After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (17 page)

Von Krosigk – a finance minister in Hitler’s regime – was clever and duplicitous. Descended from an old German aristocratic family, he had studied law and politics at Lausanne and then as a Rhodes Scholar, at Oriel College, Oxford. He had received the Iron Cross award for bravery in the First World War and then risen high in the German Civil Service. On the evening of 2 May Dönitz and Von Krosigk travelled together to Flensburg, and the following morning Von Krosigk formally accepted the post of Foreign Minister in Dönitz’s government.

Together the two men formulated a strategy, one based on their mutual loathing of Bolshevism. They would attempt to end the war by piecemeal surrenders to the Western Allies, postponing a full and unconditional surrender to all parties for as long as possible, in an attempt to buy time for German soldiers and civilians fleeing the Red Army to reach British and American lines. A military high command was in place to support this, for Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (head of the German armed forces) and General Alfred Jodl (his chief of staff) had now arrived at Flensburg, and both men – close associates of Hitler – were kept in their posts.

The mettle of the fledgling regime was quickly shown by its public statements. On 1 May 1945 Dönitz broadcast the news of Hitler’s death to the German people, delivering a eulogy to his departed leader:

‘Our Führer Adolf Hitler has fallen,’ he intoned. ‘The German people bow their heads in deepest mourning and respect. At an early stage he had recognised the terrible menace of Bolshevism and dedicated his life to opposing it. At the end of his struggle and unerring straight path, he died a hero in the capital of the German Reich. His life was a unique service for Germany. His war against the Bolshevik flood was fought for Europe and the whole civilised world.’

Dönitz then informed the German people of his own appointment as leader:

‘The Führer appointed me as his successor,’ he continued. ‘Conscious of the responsibility, I accepted this position in this fateful hour. It is my first duty to save the German people from annihilation by the advancing Bolshevik enemy. We fight on simply for this reason.’

Dönitz had begun his rule with a lie – insinuating that Hitler had died in combat, fighting at the head of his troops. The reality, that he had committed suicide in the bunker, was seen as shabby and uninspiring – and simply ignored. In his first statement to the world, Dönitz showed himself as slippery and untrustworthy.

The new leader followed up this announcement with an Order of the Day to the Wehrmacht. He repeated the fiction that Hitler had ‘died a hero’s death’, adding: ‘We have lost one of the greatest heroes in German history.’

He then made it clear that as new head of state and supreme commander, his overriding objective was: ‘To continue the war against the Bolsheviks until our fighting troops and hundreds of thousands of families from the east of Germany have been saved from annihilation or enslavement.’

Dönitz demanded unconditional obedience and loyalty from all fighting men. Thus Hitler’s race ideology, and his loathing of communism and the Slavic people that underlay it, was perpetuated.

On 2 May Von Krosigk, who had now decided to accept the post of Foreign Minister within Dönitz’s government, also broadcast to the German people. The nation’s suffering at the hands of the Red Army was his constant theme, fashioned through clever oratory into the form of a mantra. Germany’s fight, Von Krosigk emphasised, had been a noble one. He warned: ‘A stream of desperate, starving people is heading westwards … fleeing from unspeakable horror, from murder and rape.’

Bolshevik terror, mass starvation and famine were all invoked in an apocalyptic vision that prophesied the inexorable march of Soviet communism. Nazi Germany had tried with all its might to repel this threat. ‘The world can only find peace if the Bolshevik tide does not flood Europe,’ Von Krosigk said. ‘In a heroic struggle without parallel, for four years Germany fought to its last reserves of strength as Europe’s bulwark, and that of the world, against the Red menace.’

This was an extraordinary distortion of history. Nazi Germany had first invaded most of western Europe and imposed its rule by force. Hitler had then launched an unprovoked war upon the Soviet Union, his armies driving deep into her territory, inflicting death and destruction upon millions of her citizens. The extermination squads that followed behind his troops inflicted mass annihilation on the Jews and the civilian population of Belorussia and the Ukraine. This was one of the most brutal wars in human history. And yet the ‘blood guilt’ that Germany had on its hands as a result of Hitler’s quest for
Lebensraum
, ‘living space’ in the east, was now portrayed as a noble mission of sacrifice on Europe’s behalf.

Von Krosigk’s speech was delusional – but dangerously delusional, resonating with the race propaganda the German people had been inculcated with and expressed in language that was powerful and beguiling. And Von Krosigk employed a most striking metaphor to bring his point across. ‘In the east,’ he warned, ‘an Iron Curtain is advancing, and behind it, hidden from the eyes of the world, the work of exterminating those who have fallen into Bolshevik hands goes on.’

The phrase ‘iron curtain’ –
ein eisener Vorhang –
was a Nazi slogan first used by Goebbels in a leader article in
Das Reich
on 25 February 1945. Writing about the recent Allied conference at Yalta, Goebbels warned the German people:

‘If the German people lay down their weapons, the Soviets, according to the agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, would occupy all of East and Southeast Europe along with the greater part of the Reich. An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered.’

The powerful phrase had immediate impact, and a few days later it was used by the Nazi paper, the
Völkischer Beobachter
, in its main front-page headline: ‘An Iron Curtain is falling over Europe’.

Now Von Krosigk had popularised it further. This metaphor – striking, but deeply tainted by Nazi propaganda – should never have subsequently been used by a Western leader. Events would turn out differently.

The public speeches of Dönitz and Von Krosigk were broadcast across Germany from the radio transmitter at Flensburg – and monitored by all the members of the Grand Alliance. The warning was already clear. This was not a transitional, caretaker regime – as claimed – but a rump of partisan, anti-Russian Nazi sycophants, bent on promulgating Hitler’s legacy. And yet, reactions to it within the Alliance were very different.

At the beginning of May 1945, the Americans were the least interested in the prospective Dönitz government. They believed the priority was to apprehend Göring and Himmler – whom they saw as the most dangerous members of the Nazi hierarchy at large. Initially, they did not take the Dönitz regime seriously.

The British had by now established their 21st Army Group at Lüneburg Heath, 30 miles south-east of Hamburg. The British 7th Armoured Division was on the city’s outskirts and Flensburg was less than a hundred miles farther north. They had the military power to remove or arrest the regime within a matter of days. But Churchill saw practical advantages in allowing some form of German government to exist, and without enquiring too deeply about that government’s composition said to Foreign Office staff ‘let it rip’ – allow it to stay in being for a while.

Realising this, and anxious to prove their usefulness, the Dönitz regime made an offer to surrender the city of Hamburg to the British on 3 May. The reason given for this was: ‘in order to spare the city and its population from total destruction’. It then initiated broader negotiations, headed by Admiral Georg von Friedeburg (Dönitz’s replacement as head of the German navy), with the 21st Army Group. British lieutenant colonel Henry Crozier recorded: ‘After a fantastic day of negotiations with high-ranking German officers Hamburg formally surrendered at 18.00 hours. We are going in at first light tomorrow.’

While Hamburg was offered to the Western Allies, the city of Breslau – under siege by the Red Army – was ordered to keep resisting the Soviets. The total destruction of this city and its population would carry on. Surrender was the policy in the west; in the east, the war was to be continued for as long as possible.

The Soviet Union was deeply suspicious of the new regime – and for good reason. The Russians had monitored Dönitz’s radio transmissions – and were struck by the vehemence of his declaration that the war against Bolshevism would continue. As their troops entered the Reich Chancellery and the Führer Bunker on 2 May they had captured Dönitz’s personal representative, Admiral Hans-Erich Voss, and a portfolio of documents about the hoped-for government, including a copy of Hitler’s will. As they were digesting this information, Dönitz made a personal intervention by radio, countermanding the unconditional surrender of Berlin agreed by the garrison commander General Helmuth Weidling and ordering the troops to fight on. The following day, Russian surrender offers to the garrisons at Courland and Breslau were also rejected after Dönitz instructed both strongholds to continue their fight against the Red Army. By now it was clear that this was a regime implacably opposed to the Soviet Union. Russia saw it as a deeply corrupt, if not criminal, gathering – and believing it had no authority or mandate outside the Nazi hierarchy, wanted nothing to do with it whatsoever.

The capacity of this administration to cause mischief among the Allies was beginning to emerge. But for its policies to have any real impact they needed to command support from German forces still resisting the Grand Alliance. On 3 May 1945 the situation across Europe was confused. In France, German garrisons continued to hold out at La Rochelle and Dunkirk. The Channel Islands also remained under Nazi occupation. In central Europe, German forces had recently surrendered in northern Italy, and the Wehrmacht’s Army Group G, defending south-west Germany, had also begun negotiations with the Americans. These two surrenders would bring British and American troops into Austria and marked the effective dissolution of Field Marshal Kesselring’s southern military district. The only force remaining in this region was General Alexander Lohr’s Army Group E. Here some 30,000 German troops and their Croatian and Slovenian allies were cut off in northern Yugoslavia and surrounded by Tito’s partisans.

The German commander responsible for protecting Flensburg itself was Field Marshal Ernst Busch. Busch commanded the garrison at Hamburg and an assortment of troops defending Schleswig-Holstein. Under his overall authority were Generals Joseph Blaskowitz – holding western Holland – and Georg Lindemann, in charge of Denmark.

There were also the German forces retreating from the Russians in northern Germany, the remnants of Army Group Vistula, the 3rd Panzer Army and, farther south, the 9th and 12th Armies and the ill-fated Steiner Group. The majority of these troops were falling back through Mecklenburg – hoping to avoid capture by the Russians and to surrender to the British or Americans instead.

Four major Wehrmacht formations formally swore loyalty to the Dönitz regime on 2 May. In Norway, General Fritz Böhme gave Dönitz his allegiance – along with the eleven divisions and five brigades under his command, totalling some 380,000 men. These were fresh and properly equipped troops, capable of putting up a considerable fight against the Western Allies. On the same day, Army Group Courland also offered its oath of loyalty to Dönitz. More than 200,000 German troops were still holding out in this corner of Latvia, along with a Latvian SS division of some 15,000 men. General Dietrich von Saucken’s Army Group of East Prussia, the battered remnants of the German 2nd and 4th Armies, holding out along the Bay of Danzig and the Hela Peninsula – a gathering of around 100,000 Wehrmacht troops – did the same. And finally, and most importantly, Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner’s Army Group Centre – stationed in eastern Czechoslovakia – also confirmed its allegiance. Schörner’s army group totalled some 580,000 men.

Ferdinand Schörner was a fanatical Nazi who, like Dönitz, soared high in Hitler’s favour in the last months of the war. His rise had been meteoric. In the summer of 1939 he had been a mere lieutenant colonel and regimental commander. By the end of the war he was commanding entire army groups, first as colonel general and then as field marshal. The Führer said of him in April 1945:

‘On the entire front, only one man has proven himself to be a real field strategist – Schörner. Schörner had to endure the worst attacks, but he has maintained the most orderly front. When Schörner had terrible equipment he put it in order again. He has achieved excellent results from every task given to him: he can take over a chaotic situation and imbue its defenders with fresh spirit and determination.’

Hitler specially honoured Field Marshal Schörner in his will, sending him a copy of his last testament and appointing him commander of the German army (a post Schörner was never able to take up). In fact, Schörner’s successes, such as they were, were founded on excessive brutality and fanaticism. He executed more soldiers for cowardice than any other German commander. He sacked divisional, corps and army commanders he did not consider tough enough and established squads of military police to round up stragglers behind the front. His unflattering nicknames included ‘Wild Ferdinand’, ‘the Bloodhound’ and ‘the Legend of a Thousand Gallows’.

Schörner’s motto was that a soldier’s fear of his commander should be greater than his fear of the enemy. His fanaticism knew no bounds. While fighting in northern Norway against the Russians, he received reports that the bitter conditions there were causing a decline in morale. He responded by issuing his most famous battle order: ‘The Arctic does not exist!’

Yet Field Marshal Schörner was also a clever and effective propagandist. In the winter of 1944 he and Dönitz had worked together to create a ‘fortress mentality’ in the Courland Pocket. This remote Latvian stronghold was now entirely cut off from the rest of the fighting. But Schörner issued a series of clever orders, emphasising how Courland was a breakwater, drawing off Soviet forces that otherwise would be free to attack Germany. There was little truth in this assertion – the Courland Pocket had been securely blockaded by the Red Army and these troops would have been much better deployed in the Reich itself. But it appealed to the imagination of his soldiers.