US diplomat Robert Daniel Murphy claims Eisenhower found the surrender ceremony distasteful and had decided not to participate, delegating the signing to his Chief of Staff General Walter Bedell Smith and that EAC-approved surrender documents were not signed on 7 May because an exhausted General Smith had thought that EAC had never approved a surrender agreement.
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The act of military surrender was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany.
Upon implementation of the 1945 German Instrument of Surrender and the Allied occupation of Austria, the training ground was seized by the Soviet Army and, despite raised claims for restitution, has remained a military exclusion zone (renamed Truppenübungsplatz Allentsteig) to this day, now operated by the Austrian Armed Forces.
Admiral von Friedeburg went on to sign the German Instrument of Surrender that established the armistice ending World War II in Europe on 7 May at Reims in France and signed again with the Supreme High Command of the Red Army, French and US representatives in Berlin.
He later signed on behalf of the Kriegsmarine, in Berlin on 8 May 1945, along with Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff for the Luftwaffe and Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel for the Wehrmacht, an instrument of surrender in the presence of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Red Army and other Allied representatives.
These incidents preceded the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces (Wehrmacht), signed by representatives of the High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) on May 7 in Reims and on May 8 in Berlin-Karlshorst (often incorrectly referred to as "Germany's surrender"), from which, due to its nature as a purely military capitulation, no legal consequences for the legal status of the German Reich arose.
Shortly afterwards, on May 7, 1945, General Alfred Jodl signed the German military surrender, and on May 23 Speer was arrested on the orders of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, together with the rest of the provisional German government led by Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor as head of state.