Might I suggest that you take a look at the movie Der Untergang, which is a fascinating look at the last few days in Hitler’s bunker. (Yes, this is the movie made famous by the Hitler parodies on YouTube. They made me curious enough to want to see the original movie.)
Don’t forget the risk of being captured by a flying court martial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_Weidling#Flying_courts-martial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludendorff_Bridge#U.S._Capture_during_World_War_II
And as noted, surrender, particularly to the USSR was not a ticket to a long and healthy life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_Soviet_Union
In Otto Skorzeny’s autobiography he basically states that several officers realized the war was lost after D-Day, but they had no real surrender options and their diplomatic overtures were rebuffed.
Yogurt, can you explain what the last part means? Diplomatic overtures were rebuffed? By whom?
I will speculate that it means something along the lines of:
“Why not let us join forces with you and together we will crush the Bolshevik menace”.
Please also keep in mind that any autobiography by Skorzeny must be taken with the now-proverbial ‘huge grain of salt’. The louse was an unrepentant Nazi to the end . . . and beyond - he organized the flight of the worst of the surviving SS after the war, i.e. people like Franz Stangl and Gustav Wagner.
There were numerous attempts by German military officers to make contact, mostly with the British, for the purpose of negotiating an end to the war. Many of these attempts predated D-Day. Some were as early as 1938.
The overall British response was that they were not going to make any promises in advance. If the German Army did overthrow Hitler and establish itself as the government of Germany, then there might be an opportunity to negotiate. But the British weren’t going to negotiate with a bunch of conspirators.
There are various reasons why the British weren’t interested. First, the conspirators were a pretty hapless lot - they were always plotting but usually backed away from making any serious moves. Second, the British didn’t want the Soviets thinking they were negotiating a seperate peace - they needed the Soviets to keep fighting. Third, the conspirators wanted a lot of promises, like keeping much of the territory they had captured. And fourth, some cynics have suggested that the British didn’t want the conspirators to succeed - Hitler was so incompetent as a leader, they didn’t want him replaced.
Compare the British attitude when it seemed highly possible that a German invasion was coming.
We shall fight on the beaches.
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
We shall fight in the hills.
We shall never surrender.
In an alternate history, where the Germans had come, you might be asking the same question about Churchill: why didn’t he surrender weeks earlier?
This is very important to realize. Reports indicate once Hitler saw what happened to his buddy, he was determined, not only, never to be taken alive, but to make sure his corpse was cremated.
Hitler was not really insane or delusional. He knew the war was lost, but was looking for an out. He hoped that Roosevelt’s death would bring about a change. He hoped the West and the USSR would fall out and start fighting each other and he hoped his V2 rockets would reestablish some sort of chance of negotiated peace.
This is what he was really looking for a negotiated peace.
The higher ups in Hitler’s regime were too busy looking for a way to distance themselves. To escape into neutral places like Switzerland or Denmark or to get to friendly countries like Franco’s Spain or Portugal.
Think of it as being a screw up at work and warned that the next time you screw up you’re out. While common sense tells you to start looking for a new job ASAP, but most people will put it off thinking, “I won’t screw up again.” Only on a more extreme level.
The Germans on the Eastern front fought to hold up the Russians for as long as possible, so that the Western Allies would be the occupiers of as much of Germany as possible. The thought that the Wallies would stop on the Elbe and allow the Russians free reign simply never occurred to them; why would you voluntarily relinquish a chance to occupy enemy terrain?
Regarding Hitler’s decision to stay in Berlin, this was specifically addressed in a scene between Hitler and Speer. Hitler turns to Speer and asks, what do you think? And Speer appeals to Hitler’s sense of artistry, opining something like “the author must be on stage when the curtain falls.” You can almost see the calculation in Speer’s eyes as he says this – for my money, he was the most fascinating character in that movie.
If that were really the case (wanting to lose to the western allies instead of Soviets), it would seem there could have been significantly less effort put into the western front. Not that the bulk of the Wehrmacht weren’t in the east, but there was still a lot of stiff resistance put up in the west, not to mention the Battle of the Bulge and various other last gasp offensive efforts.
Some reasons they fought until Hitler died:
Many didn’t believe Hitler was that crazy – they thought he would surrender at some point.
Quite a few high ranking German military officers had resigned because they thought continuing the war was futile. And most of Hitler’s really good generals had been killed, forcibly retired, captured or otherwise marginalized. So the people left in Hitler’s inner circle in the end weren’t exactly the cream of the crop.
They figured someone would kill Hitler sooner or later. They didn’t figure Hitler would kill himself with Soviet troops on his doorstep.
They wanted to live. They faced execution if they opposed Hitler’s wishes too strongly.
They had a very strong sense of honor, and had taken a personal oath to Hitler, and felt they were bound by that oath.
I’ve always felt the “they took an oath” excuse was overrated.
Sure the members of the German armed forces swore an oath to obey Adolf Hitler in 1934 and after. And many of them later claimed that they had to obey because breaking an oath was unthinkable for a German soldier.
But here’s what they don’t mention. All those guys serving in 1934 had already sworn an oath. Members of the German armed forces up to 1934 swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the Presidency and the legal institutions of the Republic.
So if breaking an oath was unthinkable for a German soldier, why did so many of them look the other way when Hitler abolished the Presidency and Constitution and overruled the legislature and court system?
But they must have realized that they faced execution when Germany lost the war.
That turned out to be negotiable. I guess the highest-up not to get the noose was Dönitz; ten years in the slammer, then the rest of his life in peaceful obscurity.
The Nuremburg trials resulted in only 19 executions, IIRC, so the odds turned out to be pretty good. There were many countries doing additional executions, of course, but by and large they concerned themselves with native traitors.
I generally agree, but when you’re you’re desperate and you have a convenient excuse, you use it.
As to the older oath, and why they didn’t kill Hitler after he destroyed the old government, AFAIK he did it “legally”. The legislature basically voted him dictatorial powers just before he disbanded it. Yes, I know there were armed Nazi thugs roaming the Reichstag threatening violence, but that was part of their charm. 
Yes, definitely. Very powerful and interesting, and a must-see for anyone interested in Hitler, Nazi Germany or WWII. In the last months before Berlin fell, the Gestapo was executing people out of hand for desertion, hurting morale, anti-regime activities, etc. Nobody was too eager to loudly call for surrender.
Sort of maybe legally.
Hitler acquired his dictatorial powers via two acts: the Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (aka the Reichstag Fire Decree) issued on February 27, 1933 and the Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich (aka the Enabling Act) issued on March 23, 1933.
The Weimar Constitution did have an article that allowed the President to temporarily suspend civil rights in an emergency situation. It did not specify what civil rights could be suspended, how long a “temporary” could last, or define what could be considered an emergency. The two checks on the system were that the President could cancel the decree at any time and the Reichstag could overrule the decree by a majority vote.
President von Hindenburg issued the Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933. In theory, he or the Reichstag could have abolished it. But Hindenberg died in 1934 and Hitler abolished the office of the President. And Hitler didn’t allow the Reichstag to meet on a regular basis so they did not have an opportunity to vote against the decree.
The Enabling Act was enacted by the Reichstag. It gave Hitler the power to enact laws and to violate the Constitution. This was constitutional, surprisingly enough. The Constitution gave the Reichstag the power to amend the Constitution by legislative acts. So if the Reichstag voted to give Hitler this power, that was within the scope of the Constitution.
But the Enabling Act was not unlimited. It said the Hitler could not use his legislative power to enact any changes that effected the Reichstag itself or the Reichsrat, which was the state council, or the office of the Presidency. And the Enabling Act was only good for four years.
Hitler violated both of these provisions. As noted, he restricted the meetings and membership of the Reichstag. He dissolved the Reichsrat and abolished the Presidency. And while he had the Reichstag officially renew the Enabling Act in 1937 and 1941, he didn’t bother to get it renewed after that, so his power legally ended in March of 1945. (Presumably, Hitler didn’t find that a convenient time to ask the Reichstag to meet and renew his powers.)
You are looking for logic in a fascist state.
The two are mutually exclusive. There is of course a form of logic, but it’s a fascistic one.
From Robert Harris’s excellent alt-history novel Fatherland: “A police state is one in which the criminals are in charge.”