The thin-lipped, haughty Prussian aristocrat stalked into the floodlighted room, slapped his marshal's baton down on the table and stared straight ahead. Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command and of the Wehrmacht, was now ready to surrender. Across the room sat a heavyset, close-cropped Russian peasant's son: Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, deputy commander of the Red Army. He was now ready to take the German surrender.
The ceremony was at Russian headquarters in Karlshorst, a Berlin suburb, 45½ hours after the surrender to Eisenhower at Reims. There was...
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