Dönitz: The Last Führer (69 page)

The answers to such questions would be interesting, for after he arrived at his Plön headquarters and added the administration of the
northern area to his naval tasks, he continued on his straight path of absolute loyalty. Whether he did so from unshaken faith in the genius of the Führer or because of his service training in obedience, which must have seemed the single solid thing to hold on to in the strong currents pulling towards chaos and disorder, whether he believed Hitler’s predictions about the fate of the German race at the hands of the victors, as he appeared to, or feared for his own fate at a war crimes tribunal, or whether as before he buried himself in his wide-ranging new tasks to avoid making ultimate decisions, he was probably as little aware then as we can be now. One thing undoubtedly haunting him was the memory of 1918. Mutiny had to be avoided at all costs; this was a powerful reason for his anxiety to send naval detachments to plug the gaps in Himmler’s SS regiments and in these final days he sent Hitler more and more men for the defence of Berlin. Mutiny bred in idleness; employment had to be found for the men who were released from sea-going duties almost daily by the reduction of his surface and U-boat fleet through allied air strikes on the naval bases.

Whatever his mix of reasons, he refused to listen to civilian ministers and the
Gauleiter
through whom he conducted the civil administration when they urged him to open negotiations with the British—the nearest of the western allies—in order to release forces to hold off the Russians. This was what the General Staff of the Army had advocated for a long time, and what Himmler, who had also come to the northern area, was now attempting to bring about through the Swedish Red Cross. Dönitz apparently cut short all discussion on these lines by saying that no one had the right to deviate from the course set by the Führer,
²²³
and he echoed Hitler’s views on the destruction of the German people that must follow capitulation.

In rejecting the idea of a separate peace he was actually closer to reality than the civilians who advised it, much closer than Himmler who was attempting it; for one thing, the allies had made it clear they would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, and there were no military possibilities of forcing a change of attitude; for another, operational control of the armies was still at least nominally in Hitler’s hands, more importantly there were still diehard generals including the Commander in his own northwestern area, Field Marshal Busch, who would have rejected an order from anyone but the Führer; consequently an independent initiative must have produced chaos and Germans fighting Germans. This had been Dönitz’s criticism of the July plot; it was even
more valid for him now since although vested with plenary powers in his own area, he had no force unconditionally loyal to him except the Navy, which was neither trained, nor for the most part armed for fighting on land. He was in a far tighter position than he had been in Berlin; then it had been at least theoretically possible for him to have acted with Guderian, Speer and Himmler to force Hitler to accept defeat and its consequences. Whether it would have been practically possible in that charged atmosphere in the ominous shadow of Bormann, Kaltenbrunner and Fegelein is a different matter, but in any case he had shown he was only intent on gaining Hitler’s favour and feeding his delusions; the others could have expected nothing from him.

The real problem about his attitude in the north was his relationship with Himmler. At the height of his power Himmler had regarded himself as Hitler’s natural successor. The legal heir, Göring, was in eclipse; Lüdde-Neurath recalls being told that when Himmler was Dönitz’s dinner guest at the
Haus der Marine
in October 1944, an alleged remark by Göring, ‘
Donnerwetter
! if the assassination had succeeded I would have had to handle things!’, had brought shouts of laughter. Then Himmler, suddenly serious, had turned to Dönitz: ‘However, one thing is certain,
Herr Grossadmiral
. The
Reichsmarschall
will in no wise be the successor.’
²²⁴

Now Himmler had also fallen from favour, yet there was no doubt of his internal power, nor of his astonishing belief in himself as the natural successor; this was strengthened on April 23rd when Göring was officially stripped of all his offices after sending a message from his southern headquarters which Hitler misconstrued as an attempt to usurp his authority. Himmler’s peace feelers were based on the assumption that he would be accepted by the western powers as Head of State. And yet Dönitz’s appointment as Führer of the northern sector obviously moved
him
into line for succession. Himmler must have known, moreover, that Dönitz had been spoken of as a possible successor in some quarters in the Reichschancellery at about the time he was being mooted for Göring’s job as chief of the
Luftwaffe.
²²⁵
Dönitz, for his part, knew that he could not maintain internal order in his domain without Himmler—which of course Himmler also knew. The situation was extraordinarily delicate.

Just how it worked out in practice is not clear. Dönitz and his apologists afterwards sought to obscure the connection between him and the
Reichsführer SS
in order to distance the Navy from the most notorious organ of Nazi criminality. Yet the two worked closely
together, as they had to if total chaos was to be prevented; according to the Commander of Himmler’s bodyguard, SS
Obersturmbannführer
Heinz Macher, his chief visited naval headquarters at Plön every morning during these final days.
²²⁶

Naturally they speculated on the succession. Hitler had made his decision not to leave the capital on April 22nd, the day after Dönitz saw him for the last time. The decision was encouraged by Goebbels who was determined to stage a grand Wagnerian finale in the blazing ruins of the city as his last service for the Führer and posterity. The circumstances in which Hitler announced his decision to stay must also have been well known to Dönitz and Himmler since they were the subject of sensational rumour among the operations staff of the High Command, now moved to a temporary headquarters at Neu Roofen, near Rheinsberg, some 60 miles north of Berlin. Hitler’s two chiefs of staff, Keitel and Jodl, who had been sent to direct military operations from this command post to instructions dictated from the Chancellery bunker, had witnessed the extraordinary scene. It had started at the daily situation conference; Hitler, raving about treason and disloyalty, his face alternately dead white and suffused with colour, his voice cracking, had slumped back in his seat sobbing and admitting for the first time that the war was lost. ‘I shall shoot myself.’
²²⁷

This was hardly Wagnerian, more a simple uncurbed child’s ego-tantrum, an exposé of his whole career. It is inconceivable that Himmler had not been fully briefed, and since it was evident that Berlin could not hold out for many days, the question of what would happen when the Führer departed the scene came up frequently in discussion. Dönitz apparently expressed his willingness to serve in a government headed by Himmler. Despite this he was unaware of Himmler’s approach to the western powers—at least he expressed complete ignorance when he was asked about it in a call from High Command headquarters, Neu Roofen, on April 28th.
²²⁸
A monitored foreign bulletin had just revealed the astounding news there and the fact that the proposals had been rejected on the grounds that surrender must be to the Soviet Union as well. After the call Dönitz contacted Himmler and half an hour later—at 5.20 pm—the
Reichsführer SS
called Neu Roofen to say the news was false!

By this date Dönitz’s determined optimism appears to have deserted him; a visit to Keitel’s headquarters the previous day, April 27th, had revealed the extent of military disintegration;
²²⁹
Commanders in the north were making their own decisions, troops and civilian refugees were
flooding westwards with but one thought, not to fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and it was evident that the Russian advance from the Oder could not be held. He knew already the precarious fuel and armaments situation; once Mecklenberg was overrun vital stocks of food and ammunition would be lost, and it would be literally impossible to continue the fight; moreover Berlin was encircled—the Russians had joined hands with the Americans to the south of the city—and as noted in the High Command war diary, ‘the end of the battle for the
Reich
capital is beginning’.
²³⁰

According to his son-in-law, Günther Hessler, Dönitz returned from Neu Roof en convinced that resistance would soon be impossible, therefore futile, and that there would be no successor to Hitler after the fall of Berlin. He told Hessler in confidence that he proposed to surrender the Navy—presumably after Hitler’s death—and, to remove any stain on the flag, seek his own death in battle.
²³¹
According to this account Hessler asked whether it would not be better for him to stand with his authority behind the preservation of order in the dissolving situation, but he replied that the collapse would be so complete it would imply the loss of all values, and it might be important in the future for Germans to know that there had been men with the courage to draw the right conclusions without thought of self. He then dismissed Hessler, told him to regard himself as the head of the family and take care of his wife and daughter.

Lüdde-Neurath records Dönitz making a very similar statement to ‘a close circle’ two days later: his own death in battle would expiate any charges of cowardice or treachery that might otherwise attach to the Navy in surrender.
²³²
These accounts ring true as they express both the propaganda emanating from the Führer bunker at the time and the orthodox military view that those who had signed the armistice in 1918 had been traitors. They are also explicable in terms of an inner crisis as reality forced its way into his hitherto impervious world of unconditional loyalty.

On the evening of the 28th the news of Himmler’s peace offer to the west was brought down to the Führer bunker by an official of the propaganda ministry who had picked up a Reuter’s flash from San Francisco. It was the ultimate sensation—‘
der treue
Heinrich’ a traitor! Hitler released his feelings of rage and impotence in another frenzied outburst, shambling through the bunker corridors and thrusting the report at anyone he found. He ordered the immediate execution of Himmler’s
lieutenant, Fegelein, then went into a room where his new chief of the
Luftwaffe
, Ritter von Greim, was recovering from wounds suffered while flying in to the capital to receive the appointment! Hitler ordered him to fly out immediately to Dönitz’s headquarters and have Himmler arrested and, his voice quavering with hysteria, liquidated.

Greim, on crutches, was helped up the steps from the bunker, driven a short distance in the glare of the burning city to a waiting light plane, where he and the aviatrix, Hannah Reisch, who had shared his perilous journey in, took off along the wide avenue leading to the Brandenburg Gate—
with
the wind to fox the Russian gunners—just clearing the heroic statuary above.
²³³
While they were escaping Hitler prepared for the penultimate ceremony in his staged departure, marriage to his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. A champagne reception followed the formalities, then at about two o’clock in the morning of the 29th, Hitler retired to dictate his political testament. He disassociated himself from all responsibility for the war and the millions who had died and suffered; this was the work solely of ‘international finance conspirators’ of Jewish blood or working for Jewish interests. And after affirming his commitment to end his life in the capital of the people to whom, he said, he had given every thought and act over the past three decades, he consigned Göring and Himmler to the outer darkness for their secret negotiations with the enemy:

In the long list of ministerial posts that followed Dönitz was also named as War Minister and as C-in-C Navy. Since Hitler combined in his own person the posts of President and Chancellor, and since he knew that Goebbels, whom he was appointing Chancellor in the new government, was resolved to die with him in the bunker, it appears he intended Dönitz to take over all his own authority as Führer; this is also evident from Dönitz’s appointment as War Minister. How long the idea had been gestating is not clear. It is usually held that the decision to appoint Dönitz was only made after Himmler’s defection, yet Himmler had been out of favour for some time and it was Dönitz whom Hitler had appointed to
take command of the northern area when it seemed that he himself might be flying south. In any case there can be no doubt that Dönitz’s appointment was the result of the support, fanatical loyalty and indefatigable will to win over every obstacle he had shown during his time as C-in-C Navy.

Hitler’s resolve to stay in the
Reich
capital was in keeping with decisions he had made throughout his career; it placed him in an exposed position from which there was no retreat; it was, for the last time, victory or death. Yet he still clung to the hope of victory, and late that evening, the 29th, sent an anguished message to Keitel, who had been forced by the Russian advance to move his command post further north to Dobbin, near Krakow, asking where the relieving armies were, and when they were going to attack. Keitel, after long consideration, replied with the truth: the 12th Army was held and could not come to the relief of the capital; the 9th Army was surrounded. This was sent early on the 30th;
²³⁵
it was taken in the bunker as proof of further treason, and Bormann despatched a message to Dönitz accusing Keitel of allowing the forces around Berlin to stand idle for days, and urging him to act ruthlessly against traitors. He ended that Hitler was still alive and conducting the defence of Berlin from the Chancellery in ruins.