Hi Stuart. I think it was driven by the Germans’ desire to surrender to the Western Allies and not the Russians who were already in Berlin.

The other day I discovered that Chris Leadbeater wrote the Surrender Museum up for the Independent in 2015, only he was more eloquent than me (don’t you hate talented writers!).

He made a poignant observation about the way that the lives of the 3 key players (including General Walter Bedell Smith who actually who presided over the surrender ceremony, representing Eisenhower) went in different directions from the moment of Jodl’s swirling signature:

“From that second, these three men were bent on different paths. Eisenhower would serve as the 34th US President from 1953 to 1961, with Smith – who would become director of the CIA in 1950 – as a prominent part of his team; Jodl would be tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg, and hanged on 16 October 1946.