At 2:41 A.M. on May 7, at Eisenhower’s headquarters in the cathedral city of Rheims, Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl signed the documents of the Act of Military Surrender. Under the terms, the unconditional surrender of Germany was to take effect at one minute before midnight on May 8, 1945, V-E Day. But when Stalin protested that the war was not officially over until the Germans ratified the treaty in the presence of Marshal Zhukov, the conqueror of Berlin, Eisenhower was “directed to withhold news of the first signing until the second could be accomplished.”
