Jodl and Keitel: Two Surrenders In May 1945

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The surrender by German forces to the Allies happened twice. Once in Reims by General Jodl and once in Berlin by General Keitel.

On May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl signed Germany’s unconditional surrender at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Reims, France. This act was intended to end hostilities on all fronts. However, the Soviet Union objected to the surrender being signed in the Western theatre of war without their prominent involvement. The only Russian signatory at Reims was General Ivan Susloparov, who acted as the soviet representative for the signing ceremony.

Further, the text of the surrender in Reims did not conform to the wording which was previously agreed by the Americans, British and Soviets. This was an error by General Smith who forgot that the approved document of surrender was filed away in his personal top-secret cabinet.

Therefore, he sent three officers to prepare a new surrender document from miscellaneous reference material.

When the error came to light after the signing, the Western Allies had no choice but to agree that the act of surrender signed in Reims should be considered “a preliminary protocol of surrender” and another surrender ceremony should take place in Berlin.

Consequently, a second surrender ceremony was held in Berlin on May 8, where Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the definitive surrender document in the presence of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov and representatives from the Western Allies.

What Happened to Jodl and Keitel

Each of the four Allied powers – United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France – were represented at an International Military Tribunal by a judge, a alternate judge, and a team of prosecutors and staff where Jodl and Keitel, among others were, indicted and convicted for the crimes of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Both Jodl and Keitel were hanged at Nuremberg.

Alfred Jodl in Paris and Wilhelm Keitel in Berlin for the vanquished, were ‘good’ enough for the purpose of signing the surrender documents, but they were not ‘good’ enough to avoid being indicted, convicted, and hanged after the war.

Some of the facts that led to their conviction came out after the war, but some described in the indictment were known from the start. So it seems strange to me that the vanquished were represented at the signing of the surrender by Generals who were later hanged for being perpetrators of the war.

Perhaps from the Allied point of view they really didn’t care who signed the surrender for and on behalf of the Germans, as long as the Germans themselves accepted it as a sign to put down their weapons. Perhaps that is the way to look at it.

Footnote

It turned out that General Susloparov was trying to contact his superiors to determine whether he should sign the surrender document in Reims but was overtaken by events when the time for the signing arrived. What was he to do? At the same time his superiors were trying to contact him to tell him not to sign. In the event, he survived the war and worked in the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, dying in 1974.

Slavery West and East

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There is a movement in the UK nowadays to expose the slave-owning history of prominent people and businesses and institutions that sent slaves to the Americas. What is not acknowledged is the similar or greater slave-owning history that sent slaves not west, but north and east.

Slavery from Sub-Saharan Africa goes back millennia. Until the start of the Arab/Islamic slave trade in the 7th century of the Common Era it was localised and slaves were typically captives in war, criminals, or those in debt.

As Islam expanded in the 7th century, Arab traders began trafficking Africans north across the Sahara, and eastwards.

Slaves transported eastward were brought from the interior of Africa (especially Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Congo), and trafficked over the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, India, Persia, Indonesia, and China, and in large numbers.

The estimates of slaves transported on these routes range from 10–18 million people.

The transatlantic Slave Trade ran for a much shorter period, from the 15th to the 19th century. The Portuguese began it, and it was later dominated by British, French, Dutch, and Spanish traders. Over 12 million Africans were captured through raids, wars, or sold by other Africans and forcibly taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas from major slave-trading ports in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, and Angola.

The wide range of the estimates of the numbers enslaved to northern and eastern destinations reflects that fact that many of the Arab-led slave trades had no documentation, unlike the Transatlantic slave trade run by Europeans who kept detailed shipping records.

The wide range of estimates for the northern and eastern trade also reflects the centuries-long time scale over which the trade occurred.

And a third reason is the lack of will to describe it, unlike the deep contemporary analyses in the West, beginning after the legal abolition of slavery.

All in all though, and this is a surprise to some, the northern and eastward slave trade was the equal to and likely more in numbers of slaves than the Transatlantic trade.

Count Your Blessings

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Who was the first person to say count your blessings? It must have been a long time ago. And over the years, like with all things, the meaning gets trampled down and overlooked.

So let’s start again and spend time counting them, looking at them, seeing what they are. It may be many people have similar blessings but we know that not everybody is blessed with the same. And what is a blessing? What’s implied in the word blessing is that whatever one is blessed with – that blessing comes from outside.

If we could control everything then we could say it’s not a blessing; it’s my characteristic and I started it and I begat it and I control it and I decide whether it exists or it doesn’t exist

And we know this isn’t true.

We have a choice to say we are not victims but rather we are recipients. We are the receivers and if we receive we must receive from outside and where the outside is, well that’s a different question and we don’t have to think about it now.

But we can recognise a blessing is what you are blessed with and we can take a moment to stand still and feel the outside; we can all do that.

What Is Worse Than Kafka’s The Trial

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The story of Franz Kafka’s The Trial follows Josef K, a bank clerk, who is arrested by unidentified agents. He is neither detained nor told what crime he has allegedly committed. He is entangled in a labyrinthine legal system, with arbitrary rules, faceless bureaucrats, and unsettling and surreal proceedings. In the end he is executed in a quarry.

Is the novel a metaphor for the kind of existential anxiety and search for meaning we feel in an incomprehensible universe.

Or maybe the meaning is staring us in the face but we do not grasp it, with each of us seeing everything as a game of ‘what does it profit me?’

The opposite of that would be to care for the other, to want to give the other that which raises them to deeper sensations of existence.

Better than that would be for everyone to know that everyone cares for them, has their back. Ah, if that was the case I could relax. We could all relax and begin to live.

But in this world of what does it profit me, what is worse than Kafka’s trial? What can be worse?

Well, there is one sense in which Kafka’s character could derive some meaning from his situation. That is that he is accused. To be accused it to be recognised.

Josef K’s ‘crime’ may be obscure and even nonsensical, but at least he is regarded and recognised by others. He is someone in the scheme of things.

What is worse than that is to simply not be recognised at all. You do not exist. The machine grinds on and you do not figure in the process. You are not a non-person scrabbling for a purchase, a hold on the outer surface of something that is smooth without holes or entrances or edges to grip.

Try as you might, it rejects what you want to achieve, which is to make contact with, to connect with other human beings.