Last unit of the German armed forces to surrender in WW2 was Wettertrupp Haudegen on the island of Svalbard on 4th September 1945. Cambridge Journals Online - Abstract This is an old article form Der Spiegel, the translation is a tad dodgy- "Under the code name "warhorse" In 1944 a group of German weather observers were sent to Spitzbergen. The mission was so secret that their participants were almost forgotten in the ice. Only on 3September 1945 surrendered the squad: the last Wehrmacht unit - almost four months after the war. By Eike Frenzel Again and again the men agonize over the rafts through the seas of the Arctic Ocean. Tons of material they have to do with the nut shells ashore: weapons, ammunition, food, building materials and meteorological instruments. Time is short in these late summer days of 1944: The Arctic winter is approaching. He will draw on the fjord with a shell of ice, in the boat can not move even a meter longer. The weather is not the only danger that the soldiers threatened to Nordaustlandet, the barren island northeast of Svalbard. When Allied airmen through the gray clouds encounter or encounter an enemy warship in the bay, has failed its operation, but they remain undiscovered. After a week of drudgery to U-307 and the supply ship "Charles J. Bush" again set sail for Norway. Back on the island remain two inconspicuous flat roof huts made of pressed wood panels - and eleven marines wave goodbye. The men belong to the company "warhorse": Here in the Arctic, they should set up a weather station and feed the German naval command with daily meteorological data. A top-secret command, which is later ironically known for the fact that they would have been almost forgotten in the Arctic ice: The "warhorse" squad is the last German army unit that surrendered - in September 1945, just four months after the war ended." http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/14301/die_vergessenen_haudegen.html
It's a good thing for them that they were remembered at all! Did Allied units find them or did they send out an SOS for some one to come get them? It's suprising that given the Allied superiority in electronic/radio warfare that they weren't policed up shortly after they started transmission.
I thought the last surrender was the lone Japanese soldier on Gilligan's Island? Gilligan's Island - Japanese Sailor vs. Ginger in Judo Fight - YouTube
Harold, The Allies had their hands full in Western Europe at the time, and since the mission was top secret had no idea where the men actually were. The article reads like the Norwegian ship was sent to pick them up, but in others it just happened to call there.
But, Historian, wouldn't they have been able to triangulate their position from their radio traffic which according to your original post, they used daily? Weather knowledge was a strategic commodity and denying it to the enemy would have been important.
That rather depends on the frequencies they were using as well as power and the duration of the transmissions. If they were bouncing off the upper atmosphere that could make getting a precise location difficilut as well. If you google "Greenland Patrol" you'll see that there was a fair amount of activity in the Artic areas and a number of the weather stations were detected and captured.
