Marshal Stalin to President Truman 79
I am in receipt of your message of May 7,80 about announcing Germany’s surrender. The Supreme Command of the Red Army is not sure that the order of the German High Command on unconditional surrender will be executed by the German armies on the Eastern Front. We fear, therefore, that if the Government of the U. S. S. R. announces today the surrender of Germany we may find ourselves in an awkward position and mislead the Soviet public. It should be borne in mind that the German resistance on the Eastern Front is not slackening but, judging by the intercepted radio messages, a considerable grouping of German troops have explicitly declared their intention to continue the resistance and to disobey Dönitz’s surrender order.
For this reason the Command of the Soviet troops would like to wait until the German surrender takes effect and to postpone the Government’s announcement of the surrender till May 9, 7 p.m. Moscow time.81
- Reprinted from Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 230.↩
- Telegram 260, in which President Truman indicated that he would announce Germany’s surrender on May 8, at 9 a.m. Washington time, if this was agreeable to Marshal Stalin; for text, see ibid., p. 229.↩
- On May 8, at 8:15 a.m. Washington time, President Truman made the formal announcement that Germany had surrendered on all fronts. Later that day he handed the following message to Soviet Ambassador Gromyko: “Please inform Marshal Stalin that his message to me was received in the White House at 1 o’clock this morning. However, by the time the message reached me, preparations had proceeded to such an extent that it was not possible to give consideration to a postponement of my announcement of the German surrender.”↩