Dönitz: The Last Führer (71 page)

Quarters had been arranged for Dönitz aboard the modern motor passenger ship,
Patria
, berthed in Flensburg harbour, and the following morning, May 3rd, Speer joined him for breakfast aboard. Keitel and Jodl had travelled to Flensburg in the early hours to set up their headquarters there, as had Himmler. Whatever Dönitz had said to him during their long night session, the
Reichsführer SS
still attended at his headquarters in the full panoply of office, travelling in a retinue of high SS officers and bodyguard in convoys of staff cars; moreover, he believed, or said he believed, he would become Dönitz’s Chancellor, and was still included or included himself in policy discussions. Speer, for instance, obtained permission from Dönitz that morning to broadcast a speech to the German people to rouse them from despair and lethargy and encourage them to start the work of reconstruction necessary for their livelihood after the war. Himmler accosted him, according to his memoirs, in the transmitting studio and objected to the proposed speech on the grounds that it would give the enemy the idea they were prepared to give up without a fight, whereas he believed that they should bargain for concessions with the enemy, using occupied Denmark and Norway as bargaining counters. An SS officer acted as liaison at Dönitz’s headquarters and the implication of the story is that, whatever Speer and others said subsequently about Himmler wandering about in a fantasy world at this time, he was still in the governing circle working closely with Dönitz. This is confirmed by the fact that as reports came in that day of increasing war weariness, the commanding general North-west, Field Marshal Busch, was charged with maintaining order in Schleswig-Holstein, while Himmler retained responsibility for all other areas.
¹²

At ten that morning Dönitz conferred with the Party chiefs of Norway and Denmark, together with the Supreme Commanders of German forces in both countries, and his own military and civilian advisers, Keitel, Jodl, von Krosigk and Speer. Himmler’s view that Denmark and
Norway were valuable bargaining counters was strongly represented; so were the extreme views still held by many officers that Dönitz should move his headquarters to one of the Scandinavian countries, or south to Prague, to lead the fight to the bitter end in the spirit of Hitler’s last stand in Berlin; Dönitz had already been reproved by Busch for acting against Hitler’s intention in seeking local capitulation; at this conference the military not only took the view that resistance should be continued outside Germany, but the Commander in Denmark, General Lindemann, spoke of ‘the last decent battle of this war’.
¹³
It was left to the civilians to argue against such staggering irresponsibility. They pointed to the further destruction of German lives, industries and communications, the plight of the wounded and the refugees streaming into Schleswig-Holstein from the east, the shortage of medical facilities, the certainty of partisan risings behind the lines and the probability that Sweden would intervene militarily if they were to make a ‘frivolous’ stand in the north.
¹⁴

Dönitz, uncertain how the negotiations with Montgomery would turn out, reserved his decision; in the meantime he sent Godt and Hessler to Norway to report on the situation, which presumably means that he had not ruled out the possibility of moving there. Meanwhile he ordered the evacuation of refugees and wounded from Schleswig-Holstein into Denmark and had all available forces deployed to defend the peninsula along the line of the Kiel Canal. That afternoon he received the
Reich
Commissioner for Holland, Seyss-Inquart, who had made the journey in a
Schnell
boat; again he could only reserve his decision about continuing the fight until the outcome of von Friedeberg’s negotiations was known; he did, however, instruct Seyss-Inquart not to carry out inundations or demolitions, another sign that despite the delusions and atavistic lust for destruction still gripping many about him, he was taking rational decisions from a viewpoint rather closer to his civilian than to his military advisers.

The idea of area surrenders had already been agreed in principle by the allies, consequently von Friedeberg’s mission met with more success than Dönitz probably expected. Montgomery would not accept the surrender of the forces fighting on the eastern front, however, and when von Friedeberg told him that no German would willingly surrender to the Russians, for they were savages and he would be deported to Siberia, he was cut short; ‘The Germans should have thought of all these things before they began the war.’
¹⁵
The terms he demanded were unconditional
surrender and the handing over of all arms in the north-western area, including Holland and Denmark and the islands.

Von Friedeberg returned to Flensburg that evening and his report was considered in a conference early the following morning, May 4th; since the terms fulfilled the prime requirements of halting the destruction in the north while allowing continuation of the struggle to save Germans from the east, there was little disagreement; concern was shown by the military about the stain on the honour of the
Wehrmacht
if arms and ships were handed over to the enemy intact, and Jodl argued for the retention of ‘trump cards’ such as Holland and Heligoland. Dönitz took the rational view though and von Friedeberg was sent back to Montgomery with authority to sign the terms demanded.

Dönitz’s conversion was shown by three other instructions that day; an order was sent to the garrison Commander on Rügen that he was not to defend the island against the Russians, but to evacuate as many men as possible, then surrender, another order forbade destruction or scuttling of ships,
¹⁶
and what must have been the most difficult order of all went out to his U-boat Commanders to surrender their boats. This came as such a surprise after his recent edicts about fighting to the last that many seem to have wondered at first whether the enemy had penetrated the cipher system and faked the message.
¹⁷

Stunning as such a message from ‘the Lion’ appeared, most officers must have felt extraordinary relief; it is certain their crews did. A few officers, like Schnee in command of one of the two Type XXI boats to have put
out on operations in the very last days, probably felt cheated; Schnee made a dummy attack on a convoy to satisfy himself that he could approach and escape undetected, before heading back for Norway. The Commander of one of the smaller Type XXIIIs made a real attack and sunk a merchantman three days later, the last ‘success’ of the campaign that had started with the sinking of the
Athenia
so long ago. Some made for neutral harbours, two crossed the Atlantic to Argentina, five made for Japanese waters, most returned home or to allied ports.

For those already at home, preparations had been made for scuttling when the code-word
Regenbogen
was issued. According to Lüdde-Neurath it never was; two U-boat commanders called to see Dönitz about the matter that night, he wrote, but he told them that the Grand Admiral was not available; he also let slip a remark that he knew what he (himself) would do under the circumstances. This was taken as the signal to go ahead and a number of boats in the bases were scuttled.
¹⁹
This tale must be treated with caution, particularly as the cease-fire was not due to come into force until 8.00 on the morning of the 5th, by which time the deed had been done. However, it is apparent there was a good deal of confusion. One officer received the code-word
Regenbogen
at between 3.00 and 5.00 in the morning of May 5th, but by the time he had arrived to carry it out, the order had been countermanded. When he and one of his comrades decided they would scuttle their boats in any case, he was warned by his chief that he would be shot if he did so.
²⁰

The probability is that, whoever issued the code-word, Dönitz later sent a countermanding order. Certainly after the local armistice came into force at 8 o’clock there is ample evidence that he was not prepared to jeopardize it by breaking either the letter of the spirit of the terms. When a fanatical Party member started using Radio Wilhelmshaven that morning to call for opposition to the armistice and resistance to the end, he ordered energetic action against him, and strict orders were sent out later that day banning the
Werwolf
organization which had been set up to continue resistance on partisan lines in occupied Germany.
²¹
Officers also seem to have been bound on their word of honour not to scuttle their vessels.
²²

He had no intention of giving up the struggle to save the easterners, however; all naval and merchant shipping that was still serviceable was engaged in a massive ‘Dunkirk’ operation to bring back soldiers and refugees from the Baltic coast, and his orders to the troops fighting in southern and central areas remained uncompromising: ‘Anyone who
selfishly thinks only of his own safety and that of his unit makes the rescue of the whole [from Bolshevism] impossible. He is a traitor to the German people and will be dealt with accordingly.’
²³

The overall Commander in the south, Field Marshal Kesselring, had been forced to sign an armistice in the Italian theatre shortly after Dönitz’s assumption of power, but Eisenhower let him know that any attempt to negotiate a local ceasefire with US forces in Germany while continuing to fight against the Russians would fail. Von Friedeberg was sent to Eisenhower’s headquarters to try and change his mind, but he received the same answer: surrender must be unconditional and on all fronts simultaneously, including the Russian. When his report reached Flensburg on the morning of May 6th, Dönitz sent Jodl to try his hand.

Jodl flew to Rheims with a strong brief: it was Dönitz’s intention to conclude the war as rapidly as possible; however, he was not prepared to sign his eastern armies into slavery, nor would it be possible for him to do so since ‘no power on earth’ could force the troops facing the Russians to lay down their arms so long as any escape route remained to the west. Therefore, even if he were to agree to unconditional surrender on all fronts he would be unable to enforce it; he would then be represented as a treaty breaker and the treaty would be void. It was to request aid in solving this dilemma that he (Jodl) had come to the Americans.
²⁴

How much hope was placed in this appeal to the humanitarian sentiment of the west is impossible to determine. The US forces had recently liberated the concentration camp at Buchenwald, and no secret was made of the shock and disgust induced by the sight of the inmates. General Patton, visiting the camp, had been so struck he had given instructions that the entire population of the neighbouring city of Weimar should also visit it to see for themselves the horrors perpetrated in their name. Von Friedeberg was given copies of the service paper,
Stars and Stripes
, containing pictures of the heaped corpses there and the walking skeletons who so closely resembled them to take back to Flensburg. It was not a good time for appeals to sentiment. Jodl soon realized this. General Bedell Smith, acting for Eisenhower, accused him of playing a dangerous game. The war had been lost when the Rhine was crossed, yet the German leadership still counted on a split between the allies; it had not occurred and a one-sided armistice with the western powers was totally impossible. He brushed aside Jodl’s arguments about the troops not obeying orders to lay down their arms, and gave him an ultimatum: either he signed today or negotiations would be broken off,
bombing recommenced and the allied lines would be closed to troops from the east seeking surrender. He was given half an hour to decide.
²⁵

When Jodl reported this response back to Flensburg, together with his own opinion that there was no alternative to signing, it was evident the end had come: Jodl had always been the sternest opponent of unconditional surrender; if he could see no other way, there could be none. After a conference late that night he was sent an answer at 1.30 in the morning of May 7th: ‘
Grossadmiral
Dönitz gives full authority for signing terms as communicated.’
²⁶

In Rheims victory parties were already under way. The wheel had turned full circle. Did Dönitz think of a message he had received in his headquarters hut on the outskirts of Wilhelmshaven shortly before noon on September 3rd, 1939, ‘Total Germany’?

At 2.30 that morning Jodl signed the terms of unconditional surrender in all areas to come into force at midnight on May 8th.

It is impossible to determine how many troops and refugees were saved from the Russians during the eight days Dönitz managed to prolong the fighting; a figure of some two million is often given. If so, this includes all those troop detachments and refugees who made their way overland from the eastern fronts on their own initiative. So far as the rescue operations at sea were concerned the figure of two million applies to those transported over three months between January and the capitulation; many more were evacuated in the following weeks and others continued to make their way back from the southern areas, where fighting against the Russians and partisans went on, as Dönitz had predicted, long after the ceasefire. Many more went into Russian captivity.

Whatever the figure, it is certain that no balance can be struck between those saved from the east and those killed in the continued fighting or summarily executed for desertion; nor can the terror and spreading chaos of those final days ever be measured. There are only the subjective impressions of individuals—Heinrich Jaenecke for instance, whose war ended in a meadow in Holstein when he saw an approaching British jeep with four soldiers inside wearing webbing belts.