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WWII On This Day: May 2

What happened on May 2 during World War II? This date brings together 5 events from 1940, 1941, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
British troops on the quay at Namsos awaiting evacuation during 2–3 May 1940.
British troops on the quay at Namsos awaiting evacuation during 2–3 May 1940. Capt. G. Keating / War Office / Imperial War Museums N 107 · public domain Source
Operation Weserübung

The Allies evacuate central Norway

The Allied forces at Namsos and Åndalsnes withdrew by sea during the opening days of May after the Trondheim operation lost its operational basis. German aircraft attacked the evacuation areas while troops destroyed or abandoned equipment that could no longer be removed. Naval vessels carried the surviving formations away from exposed ports. German columns subsequently linked the Oslo and Trondheim areas. Central Norway became a connected German-held zone while the remaining major Allied effort concentrated around Narvik in the north.

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1941
A German infantryman beside a burning Soviet BT-7 tank and a dead Soviet soldier, June 1941.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-020-1268-36 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Operation Barbarossa

Exploitation and starvation are accepted

German economic planners expected the armed forces and the Reich to feed themselves from conquered Soviet territory. The grain surplus they intended to divert from Ukraine and other producing regions also sustained Soviet industrial cities and northern deficit zones. A planning memorandum of 2 May acknowledged that continued German extraction would cut those consuming regions off from their normal food supply and lead to the starvation of many millions. The expected human cost was built into the economic assumptions of the campaign. Ukraine therefore entered German strategy as both an…

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1944
Three Horsa gliders on the landing ground beside the Caen Canal bridge at Bénouville, photographed in July 1944.
The three Horsa gliders of the coup de main force beside the canal bridge, 12 July 1944 · Imperial War Museums · IWM Non-Commercial Licence · Source
Operation Deadstick

Howard is told what the target is

Major John Howard had been training D Company for six months without knowing where it would be used. On 2 May he was shown the objective: two bridges in Normandy, to be taken intact in darkness and held until relieved. He was a former corporal in the ranks who had left the army, joined the police, and been commissioned after rejoining in 1939. He had picked his company for the operation himself, and had been running them at a standard that had already caused comment.

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1945
General Helmuth Weidling with members of his staff after surrendering on 2 May 1945.
General Helmuth Weidling with members of his staff after surrendering on 2 May 1945. Gleb Samsonov / Izvestia · Russian Ministry of Defence · CC BY 4.0 Source
The Battle of Berlin

Weidling crosses the lines

At about 05:00 on 2 May Weidling crossed the Soviet lines and surrendered the city. He signed an order stating that further resistance was senseless and instructing the remaining German soldiers in Berlin to cease fighting. The order had to be distributed and broadcast because there was no longer one functioning communications network linking every strongpoint. Surrenders therefore occurred unevenly through the morning. The capitulation is the proper operational end point of the Berlin city battle. It was an act by the surviving military commander, not the moment represented by…

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Yevgeny Khaldei's Reichstag photograph, made on 2 May 1945 after the building had been secured. It is a later symbolic photograph, rather than the first flag raising during the fighting.
Yevgeny Khaldei's Reichstag photograph, made on 2 May 1945 after the building had been secured. It is a later symbolic photograph, rather than the first flag raising during the fighting. Yevgeny Khaldei / TASS · Russian Ministry of Defence · CC BY 4.0 Source
The Battle of Berlin

The city battle ends

By the afternoon of 2 May organised resistance in Berlin had ended as the remaining command posts, flak towers and isolated groups surrendered, dispersed or attempted to escape. The wider Berlin strategic operation continued beyond the city. German formations were still moving and fighting elsewhere in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and toward the Western Allied lines, and the general German capitulation had not yet taken effect. Khaldei's Reichstag photograph belongs to this aftermath. Made on 2 May after the principal fighting, it became one of the defining visual statements of Soviet victory…

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