Reichsender Flensburg
The Reichssender Flensburg was a provisionally set up broadcasting station in the main post office (today Alte Post ) in Flensburg , which from May 3rd to 13th 1945 on the medium wave frequency 1330 kHz broadcast a program with announcements by well-known members of the Dönitz government (2nd to 23rd May 1945) . May 1945), including the announcement of the end of World War II in Europe . In the days after Hitler's suicide on April 30, 1945, the station was "next to the one in Prague the last propaganda facility available to the collapsing Nazi regime" .
Range of the transmitter
The audience of the Reichsender Flensburg was limited. On the one hand, this was due to the comparatively low transmission power; on the other hand, many people no longer had a radio or the power supply had collapsed. Nevertheless, the broadcasts could be received in the entire sinking German Reich , albeit with better quality in northern Germany.
Facilities, program and broadcast line
Since Flensburg possessed at the time over no facility for production of its own programs, one kept as a temporary broadcast van of the Navy ago, the courtyard of the former Post Office on Norderhofenden in Flensburg city was parked.
The program of the "last mouthpiece of the collapsing Nazi regime" next to Prague consisted of appeals and speeches, news and music programs as well as Wehrmacht reports . News was read out and records played in the OB van; in the post office, however, a refreshment room for female postal workers was set up as a temporary studio so that Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (May 6 and 8) and his cabinet colleagues, including Albert Speer (May 3) and Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk ( May 7), were able to give their radio speeches. In it, Dönitz primarily addressed the Wehrmacht , Economics and Production Minister Speer addressed industry, agriculture and workers, and the leading minister, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, addressed the Allies and abroad.
The station transmitted the propaganda broadcasts from the OB van to the transmitter mast, the “Wooden Eiffel Tower” of the Flensburg station on the Ostliche Höhe in Jürgensby , from which they were broadcast nationwide.
While the engineer Ernst Thode (until 1968 head of the Flensburg broadcaster of the NWDR / NDR ) was in charge of the transmission line, an advance command of British specialists took over the technical overhead line on May 5, 1945. The attention of other British advance commandos was on research and testing sites of the Navy on the same day and on May 6, the occupation of the Flensburg-Schäferhaus airfield . Taking over the station was one of their first measures in the days of the occupation of Flensburg by British allies , which two American officers joined a few days later. The bulk of the British troops, British tanks, entered the city without incident on May 10th.
chronology
Speeches by members of the Dönitz government
The Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz , who was appointed Commander-in-Chief and Reich President by Adolf Hitler in his will , transferred his staff from Plön to the marine sports school in Flensburg- Mürwik on the night of May 2nd . A few hours after his arrival in Mürwik, on the evening of May 3, 1945, Albert Speer gave the first speech about the Flensburg ether. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler , who took up quarters in the neighboring Flensburg Police Headquarters , suggested Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel "to appoint a censor for all public statements by the government that he himself would like to take on this task." Doenitz put together a cabinet on May 5 without the SS leadership.
On May 6, at midnight, the station announced the German partial capitulation in the north and recorded a speech given by Dönitz the day before, in which it addressed all German ship and submarine crews.
The next day, May 7th, was the signing of the deed of surrender in Reims by Colonel General Alfred Jodl at 2:41 a.m. On the same day, the leading minister of the Dönitz government , Count Schwerin von Krosigk, in his address at 12:45 p.m. called for a return to the three core elements of the third stanza of the Deutschlandlied : Unity and Law and Freedom.
On May 8th at 12:30 p.m. Dönitz announced the immediate end of the war via the Reichsender Flensburg . On the night of May 7th, he had “given the OKW the order to declare unconditional surrender for all fighting troops.” So it was said: “On May 8th, 11 pm, the guns are silent.” The one that was also still sending Radio station Prague I thought the news from Flensburg about the imminent surrender was an Allied propaganda trick and called for the fight to continue. However, given the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , the Prague uprising ended . The Wehrmacht withdrew from Prague on May 8th .
Last report from the Wehrmacht High Command
The night of May 8th to 9th was the night in which the total surrender in Berlin-Karlshorst, repeated for protocol reasons, came to an end. Field Marshal Keitel, Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff and General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg signed the surrender at the headquarters of the Soviet 5th Army at 12:16 a.m., i.e. shortly after it came into force. In Flensburg, on the evening of May 9th, the tank scout operator Klaus Kahlenberg was just retiring as a (non-professional) spokesman for the Reichsender Flensburg , where he usually took turns with a Stuttgart corporal. At 8:03 p.m., Kahlenberg read the last report of the Wehrmacht High Command , in which the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht is again declared.
"8 pm and 3 minutes. Reichsender Flensburg and the connected transmitters. Today we are bringing the last Wehrmacht report of this war. From the headquarters of the Grand Admiral, May 9, 1945. The Wehrmacht High Command announces. "
This was followed by "an overview of the military situation on the various fronts" before Kahlenberg announced the end of the war:
“The Wehrmacht High Command announces: Since midnight the guns have been silent on all fronts. On the orders of the Grand Admiral, the Wehrmacht stopped the now hopeless fight. This is the end of almost six years of heroic wrestling. It brought us great victories but also heavy defeats. In the end, the German Wehrmacht is honorable inferior to a vast superior force. We brought the wording of the last Wehrmacht report of this war. There is a radio silence of three minutes. "
After the short break from broadcasting, Kahlenberg ushered in the post-war period with an instrumental version of the Deutschlandlied .
After the station was confiscated
On May 10, the British occupying forces confiscated the broadcasting facilities; a British officer marked the front door of the transmitter with chalk on which from now on it was written Reserved for Information-Control . On the same day , the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Thomas Mann , who emigrated into exile in America , spoke of the end of the “ether war” on the BBC . Nevertheless, the OKW's announcements could be broadcast for three more days, but had to pass British censorship.
An intelligence officer of the 159th Infantry Brigade (159th Infantry Brigade) put an end to the ten-day transmission on May 13, 1945 by removing the quartz control unit , sealing the high- voltage connection and removing the transmitter and amplifier tubes .
On May 23, 1945, the British arrested members of the Reich government in the Mürwik special area . On the same day Speer, Dönitz and Jodl were presented to the world press at the neighboring police headquarters in Flensburg to document the end of the Third Reich .
literature
- Gerhard Paul : "Since midnight the guns have been silent on all fronts." The "Reichssender Flensburg" in May 1945 . In: Gerhard Paul , Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45 . End of the war in Flensburg (= publication series of the Society for Flensburg City History ). 1st edition. tape 80 . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-925856-75-4 , p. 70-75 (244 pages).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Gerhard Paul : "Since midnight the guns have been silent on all fronts." The "Reichssender Flensburg" in May 1945 . In: Gerhard Paul , Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45 . End of the war in Flensburg (= publication series of the Society for Flensburg City History ). 1st edition. tape 80 . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-925856-75-4 , p. 70-75 (244 pages).
- ↑ Peter Wulf: "No Naziflags, no Heil Hitler." The occupation of Schleswig-Holstein and Flensburg by the British in May 1945 . In: Gerhard Paul , Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45 . End of the war in Flensburg (= publication series of the Society for Flensburg City History ). 1st edition. tape 80 . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-925856-75-4 , p. 64-69 (244 pages).
- ↑ a b Broder Schwensen: Flensburg, May '45. A summary . In: Gerhard Paul , Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45 . End of the war in Flensburg (= publication series of the Society for Flensburg City History ). 1st edition. tape 80 . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-925856-75-4 , p. 206-215 (244 pages).
- ↑ Gerhard Paul : Inferno and Liberation: The Last Spook. In: Zeit Online . May 4, 2005, accessed April 29, 2016 .
- ↑ Gerhard Paul : Fall in the backyard. The end of the “Third Reich” as an absurd theater and media event . In: Gerhard Paul , Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45 . End of the war in Flensburg (= publication series of the Society for Flensburg City History ). 1st edition. tape 80 . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-925856-75-4 , p. 130-137 (244 pages).