12.05.2015, Strategic Culture
Foundation http://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia), Фонд стратегической культуры http://www.fondsk.ru (Россия)
The act of unconditional capitulation signed
on May 9, 1945 did not put an end to hostilities in Europe. The German High
Command’s ordered the forces in the north-west of Germany, Denmark and the
Netherlands to lay down arms. There was no reason to continue resistance there.
The fight was to go on in the east. Army Group Centre (1st and 4th Tank and 17thArmy) led by
Field Marshall Ferdinand Schörner and elements of Army Group Ostmark
(operational in Austria and Czechoslovakia) led by Generaloberst (Senior
General) Lothar Rendulic were concentrated in Czechoslovakia to offer stiff
resistance to the Red Army. The 900 thousand strong German force possessed 9, 7
thousand artillery pieces and mortars, 1, 9 thousand tanks and self-propelled
guns, as well as around one thousand combat planes.
The new government of Gross Admiral (Grand
Admiral) Karl Dönitz resisted the Soviet troops in the western and central
parts of Czechoslovakia to ensure German troops would surrender to the British
or Americans and not the Soviet troops. The Russia’s Western allies never did
anything to change it hoping to diminish the success of Red Army and,
subsequently, the extent of Soviet influence in



