Unconditional Surrender: Witnessing History – May 1945

Witness the end of World War II in Europe like never before with this insightful account filled with images taken by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s wartime photographer, Al Meserlin, and analysis from one of the war’s foremost scholars.

Paul E. Zigo, a thirty-year Army veteran who retired as a colonel and the founder and director of the World War II Era Studies Institute, takes readers to the schoolhouse turned Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, where Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered May 7, 1945.

Nothing less than unconditional surrender was acceptable to the Allies, which U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt first proclaimed at a press conference in January 1943 following an Anglo-American summit meeting in Casablanca, French Morocco.

Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed to never accept any armistice like that which led to the signing of the failed Versailles Peace Treaty after World War I— and Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin agreed in absentia.

Despite defeat after defeat, Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler insisted on fighting, and others continued to resist even after his suicide April 30, 1945.

Discover how Nazi Germany finally surrendered with this narrative filled with powerful images that put history in context.ered with this narrative filled with powerful images that put history in context.