refused to recognize it, which created a diplomatic problem as formal inclusion of the additional clause in the EAC text would inevitably create a French demand for equal representation in any dismemberment decisions. While this was unresolved, there were in effect two versions of the EAC text, one with the "dismemberment clause" and one without. By the end of March 1945, the British government began to doubt whether, once Germany had been completely overpowered, there would be any post-Nazi German civil authority capable of signing the instrument of surrender or of putting its provisions into effect. They proposed that the EAC text should be redrafted as a unilateral declaration of German defeat by the Allied Powers, and of their assumption of supreme authority following the total dissolution of the German state. It was in this form that the text agreed by the EAC was finally effected as the Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany. Meanwhile, the Combined Chiefs of Staff of the Western Allies agreed in August 1944 to general guidelines for the terms of local military surrenders to be concluded with any capitulating German forces. They mandated that capitulation had to be unconditional and restricted to the purely military aspects of a local surrender and that no commitments were to be given to the enemy. That surrender was to be without prejudice to any subsequent general instrument of surrender which might replace any document of partial surrender and which would be jointly imposed on Germany by the three primary Allied Powers. These guidelines formed the basis for the series of partial capitulations of German forces to the Western Allies in April and May 1945. As the German surrender happened, the EAC text was substituted by a simplified, military-only version based on the wording of the partial surrender instrument of German forces in Italy signed at the surrender of Caserta. The reasons for the change are disputed but may have reflected awareness of the reservations being expressed as to the capability of the German signatories to agree the provisions of the full text or the continued uncertainty over-communicating the "dismemberment clause" to the French. Instruments of partial surrender German forces in Italy and Western Austria German military commanders in Italy had been conducting secret negotiations for a partial surrender; which was signed at Caserta on 29 April 1945, to come into effect on 2 May. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, with