Which meant that fighting still continued while he was rather pointlessly tried to negotiate a surrender exclusively with the Western Allies, which would never have worked.
Yet he could have accepted unconditional surrender the second he became Reich President and saved a week of war, since it was obvious to all (except hardcore Nazis) involved that German had lost and no terms could be brokered.
No, you didnt understand. Yes, even Donitz knew he’d have to surrender to the Allies. But individual units wanted to surrender to the Americans or British. Which was important, as the Russkies kept many Germans as POW for slave labor, many for 5 years, some a full decade, some never came back. Conditions were inhumane, perhaps 1 million died.
Quite large numbers of German aircraft were arriving at Flensburg West in the final days from pockets of resistance in the East, sometimes with incredible numbers of people stowed inside what were normally single-seaters.
I’m aware of that, though it’s debatable whether extending the war for a week was worth the effort. Point being at Nuremberg the the Russkies wouldn’t look favourably on this as a motivation (seeing it as escaping the consequences of their actions in the USSR) and from the western Allies point of view all that mattered was ending the war ASAP and sorting out refugee issues afterwards, which is why I think he was fortunate to dodge the noose.
I would say Speer was even more fortunate. He was a committed Nazi who was a good buddy with Himmler and other SS and gigantic war criminal (use of slave labor), got away with 20 years and later transformed his image into that of an apolitical administrative genius.
Good point, he cultivated a post-war image of ‘the Nazi who said sorry’, but knew what horrors the regime, one he served so diligently and effectively, was unleashing on Europe’s Jews;* “There is no doubt—I was present as Himmler announced on October 6 1943 that all Jews would be killed.”*
Just thought it worthy of an aside that as the Deputy Fuhrer escaped the noose, so too did Hitler’s successor (as Reich President, as the title of Fuhrer died with Hitler).
Given the extent of the crimes, I’m pretty sure the number of people who needed the gallows was much closer to 50 000 than to the number of people actually sentenced to death.
And given the extent of death and devastation during WWII, I’m not sure many would have shed a tear if they had picked the 50 000 top guys instead of actually sorting out which underling deserved death and which higher-up deserved leniency. They had their own loved ones to grieve for already. Tons of perfectly innocent people had been killed by, say, a bomb falling on their house in the middle of the night, thanks to the regime these 50 000 actively backed, even if they weren’t involved in anything more nefarious.
The number of war criminals who got to live a pleasant and peaceful life after WWII is properly sickening. Especially since prison sentences, for the rare people who got one, were massively reduced after the war. Apart from the peculiar case of Hess, was there still any nazi in jail after, say, 15 years, in 1960?
Speer and von Schirach were held for their full twenty year sentences and released in 1966.
Yes, there are stories about willful obstruction by higher-level allied troops in the west. Mid-level Nazis (mayors, chiefs of police, local party leaders) often got a free ride from American and British officers who felt the “war against communism” was a more important issue than sorting out mid-level blame for the “internal issues”. Plus, there were suggestions of pay-offs and participation in black markets. Finally, the main thing was that the allies consciously avoided the mess made in Iraq in 2003 where firing anyone in authority who knew how to run the place would result in so much chaos and leave too much administrative work on the shoulders of the Allied forces who may not even speak the language.