Going Down With Hitler

...Reichsleiter Bormann intends to go to you today and inform you of the situation...

...I think it would have been better for Germany if there had continued to be one government for the whole country...

...I shall join you as soon as possible...

...I was a soldier and I had to do my duty...

...I had no recourse but to accept and, after gaining a 48-hour delay, the capitulation came into force...

...The sequence of the messages, as revealed by the Archives publication, is revealing...

...I sent Admiral von Friedeburg [Commander-in-Chief of the Navy] to Marshal Montgomery [in Hamburg] to offer capitulation to the British forces...

...I asked Doenitz whether it was realistic to expect that the coalition, united in War, could be split in arranging the surrender terms...

...He replied: "He had a demonic nature that enabled him to hide his bad side...

...I had my duty to the German people to save as many refugees and soldiers as I could...

...I thought it, therefore, impossible to use people associated with the previous regime...

...That soldier was I. I think that my conviction was a solution for the embarrassment of others...

...A cook and a maid come in mornings...

...All were bodily searched before being marched off to a plane for Luxembourg, and consequent internment at Bad Mondorf...

...But Eisenhower harshly declined and demanded that all German forces capitulate immediately, including the forces standing against the Russians...

...He considered it "only the capitulation of the Armed Forces' and prepared to keep his government going...

...Later that day came the third and last message, signed this time by Paul Goebbels and Bormann: "Grand Admiral Doenitz (Top secret...

...The surrender on May 8 was not, however, the end of the Doenitz regime...

...Ignoring Hitler's appointments, Doenitz set up his own cabinet at Flensburg, near the Danish border...

...He accepted...

...The consequence was the partition of Germany...

...An enclave was established at the Muerwik Naval base in Flensburg which the Allied Control Commission respected, even to allowing President Doenitz to maintain his own Naval guard of honor...

...Admiral Doenitz does not go out much...

...On the afternoon of April 30, shortly before receiving word of his appointment, Doenitz told intimates, according to Luedde-Neurath, that Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler was also out of the running...

...Only via officer): "Fuehrer died yesterday at 15:30 hours...

...The library leans heavily to submarine warfare and military history...

...The state goes on living...

...However, the end of my government meant that there was no longer a central authority for Germany...

...All that remains of his family is a daughter, married, appropriately, to a former U-boat captain who is now a prosperous businessman in Bochum...

...So Admiral Doenitz stays home and fills his time with the past...

...I was sent to prison for political reasons...

...I was convicted on the strength of the London Statute, formulated by the victorious Allies in July 1945, which held that even the participation of a soldier in an aggressive war is liable to punishment...

...A ship's clock on the wall strikes nautical hours...

...I pointed out that Speer and Schwerin von Krosigk had also been in Hitlers regime...

...I asked Doenitz...

...Here he broods amid mementoes of a career that came to a crashing end after a moment of supreme, but almost meaningless power over a ruined Germany...

...He completed his term on September 30, 1956...

...The first was sent by Hitler's last man Friday, Martin Bormann, from the Fuehrer's bunker on April 30, 1945, at 6:07 P.M., and received at 6:35 P.M.at Admiral Doenitz's week-old Northern Command headquarters in Holstein...

...That this supposition was wrong I learned only some months later when I received knowledge of his Testament...

...He was found not to be a major war criminal because "the evidence does not show that Doenitz was privy to the conspiracy to wage aggressive war...

...about the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which sentenced him "unfairly" to 10 years in Spandau Prison...

...The appointment as President, says Doenitz today, came as a complete surprise...

...He went on the radio to report that Hitler had died fighting "at the head of his troops" (Doenitz says lie did not yet know of the suicide) and to announce his own succession...

...At first, it looked as though the Doenitz government would be permitted to go on...

...When asked about his treatment in Spandau, he says grimly, "I don't speak about Spandau But he is more than willing to speak about Nuremberg: "In Nuremberg I was not accused of crimes against humanity...

...In the last days of April,' he replied, "I had been giving much thought to what would happen if there was no central authority able to give orders to all Germans...

...Of course, my idea was to end the War as soon as possible by arranging the capitulation of the German Armed Forces...

...I asked Doenitz if he had any regrets about having served this "demonic" man so well for so long...

...His last public appearance turned into a national scandal...

...In that case, Doenitz was quoted as saying, assuming that Hitler was dead, he would surrender the forces under his command, but would seek his own death in a final battle...

...I asked Doenitz why he had rejected the proposed cabinet...

...A force of the British 11th Armored Division moved into the enclave, entered a room where Schwerin von Krosigk's cabinet was meeting, ordered the officials to lower their trousers and put up their hands while photographers took pictures...

...We knew then that our time would soon be up...

...This said "under no circumstances must the battle be given up...

...Time and form of announcement to the press and to the troops is left to you...

...Doenitz and his ministers held discussions with the Control Commission on supply and transport problems...

...Finally, on May 23 Admiral Doenitz was summoned to the Control Commission and told by American Major General Lowell W. Rooks that the seizure of his government and military staff as war prisoners had been ordered by General Eisenhower...

...To reconstruct these events, he must rely on memory and copies of documents, for his files were seized by the Allies and never returned...

...about the A L L I E D officers who subjected him to indignities when they abruptly dissolved his regime...

...If you ask me whether I still feel bitter about it today, all I can say is that one should try not to lose one's temper because of someone's bad behavior...

...The nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal sentenced Admiral Doenitz to 10 years in Berlin's Spandau prison, mainly for his conduct of unrestricted submarine warfare...

...Churchill, for example, criticized our treatment when he heard about it...

...This is one of Doenitz's bitterest memories...

...of his wife, who died in 1962...

...But I wanted to save as many troops and refugees as possible by getting them from behind the Russian lines to the Anglo- American side...

...He had a split personality, and could suppress the evil part of it...

...It must be stated that Eisenhower's demand for immediate surrender on all fronts brought hundreds of thousands of German soldiers into Russian hands who otherwise could have been saved...

...I asked, "What motivated you, an officer without experience in politics, to accept the appointment in the first place...

...But, when you arrest the head of a state, you do not cancel that state...

...There is no such provision in international law, let alone in any national law...

...Confirm receipt...

...and British forces...

...I cannot generalize about Hitler because the consequences of his political acts are still being studied by historians...

...Next morning, May 1, a second wireless message arrived from Bormann: "Grand Admiral Doenitz (Top Secret): "Testament in effect...

...Written authority on its way...

...But, in the way it was carried out, we were not treated fairly at all...

...That was why I had the plan to surrender, at first, only to the U.S...

...about General Eisenhower, who "harshly" rejected his plan to go on fighting the Russians...

...Grand Admiral, as his successor...

...Partially deaf but otherwise in good health, Hitler's successor, now 74, lives alone in four rooms of a subdivided house in this rustic village east O F Hamburg...

...By order of the Fuehrer, the Testament has been sent out of Berlin to you, to Field Marshal Schoerner, and for preservation and publication...

...He named Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk as Chancellor, Foreign and Finance Minister, and Albert Speer Minister of Economy and Production...

...The ensuing newspaper criticism led the schoolmaster who had invited Doenitz to commit suicide...

...The 24-day President of Germany is bitter about Hitler, who appointed him, and whom he says he misjudged...

...Then I sent Admiral von Friedeburg to General Eisenhower [in Reims] with the same offer...

...If fate nevertheless compels me to rule the Reich as your appointed successor, I shall continue the War to an end worthy of the unique, heroic struggle of the German people...

...Testament of April 29 transfers to you office of Reich President, to Dr...

...There is also a book by David Hoggan, the controversial American historian, whose thesis that Britain plotted to force Hitler into war has made him the darling of German nationalists...

...There is a huge 1942 oil portrait of himself as commander of the U-boat fleet that wracked Allied— and neutral—shipping...

...I concluded that this would result in chaos...

...Surely," Doenitz observed, "but they did not come from the Party...

...No nation has ever since invoked any such principle...

...At Nuremberg, this new law was given retroactive effect...

...That is why so many high-ranking officers with good judgment of men —myself, too—had no suspicion of the black deeds that Hitler performed behind the backs of the German people...

...He replied...

...In the middle of May, Pravda had demanded it...

...I shall do everything possible to relieve you in Berlin...

...The main count of my indictment was my submarine warfare...

...Goebbels office of Reich Chancellor, to Reichsleiter Bormann office of Party Minister, to Reich Minister Seyss-Inquart office of Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs...

...Invited in January, 1963, to speak at a high school in nearby Geesthacht, he told the students he saw no reason to apologize for serving Hitler because it would have been wrong to disobey orders...

...A VISIT TO ADMIRAL DOENITZ Going Down With Hitler By Daniel Schorr Aumuehle, Schleswig-Holstein Twenty years after the Fall of the Third Reich, no man has memories more bitter than its last chief of state, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, retired...

...At the time," he replied, "I thought that he considered it better that a soldier rather than a politician bring the War to an end...

...There is a portrait DANIEL SCHORR heads Columbia Broadcasting System's news bureau for Germany and Eastern Europe...

...I asked Doenitz for his judgment of Hitler in the perspective of 20 years...

...It read: "Grand Admiral Doenitz: "In place of former Reich Marshal Goering, the Fuehrer has chosen you, Mr...

...That was my fate," he said...

...And then all Germany was divided into four zones of occupation...

...Doenitz's memory may be hazy, for there was speculation about Jus succession among members of Hitler's staff as early as the beginning of April...

...On May 16, Doenitz and Chancellor Schwerin von Krosigk met with Robert Murphy, General Eisenhower's political adviser, saying they had learned belatedly of Hitler's concentration camp atrocities, and asking for permission to launch an investigation...

...Until then I recommend publication be delayed...

...Not in the Korean War, and not in the British attack on Suez...

...Playing safe, and concealing his thoughts of surrender, he sent a reply addressed to Hitler: "My Fuehrer: My loyalty to you will be unconditional...

...Doenitz reckoned with the possibility of a collapse in Berlin before a successor could be named or a surrender negotiated...

...A secretary, employed by a Hamburg insurance company, comes in two or three times a week after work to take dictation...

...But Doenitz did not wait for it...

...The Admiral did not know that the Fuehrer had shot himself...

...Doenitz gathered from Bormann's message that Hitler's death was near, if he was not already dead...

...Doenitz had last seen Hitler at a conference in Berlin on April 21, when it had been decided to set up Northern and Southern commands —under Doenitz and Marshal Kesselring, respectively—which could operate independently in case the Allies managed to split the country in two...

...You will immediately take all such measures as the present situation requires...

...I was not surprised,' he says, "by the dissolution of my government...

...Even in Nuremberg only one soldier was convicted of participating in an aggressive war without being convicted of planning or preparing that war...

...Doenitz's wartime adjutant, Walter Luedde-Neurath, quotes a Hitler aide as telling him, during a visit to the Fuehrer's bunker, "Who else could it be...

...Why do you think that Hitler's choice fell on you...

...With irony, he expressed himself as "grateful" for receiving an American National Archives publication, "Germany Surrenders Unconditionally," containing texts of the historic messages that thrust him into leadership of the tottering Third Reich...

...On top of the bookcase is a model of a killer submarine...

...We were to be sacrificed for the sake of Russian-American friendship...

...There are photographs of his two sons, both killed in action...

...Murphy promised to pass on the request to Eisenhower who, to Doenitz's surprise, failed to reply...

...My intention was," he said, "to negotiate a capitulation with the Allies and to employ my government for the most urgent tasks— feeding the German people and reorganizing transport...

...Certainly not the Reich Marshal.'" Marshal Hermann Goering, formally designated as Hitler's political heir in 1939 and confirmed in 1941, was by now in disgrace...

...But one thing is sure —that Hitler, by his abominable crimes, his annihilation of human beings, brought the greatest disaster to mankind and humanity...

...Bormann did not reach Admiral Doenitz's headquarters, nor did any of the others bearing copies of the Testament...

...The Admiral conducts active correspondence, mainly with "historians who want me to help them get a correct picture of events...

...They were not politicians in that sense...

...So, when I received word of Hitler's appointment, it was clear that I had to accept, for it gave me an opportunity to act immediately, to give orders which every German had to obey, and thus to avert greater chaos, involving, perhaps, the death of hundreds of thousands more people...