World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF EUROPE: Berlin Makes It Official

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The thin-lipped, haughty Prussian aristocrat stalked into the floodlighted room, slapped his marshal's baton down on the table and stared straight ahead. Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command and of the Wehrmacht, was now ready to surrender. Across the room sat a heavyset, close-cropped Russian peasant's son: Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, deputy commander of the Red Army. He was now ready to take the German surrender.

The ceremony was at Russian headquarters in Karlshorst, a Berlin suburb, 45½ hours after the surrender to Eisenhower at Reims. There was little talk.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur W. Tedder, General Eisenhower's deputy, coldly asked the German if he was ready to sign. Keitel's face was slightly flushed. Wetting his hard, bitter lips, he snapped in German: "Yes, I am ready." Screwing his monocle into his right eye, Keitel drew his own fountain pen, scrawled "Keitel" on nine copies, then angrily demanded an extra 24 hours to notify his army of the terms. He did not get it.

Zhukov 'spoke only when the Allied signatures were affixed. Then he said: "I now request the German delegation to leave the room."

For the Russians, this made it official. Nazi Germany had been beaten to her knees—and had admitted it.