UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDERS

IN THE ROOMS WHERE HISTORY WAS MADE

- LOUIS HARDIMAN

James Holland and AI Murray discuss the tangled web of negotiations, and the unique personalities, that brought an end to the war in Europe

After six years of fighting, Europe lay in ruins, but the Nazi regime had finally buckled. All their fronts were collapsing and they had no hope of recovery. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender, while the remnants of the Nazi state wrestled for time so its troops could escape the Soviet clutches.

James Holland and Al Murray's Victory ‘45 covers each of 1945's eight surrenders - six in Europe and two in Japan - and the celebrations that followed. The book is driven by the personalities and eccentricities of the people that negotiated the surrenders, and how they shaped our current world.

For instance, Murray recounts the different approaches of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force Dwight D Eisenhower: “Montgomery was doing it as a professional soldier and rank bothered him. Eisenhower's approach was based on his moral responsibilities. He did this fantastic thing of being the man in the next room, who said: ‘Once you have surrendered, you can come and see me. Until then, I'm going to have nothing to do with you.’ There was a theatre of absence. That was his pattern.”

On the other hand, during the negotiations with the Soviets, Murray explains that the Red Army officials acted on different instincts: “Stalin's boys did it in a state of paranoia, keeping to the timetable their boss had insisted on. Montgomery didn’t ask London and Eisenhower didn’t ask Washington what to do, but cracked on and got it done. The Soviet commanders had to do what the Stavka [high command] told them. They were worried about whether they would get liquidated and what would happen to them after the war.”