On April 30, 1945, German leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and three days later, Berlin fell to the Red Army. As per Hitler’s last will and testament, governmental powers of the now crumbling German state passed on to Admiral Karl Doenitz, head of the German Navy, who at once took steps to end the war. On May 2, German forces in Italy and western Austria surrendered to the British, and two days later, the Wehrmacht in northwest Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark surrendered, also to the British, while on May 5, German forces in Bavaria and southwest Germany surrendered to the Americans. At this time, isolated German units facing the Soviets were desperately trying to fight their way to Western Allied lines, hoping to escape the punitive wrath of the Russians by surrendering to the Americans or British.
On May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl, German Armed Forces Chief of Operations, signed the instrument of unconditional surrender of all German forces at Allied headquarters in Reims, France. A few hours later, Stalin expressed his disapproval of certain aspects of the surrender document, as well as its location, and on his insistence, another signing of Germany’s unconditional surrender was held in Berlin by General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of German Armed Forces, with particular attention placed on the Soviet contribution, and in front of General Zhukov, whose forces had captured the German capital.
Shortly thereafter, most of the remaining German units surrendered to nearby Allied commands, including Army Group Courland in the “Courland Pocket”, Second Army Heiligenbeil and Danzig beachheads, German units on the Hel Peninsula in the Vistula delta, Greek islands of Crete, Rhodes, and the Dodecanese, on Alderney Island in the English Channel, and in Atlantic France at Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, and Lorient.
(Taken from The End of World War II in Europe – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 6)
German territorial expansion and Nazi policies World War II was the bloodiest and most destructive conflict in history, causing 50 – 85 million deaths, laying waste to entire countries, and causing enormous social and economic disruptions to whole societies. This global conflict, fought in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Africa, was total war on a vast scale, and whole nations directed nearly all of their manpower, political, economic, and industrial resources to achieving their military goals. Fighting was not limited to the battlefields but carried into heavily populated centers as well, blurring the line between the military and civilian aspects of the war.
In Europe, particularly in the Eastern Front, what occurred were not only some of history’s greatest battles ever fought, but also the most horrendous acts of violence, savagery, and destruction on an enormous scale. This came about mainly because of Germany’s successive victories early in the war, which allowed Hitler to implement his long-desired policies to overturn the political, economic, and social infrastructures in the occupied territories. At its core, Nazi ideology advocated racial imbalances, that Germans were the supreme “master race” (Aryan Herrenvolk) comprising “superhumans” (Ubermensch), while those peoples to be conquered in the east, predominated by Slavs, were “subhumans” (Untermenschen).
Following its conquests in Eastern Europe and Russia, Germany implemented Generalplan Ost (“General Plan for the East”), which was aimed at achieving lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people within a period of 25-30 years. Generalplan Ost entailed the expulsion and elimination of resident populations in captured territories. In their place, German settlers were to move in to farm the land and achieve self-sufficiency in food and resources in support of Hitler’s vision of a 1000-year German Empire. Elimination of the native populations would consist of genocide, mass transfers to the depths of Russia and Siberia, or enslavement as laborers in German factories and farms. Hitler also saw the struggle with the Soviet Union as one of opposing ideologies between German National Socialism, and Soviet communism led by “Jewish Bolshevism”. To Hitler, the struggle would consist of a “total war” of annihilation.
Generalplan Ost also involved the Hunger Plan, where Germany would seize all food production from the conquered territories in the Eastern Front, in order exterminate the local native populations through starvation. The Hunger Plan was envisaged to produce 20-30 million fatalities. During its implementation, it did cause millions of deaths through artificial famines.
Devastation in the East In the battles in the Eastern Front, the scale of German violence and brutality was matched later by the Soviets during their drive to the west. Much of the carnage and destruction that occurred in Europe during World War II occurred in the Eastern Front, where much of the fighting also took place.
In the Soviet Union, which was the scene of the fiercest fighting, some 26 million people were killed (10 million military and 16 million civilians), which comprised 60% of all fatalities in Europe during World War II. Civilian casualties resulted from direct military action, starvation, massacres, famines and diseases, and brutal conditions in imprisonment and forced labor. Some 1.2 million people perished during the Siege of Leningrad. Some 25 million people became homeless. In the territories of the Soviet Union stretching from Moscow westward to Belarus and Ukraine, full or partial destruction was brought upon 1,700 cities and towns, 70,000 villages, 2,500 churches, 32,000 factories, 40,000 miles of railroad, 4,100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, etc.
In Belarus, some 25-40% of the population were killed. As well, 209 of 270 cities and towns (or 80%) and 9,000 villages were destroyed. In Ukraine, 7-11 million people perished and 700 cities and towns, and 28,000 villages were destroyed. In Poland, where Nazi racial policies were imposed early in the war, some 6 million of the 27 million total pre-war population perished (or 20%), including 90% of the 3 million Polish Jews. Some 40% of Poland’s infrastructures, and much of its industries and agriculture were destroyed. In Yugoslavia, German authorities took advantage of local inter-ethnic tensions and installed a puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, led by the Croatian fascist movement, Ustase. This collaborationist regime repressed its ethnic rivals, the Serbs, as well as Jews, Romani (gypsies), and dissident Croats and Muslims in a brutal genocide that claimed 1.7 million lives.