overall military command for OKW-South, initially denounced the capitulation; but once Hitler's death had been confirmed, acceded to it. German forces in Northwest Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and Schleswig-Holstein On 4 May 1945, German forces acting under instruction from the Dönitz Government and facing the British and Canadian 21st Army Group, signed an act of surrender at Lüneburg Heath to come into effect on 5 May. German forces in Southern Germany On 5 May 1945, all German forces in Bavaria and Southwest Germany signed an act of surrender to the Americans at Haar, outside Munich; coming into effect on 6 May. The impetus for the Caserta capitulation had arisen from within the local German military command; but from 2 May 1945, the Dönitz government assumed control of the process, pursuing a deliberate policy of successive partial capitulations in the west to play for time in order to bring as many as possible of the eastern military formations westwards so as to save them from Soviet or Yugoslav captivity, and surrender them intact to the British and Americans. In addition, Dönitz hoped to continue to evacuate soldiers and civilians by sea from the Hela peninsula and the surrounding Baltic coastal areas. Dönitz and Keitel were resolved against issuing any orders to surrender to Soviet forces, not only from undiminished anti-Bolshevism, but also because they could not be confident they would be obeyed, and might consequently place troops continuing to fight in the position of refusing a direct order, thereby stripping them of any legal protection as prisoners of war. These surrenders in the west had succeeded in ceasing hostilities between the Western allies and German forces on almost all fronts. At the same time however, the broadcast orders of the Dönitz government continued to oppose any acts of German surrender to Soviet forces in Courland, Bohemia and Mecklenburg; indeed attempting to countermand ongoing surrender negotiations both in Berlin and Breslau. German forces in the east were ordered instead to fight their way westwards. Conscious that, if this were to continue, the Soviet Command would suspect that the Western allies were intending a separate peace (as indeed was exactly Dönitz's intention), Eisenhower determined that no further partial surrenders would be agreed in the West; but instead instructed the Dönitz government to send representatives to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters in Reims, to agree terms for a general surrender of all German