After the Reich (15 page)

Holstein and Hanover

Germany capitulated unconditionally on 8 May 1945, but it wasn’t quite true that the Allies were the only power in the land. For the time being Hitler’s chosen successor Admiral Dönitz still dressed himself with the trappings of authority in Flensburg on the Schleswig-Holstein coast, albeit surrounded by British troops under Field Marshal Montgomery. The arrangement of his ministerial portfolios had been bequeathed by Hitler in his political testament, but Dönitz tore up the list and appointed his own government of technocrats. Speer was one of only two survivors from the old elite, the others had been at most junior ministers: Stuckart, Backe, Seldte and Dorpmüller. Dönitz sought to divorce his regime from the Party. He chose Hitler’s finance minister Graf Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk to be his foreign minister and chancellor, a man with strong anti-Bolshevik views like his master. Dönitz liked the idea of a return to the political thinking of 1933-4 when President von Hindenburg was still alive. He would have an active chancellor, and in himself a president who applied the brakes.
⁸⁰
Schwerin von Krosigk refused to be chancellor, however - he didn’t like the name. He became ‘leading minister’ instead.
⁸¹

Everywhere Germans were laying down their arms. In Italy Kesselring surrendered on the 2 May. Dönitz was in Plön at the time, with the British army rapidly advancing on him. His government decided to move to the Baltic coast and Flensburg. Dönitz and Schwerin von Krosigk spurned the worst Nazis when they came looking for work. Alfred Rosenberg, the Party ideologist, was one of these. He consoled himself with drink, and was seen about Dönitz’s HQ, as drunk as a lord.
⁸²
Himmler visited on the 3rd, 4th and 6th, but Dönitz considered him to be a political liability, and he was shown the road.
⁸³
When Admiral von Friedeburg returned from Rheims he brought back some of the pictures of German atrocities that had circulated during the signing of the peace.
⁸⁴

Churchill tolerated the Dönitz government for a while until the Soviets began to clamour for its elimination. He was of the view that the Germans could look after themselves to some degree. A campaign organised by Stalin appeared in
Pravda
. The Russians demanded an end to the ‘militarist-fascist clique’ around Dönitz.
⁸⁵
Radio Moscow even suggested that Dönitz was trying to blackmail the West. That was on 18 May, when the Allies started to get tough with the admiral. Two days later
Pravda
,
Izvestia
and
Krasnaya Zvezda
demanded that Dönitz be deposed at once. Dönitz had been pleading with the West to launch a joint crusade against the Bolsheviks, and the Soviets naturally got wind of it. They also knew that the British had simply placed German arms at a distance from the captured men. Churchill must have been considering his options. If the Russians did not convince him, Eisenhower did, when he ordered Dönitz’s arrest.
⁸⁶
The Americans were not prepared to work with the relics of Hitler’s regime, and there was JCS 1067 - the Joint Chiefs of Staff document laying down that no Nazis were allowed to continue in office.
⁸⁷

The Times
postulated that the new German government consisted of nothing more than Dönitz, Schwerin von Krosigk and a microphone, and that the microphone had been the most important member.
⁸⁸
Admiral Dönitz was not popular with Germans - Margret Boveri called him an
Obertrottel
, a supreme idiot - but many could see some good in Schwerin von Krosigk, who had entered the Cabinet under Franz von Papen in 1932 and seemed for the time and circumstances not only moderate but intelligent. This cut no ice with SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. If Dönitz and the Flensburg government had any role it was only to disarm, disband and feed the Wehrmacht.

The Dönitz government must have been feeling over-confident of British love when on 11 May Field Marshal Busch gave a broadcast on Radio Flensburg to announce that he was in charge in Schleswig-Holstein, ‘with the agreement of the British’.
⁸⁹
The Allies had been using various high-ranking military officials to help them shut down the Wehrmacht and its organs,
⁹⁰
but JCS 1067 made it clear that no Nazis were to remain in authority. Busch’s broadcast aroused fury among the other Allies who suspected that Montgomery had recognised the Dönitz government.
⁹¹

Not just the other Allies - the
Daily Mail
was outraged by this ‘mysterious station’. Busch had let the cat out of the bag and Dönitz had sealed his fate.
⁹²
Dönitz was giving himself airs and graces as well. British soldiers had to salute high-ranking German officers, which angered many.
⁹³
The next day Churchill sent his ‘Iron Curtain’ telegram to Truman. He was worried, he told the American president, about what would happen when America transferred its forces to the Pacific and he was left alone with the French to face the Russians. The inference is clear: he might need German help.
⁹⁴
There were a million German soldiers chewing the cud in Schleswig-Holstein; their weapons had been taken from them, but they were not far away.

Sir Bernard Montgomery had just returned from the Russian lines at Wismar. He gave orders that German weapons should not be destroyed, ‘in case they might be needed for any reason’.
⁹⁵
It may be that the sight of the Russians at close quarters had confirmed his worst fears. The Russians, on the other hand, were not pleased to learn that ‘the Flensburg criminals’, Hitler’s designated successor and his ministers, were walking freely about the streets of the little port.
⁹⁶
On 13 May the Allied Control Commission came to collect the chief of the German Armed Forces High Command (the OKW) Field Marshal Keitel and bear him off to captivity. Dönitz thought it prudent to remove a bust of Hitler from his office. He also ordered the end of the Hitler salute, but he drew the line at the Allied request that the Germans should cease wearing their medals. Admiral von Friedeburg was apprehensive about what the Allies would do, but Dönitz assured him that they would observe the Geneva Convention.
⁹⁷

On 17 May a Soviet officer joined the Allied team on the SHAEF passenger ship
Patria
and Dönitz was invited to appear before them in Flensburg harbour. He was received with pomp and had an interview with Bob Murphy, political adviser to SHAEF. Dönitz turned to his favourite theme: the Bolshevisation of Europe, and how the Germans were needed to prevent it. The Allies were also worried, but they didn’t like it coming from him, any more than they had from Himmler. Albert Speer had decided to jump ship. He resigned from Dönitz’s government and retired to his family in the doubtless palatial surroundings of Schloss Glücksburg.
⁹⁸

A day later - on the 18th - the Allies returned the visit to the seat of the Dönitz regime in the barracks at Mürwik. Their delegation was led by the British brigadier E. J. Foord and the American major-general Lowell Rooks. On 22 May Dönitz was summoned aboard the
Patria
for 9.45 the following morning. The Allied generals had received their instructions from Eisenhower. If Dönitz felt he had any claim to immunity as a head of state, he was rapidly disillusioned. He was told to consider himself a prisoner. General Lucius Clay of the Allied Control Commission had said that Dönitz was on the list of war criminals and would be treated as a POW. The Allies sent the Germans away: ‘Pack your bags!’ they said.
⁹⁹
Clay made it clear that all war criminals would pay for their acts with ‘their lives, freedom, sweat and blood’.
¹⁰⁰

Three battalions of British troops commanded by Brigadier Churcher surrounded the government’s HQ in the Mürwik Barracks and finally stormed it brandishing sten guns and grenades. The leading minister’s cabinet meeting had just begun. ‘Hände hoch! Ausziehen!’ (Hands up! Strip!) The participants and their secretaries were put against a wall and strip-searched: Dönitz, Jodl and the rest. Schwerin von Krosigk allegedly found a Tommy tugging at his trousers saying, ‘Bitte - please?’, although it is hard to believe that they had any problem communicating with the former Rhodes Scholar.
¹⁰¹

The leading minister tells the story differently: ‘as nothing went unexamined, the blood went to my head. General von Trotha, who was standing next to me, noticed that I was on the point of turning round and lashing out with my fist. He whispered to me: “Keep smiling.”’ Schwerin von Krosigk felt Trotha had saved his life.
¹⁰²
Some sources claim that the men were forced to strip naked, as well as the female secretaries the British had found in the other offices. Others suggest that their examination was confined to the areas below the waist.
¹⁰³

A British sergeant equipped with a surgical glove searched anuses and other orifices of ministers, officials and secretaries. Speer had been fetched from Schloss Glücksburg and was subjected to the same indignity. He thought it was because Himmler had slipped though the British net (by biting on a cyanide capsule) and they were determined it would not happen again, but Himmler died only later that day.
¹⁰⁴
The idea of humiliating the prisoners could not have been far from their minds either. Admiral von Friedeburg poisoned himself in a lavatory to escape the defilement, as did Dönitz’s secretary. Squaddies plundered Friedeburg’s body.
¹⁰⁵

The only other person to be let off was the deputy chief of operations at the OKW, whose boots were so tight the Tommies couldn’t get them off. The captain commanding the operation was so angry he ripped the German officer’s
Ritterkreuz
from his neck and stamped on it.
¹⁰⁶
Watches and rings vanished into the British soldiers’ pockets. Dönitz’s baggage was rifled and his bejewelled admiral’s baton stolen. Schwerin von Krosigk also complained of theft. For three-quarters of an hour photographs and newsreel films were taken of the Germans while they stood in the courtyard with Tommies peering at them over the sights of their weapons. The pictures appeared in the British papers showing some of the men and women
en déshabille
. The headlines suggested that the
Herrenvolk
had been caught napping. The truth was they had not been given time to cover up after their examinations.
¹⁰⁷
When Churchill heard the story, he was scandalised and wrote Montgomery a letter of protest. The Flensburg government had lasted three weeks.
¹⁰⁸

Charlotte von der Schulenburg knew the war was over when she saw a British jeep in Testorf, where she had taken refuge after her flight from Mecklenburg. East Holstein was to be turned into a huge detention camp for captured German soldiers. Chaos reigned until September when the post was restored and she was able to make contact with others in her situation. She learned that her mother and sister were still alive in the Russian Zone and hiked to Bremen to see Mausi Lehndorff, a member of the noble East Prussian clan, whose husband had been another of Hitler’s victims following the abortive plot. The worry was how she and her children were to survive. She had lost everything in the east. Then she received a letter from one of her late husband’s cousins. Jonny von der Schulenburg lived in the original family Schloss at Hehlen on the Weser. He invited her to stay and to bring her children with her. She was not altogether convinced: she had heard that the Hehlener Schulenburgs ‘hätten nicht alle Tassen im Schrank’ (an idiomatic translation would be ‘A sandwich short of a picnic’.) She went to inspect the house with Marion Gräfin Dönhoff - later editor of
Die Zeit
.

They set off for the ruins of Hamburg. A bus took them to Hanover, where they were able to pick up a train to Hameln. The bridges over the Weser were all down and there were no trains leaving in that direction. Then she saw two men, one in a military leather coat, waiting on a low cart on rubber wheels drawn by a chestnut. This was Mathias von der Schulenburg and his cousin, the owner of Schloss Hehlen, Jonny. The house was filled with former German POWs that Jonny had invited back to live with him and drink up the contents of the cellar.

The house resembled so many that had been occupied by soldiers. In places the electric wiring had been pulled out; windows had been smashed; the books in the library lay scattered on the floor; there were empty bottles everywhere. Jonny gave Charlotte a lift back to Hanover the next day in a Fiat Topolino without doors in which he sat on a wobbly milking-stool. The servants often had to push it to get it started. Sometimes it needed a horse. That autumn she moved into Hehlen with her six children and the few belongings she had been able to take from the family Schloss at Trebbow in Mecklenburg. Their journey to the Schloss was an adventure in itself.

In Hamburg they were arrested for breaking the curfew and spent some days in a barracks with more POWs, who shared their meagre rations with the children. The latter were delighted with English white bread and ersatz honey. Antediluvian figures speaking an unintelligible language jumped on the bus seeking a lift to Bremen and were finally shaken off near Bergen-Belsen. In Celle they found quarters in a Red Cross camp that had been set up in a gym. In the ruins of Hanover they met Jonny - an apparition in a white linen suit.