End of the war 1945 – absurd and murderous until the end

The “German Reich” surrendered in stages – in northern Italy, for example with effect on May 2, 1945, in northern Germany on May 4. However, these partial capitulations did not replace the unconditional surrender demanded by the Allies, which was signed in Reims in the Allied headquarters on May 7th and was repeated on May 8 in the Soviet headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst. But the Nazi rule did not end completely, because by May 23rd in Flensburg-Mürwik in northwestern Germany there was a “imperial government” under Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, before the British occupying powers, pushed by the USSR and the USA, also occupied the last tip of the “German Empire”, and Dönitz, Alfred Jodl and Albert Speer. The last phase of the Nazi Empire was now over, a phase in which grotesque and gray mixed.

How absurd this “government” was, many examples show in the new book by Gerhard Paul, emeritus professor of history and didactics at the University of Flensburg: the daily daily cabinet meetings at the marine center in Mürwik; the inflationary award ceremony; The writing recognizably senselessly senseless memoranda and planning papers, for example about the training measures in the Wehrmacht for 1947. A ridiculous farce was this last “imperial government”, and yet cruel. Many soldiers, mostly members of the Navy, just wanted to go home after hearing from the suicide of Hitler, who was deserted in his own way, and heard of the different stages of the surrender. But what the Nazi peaks allowed themselves were far from being legitimate for simple soldiers. And so at least until May 11, 1945, death sentences were enforced and imposed on “deserters”, possibly also beyond. As is well known, the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg (1966–1978), Hans Filbinger, could not recognize that he had been wronged by causing the execution of a deserter as a marine judge in March 1945 and still imposed a death sentence in April 1945.

Hitler used Dönitz as his successor, who informed Hitler’s death on the evening of May 1st, full of pathos, fanatical loyalty to leadership and lies. But why was Dönitz “Reich President” – an office that had not been occupied since Hindenburg’s death in August 1934? Dönitz later claimed that this surprised him himself, since he was never more than an apolitical soldier. But Dönitz was a glowing admirer of the “leader”, who regarded his navy as an indomitable partial dispute, which was never again the starting point of a revolutionary mutiny as in 1918. It is precisely in this nationalist trauma from 1918 that Paul sees the reasons for the relentless hardness of the naval devices against “deserters” in May 1945.

SS boss Heinrich Himmler hoped in vain to get a position in Dönitz ‘government. On May 5, 1945, he ordered 60 higher SS and police leaders and concentration camp commanders in the Flensburg police headquarters one last time- the largest accumulation of mass murderers in a place in German history, as Paul aptly noticed. Himmler’s following escape also ended on May 23 in Lüneburg, where he was arrested and killed.

But why did the British still leave the government in Flensburg in office, how ridiculously low their influence was? Two thoughts played a role. On the one hand, at least the British commander-in-chief in Northern Europe, Bernard Montgomery, hoped that a formally intact German government could help to make a possible push beyond the agreed occupation zones to Schleswig-Holstein and to Denmark and thus to the North Sea until the Westernallied their own troops. Above all, however, it must be taken into account that at the beginning of May 1945, the British faced a huge number of German troops in Norway and Denmark and an even larger number of soldiers who wanted to escape the capture by the Red Army.

In Norway alone, between 300,000 and 400,000 Wehrmacht members were at the end of the war, which was not only for Norwegian and Danish resistance, but also for the British, which was far inferior in Northern Europe. Without greater resistance to disarm them and returning them to Germany, it was a major challenge, which, however, succeeded. Well over a million Wehrmacht soldiers were in Schleswig-Holstein, especially in Eiderstedt, after the war.

On May 23, the British also had enough: “The Strange Show at Flensburg was over.” Except for General Admiral of Friedeburg, who killed himself, nobody died in the crew of Mürwik. The worst thing about the most highly ranked arrested was embarrassing physical visitations, hidden weapons and, Himmler greets greetings, to find poison capsules. Dönitz was deeply outraged by Darob, as well as the restriction of clothing, which he was allowed to take into captivity, to just one case. However, Dönitz was most angry that his field marshal rod was taken away from him, which he regarded as a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Alfred Jodl was sentenced and executed in Nuremberg in October 1946. Albert Speer successfully managed to spin the legend of the “apolitical technocrat” and received a prison sentence of 20 years. The “apolitical soldier” Karl Dönitz was only sentenced to 10 years. Gerhard Paul argues his greatest “performance” in May 1945, it was convincing, it was to bring the legend of the “clean Wehrmacht” into circulation that had nothing to do with the crimes of the SS and other Nazis.

Gerhard Paul: May 1945. The absurd end of the “Third Reich”. How and where the Nazi rule really came to an end. WBG Theiss, 336 p., Br., 28 €.