‘You feel the huge weight of history’: the room where Nazi Germany surrendered

The table where Germany signed an unconditional surrender in the early hours of 7 May 1945. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian

For a building that witnessed one of the pivotal moments of European history, it is oddly unremarkable: a nondescript red-brick schoolhouse on an unexceptional street on the wrong side of the railway tracks in Reims, eastern France.

In May 1945 it was the Collège Moderne et Technique. Students came and went. Passersby may have wondered, briefly, at the two US military police officers outside the doors, but Americans were everywhere – the city had been liberated in August 1944.