Name: VE Day - the unknown British colonel who drafted the terms of German surrender - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T17:41:10.000Z
Duration: 3 min 26 s
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It was 75 years ago this month that the Second World War came to an end in Europe.

Basic passive voice

The surrender document signed by Germany was drafted not by senior diplomats or ministers, but by an officer in the British Army who was by training an actor and theatre manager.

Few people, including his own daughters, realize the role that he played on the day.

As my colleague Rita Chakrabarti explains that Meet John Council, the British Army colonel who played a pivotal role in ending World War to an actor and theatre manager.

In 1940 he was called up into the Theater of war.

But Army life, his twin daughters told me, wasn't for him.

I think the word would be his battery commander said that he was the worst.

Jenny and Elizabeth was small Children at the time.

Their father, despite being a poor soldier, was a good writer and was propelled into ghost writing.

Official reports for the Allied commander, General Eisenhower, Nazism, was crushed in the rubble of German cities.

By the spring of 1945 Germany overpowered and Hitler dead.

Momentous task of drafting the surrender document fell to John Council.

He was bordered to go away and write a document in on behalf for the Germans to sign top secret.

Only he and the Sonam refers, as he called them.

Yes, Firstly, he really didn't know what to put apart from active military surrender.

And then he remembered that in the office somewhere was an old peace document that would sort of show him a style of how these things were done on dso.

He sat down on, began to write we the undersigned Oh, Jenny, you say this because you're better doing this and I on form.

We, the undersigned acting by authority of the German High Command do hereby surrender unconditionally.

The German delegation headed by General Yodo, Germany's chief of staff, have arrived for the faithful settlement.

It the general puts his signature to the document which acknowledges the complete defeat of the German armed forces by those of Britain, Russia and the United States.

Did he have a sense of how important his role?

He knew he was making history, and it astounded him because basically, it was an actor, he said.

There was a mixture of terror and excitement as he knew what he had to do, and it was terribly important.

It's lovely to think, you know, when I see that footage off the crowds in Piccadilly Circus on Dancing in the Streets and cheers and famous shot of Churchill with his re sign for Oh my gosh, what Daddy did that?

 What an extraordinary thing for him to have done that actually saved lives with a sheet of paper, a revealing new insight there into the events of VE Day, as told by Rita Chakrabarti. 

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VE Day - the unknown British colonel who drafted the terms of German surrender - BBC News

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