The Second World War in Europe ended officially on May 7, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of all German forces. For the First Canadian Army, however, it had ended two days earlier. On May 5, German General Johannes Blaskowitz surrendered the 120,000-strong Twenty-Fifth Army to I Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes at Wageningen in the Netherlands. Almost simultaneously, at the German resort town of Bad Zwischenahn, II Canadian Corps’ Lieutenant- General Guy Simonds accepted General Erich von Straube’s surrender of about 93,000 troops in northwest Germany.