After the Reich

by Giles MacDonogh

  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.

  Charlotte and her children were allotted a tower and a kitchen in the servants’ quarters, so that they could maintain their independence from the wilder shores of the castle. A gemstone proved enough to procure a stove on the black market. With Jonny’s permission, they collected furniture from other parts of the house. When Charlotte had finished, her tower room was so lovely that visitors compared it to the Marschallin’s bedroom in Act One of Der Rosenkavalier.

  In 1946 the entire population of an evacuated Upper Silesian village was accommodated in a back wing of the Schloss. The men were found work in the village and oven pipes protruded from the windows as they installed kitchens in their rooms. The bridge and courtyard buzzed with women and children dressed in traditional headscarves. That Christmas Charlotte organised a nativity play at the Schloss in which her children and the Silesians performed the roles. It was the village’s first taste of post-war ecumenicalism, as the Silesians were all Catholics and the Hanoverians were Lutheran to a man. British soldiers came to hunt at the Schloss and paid for their pleasure in cigarettes and alcohol - much to Jonny’s delight. The parties at the castle were as mad as ever as he drove his motorbike round the knights’ hall and hurled bottles at the portraits of his ancestors.109

  In the chaos that was Germany in 1945, it was hard to know if the writer Ernst Jünger had survived. Many of his friends and admirers had perished on Hitler’s gibbets. Others had fallen victim to bombs and bullets - both soldiers and civilians. Jünger, however, was at home in his house in Kirchhorst near Celle in Hanover. He watched the American advance in a detached way. It literally passed him by. The black soldiers in the American army were the subject of much gossip. A little boy of nine told Jünger, ‘I am frightened of him.’ He meant a black GI. The Negroes were accused of perpetrating several rapes, in one instance of a fourteen-year-old girl in the village of Altwarmbuch.110

  Americans and Poles searched Jünger’s house, but he had wisely hidden incriminating objects such as his weapons (in the pond) and his hunting rifle (buried) and stashed away his collection of burgundy where he thought no one would find it: ‘It would be a criminal offence to let nectar like this fall into the hands of the Kentucky men.’111 Sadly for him, some GIs were billeted on him. The usual bands of DPs were stealing and murdering - coming for spirits, meat and bicycles - but Jünger had the Americans on the ground floor to protect him: ‘downstairs is Wallenstein’s Camp:af loudspeakers announce news of victory, patrols bring in prisoners whom they have tracked down in the bog’. Jünger read his way slowly through the Bible, turning to the poet Rückert and others when he wanted a break. He was relieved to hear that the Americans were not allowed to talk to the Germans.

  All around him order was breaking down, and the Allies were doing little to restore it while they advanced on Berlin. On 28 April the owner of the neighbouring estate was killed by DPs looking for benzene. He had been tortured first. Another local had been tied to a car and dragged along the road. The villages were full of drunken American blacks with women on their arms, looking for beds. DPs would visit the men-less houses and ‘feast like the suitors of Penelope’. Mussolini’s and Hitler’s deaths prompted more classical references: ‘We are living now in the time of the fall of Galba, Otho and Vitellius, repeating events in every detail . . .’112

  Some things could not be found in the lives of the later Augustan emperors. On 4 May he had two prisoners from nearby Belsen to breakfast, and was fascinated by their yellow faces and parchment-like skin. One of them had had one of the best positions in the camp: he was the kitchen-kapo, and if there were any food, he had first pick. On 6 May Jünger was visited by six Jews from the camp. The youngest was a boy of eleven. He watched the child devour a picture with his eyes. It was not just food they craved. And then the child was in raptures when he saw the Jüngers’ cat.113

  The novelist Jünger was calmly jotting down the stories brought to him by refugees. A woman from the east told him how prosperous Prussians had committed suicide en masse. During their trek they would look in at the windows of large houses and see a ‘party of corpses sitting around a table covered with a cloth’.114 Two American journalists came to see him; the day before they had visited a ‘concentration camp on the outskirts of Weimar’. Jünger had not heard of Buchenwald. They told him about the crematorium and the sign that read ‘Wash your hands. In this room cleanliness is a duty.’ The job of the journalists was to ‘put together a sort of spiritual stock-taking in our field of rubble’. He had seen no journalists for six years: it was the ‘first thread in a new weave’. When they left they gave him some of their food.

  The war ended for the Kaiser’s only daughter, Victoria Louise, on Hitler’s Birthday, 20 April. She was living with her husband the Duke of Brunswick in Blanckenburg in the Harz Mountains when the Americans arrived. Soon after the Americans had paid a visit to the Schloss, the British came by. Th
ey were interested in some cases that had been lodged in the cellar. After the British left, Americans arrived to carry off the cases. They were unconcerned when they were told that the British had already claimed them. One of the Americans who came for them had been brought up in Potsdam, where he had played golf with the crown prince, William, and had been present at the arrest of her Nazi brother, Auwi, in Frankfurt.

  Victoria Louise was much struck by the arrival of blacks - ‘niggers’, as she called them. They were, in her report, friendly and cheerful. To the princess’s staff they shouted, ‘We are slaves, now you are slaves!’ The Americans behaved well in general, but the British who relieved them left a bad impression. The colonel ordered the duke and duchess to report to him; failed to get up when they entered the room; and threatened to shoot them because they had concealed weapons. Victoria Louise observed that it was not à propos to shoot a prince of the Hanoverian royal house, which was Britain’s own! The guns in question had been locked up by the Americans in a wing of the house and the keys removed to the command post.115

  Princess Victoria Louise opened the door one day to find her brother Oscar standing before her. He had left his house in Potsdam on foot and walked to safety. He was ‘at the end of his strength. He had battled through the advancing American forces, through fields and thicket, from hiding place to hiding place, in constant fear of being taken prisoner’. Prince Oscar had begun the war as a regimental commander, and there had even been a suggestion that he should receive a division, until Hitler slapped it down. He wanted no heroes among the princes. Oscar’s eldest son had been the first of the Hohenzollerns to die in action, in 1939. When there was a massive demonstration of royalist sympathy in Potsdam at the burial of the crown prince’s eldest son, William, the following year, Hitler resolved to dismiss the princes from the armed forces.116