By April, 1945, the once great city of Berlin had been reduced to a smoldering ruin by devastating, round-the-clock, Allied air raids. The Soviet Red Army was closing in, only a few miles from the outskirts of the city, having laid waste to Eastern Europe as they relentlessly advanced after defeating the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad.
Hitler Names His Successor
From his bunker, deep under the heart of Berlin, the Nazi Fuhrer made his final plans as the Siege of Berlin began on April 25. He would not be taken alive, not be hung upside down, his body mutilated by his enemies, as had happened to his ally Mussolini in Italy. Instead he would take his own life and have his body set afire by aides.
But Hitler planned to keep the war going even after his death, “by every possible means.” To do this he needed to name a successor, someone he could trust. Forgoing any of the likely candidates from his circle of confidants, Hitler instead chose Commander in Chief of the German Navy, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, naming him Reichspresident and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.
Admiral Donitz Takes Power
Hitler’s death was officially announced on April 30, via radio broadcast from the Reichs Chancellery, and Admiral Donitz became the new leader of what remained of Nazi Germany. Donitz’s actions made it immediately clear that he had no intention of carrying out Hitler’s wishes to continue the war to a bloody, apocalyptic conclusion.
Instead, what Donitz had in mind was to negotiate a surrender with the Americans and British on Germany’s western front while keeping the war on the eastern front going long enough to allow as many refugees as possible access to what would become American/British controlled Europe.
Admiral Donitz was motivated by eyewitness reports that had reached Germany detailing the vicious treatment being handed out to civilians as the Red Army advanced through towns and villages on its way to Berlin. The German Wehrmacht had been brutal when Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa on Russia in 1941 and now the Soviets were exacting a cold-hearted revenge.
Soviet Atrocities in Eastern Europe
Upon retaking the town of Nemmersdorf, the extent of Russian brutality on the civilian population was seen. The villagers, all women and children, had been summarily murdered, many crucified. Fifty French prisoners of war had also been killed trying to protect the villagers.
Outside observers from Switzerland and Sweden had been brought in to verify the acts of the Soviet Army, but news of atrocities committed in German concentration camps overshadowed what Nazi leaders had hoped would be a propaganda coup. But for Germans living in the east, Nemmersdorf came to evoke unspeakable fear of the advancing Soviet soldiers.
Those Germans who stayed behind in their villages faced the full fury of the Russian Army. Leaflets urged the soldiers on, telling them “the hour of revenge has struck!” Women as young as twelve were raped repeatedly by entire squads of soldiers while their male family members were forced to watch. Men who attempted to fight back were castrated or shot.
Women who resisted were disemboweled or nailed naked to barn doors. Infants with shattered skulls were left lying on the floors of homes. German militiamen were set afire with gasoline. Those men not shot were sent back to the Soviet Union as slave labor. By 1946 the historic German population that had lived east of the Elbe River had been reduced from 17 million to a little over two million.
Admiral Donitz and the Allies
It was this fate that Admiral Donitz sought to save his countrymen from. His plan was to extend the fighting for one more week to keep an evacuation route open for civilians and soldiers in the east through the German states of Schleswig-Holstein. On May 5, Admiral Donitz approached the Allies with a cease fire offer aimed exclusively at the western powers. This would allow him to continue engaging Soviet forces on the Eastern front, buying time for refugees to make it to the western part of Germany.
General Eisenhower flatly refused the offer saying surrender was to occur on all fronts to all forces of the Allies. If unconditional surrender was not accepted hostilities would resume immediately. Faced with no alternatives, Admiral Donitz agreed to Eisenhower’s demands. Thus, Germany’s unconditional surrender officially occurred at 23.01 European Central Time, May 8, 1945.
Historians agree that Admiral Donitz’s plan, though lacking in the total needed time, was partially successful in its goals. He managed to get about 1.8 million German soldiers back into Germany from the Eastern front along with approximately one million refugees, people who might otherwise have been captured, killed, or imprisoned by the Soviets.
Sources:
Beck, Earl R., Under The Bombs, The German Home Front 1942-1945, The University Press of Kentucky, 1986, Lexington, Kentucky
Charman, Terry, The German Home Front 1939-45, Philosophical Library, NY, New York, 1989
Hansen, Reimer, Germany’s Unconditional Surrender, History Today, Volume 45, May, 1995
Keegan, John, The Second World War, Penguin Books, NY, New York, 1989
Whiting, Charles, The Home Front: Germany, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Va. 1982
Lawrence Koppy - Lawrence Koppy is an Oregon native living in the high desert of Central Oregon. He has been a small business owner for many years ...
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