Why didn't Eisenhower personally sign Act of Military Surrender in Reims, 1945?
score:21
It is difficult to answer with certainty, but I think the answer is closer to #1. But the comparison would not be about how many stars the generals had (after all, comparisons could be tricky between armies of different nations) but of the respective positions in each army.
Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and, as such, held the top military position and was answerable only to the Allied governments.
The German equivalent would have been Wilhelm Keitel as head of the Oberkommando der Werhmacht(OKW).
Jodl was the Chief of Staff of the OKW, so he was under the orders of Keitel. Sending the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces to work out a deal with a subordinate would have been highly unusual even in a situation in which the Germans were not on the losing side, and probably could be taken as an insult1.
The closest equivalent in the SHAEF to Jodl's position would have been that of Walter Bedell Smith, making the negotiations an issue "between peers".
Additionally, the fact that Eisenhower received the German delegation after the signing shows that, whatever Eisenhower's opinions about them, he could put them aside for a moment. Since there is no reason to believe that such a reception was in any means necessary for the effective surrender of Germany, the #2 seems highly unlikely.
1And, from what I have read somewhere, at the time Eisenhower probably was already considering a political career, making it more important to avoid those faux-pas.
Upvote:3
Just to add to SJuan76's great answer which I upvoted as both informative and logical. Such an act as SJuan76 describes has historical precedent.
After the siege of Yorktown Oct 19th 1780, when General Cornwallis was to surrender to General George Washington ending the American Revolutionary War; General Cornwallis declined to show up to the surrender ceremony saying he was ill. Cornwallis sent a secondary officer, General Charles O’Hara to surrender. In response George Washington declined to accept the surrender but instead motioned to his second in command General Benjamin Lincoln who stepped forward to accept Cornwallis's sword, with Washington watching just a few feet away.
General Charles O’Hara
General O'Hara represented the British at the surrender of Yorktown on 19 October 1781, as Cornwallis' adjutant, when he pleaded illness. He first attempted to surrender to French Comte de Rochambeau, who declined his sword and deferred to General George Washington. Washington declined and deferred to Major General Benjamin Lincoln, who was serving as Washington's second-in-command and had surrendered to General Clinton at Charleston in May 1780.
(*) The french officer who declined Cornwallis's sword was General Rochambeau
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