Supreme Commander (112 page)

“After dictating the above,” Eisenhower concluded, “I called Bradley in person to determine his own feelings in the matter. His only answer was: ‘I will serve anywhere in any position that General Marshall assigns me.’ ” Still, Eisenhower thought it would be a mistake. So did Marshall, and Bradley remained in Europe.
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As his armies rolled forward Eisenhower inspected some of the concentration camps they uncovered. “The things I saw beggar description,” he told Marshall. “The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.” In one room he saw naked men piled to the ceiling, dead by starvation. “I made the visit deliberately,” Eisenhower said, “in order to be in position to give
first-hand
evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’ ” He saw to it that British M.P.s and American congressmen visited the camps to see for themselves, and sent photographs of the camps to Churchill.
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The experience deepened his already great hatred for the Nazis and led him to take a stern attitude when the time came for them to surrender.

Two major obstacles stood in the way of a quick, sharp end to the war. First, most Germans believed that the 1918 armistice had come at a time when their armies were still winning and they were determined to avoid another unnecessary capitulation. All German leaders, not just the Nazis, wanted to avoid a postwar charge of having stabbed the armed forces in the back. Nazi ideology, with its doctrine that defeat was impossible, reinforced this tendency, and as long as Hitler lived it was unlikely that the Germans would quit. The unconditional surrender policy, with its implication that the German government would not survive, also played a role, since any government that signed an unconditional surrender document was simultaneously signing its own death warrant. Second, the Germans hoped for—indeed expected—a falling out between East and West. If they could hold firm until it occurred, they would survive as a nation, possibly even joining the West in an anti-Communist crusade.

The first obstacle was removed, or at least partly overcome, when the Russian Army took Berlin and when Hitler, on April 30, committed suicide. The second now loomed larger, however, as the new German government and the remaining military leaders felt that with Hitler gone the West would be more inclined to see Germany as a bulwark against Communism in Europe. Specifically, the way Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s successor, tried to speed up the East-West split and salvage something for Germany was through piecemeal surrender to the Western Allies only. This process had begun even before Hitler’s death; on April 26 Marshall informed Eisenhower that Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler had sent an agent to Sweden to try to arrange for a surrender of German forces in the West. President Truman had replied that the only terms acceptable were unconditional surrender of all German armies to the U.S.S.R., the U.K., and the U.S. Stalin, informed of these developments, had said Truman’s attitude was “absolutely correct.” Churchill told Eisenhower that “the offer looked like a last desperate attempt to create a schism between ourselves and the Russians,” and the Supreme Commander himself was in complete agreement with Truman’s policy. “In every move we make these days,” Eisenhower assured Marshall, “we are trying to be meticulously careful in this regard.”
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Given the determination of both Truman and Churchill to maintain good relations with the Russians, and Eisenhower’s eagerness to get the war over, being meticulously careful was highly important. By both word and act the Germans continued their effort to split the alliance. Soldiers on the eastern front, rightfully fearing above all else capture by
the Red Army, which they knew would demand revenge for German atrocities in Russia, fought desperately. On the western front, soldiers surrendered at the first sight of an AEF unit. German civilians tried to flee to the West so that they would be inside the Anglo-American lines when the end came. And on May 1 Doenitz, in a radio address to the nation in which he announced Hitler’s death, said the Wehrmacht would “continue the struggle against Bolshevism until the fighting troops and the hundreds of thousands of families in Eastern Germany gave been preserved from destruction.”
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But by May 2 or 3 Doenitz realized that the British and Americans would not accept any general surrender in the West only; he thereafter tried to achieve the same end by surrendering armies and army groups to SHAEF while fighting on in the East.

The first important offer came from the Germans facing Montgomery, who indicated that they wanted to surrender to the British the army group in northern Germany facing the Red Army. There were hints that they would also be willing to surrender all of northwest Germany, Denmark, and even Norway to Montgomery. Eisenhower immediately informed General Susloparoff, the Russian liaison officer at SHAEF, and laid down instructions that if the more general surrender did occur he would arrange “for a more formal and ceremonial surrender with Russian representatives present.”
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Eisenhower also told Montgomery to refuse to accept the surrender of German armies facing the Russians, but he did allow Montgomery to tell the Germans that “individual soldiers of these Armies surrendering would be accepted as prisoners of war.” Montgomery, in discussing the matter with the German officers who came to negotiate with him, added that he personally would not turn over to the Russians any individual soldiers who surrendered.
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Doenitz then agreed to the smaller surrender—that is, of those German forces facing Montgomery—and on the afternoon of May 4 German representatives came to Twenty-first Army Group headquarters to capitulate unconditionally on the British front. The terms they signed, which went into effect on the morning of May 5, stipulated that the capitulation was independent of and would be superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by the Allies and applicable to German armed forces as a whole.

Farther south, German generals appeared at Hodges’ headquarters and offered to surrender the remaining elements of two German armies still facing the Russians east of the Elbe. The U. S. Ninth Army representatives refused to accept and forbade German civilians to cross the
Elbe and surrender to the American troops. The surrender of individual soldiers would be accepted. In fact, no real effort was made to prevent civilians from crossing the river, and thousands did so. In southern Germany and western Austria Von Kesselring was also ready to give up, but hopefully only to the West. On May 4 he notified SHAEF of his readiness to discuss terms. Eisenhower replied that unless Von Kesselring was willing to surrender all the forces under his command, and especially those facing the Red Army, he should go to Sixth Army Group headquarters, not SHAEF. Von Kesselring thereupon sent his representatives to Devers’ headquarters and on May 5 signed an instrument of surrender for only those German troops opposing Sixth Army Group.
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Doenitz, meanwhile, had sent Admiral Hans von Friedeburg to SHAEF with instructions to arrange for the surrender of the remaining German forces in the West. Eisenhower insisted that any general surrender take place on the eastern and western fronts simultaneously, and he invited Susloparoff to attend the negotiations.
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Smith and Strong, who had handled the Italian surrender negotiations, carried on the discussion with Von Friedeburg, as Eisenhower refused to see any German officers until the document of surrender had been signed. When Smith told Von Friedeburg that there could be no bargaining and showed him a short surrender document drawn up by the SHAEF staff, the German admiral said he had no power to sign. Smith then showed Von Friedeburg SHAEF situation maps to illustrate the hopelessness of the enemy situation, and even brought out some special maps on which imaginary attacks had been projected. The admiral was impressed, and he cabled Doenitz asking for permission to sign an unconditional and simultaneous surrender.
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Doenitz, shocked, decided to send Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, chief of OKW, to Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims to explain why a simultaneous surrender on both fronts was impossible. Jodl arrived on Sunday evening, May 6. After conferring with Von Friedeburg, he went into Smith’s office to talk with Smith and Strong. Jodl emphasized that the Germans were willing, indeed anxious, to surrender to the West, but not to the Red Army. The Germans, he said, would order all their troops remaining on the western front to cease firing no matter what SHAEF did about their offer to surrender. When Smith replied that the surrender had to be a general one, Jodl asked for forty-eight hours “in order to get the necessary instructions to all their outlying units.” Smith replied that such a course was impossible, and Jodl again
asked to surrender to the West only. After the talks had dragged on for over an hour, Smith decided that Jodl was stalling and put the problem before Eisenhower.

Eisenhower felt that all Jodl was trying to do was gain time so that more German soldiers and civilians could get across the Elbe and escape the Russians. He told Smith to inform Jodl that “he would break off all negotiations and seal the western front preventing by force any further westward movement of German soldiers and civilians” unless Jodl signed the surrender document immediately.

Jodl then sent a cable to Doenitz, who replied, enraged, that Eisenhower’s demands were “sheer extortion.” He nevertheless felt impelled to accept them because Jodl, who was the strongest opponent of surrender in the East, now insisted that there was no choice. Doenitz was consoled somewhat by the thought that he could still save many troops from the Russians during the forty-eight-hour period Eisenhower had granted before the capitulation went into effect. Early on Monday morning, May 7, therefore, he telegraphed Jodl: “Full power to sign in accordance with conditions as given has been granted by Grand Admiral Doenitz.”
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At 2
A.M
. Jodl, accompanied by Von Friedeburg and an aide, marched into the small recreation hall of the Ecole Professionelle et Technique de Garçons. It served as the SHAEF War Room. Generals Smith, Morgan, Bull, Spaatz, Strong, Susloparoff, and a half dozen others were already there.

While the somewhat elaborate procedures for the signing went on, Eisenhower waited in his office, pacing and smoking. The signing took more than a half hour, so he had time to think. In the War Room Jodl was delivering the German nation into the hands of the Allies and officially acknowledging that Nazi Germany was dead; outside, spring was bursting forth, promising new life.

Eisenhower had a wealth of accomplishments to think about, as well as the long path he had followed to reach this office at this momentous time. Smith’s call that brought him to Washington in December 1941 and the work under Marshall in OPD, for example, or the disappointment he felt at not being able to do anything to save the Philippines, or the moment he always considered the critical one in his career, the day he told Marshall that he was willing to spend the war working as a staff officer and did not give a damn about promotions. The moment was dramatic, as many had been throughout the war, such as the dripping cave that served as an office in the bowels of Gibraltar, the
Mess Room at Portsmouth and the decision to launch OVERLORD, or the barracks room with the old potbellied stove in Verdun during the crisis of the Bulge.

He had dealt with a remarkable group of people throughout the war. Henri Giraud, the ponderous old soldier who never seemed to understand what was going on. Charles de Gaulle, with his preposterous, haughty manner and his deep, indomitable patriotism. Churchill, clamping his teeth down on his cigar and sticking out his chin, frowning, growling, fighting to preserve the Empire he loved and to destroy the guttersnipe Hitler he hated. Roosevelt, almost casually telling Eisenhower he would command OVERLORD. Montgomery, always lecturing, always condescending, and Brooke, forever critical.

Eisenhower liked to emphasize his Abilene childhood and was constantly amazed at his good fortune. He had established friendships with a widely disparate group of strong-willed men. He had worked side by side with the great and the near great. It had been, by any standard, a challenge to live in close association with such a body of men, powerful in their own right, accustomed to having their own way, and responsible for the fate of their nations. The issues were always critical, so when men like De Gaulle, Churchill, Brooke, Montgomery, Bradley, and the others discussed a subject with Eisenhower, they did everything they could to swing him to their point of view. Eisenhower could not afford to insult any of them, and he had to give each an opportunity to state his case fully. The Supreme Commander had a legendary temper, but he had even greater self-control, and he drew on his enormous fund of patience to hold things together.

He was able to do so because it was his deepest conviction that victory depended upon making the alliance work and he would do anything to achieve that purpose. His basic method was to approach all problems objectively himself, and to convince others that he
was
objective. Equally important, he had the ability to see matters from other peoples’ point of view. He did not dismiss De Gaulle as an egotist who wanted to become a dictator; had he done so, he could never have achieved the successes he did in dealing with the French. Some American officers were darkly suspicious of Churchill, seeing him as a meddlesome old man whose only aim was to promote the interests of the British Empire. Eisenhower did not make that mistake, nor did he assume, as others did, that Montgomery was motivated by considerations of personal advancement. Rather, Eisenhower believed
these men to be honest. This attitude made it possible for him to base his decisions on the issues, not on personalities.

But he did not ignore the personalities. No one could have. People like Patton, Churchill, De Gaulle, Montgomery, and scores of others all had habits, mannerisms, and idiosyncrasies that set them apart and demanded attention. But, in a way, dealing with such men, responding to them at different levels, helped Eisenhower get through the war. He looked upon the relationships as challenges and found them intensely interesting. He had been given an opportunity to work with some of the most fascinating men of the century, and he made the most of it. No matter how bitter the struggle over an issue, Eisenhower always maintained good personal relations. He was able to do so because he enjoyed being with such men.