East-West link-up: On April 25, Soviet and American troops linked up, cutting Germany in two (see Elbe Day). The first units to make contact were from the U.S. 69th Infantry Division of the U.S. First Army and the Soviet 58th Guards Division of the 5th Guards Army near Torgau, on the river Elbe.
Mussolini's death: On April 27, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian Partisans. He was trying to flee Italy to Switzerland and was traveling with a German anti-air battalion. On April 28, Mussolini and several of the other Fascists captured with him were taken to Dongo and executed. The bodies were then taken to Milan and hung for public display in front of a petrol station. On April 29, Rodolfo Graziani, surrendered all Fascist Italian armed forces at Caserta. This included Army Group Liguria. Graziani was the Minister of Defense for Mussolini's Italian Social Republic puppet state.
Hitler's death: On April 30, as the Battle of Berlin raged above him and realizing that all was lost, German dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker along with Eva Braun, his long-term mistress whom he had married just hours before their joint suicide. In his will Hitler appointed his successors; Karl Dönitz as the new Reichspräsident ("President of Germany") and Joseph Goebbels as the new Reichskanzler (Chancellor of Germany). However, Goebbels committed suicide on May 1, 1945, leaving Dönitz as sole leader of Germany.
German forces in Italy surrender: On May 1, SS General Karl Wolff and the Commander-in-Chief of the German Tenth Army, General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, after prolonged unauthorised secret negotiations with the Western Allies named Operation Sunrise, which were viewed as trying to reach a separate peace by the Soviet Union, ordered all German armed forces in Italy to cease hostilities and signed a surrender document which stipulated that all German forces in Italy were to surrender unconditionally to the Allies on May 2.
German forces in Berlin surrender: The Battle of Berlin ended on May 2. On this date, General of the Artillery Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov of the Soviet army.[1] On the same day the officers commanding the two armies of Army Group Vistula north of Berlin, (General Kurt von Tippelskirch commander of the German Twenty-First Army and General Hasso von Manteuffel commander of Third Panzer Army) surrendered to the Western Allies.[2]
German forces in North West Germany, Denmark and Holland surrender: On May 4, 1945, the British Field Marshal Montgomery took the unconditional military surrender from General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, and General Hans Kinzel, of all German forces "in Holland, in northwest Germany including the Frisian Islands and Heligoland and all other islands, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Denmark… includ[ing] all naval ships in these areas."[3] on Lüneburg Heath; an area between the cities of Hamburg, Hanover and Bremen. As the operational commander of some of these forces was Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, this signaled that the European war was over.[4][5][6][7][8] On May 5, Dönitz ordered all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases. At 14:30, General Hermann Foertsch surrendered all forces between the Bohemian mountains and the Upper Inn river to the American General Jacob L. Devers, commander of the American 6th Army Group. At 16:00, General Johannes Blaskowitz, the German commander-in-chief in the Netherlands, surrendered to Canadian General Charles Foulkes in the small Dutch town of Wageningen in the presence of Prince Bernhard (acting as commander-in-chief of the Dutch Interior Forces).[7][8] In Dresden, Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann let it be known that a large-scale German offensive on the Eastern Front was about to be launched. Two days later, Mutschmann was captured by Soviet troops while trying to escape.[9]
Deposition of captured 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler standards by Soviet soldiers near the Kremlin Wall during the Victory Parade, June 24, 1945.German forces in Breslau surrender: On May 6 at 18:00, General Hermann Niehoff the commandant of Breslau, a fortress city surrounded and besieged for months, surrendered to the Soviets.[8]
German forces on the Channel Islands surrender: On May 8 at 10:00, the islanders were informed by the German authorities that the war was over. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a radio broadcast at 15:00 during which he announced: "Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight to-night, but in the interests of saving lives the 'Cease fire' began yesterday to be sounded all along the front, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed to-day." [10]
Jodl and Keitel surrender all German armed forces unconditionally: One half hour after the fall of "Fortress Breslau" (Festung Breslau), General Alfred Jodl arrived in Rheims and, following Dönitz's instructions, offered to surrender all forces fighting the Western Allies. This was exactly the same negotiating position that von Friedeburg had initially made to Montgomery, and like Montgomery the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, threatened to break off all negotiations unless the Germans agreed to a complete unconditional surrender.[11] Eisenhower explicitly told Jodl that he would order western lines closed to German soldiers, thus forcing them to surrender to the Soviets.[11] Jodl sent a signal to Dönitz, who was in Flensburg, informing him of Eisenhower's position. Shortly after midnight Dönitz, accepting the inevitable, sent a signal to Jodl authorizing the complete and total surrender of all German forces.[11][8]
At 02:41 on the morning of, May 7, 1945, at the SHAEF headquarters in Rheims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies[12] It included the phrase "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European Time on May 8, 1945."[3][13] The next day, General Wilhelm Keitel and other German OKW representatives traveled to Berlin, and shortly before midnight signed a similar document, explicitly surrendering to Soviet forces, in the presence of General Georgi Zhukov.[14] The signing ceremony took place in a villa in an eastern suburb of Berlin, in the town of Karlshorst.[15]
Victory in Europe: News of the surrender broke in the West on May 8, and celebrations erupted throughout Europe. In the United States, Americans awoke to the news and declared May 8 V-E Day. As the Soviet Union was to the east of Germany it was May 9 Moscow Time when German military surrender became effective, which is why Russia and many other European countries east of Germany commemorate Victory Day on May 9.
The Oder-Neisse Line (click to enlarge).The government of Dönitz ordered dissolved by Eisenhower: Karl Dönitz continued to act as the German head of state, but his Flensburg government (so-called because it was based at Flensburg and controlled only a small area around the town) was given no regard after the surrender on May 8th. On May 23, 1945 a British liaison officer was sent to Flensburg and read to the Flensburg government Eisenhower's order dissolving the government and ordering the arrest of its members. The Allies had a problem, because they realised that although the German armed forces had surrendered unconditionally, SHAEF had failed to use the document created by the "European Advisory Commission" (EAC) and so the civilian German government had not. This was considered a very important issue, because just as the civilian, but not military, surrender in 1918 had been used by Hitler to create the "stab in the back" argument, the Allies did not want to give a future hostile German regime a legal argument to resurrect an old quarrel. Eventually they decided not to recognise Dönitz and to sign a four-power document instead, creating the Allied Control Council which included the following:
The Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, hereby assume supreme authority with respect to Germany, including all the powers possessed by the German Government, the High Command and any state, municipal, or local government or authority. The assumption, for the purposes stated above, of the said authority and powers does not effect[16] the annexation of Germany. [US Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts Series, No. 1520.][17]
Debellation: On 5 July 1945 the four powers signed the document in Berlin and the de facto became the de jure. In July/August 1945, the Allied leaders planned the new postwar German government, resettled war territory boundaries, de facto annexed a quarter of pre war Germany situated east of the Oder-Neisse line, organized the expulsion of the millions of Germans remaining in the annexed territory and elsewhere in the east, ordered German demilitarization, denazification, industrial disarmament and settlements of war reparations at the Potsdam Conference.
End of the war with Germany: The U.S. ended its state of war with Germany on October 19, 1951 at 5:45 p.m. The U.S. state of war with Germany had been maintained for legal reasons,[18][19] but in mid 1951 the Western Allies; the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the cobelligerent Italy moved to end the state of war with Germany.[20] The state of war between Germany and the Soviet Union was ended in early 1955.[21]
( კოპი პასტე არი ისე საიტის მისამართია
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_World_War_II_in_Europe)
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9/05/1945 ბერლინი, გამარჯვების დღე რას ფიქრობთ ამაზე :) 
