Hitler had entrusted Minister of Armaments Albert Speer to enforce a scorched earth policy, which would have reduced Germany to even worse rubble.  Speer promised to comply but refused to enforce the order.

Speer returned to the bunker between April 22-24 and confessed that he had defied the order.  Hitler wrote Speer out of his political will.

Speer was captured by the Allies on May 23 and tried as a war criminal.  He was convicted of crimes against humanity and served 20 years in Spandau Prison (1946-1966).  The Soviets insisted that Nazi war criminals receive no credit for time served before conviction.  He died in 1981.

Speer had designed the New Reich Chancellery, the building where Hitler died.

April 30 - After lunch Hitler and Eva retire to his personal study.  A single gunshot is heard.

Hitler has shot himself in the head with his Walther PPK 7.65.  Eva has taken cyanide.

Joseph Goebbels made the announcement.  "The heart of Germany has ceased to beat. The Führer is dead."

There is no time for mourning.  The bodies are carried out of the bunker and burned in a bomb crater as the remaining staff plan their breakout.

Not very glamorous.

May 1-2. The breakout. The remaining members of the bunker staff escape in separate groups, each to a different fate.

May 2. Around noon, Russian troops first enter the bunker complex, finding Johannes Hentschel, a mechanic, the sole remaining occupant.  The western allies learn of Hitler's death.

Yes, that's from Apex's link.

This is a new view of a photograph that appeared, heavily cropped, in LIFE, picturing Hitler's command center in the Berlin bunker, partially burned by retreating German troops and stripped of valuables by invading Russians.

Albert Speer's architecture was pretty awesome.

Happy VE Day.

The first instrument of Surrender was signed at Reims, France, at 02:41 hours on 7 May 1945. The signing took place in a red brick schoolhouse that served as the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). It was to take effect at 2301 hours Central European time on 8 May 1945.

The unconditional surrender of the German armed forces was signed by Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, on behalf of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (German language: High Command of armed forces) and as the representative for the new Reich President, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. Walter Bedell Smith signed on behalf of the Western Allies, and Ivan Susloparov on behalf of the Soviets. French major general François Sevez signed as the official witness.

Since the Rheims ceremony was arranged by the Western Allies without agreement with the Soviet Command, shortly after the surrender had been signed the latter announced that the Soviet representative in Rheims, General Susloparov, had no authority to sign this document. In addition, it had been found that the document signed in Rheims was different from the draft prepared earlier, which had been approved by the Big Three. Importantly, a part of Wehrmacht refused to lay down their arms and continued to fight in Czechoslovakia; it has been stated in a German radio broadcast that the Germans made peace with the Western Allies, but not with the Soviets.

The Soviets argued that the surrender should be arranged as a unique, singular, historical event. They also believed that it should not be held on liberated territory, that had been victimized by German aggression, but at the seat of Government from where that German aggression sprang from: Berlin. The Soviet side insisted that the act of surrender signed in Rheims should be considered "a preliminary protocol of surrender", so the Allies agreed that another surrender ceremony should take place in Berlin. A second Act of Military Surrender was signed shortly before midnight on 8 May at the seat of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin-Karlshorst, now the location of the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

Heinrich Himmler, traveling disguised with a false passport, was arrested by British forces on May 22.

He committed suicide by poison the next day.

BlackAce wrote on May 23^rd, 2012 at 8:54am:

This story looks as good as any.

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