SUMMARY: One of the most important days in U.S. history has been virtually ignored by the news media. Sixty-three years ago today Germany officially surrendered during WWII. 05-08-2008
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
---George Santayana,1905 MEDIA IGNORES V-E DAY By 1945, Germany was on the retreat and Allied forces were closing on Berlin from the east and west. German capitulation was imminent. On April 30, Hitler committed suicide, leaving Karl Donitz in power. Donitz immediately sought to negotiate a conditional surrender with the western Allied forces. But the Allies would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. After a week of unsuccessful negotiation and troop surrenders, Donitz finally agreed to surrender unconditionally. In the early morning of May 7, at Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France, Colonel General Alfred Jodl signed the instrument of surrender. Late the following day (May 8), at a formal ceremony in Berlin, a second unconditional surrender was signed by General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. Under the terms of the surrender, all German military operations were to cease at 11:01 p.m. on May 8. At the news of German surrender on May 8, spontaneous celebrations erupted all over the Allied countries, including now-famous victory parties in New York’s Times Square and London’s Trafalgar Square. In London, “American sailors and laughing girls formed a conga line down the middle of Piccadilly and cockneys linked arms in the Lambeth Walk,” recalls Eyewitness to History. The day was declared Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day.
