p The pre-history of the Doenitz government is one of the unrevealed secrets of the Second World War. During the last days of the fascist Reich, Admiral Karl Doenitz was in command of the German navy, with headquarters at the extreme northern tip of the country near the German-Danish border. Unexpectedly, he received a radiogram signed by Bormann from the Imperial Chancellory on April 30 at 18.35 hours. "In place of the former Reich-Marshal Goering,” it said, "the Fiihrer appoints you, Herr Grand Admiral, as his successor. Written authority is on its way. You will immediately take all such measures as the situation requires.”  [237•2 

p The telegram was sent in Hitler’s name when he was already dead, though this is not mentioned in it. Yet the man who was about to commit suicide was not likely to have thought of a successor. "If I am to perish,” Hitler used to say, "the German nation, too, shall perish, for then it will not have been worthy of me."  [237•3 

p What alerts one, too, is the fact that even before the telegram was sent, the British Government ordered its troops not to enter those towns in Northern Germany, where Doenitz had his headquarters. In any case, it was not Hitler who had tried to preserve the fascist regime in Germany after his death.

p Doenitz, a faithful nazi and Hitler’s admirer, replied to 238 Bormann’s telegram: "My loyalty to you, my Fuehrer, remains unshaken."  [238•1 

p A second radiogram from Bormann reached Doenitz’s headquarters on May 1 at 10.53 hours. Curtly, it said: " Testament in force."  [238•2  After this, Doenitz’s radio stations broadcast a statement informing Germans that Hitler, who committed suicide on May i, 1945, had appointed Admiral Doenitz as his successor. Lies that had surrounded Hitler all his life, accompanied him to his grave.

p On the same day, Doenitz proclaimed himself Fuehrer of the German state and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. He quickly formed a fascist government. Some 500 prominent nazi leaders, including Himmler and General Jodl, were gathered in Flensburg, where the government was constituted. They were not daunted by the fact that the territory under Doenitz’s jurisdiction was, in effect, but a small part of Schleswig-Holstein. They banked on the new government’s extending its authority.

p In fact, the Doenitz government was semi-officially recognised by the United States and Britain. Doenitz and Montgomery, the British Commander-in-Chief, came to terms that Flensburg and its environs would remain unoccupied.  [238•3  Doenitz defined his policy as follows: "We must go along with the Western powers and work with them in the occupied territories in the West, for only by working with them can we have hopes of later retrieving our land from the Russians."  [238•4 

p There must certainly have been grounds for Doenitz’s hope of a deal with Britain and the United States. Yet the secret behind it did not come to light until well after the war. An entry in the diary of Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Chairman of the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee, revealed that in May 1945 he had examined a report by the Planners of Chiefs-of-Staff Committee "on the possibility of taking on Russia...".  [238•5  Field-marshal Montgomery, too, refers in his memoirs to the plan’s existence.  [238•6  And Churchill 239 admitted in 1954 that he had telegraphed Lord Montgomery, "directing him to be careful in collecting the German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be issued again to the German soldiers whom we should have to work with if the Soviet advance continued".  [239•1  The reference to the "Soviet advance" was pure eyewash.

p American and British generals in direct command of the troops in the field, however, were opposed to a war against the Soviet Union. To begin with, they knew the USSR could not be defeated. Secondly, they knew the British soldiers would refuse to fight against the Soviet Union. Alanbrooke, for one, put down the following in his diary, referring to a war against the USSR: "The idea is, of course, fantastic and the chances of success quite impossible. There is no doubt that from now onwards Russia is all-powerful in Europe."  [239•2 

p "The British people,” wrote Montgomery, "would never have been persuaded to fight the Russians in 1945.” And he amplified: "The Russians had been built up as heroes during the German war, and any British government that wanted to fight them in 1945 would have been in for trouble at home."  [239•3 

p Although the plans of war against the Soviet Union, which the British and American imperialists had nourished in 1945, fell through, their governments and military commands did everything in their power to gain control of as large a part of the defeated German troops as they could.

p In secret negotiations between SS General Karl Wolff and Allen Dulles back in March 1945, the two drafted the plan for Operation Crossword. The idea was that German troops would withdraw from Italy to southwest Germany, where they would stay at the disposal of the US and British governments. Vigorous Soviet protests and eruption of the armed uprising in Italy frustrated that operation.

p After the Doenitz government was formed, secret negotiations on placing the surviving German armies at the disposal of the US and British commands, were continued and expanded. On Doenitz’s instructions, Admiral Hans von Friedeburg, placed in command of the German navy, entered into 240 negotiations with Montgomery. Culminating the talks, which were held behind the Soviet Union’s back, an agreement was concluded in the afternoon of May 4 that all German armed forces in Holland, north-west Germany, Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark, would surrender to the British.

p In the period of May 2 to 5, the Anglo-American Command accepted the surrender of German troops in Italy (Army Group *’C”), Croatia and Southern Austria (Army Group “E”), Bavaria and West Austria (Army Group “G”), Vorarlberg and Tirol (German igth Army).

p Encouraged, Doenitz despatched Friedeburg to Eisenhower’s headquarters in Rheims. Simultaneously, he issued the order ending the submarine war against the Western powers and prohibiting the underground fascist terrorist Werwolf groups to operate against the United States and Britain.  [240•1 

p Friedeburg arrived in Rheims on May 5. That day, General Patton, representing the American Command, assumed control of fascist Germany’s military academy evacuated from Berlin. In talks with General Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, Friedeburg suggested the Allies should accept the surrender of Schoerner’s and Rendulic’s troops. This was tantamount to their seizing a large section of Czechoslovakia. The proposal was received favourably by Eisenhower’s headquarters, but proved impracticable. Schoerner’s surrender to the Allies was frustrated by the Soviet operation liberating Czechoslovakia and by the rising of the Prague patriots.

p Meanwhile, Doenitz’s government was preoccupied with a new plan: that of a separate surrender to the United States and Britain. Jodl was quickly bundled off to Rheims to assist Friedeburg. General Bedell Smith accepted the proposal brought by Jodl. Preparations were under way for a formal signing by Germany of an instrument of surrender to but the United States and Britain. However, aware of the firm Soviet position and the probable consequences of such unheard-of perfidy, Eisenhower turned his thumbs down. A protocol on Germany’s unconditional surrender was signed in Rheims on May 7, 1945, at 02.41 hours.

p In the early hours of May 7, General A. I. Antonov, Chief of the Red Army General Staff, addressed a message 241 to the heads of the British and American Military missions in Moscow, suggesting that the Rheims instrument be regarded as temporary and that a general unconditional surrender instrument be signed in Berlin. The governments and military commands of the United States and Britain consented.

p The instrument of Germany’s unconditional surrender was signed at midnight, May 8, 1945, in Karlhorst, a Berlin suburb, by representatives of Hitler’s military command, Fieldmarshal Keitel, Admiral Friedeburg and Air Force Col.-Gen. Stumpff. The Soviet Supreme Command was represented by Marshal of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov, the Supreme Command of the Allied Expeditionary Force by British Chief Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, the US Armed Forces by General Carl Spaatz, and the French Armed Forces by their Commander-in-Chief, General Delattre de Tassigny.

p The surrender instrument formalised the conclusion of the war in Europe. But for the political conclusion it was essential to dissolve Doenitz’s fascist government.

p That government enjoyed the increasing goodwill of the United States and Britain. On their insistence the Allied Control Commission, formed to assure fulfilment of the unconditional surrender terms, began its functions on May 13 in Flensburg—something that the Doenitz government responded to with enthusiasm. From May 13 to 16, in the absence of the Soviet representatives, the British and American members of the ACC settled many a point with Doenitz. They came to terms with him on co-operation, and on Jodl’s appointment as Chief of Staff of the German High Command, with whom many military and organisational issues were settled.  [241•1  Finally, the American and British representatives paid an official call on Doenitz, the latter assuring them of this "Western orientation" and urging joint action against the Soviet Union. "This,” a German historian wrote later, "made an obviously strong impression on the two generals."  [241•2 

p On May 16, in contravention of the Crimea decisions, Churchill officially declared that the United States and Britain had "no intention of undertaking the burden of administering Germany”,  [241•3  meaning that it would be shifted 242 on to the Doenitz government. The Daily Herald, the British Labour Party’newspaper, styled this flirting with Doenitz as “monstrous”, adding, "in Germany, desperate adventurers continue to pose as a Government".  [242•1 

p The situation changed when the Soviet representatives on the Allied Control Commission arrived in Flensburg on May 17. They insisted on shutting down Doenitz’s " establishment”. The Grand Admiral’s fate was sealed. The Soviet Government took a firm stand. There was public outcry in the United States and Britain, and a total absence of support for Doenitz in Germany, whose people aptly named him and his entourage a "government of ghosts”. On May 23, 1945, the Doenitz government was dissolved and its members arrested as war criminals.

p On June 5 the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France signed in Berlin the Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority with Respect to Germany, saying that the four powers assumed "supreme authority in Germany, including all the powers possessed by the German Government, the High Command, and any state, municipal, or local government or authority".  [242•2  The German armed forces would be disarmed and all arms and war facilities turned over to representatives of the four powers. The Declaration provided for the immediate release and repatriation of POWs and civilian nationals of the United Nations in Germany, and for the immediate arrest of all top fascist leaders and other war criminals.

p Concurrently, agreements were signed on the control machinery and zones of occupation. The former envisaged that "in the period when Germany is carrying out the basic requirements of unconditional surrender, supreme authority in Germany will be exercised, on instructions from their governments, by the British, United States, Soviet, and French Commanders-in-Chief, each in his own zone of occupation, and also jointly, in matters affecting Germany as a whole. The four Commanders-in-chief will together constitute the Control Council."  [242•3  The Control Council was to assure agreed measures by the four C-in-Cs in their respective zones and adopt joint decisions on matters of 243 principle relevant to Germany as a whole. Administration of Greater Berlin was delegated to the Inter-Allied Commandatura, which functioned under the general supervision of the Control Council and consisted of four Commandants.

p The Statement on Zones of Occupation defined the border between the Soviet zone and those of the Western powers, still squabbling among themselves over the borders between their zones. The agreements, concluded in Berlin, provided for the immediate withdrawal of Anglo-American troops from the Soviet occupation zone and the partition of Berlin into four sectors.

A month later, the four powers reached agreement on zones of occupation and the control machinery in Austria. Concluded thanks to Soviet diplomacy, the latter agreement recognised the right of the Austrian nation to independent national existence within an integral state. In the German question, too, the Soviet Union adhered firmly to the principle of Germany’s integrity and national independence. The Soviet occupation of part of German and Austrian territory was an act of retribution against fascism, but at once selfless aid to the peoples in achieving- a democratic arrangement and their national and social aspirations. Also, Soviet policy towards vanquished Germany was prompted by the long-term aim of a lasting European peace.