Guingand watched as ‘a rather miserable and coldlooking collection of Germans’ were led inside. Arthur Seyss-Inquart, reichskommissar of the Netherlands, had sent his deputy, Ernst Schwebel, and General Johannes Blaskowitz, the army commander. On entering the room where de Guingand was waiting they saluted and made to shake hands. He simply returned the salute. De Guingand told them that he understood they were willing to allow food in but they must accept the Allied plan. ‘Schwebel was one of the most revolting men I have ever seen,’ he wrote. ‘A plump, sweating German who possessed the largest red nose I have ever seen, the end of which was like several ripe strawberries sewn together.’

Schwebel replied that he could make no definite commitments until the proposals were examined by Seyss-Inquart. De Guingand said they must return within 48 hours to agree to the details. Before they left, however, he took Schwebel and Blaskowitz aside and sounded them on a more general capitulation, pointing out the hopelessness of their position militarily, isolated from Germany. All they would agree to was to convey his remarks to Seyss-Inquart.

Although the bulk of food supplies were supposed to enter by sea and road, the situation was now so dire that planning for air relief had begun 10 days earlier. Air Commodore Andrew Geddes, head of operations at the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) 2nd Tactical Air Force headquarters, had to plan for low-level free drops as there were no parachutes available, and earmarked Numbers 1 and 3 Groups, operating Lancasters, and the US Army Air Force’s B-17 Flying Fortresses of 3rd Air Division for the task. As dropping tins was a different matter from dropping bombs, the squadrons began working out how best to pack and despatch the food, which meant considerable modifications to the bomb bay of the B-17 in particular. Crews started practising flying and drops at low level  with filled sandbags, and in daylight: a novelty for the RAF crews as Bomber Command operated principally at night from high altitude. Geddes also decided on the name for the relief operation. As the food would descend like ‘manna from heaven’, it would be Operation Manna (although the Americans preferred to call theirs Operation Chowhound).

Nor would Geddes wait for the Germans to sign a piece of paper: Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the Dutch liaison officer at Eisenhower’s headquarters, was pleading that delay now would be catastrophic. Geddes decided to risk going ahead the day before the second meeting. On 29 April, therefore, the Dutch heard the broadcast on Radio Oranje, the BBC European Service’s station for the Netherlands, that the air drops would begin at midday. At the same time, Radio Luxembourg, now in Allied hands and broadcasting as Nachtsender (Night transmitter) 1212, told the Germans not to interfere with the drops.

The RAF were taking an enormous risk. At such low altitude the Lancasters would be easy prey for the many anti-aircraft guns the Germans still manned. The weather was bad, too, forcing some to fly as low as 50 feet. Yet somehow it worked: 239 Lancasters dropped 556 tons of food that afternoon – flour, tinned meat, sugar, coffee, peas, chocolate and dried egg powder. In all, during the next 10 days, the RAF made 3,154 flights, dropping 7,030 tons, and the US Army Air Force 2,189 flights and 4,156 tons. Everywhere the crews saw ‘Thank You’ spelled out below with rocks. Little wonder that when in 2006 a memorial to Operation Manna was unveiled in Rotterdam, the footpath leading to it was named ‘Air Commodore Geddespad’. (Recipe: Homity Pie – a Land Girl’s recipe.)

At the meeting in Achterveld on 30 April, Seyss-Inquart himself showed up. After the reichskommissar had signed the local truce, Eisenhower’s own chief of staff, US General Walter Bedell Smith, who’d flown from AEF headquarters in Rheims, took him aside, poured him ‘a stiff glass of gin’ and told him it was only a matter of weeks or perhaps days before Germany must accept complete and absolute defeat. Seyss-Inquart agreed but said he’d received no orders that would allow him to take such action. “What would future generations of Germans say about me – what would history say about my conduct?” he is reported to have said. Bedell Smith exploded: “Now look here: General Eisenhower has instructed me to say that he will hold you directly responsible for any further useless bloodshed… And you know what that will mean – the wall and a firing squad.” Seyss-Inquart replied coolly: “I’m not afraid. I’m a German.” (He was hanged at Nuremburg the following year.)

In Germany that same afternoon Hitler committed suicide. By the terms of his will, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz now became head of state. Two days later British troops reached the Baltic, and the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein began overtures for an armistice. Dönitz did not think it appropriate as head of state to negotiate personally with Montgomery, so on 3 May he sent Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, the naval commander-in-chief, and General Eberhard Kinzel, chief of staff of the opposing army group, to Montgomery’s tactical headquarters on Lüneburg Heath, 20 miles south of Hamburg.

Dönitz intended playing for time to allow as many troops as possible to fall back from the east into the hands of the Western Allies rather than the Russians. Montgomery, faced with the massive task of disarming and feeding the German army in Holland, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, wanted none of it: if the Germans believed they were in a position to negotiate, he’d leave them in no doubt that they weren’t. When they arrived, escorted by armoured cars of the 11th Hussars, Friedeburg and Kinzel were made to wait in the open under a Union flag set high on a pole. Montgomery appeared from his battle caravan and asked his interpreter “Who are these men?” On receiving their answer, which he knew anyway, he barked: “I’ve never heard of them. What do they want?”

Friedeburg read his letter of authorisation. Montgomery told them that only unconditional surrender of all German forces to his northern and western flanks would be acceptable: elsewhere they must surrender to the Russians, and if they weren’t prepared to discuss this he’d be delighted to continue fighting. He then stalked off. The delegation was given lunch, with wine and brandy and the opportunity to consider what Montgomery had said. The cooks had been told to produce the best possible meal, and the Germans were impressed. A German-speaking officer disguised as the mess sergeant apologised for its quality, however, adding: “Our boys wouldn’t touch this muck.” It was low-level psychological warfare, but effective. (Read: Chocolate steamed duff – a WWII pudding.)

Afterwards, in a comfortable and well-decorated tent complete with flowers and a standard lamp, the delegation was given a briefing on the plight of the German army. Their attitude changed. Friedeburg became tearful and agreed to return to Dönitz’s headquarters at Flensburg to seek his and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel’s (head of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces approval for complete surrender. The following afternoon, Friday, 4 May, Friedeburg returned escorted once more by the 11th Hussars, and at 1830 hours British Double Summer Time he formally signed the unconditional surrender of German forces in the Netherlands, north-west Germany and Denmark, effective 0800 hours 5 May. Next day he was flown to Eisenhower’s headquarters in Rheims to discuss the surrender of German troops elsewhere, and sent a signal to Keitel requesting powers to sign. Playing for time still, Keitel signalled back: ‘Colonel-General Jodl with plenipotentiary powers from Admiral Dönitz on his way. Suspend further negotiations until arrival.’

Alfred Jodl, chief of the Wehrmacht’s operations staff, arrived at Montgomery’s headquarters next morning and was immediately flown to Rheims accompanied by de Guingand, who thought ‘he looked very drawn but behaved perfectly correctly’. Jodl continued to stall, however, and Eisenhower refused to meet him. Finally, at 0241 the following morning, 7 May, in the presence of representatives of the four Allied Powers – France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the USA – Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. But after the signing the Soviet representative, General Aleksei Antonov, remonstrated that the continued fighting in the east made the Rheims surrender look like a separate peace. Eisenhower therefore agreed to fly Keitel to Berlin to sign a further surrender document in the presence of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, victor of the battle for Berlin, and that Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower’s deputy, would accompany him. Keitel’s signature in Berlin on 8 May at 2301 Central European Time brought a definitive end to the war.

Meanwhile in London, having gained assurances from the Ministry of Food that there was enough beer in the capital, Churchill declared 8 May a public holiday. It would become known as Victory in Europe (VE) Day. In the afternoon he broadcast from 10 Downing Street – like Chamberlain in 1939 – saying: “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead.” Japan still had to be defeated.

Churchill then went to the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall and gave an impromptu speech to the huge, cheering crowd. “This is your victory,” he declared. “No,” they roared back. “It’s yours.” (Read: the Winston’s guns – the personal armoury of Sir Winston Churchill)