Doenitz government

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Dönitz and Hitler in the Führerbunker , 1945

The Dönitz government , also known as the Flensburg government , was the executive government of the Reich under Karl Dönitz in the last days of World War II , which Adolf Hitler had determined in writing before his suicide . The legality of this last government of the German Reich is disputed.

This government existed from May 2nd to May 23rd 1945. During its time the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht fell . There were few significant achievements of the government, however, it removed the Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler , of all offices. Its members were arrested by Allied soldiers on May 23rd. Two weeks later, with the Berlin Declaration , the four main victorious powers also formally assumed supreme governmental power in Germany .

It succeeded Goebbels' cabinet , which resigned on May 2, and was initially based in Plön and Eutin , and since May 3 in Flensburg . Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk , who was commissioned by Dönitz to form a government, formed the Schwerin von Krosigk cabinet ( Flensburg cabinet ) after Joseph Goebbels , who had been appointed by Hitler for this purpose, also committed suicide. After May 12th, members of the government were in the British zone of occupation , which included the Mürwik special area .

Hitler's political will included the mandate to his successor to "continue the war by all means". In contrast, the executive government defined itself as "non-political". For the Allies , the signing of the military surrender on May 7, 1945 was an essential function of the executive government, whereby the documents of surrender were then issued by Colonel General Jodl and General Field Marshal Keitel , each acting on the basis of a power of attorney from Dönitz, on behalf of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) were signed.

prehistory

At the beginning of April 1945 Heinrich Himmler had the future location of the Reich government selected, and his choice fell on Holstein Switzerland as a relatively rural area, but at the same time not far from the most important naval base on the Baltic Sea, Kiel .

On April 20, 1945, his 56th birthday, Hitler decreed that his Reich government should move from Berlin to Schleswig-Holstein , which at the time was still held by the Wehrmacht . Only Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann remained as government members with the Führer in the Reich capital .

On April 21st the Reich government arrived in Eutin . Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was appointed in April 1945 to command the "North Fortress". Under his leadership, the government moved into quarters in the “ Forelle ” barracks on Lake Suhr near Plön.

In the government sat Reich Food Minister Herbert Backe , Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti , Reich Minister of Transport Julius Heinrich Dorpmüller , Reichsfinanz- and Foreign Minister Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk , Minister Otto Meissner , Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg , Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust , Labor Minister Franz Seldte , Reich Armaments Minister Albert Speer and Reich Minister of Justice Otto Georg Thierack ; in addition, military commanders such as field marshals Fedor von Bock , Walther von Brauchitsch and Erich von Manstein .

The first cabinet meeting in Holstein took place on April 23 in the local district administration . Since then, the Reich government has met daily under the chairmanship of Lutz von Krosigk, the longest serving Reich Minister. Meanwhile, Reichsführer SS Himmler negotiated on the same day in Lübeck with the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte about an armistice with the anti-Hitler coalition , which the latter refused. Hitler and Doenitz saw Himmler's actions as treason.

The news of Hitler's suicide reached the government on April 30, 1945 at 6:35 p.m. Himmler immediately traveled to Plön in order to offer himself to Dönitz as his future deputy - but Donitz refused. At the cabinet meeting on May 2, Hitler's last government in Eutin officially resigned. The ministers were then free to go into hiding, since their oath to the Führer had now expired.

Last Reich President

Karl Dönitz, U.S. government arrest card dated June 23, 1945

Appointed by the " Führer der Nation " Adolf Hitler in his political testament as his successor as Reich President, Karl Dönitz took up this office after he had learned of Hitler's death with a radio address on May 1st. According to the law on the successor of the Führer and Reich Chancellor of December 13, 1934, Hitler could determine his successor himself “in the event of his death or any other discharge of the combined offices of Reich President and Reich Chancellor”. However, this law was always treated as a " secret imperial matter " and was never published, which is why there are doubts as to its effectiveness. Apart from Hitler's political testament, Donitz was not legitimized for the office of Reich President by any other body ; because of the lack of choice, the title is considered controversial.

Doenitz did not carry out the task assigned to him by the Führer to stage the downfall “heroically”. Its essential importance lay rather in the commissioning to sign the unconditional surrender .

Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht

Another aim of Dönitz was to bring as many German soldiers and civilians as possible from the east of the Reich into the territory of the Western powers in this final phase. However, whether he succeeded in this is a matter of dispute. On the one hand, it is claimed that Mürwik organized the escape of around two million refugees and wounded by ships from the already occupied or encircled eastern areas. According to Richard J. Evans , Dönitz's delaying tactic enabled more than 1.75 million Wehrmacht soldiers to surrender to American or British forces instead of the Red Army. The historian Heinrich Schwendemann , on the other hand, believes that Dönitz hindered rather than helped the rescue of the Eastern Army. He points out that Dönitz did not lift Hitler's Nero order , according to which the entire German infrastructure was to be destroyed, until May 6, 1945. The " perseverance terror " against soldiers and civilians had not been lifted. The comparatively favorable picture that Dönitz has drawn in historical literature is rather due to the deliberate creation of legends that Dönitz pursued through his memoirs.

Last imperial government and unconditional surrender

The sports school on the edge of the Mürwik naval school , where the executive government was staying (photo 2014)
The British military began arresting the Dönitz government at the sports school in Mürwik
The demonstration by Dönitz (center, in admiral's uniform), and behind him Jodl and Speer, in front of the world press in the courtyard of the police headquarters in downtown Flensburg

The British Army had crossed the Elbe near Lauenburg on April 28 and was moving towards Lübeck in a race with the Red Army . The Reich government appointed by Dönitz therefore had to move on to Flensburg immediately after the cabinet meeting on May 2nd in Eutin. On the same evening Lübeck was taken largely without a fight by the British. Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer initially fled to Bad Bramstedt .

On May 3, the "Managing Reich Government" moved into its headquarters in the marine sports school on the outskirts of the Mürwik naval school in Flensburg, while Field Marshal Ernst Busch of Army Group Northwest moved his headquarters with the associated general staff from Hamburg-Bergedorf to Kollerup in fishing after Dönitz that day had previously instructed Hamburg to be handed over to the British without a fight. Himmler also fled with 150 followers to Hüholz near Flensburg. He appealed to the executive government of the Reich to move to Prague , which was also still in German hands.

On May 3rd at 8:00 a.m., a group of officers met on Dönitz's order, consisting of the delegation leader General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg , General Eberhard Kinzel , Rear Admiral Gerhard Wagner , Major Jochen Friedel and Colonel i. G. Fritz Poleck arrived at the British headquarters of General Miles Dempsey in the Villa Möllering in Häcklingen and was brought from there to the Timeloberg between Deutsch and Wendisch Evern near Lüneburg . The group was supposed to negotiate with the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery about a partial German surrender, whereby the British would let civilian refugees from the East through into the area occupied by the Western Allies and the resulting German soldiers would be able to be taken over into Western captivity . The German offer was rejected and instead an unconditional surrender was demanded. With the partial surrender of the Wehrmacht for north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands coming into effect on May 5 at 8:00 am, according to the OKW situation report, “in Holland , in north-west Germany from the mouth of the Ems to the Kiel Fjord and in Denmark including the upstream areas Islands truce. "

Under these circumstances, the executive government of the Reich met in Flensburg on May 5th. Lutz von Schwerin-Krosigk, who had received the order to “form a government” from Dönitz on May 2, became the leading Reich Minister , Finance Minister and Foreign Minister, Albert Speer Minister of Economics, Wilhelm Stuckart Minister of the Interior and Culture, Herbert Backe Minister of Food and Agriculture, Franz Seldte Minister of Labor and Julius Heinrich Dorpmüller Minister of Transport and Post. There were also hundreds of employees in the ministries. On the same day, Himmler met with like-minded members of the SS and the police at the Flensburg Police Headquarters to announce the dissolution of the Gestapo . Here and in Mürwik they distributed large quantities of false personal papers.

On May 6th, Dönitz relieved the NSDAP Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse from his position as Schleswig-Holstein's upper president. At 5:00 p.m., Himmler and Rosenberg were finally relieved of all their offices after they repeatedly wanted to participate in the work of the executive government in Flensburg. Meanwhile, the US Army occupied the Schäferhaus airfield in Flensburg.

The Reichssender Flensburg announced in a speech by Lutz von Schwerin-Krosigk on May 7 at 12:45 for the first time by German side, the end of the Second World War in Europe after recently Colonel General Alfred Jodl in Reims in the operational headquarters of the SHAEF had signed the unconditional military surrender of "all armed forces under German command ".

This unconditional surrender of the German armed forces came into force on May 8, 1945, which was also confirmed in the Reichsender Flensburg by Karl Dönitz's address. On that day, the Wehrmacht finally withdrew from Denmark in the direction of Schleswig-Holstein.

After Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel , Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff (Commander of the Reich Air Fleet) and General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg (Commander of the Navy) the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht and all branches of the armed forces shortly after midnight on the night of May 8th to 9th had ratified in Berlin-Karlshorst , Klaus Kahlenberg read out the last Wehrmacht report on May 9th at 8:03 pm : "The guns have been silent on all fronts since midnight."

After the capitulation, the Dönitz government unsuccessfully offered itself to the Allies to wind up the Wehrmacht and drafted unrealistic plans for the reconstruction of Germany. In the remainder of the period that followed, the executive government was isolated and its freedom of movement was restricted to the special area of ​​Mürwik . Since the Allies forbade her to use the radio on May 8, 1945, there was no longer any possibility of contact with the outside world. It was not able to develop any administrative effect, it was, as the historian Karl Dietrich Erdmann wrote, a “government only in name”, the historian Elke Fröhlich calls its existence “like a ghost”.

Bargaining chip in the tension between the victorious powers

In the final weeks of Roosevelt's presidency , who died on April 12, 1945 , differences between the main victorious powers had arisen over a number of European problems, particularly Poland , which led to considerable mutual distrust. The military capitulation of the Wehrmacht in Western Allied headquarters in Reims on 7 May 1945 had the Soviet headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst on the night of 8 to 9 May be repeated, so that the decisive military role of the Soviet Union in the victory against the German Reich to Was expressed.

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill initially held on to the Dönitz government in order to be able to deploy German troops against the Red Army in the event of a Soviet advance to the North Sea . However, this anti-Soviet bargaining chip policy found insufficient support from the British public.

For its part, the Soviet Union tried to induce the Dönitz government to relocate from the military sphere of influence in Flensburg to Berlin, which at that time was occupied by the Red Army alone. When this failed, the Dönitz government was arrested under Soviet pressure on the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Allies, General Dwight D. Eisenhower .

The Dönitz government is arrested

On May 23, 1945, during a morning briefing, the Dönitz government was arrested by an armed platoon of British soldiers as part of Operation Blackout . All Germans present had to completely undress and were subjected to an exact physical search, namely for cyanide poison capsules. After being dressed again, they were led into the courtyard with their hands on their heads under guard, where they were photographed and filmed by more than sixty Allied reporters. They were then taken to prison camps on trucks under cover of thirty to forty armored vehicles. The next day the New York Times announced the final end of the Dönitz government in Mürwik under the heading “Today the German Reich died” .

See also

literature

  • Klaus Hesse: The "Third Reich" after Hitler. 23 days in May 1945. A Chronicle / The Third Reich after Hitler. A Chronicle of 23 Days in May 1945. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95565-117-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dirk Nolte: The problem of the legality of the succession of Hitler by the "Dönitz government" , in: Juristische Schulung , 1989, pp. 440–443; Thomas Moritz, Reinhard Neubauer: The legitimacy of the “Dönitz Government” or: How constitutional was the “Third Reich”? , in: Kritische Justiz , 1989, p. 475 ( PDF ).
  2. ↑ With this, however, Flensburg did not become the capital of the Reich, only the Mürwik district became the provisional seat of government ; see. Broder Schwensen , Imperial Capital , in: Flexikon. 725 aha experiences from Flensburg! , Flensburg 2009. Although the claim that Flensburg was the “provisional capital of the Reich” during this time is sometimes made anyway; see. on this, for example, Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, Schleswig-Holstein from A to Z: Flensburg ( Memento from January 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on May 6, 2014.
  3. ↑ Files of the Reich Chancellery , Hitler Government, II / 1, p. 241 f.
  4. ↑ Bernd Mertens: Legislation in National Socialism , Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2009, p. 67 .
  5. ↑ Flensburg: Rat Line North . Stern on May 3, 2005, accessed December 11, 2014.
  6. ↑ About the Marineschule Mürwik, In the Second World War, The Last Weeks of War , German Navy , accessed on December 11, 2014.
  7. ^ Richard J. Evans: The Third Reich . Volume III: War . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2009, p. 919.
  8. ↑ Heinrich Schwendemann: "To save German people from annihilation by Bolshevism": The program of the Dönitz government and the beginning of a legend. In: Jörg Hillmann , John Zimmermann : End of War 1945 in Germany (=  contributions to military history , vol. 55). Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56649-0 , pp. 9-33 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  9. ↑ See Lutz Wilde : City of Flensburg (=  monument topography Federal Republic of Germany / cultural monuments in Schleswig-Holstein . Volume 2 ). Wachholtz, Neumünster 2001, ISBN 3-529-02521-6 , pp. 526 . Gerhard Paul , Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg , 2015, p. 124 ff .; Klaus W. Tofahrn: The Third Reich and the Holocaust , Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 112, note 155 .
  10. ↑ Heinz Jensen: The red "Wanderer" seats from Kollerup , in: Yearbook of the Heimatverein der Landschaft fishing, Sörup 2017, p. 171 f.
  11. ↑ Flensburg genealogical table, keyword: Kollerup , accessed on March 31, 2018.
  12. ↑ See The Capitulation on the Timeloberg (PDF; 455 kB), accessed on May 1, 2017.
  13. ↑ Dönitz commissioned and authorized Colonel-General Jodl, the chief of the Wehrmacht command staff, who was originally only authorized to “conclude an armistice agreement with General Eisenhower's headquarters”, by radio to sign an unconditional surrender of the German troops; see. Katja Gerhartz, Minutes of the Last Moments , in: Die Welt , May 7th 2005. This happened on May 7th between 2:39 and 2:41 am.
  14. ↑ See Landeszentrale für political education Schleswig-Holstein (ed.): Der Untergang 1945 in Flensburg (lecture on January 10, 2012 by Gerhard Paul ), p. 17; Stern, Flensburg: Rattenlinie Nord , May 3, 2005.
  15. ↑ State Center for Civic Education Schleswig-Holstein (ed.): Downfall 1945 in Flensburg (PDF, p. 18).
  16. ^ Karl Dietrich Erdmann: The end of the empire and the new formation of German states . In: Herbert Grundmann (Ed.): Gebhardt. Handbook of German History , Vol. 22, dtv, Munich 1980, p. 35.
  17. ↑ Elke Fröhlich: Capitulation, Germany 1945. In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml and Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, p. 541.
  18. ↑ Andreas Hillgruber : Germany between the world powers 1945-1965 . In: Peter Rassow and Theodor Schieffer (eds.): German history at a glance . Metzler, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-476-00258-6 , pp. 751 f .; Wilfried Loth : The division of the world 1941–1955. Cold War history 1941–1955. 3rd edition, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-423-04012-2 , p. 103 f.
  19. ^ Douglas Botting: Die Unterseeboote , 1979, Bechtermünz Verlag, Eltville am Rhein 1992, p. 163.
  20. ↑ Hitler's successor: Reichsregierung ohne Reich , Spiegel Online , April 30, 2012, accessed on December 9, 2014.
  21. ↑ Cf. State Center for Political Education Schleswig-Holstein (ed.): Der Untergang 1945 in Flensburg (PDF, p. 21).
  22. ↑ See also the legal situation in Germany after 1945 .
  23. ↑ added time in Mürwik . In: FAZ of August 2, 2016, p. 6.