On This Day: V-E Day Ends World War II in Europe

By 1945, Germany was on the retreat and Allied forces were closing in on Berlin from the east and west. German capitulation was imminent.

On April 30, Hitler committed suicide, leaving Karl Donitz in power. Donitz immediately sought to negotiate a conditional surrender with the western Allied forces, but the Allies would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.

After a week of unsuccessful negotiation and troop surrenders, Donitz finally agreed to surrender unconditionally. In the early morning of May 7, at Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France, Colonel General Alfred Jodl signed the instrument of surrender.

Late the following day, at a formal ceremony in Berlin, a second unconditional surrender was signed by General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.

Under the terms of the surrender, all German military operations were to cease at 11:01 p.m. on May 8.

At the news of German surrender on May 8, spontaneous celebrations erupted all over the Allied countries, including now-famous victory parties in New York’s Times Square and London’s Trafalgar Square.

In London, “American sailors and laughing girls formed a conga line down the middle of Piccadilly and cockneys linked arms in the Lambeth Walk,” recalls Eyewitness to History.

Canada's celebrations included an alcohol-fueled riot in Halifax, while the West Coast remained cautious of the Japanese threat still present, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

But for many, V-E Day elicited as much mourning as celebration. The feelings of one British sailor, according to the BBC, were typical: “On hearing the news he felt immediate exhilaration and marked the occasion with some ‘liberated’ champagne. But then ‘reaction set in’ as he thought of his friends who had been killed, and he no longer felt like celebrating.”

The day was declared Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day.

The Battle for Berlin was the decisive battle of the War in Europe, ending with the fall of the Third Reich. Stalin, hoping to seize Berlin before the Western Allies could, launched a massive artillery attack on the city starting April 15. On April 30, with his bunker under heavy fire and his capital city in ruins, Hitler committed suicide. On the night of May 2, German troops surrendered to the Soviets.

Dwight David Eisenhower was born in 1890 and went into the U.S. Military Academy a few years before World War I began. He spent the war in the United States, commanding a traning center for tanks, according to Military.com. During World War II, he became Commanding General of the European Theater. In 1944, he launched the D-Day invasion on France's beaches. After Germany's surrender, Eisenhower was promoted to Chief of Staff of the Army, and was elected president in 1952, and served two terms. Eisenhower died in 1969.

Karl Doenitz served as a submarine officer in the first world war, and then he rebuilt Hitler's submarine fleet. In 1943 he became commander of the German Navy. Doenitz lost both of his sons in the war, and after the surrender, allied forces captured him and he went on trial at Nuremberg. He was sentenced to 10 years, though he wasn't charged with crimes against humanity. The BBC called his sentence one of the most controversial.

"Many in the Allied military regarded him as an honourable officer who did not deserve to be lumped in with people like Goering," the BBC said.

After his prison sentence he retired, wrote his memoirs, and died in 1980 at the age of 89.