Wayne Soini

Germany Surrenders! Wayne Soini

MAY 7, 1945 (PARIS, FRANCE): Germany has surrendered but U. S. Army censors are holding back that fact. Accepting military orders, all of the correspondents - except one - say nothing. Working up to and then beyond the climactic German surrender at 2:41 a.m., May 7, 1945, in the former French schoolhouse in Reims, France that had become Eisenhower's headquarters, the novel quickly shifts to the Hotel Scribe in Paris. There, as war correspondents write their stories and await the censor's release, they learn that German radio has begun broadcasting news of a surrender still unknown to the people of the United States. Stunned by military hypocrisy, one of the correspondents - a legendary newspaperman here called Fred Morrissey - challenges authority and desperately seeks some way to smuggle out the biggest story of the war. As he bucks the passivity of his peers and fully accepts the certainty of instant retaliation by his own government, he works to tell people back home that Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe is over. Behind this suspenseful novel stands a true story of the end of World War II, misunderstood in 1945 and to this day not widely enough known, when history turned on the act of a single champion who rose to defend the people's right to know against all odds and opposition. Presented here as fiction for the very first time, Germany Surrenders! is an exciting historical novel that will grip anyone interested in World War II, war correspondents or the moral issues and complications that arise when fighting censorship.