When Germany's last attempt in World War II, the Ardennes Forest Counterattack, went bankrupt in the winter of 1944, it was not difficult for everyone to see that Hitler's "Third Reich" was on the verge of collapse, and the biggest suspense that remained became who would conquer Berlin and take the lead in the European theater. In this "competition", the Allies would have had the possibility of fighting the Soviets for a long time.
At that time, Eisenhower led LinkedIn the U.S. Allies to the elbe river bank tens of kilometers west of the city of Berlin, and Zhukov's million Soviet Red Army also quickly pushed to the line of the Nice River, which was only a few tens of kilometers east of the city of Berlin. With the superiority of the weapons and equipment (especially the air force) of the United States and Britain, it was possible to try to capture Berlin before the Soviet Union. In fact, Montgomery, the British commander at the time, also had this intention, and his Twenty-first Army launched an attack on Berlin in March 1945, with a posture of picking peaches first.
But it was at this time that Montgomery received a telegram that stunned him, sent by the Allied Commander-in-Chief of the European Theater of Operations, Eisenhower, saying that the Allied battle plan had changed, and that the main direction of attack had been changed from the original Berlin to Munich and Leipzig to the southeast. As for the British's "capture of Berlin", Eisenhower said in his letter: Let it be "left" to the Soviets to complete it.
Eisenhower's telegram was an explosive event of the year. Not only was Montgomery furious, but the leaders of Britain and the United States also said they "couldn't understand." Upon learning of the news, US President Harry Truman commented that he had "no political mind," while British Prime Minister Winston Churchill bluntly accused: "Once the Russians (Churchill's private name for the Soviet Union) enter Berlin, they will have extremely serious political consequences, and all this will give the world the illusion that 'the world is under the russians.'"
As the heart of Nazi Germany's politics, the capture of Berlin was undoubtedly of considerable political significance. Why would Eisenhower give this honor to someone else? In fact, as a "military politician" who later became the president of the United States, Eisenhower was not only not a political idiot, but also looked farther than his colleagues. The Allied commander's decision was largely concerned about the casualties required to capture Berlin. The beastly Nazi Germany had by now turned Berlin into a "steel fortress" of barbed wire, Eisenhower believed
The capture of Berlin would cost the Allies at least 100,000 soldiers. In his view, at a time when the war is a foregone conclusion, it is not in line with American values to waste the lives of soldiers to fight for illusory honors, which will not help their political future. Moreover, he realized that the division of the German occupation zone by the East and west camps after the war must be bounded by the Elbe, which divided Germany in two from south to north. In this way, even if the Allies worked hard to lay the city of Berlin, it would inevitably be returned to the Soviet Union after the war, so why make a wedding dress for others?
Another important reason for Eisenhower's "transfer" of Berlin was that the U.S. military had begun to bargain with Nazi Germany on the issue of surrender at this time, anticipating the possibility that the German army would be the first to surrender unconditionally to the Americans when it was desperate. As a result, the surrender ceremony to Germany would remain dominated by the West, and Berlin, which the Soviet Union had painstakingly laid, would be an empty city with no political significance.
Later events confirmed Eisenhower's prediction, and on April 16 of that year, the Soviet army launched a general offensive on Berlin, and on the 29th, Hitler committed suicide in despair. On 3 May, the Soviets completed the capture of Berlin at a cost of 300,000 casualties. However, the Soviets who laid down Berlin did not wait for the surrender representatives of Germany. Not only that, but they later learned angrily that the official german capitulation representatives were already on their way to the American and British occupation areas.
It turned out that Hitler had appointed German Admiral Dönitz as his successor before committing suicide. As a famous general in German submarine warfare in World War II, the resourceful Dönitz obviously had a headache about how to clean up the mess in Germany after "taking the throne". Probably because the Soviet-German war was too fierce, the Red Army retaliated with horror after occupying eastern Germany. Given this situation, if Germany had surrendered to the Soviet Union first, and the millions of German troops fighting on the Eastern Front had been surrendered by the Soviet Union, it would have been difficult for these capitulators to return to Germany alive. In order to avoid the loss of the few remaining young adults in Germany after the war, Dönitz was determined to try to make a separate peace with the Allies and achieve a ceasefire on the Western Front as soon as possible.
On 3 May, when Berlin was conquered, Dönitz's envoy, the new Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Friedberg, had arrived at the allied Twenty-first Army garrison. The next day, Friedberg signed a partial surrender to Montgomery on the Western Front. After the instrument of surrender was signed, Friedberg rushed to Reims, France, where the Allied General Command was located, to find out how the Allied commander-in-chief, Eisenhower, was talking about making peace with him alone. Unexpectedly, Eisenhower refused to talk to Friedenburg on the grounds that he was too low-ranking, and Dönitz had to send the famous general Jodel to Reims to negotiate surrender on behalf of the German side. The talks were thus delayed until May 6.
In the face of the Germans taking the initiative to "surrender", the real reason why Eisenhower put up a shelf first was that he was not ready to play this play. Given the soviet union's great power and the inequitable contribution it made in World War II, it was obviously unrealistic for the United States and Britain to make a separate peace with Germany, but it was impossible to miss the opportunity for Germany to surrender voluntarily, and it could not make up for the regret of ceding Berlin to the Soviets. After much thought, Eisenhower played a trick, and he deliberately found the Soviet liaison officer in Reims, the unknown Major General Suslobarov, and suggested that he sign the "Lance Surrender Letter" on behalf of the Soviet Union. Eisenhower apparently knew that a major general as a liaison officer was clearly unqualified as a general surrender ceremony in the European theater of World War II, but such an arrangement could have served to depress the Soviet Union's contribution to the victory of the war.
In the face of Eisenhower's sudden invitation, Major General Suslov hurried to report to Moscow, but Moscow failed to reply in time, and later historians believe that this may be because Suslovbarov did not have the right to contact the Kremlin directly, and his request for instructions turned several times before reaching Stalin's desk, so it was delayed for a long time.
Poor Major General Suslov was now caught in a dilemma, and it would be inappropriate for him to hastily sign this agreement without receiving specific instructions from Stalin, but if he chose to refuse, the Soviet Union would risk Nazi Germany's separate peace with the Western Allies, which would be a great harm to the Soviet Union's post-war victory. After much deliberation, Major General Suslovbarov had to join the negotiations and signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of the Soviet Union. According to Suslov, "Although I signed it, I attached a note that if any of the allies asked, the new surrender ceremony could be held elsewhere." At the time, however, his words were clearly not taken seriously.
On May 7, 1945, the representative of the German government, Admiral Jodel, signed the unconditional surrender of Germany with the representatives of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union at the Allied High Command in Reims, France. On May 7, the surrender ceremony was a very strange scene - the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries attended the surrender ceremony, all of whom were famous on the battlefield, except for the Soviet representative, who was an unknown major general, sitting in a pile of famous generals who appeared to be very inadequate. This detail gave the Western media a great deal of room for interpretation, questioning the Soviet Union's role in World War II, arguing that the Allies were the main force in defeating Nazi Germany, and that the Eastern Front was only a secondary battlefield to contain german forces. In this way, the Soviet Union lost the momentum of conquering Berlin in this surrender ceremony.
Qilu Evening News Qilu one-point reporter Wang Yu
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