Office of the Historian

740.00119 EW/5–445: Telegram

The Ambassador in France (Caffery) to the Secretary of State

Paris, May 4, 1945—2 p.m.
[Received 10:07 p.m.]

2345. For Matthews from Murphy. SHAEF representatives have been in touch with an emissary from Keitel67 and also with General Busch68 regarding the capitulation of German forces to the northwest [Page 776] of Hamburg, including apparently Denmark. Surrender discussions are understood to be fairly well advanced.69 They do not as yet apparently include Norway. In Holland a standstill exists in effect through tacit understanding despite the fact that there is nothing further on the military discussions with the Germans there. American G–3 seems to think that the war in Europe may be over by the end of the week, although it is still too early to estimate the Czechoslovakian situation. Surrender is progressing through a series of regional capitulations70 but a general surrender may also come at any time.

British Political Adviser71 asserts that his Government considers that Keitel’s name to a surrender instrument would not suffice and that those of Hitler or Himmler would have been required, but he is not sure what the situation would be under the changed circumstances. There is a view here that General Eisenhower is capable of accepting general surrender on his own responsibility. Steel objects to this view maintaining that the governments should be consulted first.

Foreign Office, on its own suggestion, is sending Steel a copy of the surrender terms72 in German and Russian. In March we requested our EAC delegation to let me have these texts but they were not then ready. I am again asking Ambassador Winant for them.

[For the remainder of this telegram, see volume IV, page 447.]

[Murphy]
Caffery
  1. Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW).↩
  2. Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch German Commander in Chief Northwest (OB Nordwest).↩
  3. Reference is to discussions then taking place at Lüneburg between German emissaries and Field Marshal Montgomery, Commander of the 21st Army Group. A local surrender of German forces in Holland, Northwest Germany, and Denmark was signed on May 5.↩
  4. For details of the several local surrenders negotiated May 4–7, see Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 480–483.↩
  5. Christopher E. Steel.↩
  6. For text of the Instrument of Surrender for Germany as approved by the European Advisory Commission on July 25, 1944, see annex 2 to the minutes of the Seventh Formal Meeting of the European Advisory Commission, July 25, 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, vol. i, p. 256. For documentation on the substitution of the short surrender document for the instrument of surrender negotiated in the European Advisory Commission, see ante, pp. 282–296, passim. For details of the Berlin ratification ceremony, see Pogue, The Supreme Command, pp. 490–494.↩