For educational purposes
To some Doenitz was the saviour of millions of refugees from the East, to others a cold technocrat of the war.
To the Allied forces he was a war criminal. In his own mind he saw himself as an apolitical soldier doing his duty.
Karl Doenitz was Hitler's Admiral of the Fleet and the creator of the U-boat.
Before Hitler committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery bunker, he appointed Karl Doenitz as his successor. Powerless and on the verge of defeat Doenitz's reign lasted just 23 days.
The Allies did not permit him to do anything more than wind up the war and at Nuremberg trials accuse him war crimes against humanity.
Contemporary witnesses and his nephew Klaus Hessler speak for the first time on film about the largely unknown successor to Hitler.
To some Doenitz was the saviour of millions of refugees from the East, to others a cold technocrat of the war.
To the Allied forces he was a war criminal. In his own mind he saw himself as an apolitical soldier doing his duty.
Karl Doenitz was Hitler's Admiral of the Fleet and the creator of the U-boat.
Before Hitler committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery bunker, he appointed Karl Doenitz as his successor. Powerless and on the verge of defeat Doenitz's reign lasted just 23 days.
The Allies did not permit him to do anything more than wind up the war and at Nuremberg trials accuse him war crimes against humanity.
Contemporary witnesses and his nephew Klaus Hessler speak for the first time on film about the largely unknown successor to Hitler.
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LearningTranscript
00:00They were some of the most treacherous weapons of the war, the German U-boats.
00:25Three out of every four U-boat crewmen did not return.
00:32Thirty thousand Allied sailors were their victims.
00:44The man responsible for all this was rewarded at the end by his Fuhrer.
00:49He became Hitler's successor, Karl Dönitz, Grand Admiral.
01:19He was a loyal vassal of Hitler, and Hitler was now his superior, and if he gave an order,
01:44he followed it.
01:45In the end, I only thought of him as a death-thrower of the worst provenance, as a party scum,
01:59which he could no longer be.
02:06He was a hundred percent patriot.
02:09To some people, he is the saviour of millions of refugees.
02:21To others, a cold technocrat of war.
02:26To the victors, he was, above all, a war criminal, a man of conviction.
02:50Berlin, at the turn of the century, the bourgeoisie was loyal to Kaiser and fatherland, as was
03:19the Dönitz family.
03:22Karl Dönitz's mother died young.
03:24His father brought up the two sons on his own.
03:28Duty and obedience were the highest imperatives.
03:35Personal happiness was of secondary importance.
03:38Karl was considered reserved, but talented.
03:41He wanted to be an officer in the Navy.
03:46The imperial fleet, the pride and joy of an adolescent nation.
03:54The Naval Academy at Flensburg-MĂĽrwig.
03:58Here Karl Dönitz's career both began and ended.
04:02He enlisted in 1910.
04:04Two years later, his father died, and he lost his only support in life.
04:10The young cadet yearned for a replacement.
04:15Then Lieutenant Commander von Loevenfeld took him on board and became his idol and
04:19mentor.
04:26The First World War.
04:28Dönitz was considered a brave fighter.
04:35He fell in love and married soon afterwards, all part of his longing for security.
04:44His second great love, a new weapon.
04:49U-boats, the last trump card.
04:52They promised glory and the hope of victory.
05:01But in the end, the whole fleet was forced to surrender.
05:04Dönitz was in British hands when he learnt of Germany's defeat and the fall of the monarchy.
05:08Anarchy in the Reich, a world collapsed, not only for Dönitz.
05:26A mutiny by sailors of all people sparked off the revolution.
05:32It was traumatic to Dönitz.
05:39The returned sailor hated the new Weimar Republic under the moderate socialist Ebert.
05:44He missed the old rule.
05:49He felt unnerved by the new freedom.
05:52Nonetheless, he entered the Reich Navy.
05:55He was serving the state, not a particular government.
06:03In the Kapp Putsch of 1920, insurgent soldiers tried to overturn the unpopular republic.
06:10Dönitz secretly hoped they would succeed, but in vain.
06:17Everyday life between the two wars, he commanded torpedo boats.
06:26Naval chief Raeder didn't like Dönitz.
06:31He described him as clever and hard-working, but on a disapproving note, he reported Dönitz
06:39hankered after recognition and was very ambitious.
06:49The economic misery of the Weimar Republic's years of crisis also affected the Dönitz family.
06:57By now they had three children.
07:24One man used all this hardship to pick up votes.
07:27He seduced the people with promises of strong leadership, the restoration of order and the
07:32end of chaos.
07:34A clear message to Dönitz as well.
07:45And so Hitler slipped into power.
07:52Dönitz welcomed it as a fresh start for Germany, at last someone who meant business.
08:07Anyone who got in the way was disposed of.
08:13Order through terror.
08:16The murder of Röhm and the others, Dönitz excused as necessary in the defence of the
08:21state.
08:34The navy submitted unconditionally to the new head of state.
08:42Like all military men, the ambitious naval officer Dönitz swore a personal oath of loyalty
08:46to Hitler.
08:50A rosy dawn for Dönitz and for U-boat propaganda.
09:06Dönitz would provide the excitement.
09:27Hitler valued the expert knowledge of his specialist and ordered a new arsenal of U-boats.
09:36Starting from scratch, Dönitz was to give Hitler supremacy under the water.
09:41With zeal and determination, he worked beyond the call of duty.
09:45More than submarines, Hitler really wanted big battleships.
10:15Dönitz looked on with suspicion.
10:24He thought giant ships like the Bismarck were superseded and vulnerable.
10:40Great Britain, a defiant island.
10:45Dönitz maintained that only U-boats could cut her crucial lines of supply and starve
10:49out their enemy of past and future.
10:56His words fell on deaf ears.
10:58He didn't belong to the inner circle yet.
11:12The Olympic Games in Berlin, the Reich put on a facade of peacefulness.
11:17The reality was different.
11:30Hitler was on course for war.
11:38Two years later, the regime showed its true face.
11:48Dönitz protested to his commanding officer.
11:50He did not like these disorderly methods.
12:02The Navy had the privilege of opening the Second World War.
12:10Dönitz was horrified, but not from a love of peace.
12:13Britain was far superior at sea, and he had only 56 U-boats, despite his demands for 300.
12:19He withdrew, and came back after half an hour, after he had gathered himself again.
12:30And that actually suits him.
12:34He had gathered himself, he had swallowed it and said, now we have to do what was still
12:42to be done in this desperate situation, because for us Marines it was a war with England,
12:49a completely desperate situation.
12:56Such fears had to be pushed under.
13:02An attack on the very first day of war.
13:04The commander of the U-30 torpedoed the British passenger ship Athenia without warning.
13:10One hundred and twelve people died.
13:20Pictures of the survivors were seen all over the world, and kindled hatred of Dönitz's
13:25men.
13:26Dönitz had the order to sink the ship removed from the U-30's war log.
13:35A visitor to Wilhelmshaven.
13:43When Hitler came to inspect Dönitz's men, the U-boat commander seized the opportunity
13:48to press his demands for what he had been so far denied, more boats.
13:58But Hitler still thought the war at sea was of secondary importance.
14:09Dönitz was frustrated.
14:12U-boat production was going slowly, a mere two submarines per month.
14:25They had to come up with a stroke of brilliance.
14:34October 1939, Lieutenant Commander Preen was hunting the enemy.
14:43A piece of astonishing bravado from U-47.
14:48Her commander penetrated the British Royal Navy's sanctuary at Scarpa Flow, and sank
14:52the battleship Royal Oak.
14:57For this, Dönitz was given a hero's welcome in Berlin, as if he were Hitler himself.
15:03U-boat victories were good for morale.
15:05We had made our way through the guards, and were suddenly inside, in the port of Scarpa
15:21Flow, the port of the British Navy.
15:24We chose our opponent, in the next moment a crash happened, and first Royal Oak sank,
15:32and then Royal Oak flew into the air.
15:36Karl Dönitz became one of the best known figures of the war.
15:41I think I first really was aware of him when he sent Gunther Preen in U-47 into Scarpa
15:47Flow.
15:49So that was how, that was first put Karl Dönitz on the map, as far as I was concerned.
15:54And then after that, I mean, he appeared in our newspapers all the time.
15:59He was as well known as Goering, and Goebbels, and Ribbentrop, and all the rest of them.
16:04I mean, he was very well known.
16:09In Britain, Prime Minister Churchill sought safeguards against this new threat.
16:14He later admitted, the only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat
16:19peril.
16:26What mattered to Hitler was victories on land.
16:33France was beaten.
16:35The way to the Atlantic ports was open.
16:43Dönitz had long dreamed of having bases here, at last access to the Atlantic.
16:53Battle followed battle on the British convoy routes.
16:57Now England was to be starved.
17:01This of the wolf pack, with several U-boats attacking at the same time.
17:16In their home port, a proud chief.
17:56The U-boat was nothing more than a small expedition crew.
18:05It was nothing, just a handful of people.
18:08But of course, they were perfect for the propaganda.
18:12First of all, sailors in off-duty uniforms looked quite decent.
18:17And also, around the U-boat, you could create a myth.
18:22But life under water was not glamorous, it was grim.
18:52The hunt was on, British bombs against German U-boats.
19:15We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall
19:39fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.
19:47A merciless duel of weapons and words.
19:52London in flames.
20:17While Goering's air force tried to subdue London,
20:20the British admiralty took shelter in a bunker, the Citadel.
20:26Here there was an atmosphere of crisis, losses were increasing rapidly.
20:33Over 10,000 sailors had already been killed.
20:39Suffocated in the oil of their sinking ships, dead of thirst in the watery wasteland.
20:49Wounded from exhaustion.
20:52Or burnt to death just before help arrived.
21:07In the mill at Rosmedeck, German U-boat men celebrated their victories with their related
21:26chief.
21:31They drank to their spoils and their own survival.
21:58Dönitz had gigantic pens built for his U-boats.
22:14Concrete roofs several meters thick protected them from the Royal Air Force.
22:23The bunkers at Lorient alone cost over 400 million Reichsmarks.
22:35The U-boat war soon reached its limits.
22:39Dönitz repeatedly asked Goering for help from the air and for more navy pilots.
22:44But the Reich Marshal refused.
22:53To keep up his men's spirits, Dönitz resorted to unusual methods.
23:03Here the chief is playing himself in the film U-boats westwards.
23:07He was not a speaker, not a rhetorician, he was not an educated speaker.
23:24His speeches were always very simple.
23:28The people who were around him spoke to him.
23:34And of course I could always observe how he spoke to the troops.
23:40That's not normally what a chief does.
23:44That he gathers his soldiers and then, according to Goebbels' pattern,
23:48he speaks propaganda with a desolate gesticulation,
23:53like that of a badly-behaved marionette leader who has broken all his legs.
24:09Bombs hit the U-110.
24:16The submarine was forced to surface and was boarded.
24:25It offered rich booty.
24:28Enigma, the key to the Wehrmacht's secret code.
24:36This machine let British codebreakers into everything Dönitz and his commanders discussed over the radio.
24:45What happened, therefore, is that we read every one of those signals
24:50and almost every convoy was sent away from the U-boat pack.
24:57And the defeat of the U-boats was not so much a defeat as the avoidance of any successes.
25:08They had to say, we cannot find convoys.
25:13The Germans knew nothing of this breach of security which was to decide the battle of the Atlantic.
25:22The enemy was listening and no one suspected.
25:27Dönitz's U-boats tracked down British convoys more and more rarely.
25:31It wasn't until the 1970s that the truth came to light.
25:37A new enemy, the United States. U-boats off New York.
25:42Operation Drumbeat began on January the 12th, 1942.
25:51Torpedoing ships off the east coast of the United States was like shooting ducks on a pond for the German submariners.
25:57By July 1942, they had sunk 500 ships and their crews.
26:07An inferno.
26:14Dönitz rewarded his men with medals, with grand words,
26:28with home leave,
26:33and with presents.
26:59All with Arabic numbers, red, black, and all without a chain.
27:04In this mountain of clocks, one could have stirred like a baker in the dough with both arms.
27:11There must have been hundreds and hundreds.
27:15And on the folded back lid of the sailboat,
27:20one could read on a small sign, a medium-sized sign,
27:27a present from the BDU for its U-boat drivers.
27:31The U-Boat Drivers
27:42I remember, and I'm sorry to admit it,
27:47because we couldn't classify these clocks,
27:51and instinctively had the feeling
27:55that this mass of unchained clocks had something to do with lawlessness and violence.
28:07Autumn 1942.
28:09The U-Boat War was becoming more ruthless.
28:13A German U-Boat picking up shipwrecked victims was attacked by Allied planes.
28:21As a result, Dönitz forbade any more rescue attempts.
28:24Humanitarianism now meant disobeying orders.
28:55I don't think we talked about it.
28:57I think everyone did it for themselves.
28:59Maybe it sounded like the poor pigs or something like that.
29:05It wasn't a discussed topic of conversation.
29:11Grand Admiral Dönitz, who was appointed by the Führer to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy,
29:16leaves his previous position in France.
29:24FĂĽhrer to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy
29:34Now he belonged to the inner circle.
29:37When Hitler stopped trusting most of his generals, he called for Admiral Karl Dönitz.
29:42From then on, he didn't leave his FĂĽhrer's side.
29:48One day later, the German 6th Army surrendered.
29:51Stalingrad, the turning point.
30:01And the U-Boats?
30:04Dönitz's voice was finally heard.
30:07Hitler's armaments minister Speer gave top priority to the building of new submarines.
30:14Concentration camp prisoners were used as dockyard workers, at Dönitz's request.
30:20He also had a suggestion of Admiral Fricke's entered into the naval command's war records.
30:25Fricke wanted ships with Jewish refugees on board, torpedoed.
30:31The wording is camouflaged.
30:33Jewish transports are to be neutralized by methods not commonly used in peacetime.
30:41Dönitz knew what was meant.
30:50He was a port and fortification doctor in Almeida,
30:54and a department doctor in a naval fleet department.
30:59The commander was the corvette captain of the Hans Erdmann reserve.
31:04We were visited in Almeida by Admiral Voss.
31:10Voss was a liaison officer between the naval war leaders and the FĂĽhrer's headquarters.
31:17Erdmann told him what he had heard of me,
31:23about the things on the Eastern Front that were taking place in the German name,
31:28and said, Voss, could you not ask Dönitz to point out these terrible things to the Führer?
31:39Voss replied, Erdmann, we have already tried that.
31:47And Dönitz replied, I will try to protect my good relationship with the Führer.
32:01Victories pushed aside knowledge of such matters.
32:04Once more there was cheering in the home ports.
32:07It would be the last time.
32:10Dönitz
32:16Then came the catastrophe.
32:18The new British detection equipment proved deadly accurate.
32:24In the single month of May, 1943, Dönitz lost 41 boats.
32:302,000 U-boat crewmen died.
32:35Including Dönitz's son, Peter.
32:39And in the following year, his son Klaus.
33:04He came to me, I had an angina, and also in bed.
33:08And then we sat there, not for hours, it's exaggerated,
33:14but then we sat there hand in hand and didn't say a word.
33:18Only he sat there and...
33:24An audience at the Berghof.
33:28Dönitz broke off from battle, but only briefly.
33:32His father had taught him to finish what he had set out to do.
33:37I am of the opinion that what he had set out to do was mass suicide.
33:43Because the U-boat war had long since been lost in 1942.
33:48What was then carried on, served only as fodder for an ambition,
33:54which in its monstrous form had been dispossessed.
34:01The devil's admiral.
34:03Dönitz was under the spell of the dictator.
34:06His faith in Hitler had almost mystical qualities.
34:12The enormous strength radiated by the FĂĽhrer has shown quite clearly
34:16that we are all miserable little creatures compared to him.
34:19Anyone who thinks he could do better is stupid.
34:33We sat there and later it became a kind of standard repertoire
34:40when we remembered his personality.
34:42I come straight from the FĂĽhrer.
34:45Then his eyes began to shine as if they wanted to
34:49and he shared the latest information with us.
34:54Here he was close to Hitler.
34:58Choralle, Dönitz's headquarters in the woods near Berlin.
35:02Here he issued orders to hold out to the bitter end.
35:16The virtue of being without pity.
35:21Even when compassion was asked of him.
35:32Maybe he wanted to ask for mercy.
35:35I don't know exactly.
35:37He only said that he had entered a huge room
35:42in which a corner of Dönitz sat at the desk.
35:47He, the young captain, stood in the diagonal opposite corner
35:53and reported that Dönitz had not risen from his desk,
36:01did not approach Ernst JĂĽnger, did not shake his hand,
36:06did not offer him a chair, but let him talk through the room.
36:12And Ernst JĂĽnger was deeply disappointed
36:16about the cold he had been received with.
36:32It would be full of political parties
36:34and full of Jews who would take every opportunity
36:37to criticize, to harm and to divide.
36:40We owe everything to the FĂĽhrer.
36:42The German people owe everything to National Socialism.
36:46Our soldiers have but one choice,
36:48to support our FĂĽhrer and our National Socialism
36:51with unrelenting effort.
37:02Blind activity for its own sake.
37:05Dönitz ordered the Scharnhorst to attack an Allied convoy.
37:10A suicide mission with no chance of success.
37:14The German battleship was sunk.
37:162,000 sailors died.
37:31There was also the song,
37:34On a seaman's grave no roses bloom,
37:38which I also saw,
37:40that the ship went down to the front
37:43and then slowly sank into the flood.
37:48Then it got dark, pitch dark.
37:52They couldn't see anything anymore.
37:54They only then heard the wind.
37:57They then felt the waves
38:00and then I was alone on the sea.
38:09Fight to the end.
38:11Dönitz was like Hitler in this respect.
38:13Two of a kind.
38:16At issue, the Crimea.
38:21The army wanted to withdraw.
38:23Dönitz advised they stay.
38:30It cost 80,000 men their lives.
38:39Hitler and Dönitz.
38:41An alliance against reason.
39:00We are bankrupt.
39:02We can't do anything anymore.
39:11Dönitz, a careerist.
39:14Now he was allowed to represent his FĂĽhrer officially.
39:18Memorial Day, 1944.
39:21What would our homeland be like today
39:25if the FĂĽhrer had not joined us in National Socialism?
39:30Torn apart by the dissolving poison of Judaism
39:37and accessible to it
39:40because the defense of our current uncompromising worldview was lacking,
39:46we would have long been burdened with this war.
39:56After the assassination attempt on his FĂĽhrer,
40:00Dönitz presented himself as a humble vassal prepared to do anything.
40:04Anyone who makes any kind of defeatist remarks
40:07must be ruthlessly exterminated.
40:09I would sooner eat soil than have my grandchildren
40:12brought up and poisoned by the Jewish spirit and filth.
40:20After the war, this memorandum was missing from the files.
40:25Only much later was one lone copy discovered,
40:29the evidence of murderous lunacy.
40:44The Allies in Paris.
40:47Their bombers attacked Dönitz's U-boat pens.
40:50The submarine war had long been decided, in the air.
41:05On the home front, Dönitz had smaller implements of war tested.
41:09Maritime miracle weapons.
41:40A last, desperate, but unsuitable attempt.
41:46These young men had no human experience.
41:53They had just learned what a compass is.
41:57They were almost children
42:00who then went against the enemy
42:04and did not return.
42:10Dönitz himself found reinforcements.
42:27In the spring of 1945 alone, almost 8,000 U-boat sailors died.
42:35The final battle for Berlin.
42:45Shortly before the end,
42:47Hitler sent Dönitz to the north of the decaying Reich.
42:54The Admiral was told to hold the German position there.
43:05His destination was Plönn.
43:09On April the 30th, he received a message from Bormann.
43:14Hitler had laid it down in his will that he, Dönitz, was to be his successor.
43:20Bormann did not mention Hitler's suicide.
43:25Humbly, Dönitz replied to his Fuhrer,
43:30My loyalty to you is everlasting and unconditional.
43:33I shall do everything in my power to relieve you in Berlin.
43:44The capital was surrounded.
43:46The Third Reich facing collapse.
44:00Dönitz kept his promise.
44:02Young marines were sent to free Hitler.
44:05Most of them paid for this insane plan with their lives.
44:14On May the 1st, the Admiral learnt of Hitler's death.
44:20Now he was the successor.
44:30Our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, has fallen.
44:36In deepest sorrow and fear, the German people bowed their heads.
44:43The Fuhrer has appointed me his successor.
44:48In the awareness of responsibility,
44:51I take over the leadership of the German people
44:56in this difficult hour of fate.
44:59If I were to answer your question,
45:02why he was the successor, with a counter-question,
45:06I would say, who else?
45:08Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann.
45:13They were all registered.
45:16As British tanks pushed forward into Holstein,
45:19Dönitz moved the German headquarters from Plön to Flensburg.
45:26The naval academy at Murwick, where it all began.
45:35Conscientiously, Dönitz set to work on his task,
45:38the winding up of the thousand-year Reich.
45:46It was in ruins.
45:48Destroyed like its people.
45:57The new head of state tried to govern.
46:19They were standing in front of the door,
46:21presenting the rifle when Keitel or Juhl entered the building.
46:27So it was deep peace and unreal.
46:31Dönitz wanted to carry on fighting in the east
46:34to save as many Germans as possible from Soviet captivity.
46:39Admiral von Friedeburg was given his orders.
46:42Play for time and surrender in the west.
46:48On the LĂĽneburg Heath,
46:49Field Marshal Montgomery consented to Dönitz's tactics.
46:53Montgomery accepted the partial surrender of the Wehrmacht
46:57on the 4th of May.
47:02The strategy worked.
47:05In the end, over two million refugees made it to the west.
47:19But while he was saving some people,
47:23he was executing others.
47:27A few young sailors paid for his moral standards with their lives.
47:36They had heard about the surrender
47:38and, in good faith, decided to go to war.
47:43They had heard about the surrender
47:45and, in good faith, decided to go home.
48:13Act II of the fall of the Reich.
48:16Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims.
48:20General Jodl's orders were to prevent unconditional surrender
48:24spreading to all fronts.
48:28He was to string the Allies along with surrender in the west,
48:32but continued fighting in the east.
48:35Not all the victors would accept this.
48:40After conferring with Dönitz,
48:42on May 7th, Jodl agreed to unconditional surrender on all fronts.
49:10I am obliged to stay in my post.
49:14Then I will try to help you as far as I can.
49:20I am obliged to see you,
49:23and at every step you will be a service to the people and the Reich.
49:34The Ersatz-Hitlers.
49:36There wasn't much left for them to do.
49:42Dönitz carried on as if nothing had happened.
49:45The last absurd state performance.
49:48Dönitz's last U-boats surrendered in London.
50:19No more playing at government.
50:24Two weeks after the surrender,
50:26Hitler's executors were finally forced to step down.
50:32Defiance.
50:34Disappointment.
50:37Mistrust.
50:41Arrogance.
50:49Arriving for one last pose.
50:58The admiral thought he was in the right.
51:03Later, Dönitz was to reproach Speer.
51:06You got me into this. It's all your fault.
51:09If it hadn't been for you,
51:11Hitler would never have had the idea of making me head of state.
51:16I believe to this day
51:19that he, personally,
51:22has not been able to reach a conclusion,
51:25a real assessment of his relationship to this person, Hitler.
51:34What he has written
51:37ultimately goes against the FĂĽhrerprinzip.
51:40It goes against totalitarianism.
51:43It goes against the totalitarian FĂĽhrer.
51:46But all of this is nothing
51:49that I could take away
51:52from the fact that he, with this person,
51:55with his relationship to this person,
51:58whom he had, in a certain way,
52:00subjugated unbelievably,
52:02has come to an end
52:04in one way or another.
52:09After ten years in Spandau prison,
52:12Dönitz was released in October 1956.
53:12© BF-WATCH TV 2021