Germany's Fake Last Fuhrer - YouTube

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When Adolf Hitler ended  his life on April 30, 1945,  

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz announced to the German  people: (QUOTE) “(Hitler) died a hero’s death in  

the capital of the German Reich, after having  led an unmistakably straight and steady life.”

During Hitler’s last days, his closest friends had  betrayed him and he had no one to trust. The Reich  

was irremediably doomed, but the Fuhrer’s  last wish was for Dönitz to succeed him,  

and he was named President of Germany and  Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The  

responsibility of the entire country now laid in  the hands of the former Navy Commander-in-Chief.

Dönitz came to power on May 1 with  what was left of the Nazi party  

and took his feeble cabinet to the undamaged  town of Flensburg in the northern border.

For a while, the pretend administration,  sometimes referred to as a ‘comic opera,’  

was allowed to exist, even if  no one cared by that point.

Daily meetings took place at 10:00am, and  the so-called last Fuhrer and his officials  

discussed the plans for Germany even after  the country’s unconditional surrender  

and with total indifference to what  little leeway they actually had.

It would only be a matter of time until  the whole charade came crashing down...

Much has been said about what could have  been if Hitler did not get to power. 

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The Fall

By mid-April of 1945, it was evident that Germany  would fall in a matter of weeks, if not days.  

However, its supreme leader would not leave  the capital, and instead, Hitler opted to stay.

The command of the German armed forces then  passed to the High Command, recently relocated  

to Rheinsberg. However, in anticipation of  the political division of German territory,  

full command was provisionally bestowed  to Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz in the North  

and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring in the South.

A meeting then took place at Rheinsberg on April  27, just when the fall of Berlin was imminent.  

Hermann Göring was the expected successor  to the dictator, but after his dismissal,  

Heinrich Himmler was appointed Deputy Fuhrer.

However, another unexpected act of  treason was disclosed the following day,  

when the Allies revealed that Himmler had tried to  negotiate a separate peace treaty with the West.

By April 29, Himmler had been dismissed,  and an order of arrest was issued.  

When Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz confronted Himmler  at his headquarters, he denied any implication  

and dismissed the rumors as enemy propaganda.  But the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery,  

Martin Bormann, confirmed Himmler’s dismissal  and appointed Dönitz as Hitler’s successor.

Hitler’s closest friends had betrayed him, and  per his last will and testament, Dönitz was named  

Reich President and Supreme Commander of the  Armed Forces right after his death on April 30.  

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels  would serve as Reich Chancellor,  

but he also committed suicide the following day.

Dönitz accepted the titles  and addressed the German  

people and servicemen in separate broadcasts.

Several ministers presented their resignations  the following day, but Dönitz suspected that  

Borman had ulterior intentions and resolved  to constitute a new Reich government.

By then, almost every major German  city had been bombed to the ground,  

and the Grand Admiral met with top Nazi  officials Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk,  

Paul Wegener, Wilhelm Keitel, and  Himmler, and decided to move the  

new government to the remarkably unscarred  town of Flensburg near the Danish border.

The SS leadership had already  relocated there days before.

The chosen location to set up an office was  the Mürwik naval academy, and the cabinet met  

in its sports school. Soon after, the entire  German High Command relocated to the new site.

Some members of the Nazi cabinet were retained,  but several others were dismissed. Furthermore,  

three ministries were immediately abolished,  and only the most vital remained standing.

Navy Captain and historian Joerg Hillman would  later recall of the new set-up: (QUOTE) "There  

was a Minister for Finance without any money,  there was a Minister for Foreign Affairs,  

but there were no people working for him. There  were ministers, but they didn’t have a ministry.”

The New Government

The last Fuhrer was now Nazi  Germany’s last chance of survival.  

Most Nazi leaders were dead or on the run, and  Dönitz was now in charge of the millenary Reich.

Dönitz’s successful U-boat campaign  had made him a national hero,  

and he truly believed he  was Germany’s new president.

Other than Albert Speer, Dönitz did not include  any prominent Nazi leader in his cabinet. However,  

he did include several SS officers involved in  the genocidal policies of the old regime, such  

as Herbert Backe, the author of the Hunger Plan,  Otto Ohlendorf, who ordered hundreds of thousands  

of murders, and Wilhelm Stuckart, a participant of  the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem approach.

Hillman later wrote: (QUOTE) "All the rats  from the Nazi regime went to Flensburg,  

a lot of SS people also got new  papers from this last government,  

so they changed identities, then they were  able to escape from the Allied troops."

In a surprising twist of fate, Dönitz himself  claimed that his new government was unpolitical.  

However, it strongly opposed Bolshevism  and was determined to do whatever it took  

to avoid repeating the events  of the Armistice of 1918.

The only loose end was Himmler.

His post as Minister of the Interior remained  vacant for a while, given his recent condemnation  

as a traitor. The new Fuhrer didn’t want him in  his government, but Himmler was a powerful figure.  

Any move against him could turn his loyal  followers in the SS against the new regime.

Ultimately, Dönitz overlooked Hitler’s last  instructions and kept meeting Himmler informally,  

offering him vague prospects of  a position in his government.

As for their decaying Armed Forces, Field Marshal  Wilhelm Keitel was appointed Commander in Chief  

with the support of the Wehrmacht Chief of  Operations Staff, Colonel General Alfred Jodl.

The Flensburg policies were a continuation of  the Nazi ideology. Its members still wore the  

uniform and followed Nazi protocols, and the  initial greeting continued to be ‘Heil Hitler.’

In a desperate attempt to keep the Reich alive,  the cabinet of the Flensburg Government would meet  

every morning at 10:00am, harboring the delusional  hope that the party could still be saved.

While they discussed the streamlining of their  crippled military and the design of a new flag  

that didn’t include the banned swastika,  more pressing matters came to the surface.

Dönitz’s main objective was to establish  his authority as Supreme Commander  

and persuade his armies to partially surrender  to the Western Allies. Capitulation to the  

Soviets was out of the question, and the  fighting kept going on the East Front.

In the Grand Admiral’s mind, this strategy could  split the Allies by offering the West his support  

in building an anti-Bolshevik front. But he  quickly learned that such an idea was ridiculous.  

The Allies in the West and the Communists stood  their ground, demanding unconditional surrender.

Avoiding the Soviets

Dönitz’s first order of business was to try  and save as many German soldiers as possible  

before they fell to Soviet captivity.  He then ordered his troops in the East  

to retreat towards the West and  surrender to the British or Americans.

On May 3, only two days after being appointed  leader, Dönitz sent his successor as Head of  

the Navy, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, to  meet British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

The Germans offered to surrender,  but the British leader was reluctant,  

arguing that he could not accept the surrender  of troops fighting in the Eastern Front;  

they would have to capitulate to the Soviets.

However, the surrender of Germans  fleeing westwards and the entire  

military forces in the northwest was accepted.

The following day, Friedeburg signed an instrument  of surrender for all his troops and ships  

in German and German-occupied  territories in the area.  

Montgomery accepted the agreement on behalf  of then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Himmler was eventually dismissed after official  negotiations with the Allies in the West continued  

and the scene was set for a proper  capitulation. He was promised false  

papers in exchange for his removal, and  he and his fellow SS leaders quickly fled.

On May 5, the southwest also  surrendered, albeit partially.  

Dönitz attempted to surrender solely to  the Western Allies, but it didn’t work.

General Jodl then arrived in Reims, France, to  sign the unavoidable unconditional surrender,  

but Eisenhower soon noticed  that he was only trying to  

stall the agreement to allow his  troops in the East to escape.

The General then threatened to close the Western  front and have all surrendering German soldiers  

shot. Dönitz had no choice but to accept the  Allied terms, and Jodl signed on his behalf.

The war was officially over, and May 8,  1945, became known as Victory in Europe Day.

Last Days

Despite the surrender, Dönitz’s pretend government  was allowed to continue for a few more weeks.

The American and Soviet leaders  wished to finish them at once,  

but the British believed that letting  it stand could provide stability,  

as the German population was more  likely to listen to other Germans.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed:  (QUOTE) “We cannot go running round into  

every German slum and argue with every German  that it is his duty to surrender or we will  

shoot [...] There must be some kind of force  which will give orders which they will obey.”

The Nazi government continued  to issue orders addressed to  

what was left of the military and  the German population until May 23,  

when British occupation authorities  called for a meeting in Flensburg.

Dönitz and his staff were then politely informed  of their arrest in preparation for trial.

The so-called last Fuhrer was eventually  spared his life on the Nuremberg trials  

and only served 10 years at the  Spandau prison in western Berlin.

Decades later, he would write  in his postwar memoirs: (QUOTE)  

“When today I look back upon what I did at the end  of the war, I realize the inadequacy of all human  

endeavor. (...) Though I might be prevented from  exercising the practical function of government,  

this did not alter the fact that  I was Head of the German State.”

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