HITLER's corpse smouldered in the blackened rubble of Berlin. But it wasn't quite the end - the Nazi nightmare had still to run its bloody course. That evening, April 30, Berlin sent a message to Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, the 53-year-old commander of the navy, at his headquarters at Plon in north Germany. "The F├╝hrer appoints you his successor." Donitz was astonished.
His first move was to summon Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo and SS chief, to his office. Knowing that Himmler had expected to succeed Hitler, Donitz took no chances. He hid a pistol under papers on his desk and broke the news, watching dismay spread over Himmler's face. Then he told him he had no use for him.
Donitz's inheritance was a Germany ruined and overrun. Remnants of the fragmented army fought hopeless battles, while fanatical SS execution squads spread terror, hanging deserters from lampposts and trees.
Some generals blustered irresponsibly about fighting to the death. The Red Army was smashing Berlin street by street while boys of 12 and grandfathers in their 70s tried to defend it. But Donitz agreed that Hamburg should surrender to the British rather than offer pointless resistance.
British troops moved so quickly on Plon that Donitz retreated 50 miles further north to Flensburg, close to the Danish border. He set up his rats-in-a-trap "government" in a navy school and found quarters in the passenger ship Patria.
In the front of the new f├╝hrer's mind was the need to make time for as many soldiers and refugees as possible to flee the advancing Red Army. No one wanted to surrender to the Russians. In German eyes they were savages who would wreak terrible vengeance for the Reich's brutality in the Soviet Union. Fear of execution and mass enslavement hung like a cloud.
Donitz knew that the war should be ended quickly but thought concessions could be salvaged, that an exploitable rift might grow between the Russians and their allies. German forces began to surrender piecemeal to the British and Americans; but the Allies wanted unconditional surrender on all fronts, demanding that troops facing the Russians should surrender to the Russians.
One of Donitz's envoys, sent to parley with Montgomery, spoke of the Germans' horror of the Russians. "You should have thought of that before you started the war," Montgomery said curtly.
There was similar short shrift for the envoys despatched to Eisenhower's headquarters in France - they were pointedly shown shocking photographs of concentration camps. The envoys knew the game was up. After getting Donitz's approval they signed the surrender on May 7. A second surrender document was signed next day in Berlin, the Russians insisting that this was the only place for capitulation.
As they looked out across their devastated land the German people heard Donitz, making his farewell speech on May 8, urging them to face the future with dignity. His own bolthole in Flensburg was surrounded by British troops and some of the remaining Nazi leaders were planning to make a run for it.
Two gauleiters had demanded submarines to take them to South America, but Donitz refused them. Himmler and other SS officers furnished themselves with fake papers and slipped away. One SS man disguised himself as a Red Cross official. Suddenly, there were no more SS uniforms to be seen.
In a strange melodrama, Donitz's Flensburg "government" continued for 15 days after the surrender. At 10am every day, Donitz, in uniform and punctilious about saluting, was driven in one of Hitler's armoured Mercedes to a "cabinet meeting" in a schoolroom, over which flew the Reich war flag.
A photographer was summoned to take pictures of the new government - "the tragedy was turning into a tragicomedy", recalled Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments chief, who was at these sessions. One meeting was enlivened by bottles of rye and a heated debate on whether a Minister for Churches should be appointed.
Donitz, General Jodl and others sought to distance themselves from Nazi crimes. They presented themselves as honourable soldiers and expressed horror at what had happened in the camps. There were no anti-Jewish statements now. Reporters and British and American officials visited the "seat of government" and, on several occasions, Speer drove out of Flensburg to visit his family nearby.
But Donitz's bizarre pantomime could not last long. "We were ridiculous," said Speer. On May 23 the Allies rang down the curtain . Speer was called from his bath to be told by a British sergeant that he was under arrest. "It was just an opera anyway," Speer said.
Donitz, Jodl and Admiral von Friedeberg were summoned to the ship Patria and there, in the lounge bar, Eisenhower's representative informed them that their "government" was dissolved and they were now prisoners of war.
The prisoners were intimately searched for the cyanide capsules that played such a part in the Nazi denouement. The day before, Himmler, fleeing in disguise, had been detained by British troops near Hamburg.
He had shaved his moustache and wore an eye patch. He melodramatically tore off the patch and announced he was Himmler. As an Army doctor searched his mouth, he jerked back his head and crunched a capsule. He was dead in five minutes.
At Flensburg, von Friedeberg tricked his guard, went into a bathroom and took a poison capsule concealed there. Donitz, Jodl, and Speer were flown to Luxembourg. When they arrived they were closely guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons. Speer observed wryly: "I had seen such a reception only in gangster films when the criminals are finally led off to justice."
Ahead lay Nuremberg and judgment: death for Jodl, 20 years for Speer, 10 years for Donitz, the three-week fuhrer.
