conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Unconditional Surrender'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Unconditional Surrender
  At Eisenhower's instigation the formal signing had to be repeated on 8 May 1945 in Berlin in a ceremony for the benefit of the Soviets. It sprang from his 'crusader' mentality and political naïveté in which he thought it necessary to 'symbolise the unity of the Western Allies and the Soviets' and to make clear to the Germans in as drastic manner as possible that they had not only surrendered to the Western Powers. Thus at Rheims, Jodl was obliged to appear with Keitel and the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht branches at a place and time to be determined by Eisenhower and the Soviet High Command for the formal ratification of the document.
  The Western Powers contented themselves with the role of invited guests. Air Marshal Tedder, General Spaatz and General de Lattre de Tassigny were the Western representatives with Marshal Zhukov, who presided at the ceremony. Keitel as OKW Chief and the highest ranking officer led the German delegation. Since there had been no effective Army Commander-in-Chief since Hitler's death Keitel also took on this role while Generaloberst Stumpff deputised as the most easily-reached senior Luftwaffe officer in place of the wounded Commander-in-Chief Ritter von Greim. Only the Kriegsmarine was represented by its actual Commander-in-Chief, Generaladmiral von Friedeburg.
  On the morning of 8 May the delegation flew from Flensburg to Stendal, where a new flight commanded by Air Marshal Tedder, Eisenhower's representative, was on hand. The party landed at Tempelhof and was driven to the old Pioneer Training Camp at Karlshorst, arriving at 1300 hrs. Keitel had been given the German-language version of the instrument at the airfield and after comparing it to the Rheims original made a few minor alterations. The only important introduction had been new penalties for troops who failed to hand over their weapons. Keitel objected and demanded a guarantee that no disciplinary measures would be taken until twenty-four hours after the corresponding German orders had been issued. Zhukov agreed to twelve hours. This cleared away all German objections to signing, but the German delegation was then herded into a small villa near the military school to wait out the hours until midnight, when the capitulation came into effect. At the appropriate time Keitel and his party were led into the hall. The signing of the four copies seemed to the Germans to 'last an eternity' and dragged on until somewhere towards 0200 hrs. Nevertheless, the date on the document was left at 8 May 1945. Thus did Hitler's total war end officially in total defeat and unconditional surrender.
  When the American commandant of Mondorf Camp proclaimed to the assembled prisoners on 7 July 1945 that 'the German State has ceased to exist' he was probably acting under orders with which he found himself in agreement. The opening sentences of the Allied declaration of 5 June 1945, in which the victors assumed formally 'supreme Government power', speak of 'Germany's unconditional surrender' as the alleged basis of their right. It was supposed to appear as if the Reich as such in Rheims and Berlin had delivered itself up: Finis germaniae.
  To impute this sense to the phrase 'unconditional surrender' and to couple the military surrender to a political one in international and constitutional law was the original Allied programme. What was to be inflicted on the Germans legally, and extracted from them under the pressure of defeat, was something different, however. The confusing and confused plans of the victors for the treatment of the Reich after the war reflect the tensions amongst them and the differences in their own houses.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My wife and I choose death to avoid the ignominy of fleeing or capitulating. It is our wish that our bodies be burnt immediately afterwards in that place where I have carried out the greater part of my daily work in the course of 12 years' service to my people.
  Grossadmiral Dönitz, whom the Führer named as his successor, has given me the portfolio of Reich Foreign Minister. In Germany's darkest hour I now turn to the public. The world still hears the sounds of war, German men are still dying in the last battles to defend the German homeland. Along the highways of German territory as yet unoccupied, a stream of desperate, starving people hunted by fighter-bombers heads westwards, fleeing from an unspeakable terror, from murder and rape. In the East the Iron Curtain is ever advancing and behind it, hidden from the eyes of the world, the work of exterminating those who have fallen into Bolshevik hands goes on.
  In San Francisco talks are being held to debate the organisation of a new world order to indemnify humanity against a new war. The world knows that a Third World War would not mean just the destruction of one nation, but the end of the human race. The terrible weapons not used in this war would appear in a Third World War, bringing death and destruction to the whole world. We Germans, of all peoples of the Earth, have had more experience than any other nation of what war means in its destruction of all culture. Our cities are destroyed, our cultural monuments of Dresden and Nuremberg, Cologne and Bayreuth and other cities of world renown of the German spiritual creation lie in ruins, our cathedrals have become victims of the bombing.
  Hundreds of thousands of women and children have been forced to flee before the fury of war, while millions of our German youth and men have fallen at the fronts. If therefore from the hearts of distressed women and mothers the prayer reaches heaven that the world may be saved from the cruel horror of a new war, then it is at its strongest and most heartfelt within the German people. Together with us, all European lands threatened with starvation and the Bolshevist terror hope for a reorganisation which will bring to this part of the Earth, churned over by war, a real and lasting peace, and the possibility of a free and secure life.
  But the more that the German East, which is the basic food source for the starving millions in the West, falls into the hands of the Bolshevists, the quicker and more dreadful will be the famine over all Europe. In the despair this need engenders, Bolshevism will flourish. A Communist Europe is the first stage on the path to the Soviet world revolution upon which they deliberately set their sights twenty-five years ago. It is an inescapable consequence of their aims that either they will achieve their goal or there will be a Third World War.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Caretaker Reich Government sees its role as temporary and of limited scope. The time limits are set by the necessity for the German people to express its political will in the constitutional manner, to choose the nature the State will assume, to elect a Head of State and a Reich Government. The statement of this will of the people will not be practical for a period of time beyond the possibility of present assessment. During this period it would seem to be right that the affairs of the Reich Government should be looked after by expert persons especially qualified by experience whose task is transitional and limited to winding up affairs.
  I find myself compelled to inform you of the following: After my detention by troops under your command on 23 May at Flensburg, I was obliged to submit to a body search without regard being paid to my rank. At the same time my private luggage was rummaged. Together with a number of items of value, my marshal's baton was removed. I had placed it in my private luggage deliberately in the belief that this honourable emblem of a soldier of my standing would be respected even by a victorious opponent. I have not received a receipt for the articles of value, nor for the marshal's baton, nor for the interim baton removed from my person during the body search.
  As I am sure, Field-Marshal, that any infringement of honour and the inviolability of private property would not be tolerated by yourself, I bring these defamatory incidents to your attention and am convinced that in this manner I shall retrieve the marshal's and interim batons and the private items of property.
  Under these circumstances it is necessary to prepare for later decisions which may be taken with regard to Germany, precautionary measures to terminate any future hostilities by the German armed forces, to maintain order in Germany, to administer the country and announce the immediate requirements with which Germany is to comply.
  In order to avoid misunderstandings of my personal position, I would like to make the following clarification: