1. Kathrin Orth, ‘Kampfmoral und Einsatzbereitschaft in der Kriegsmarine 1945’, in Jorg Hillmann and John Zimmermann (eds.), Kriegsende 1945 in Deutschland, Munich, 2002, p. 141.
2. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Uffz. Heinrich V., 2.5.45.
3. BA/MA, NL Schorner, N60/18, unfoliated, Tagesbefehl, 3.5.45.
4. Cited in Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London, 2009, p. 141.
5. BA/MA, N245/3, fo. 88, NL Reinhardt, Kalenderblatter for 1.5.45. The news of Hitler’s death also came as no surprise to Colonel-General Lothar Renduli?c when he heard it on 1 May in Austria. Discipline among his troops was unaffected, though Hitler’s death was seen to improve the prospects of a political way out through cooperation with the west.—Lothar Rendulic?, Gekampft, Gesiegt, Geschlagen, Wels, 1952, p. 378.
6. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.
7. Sonke Neitzel, Abgehort: Deutsche Generale in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942– 1945, Berlin, 2005, pp. 210–12 (Eng. language edn., Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations, 1942–45, Barnsley, 2007, pp. 156–8).
8. Marlis Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen, Dusseldorf and Vienna, 1970, p. 582.
9. BfZ, Sammlung Sterz, Tagebuch Eveline B., 6.5.45. Erich Kastner, Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch, Berlin, 1961, p. 116 (2.5.45), remarked that people were greeting each other jokingly with ‘Heil Donitz’. The accordion-player had changed, he commented, but the tune was the same.
10. Cited Bessel, p. 141.
11. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin: Ein deutsches Tagebuch, Munich, 1962, pp. 188–9 (2.5.45).
12. Jorg Echternkamp (ed.), Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland 1945: Leben in Angst—Hoffnung auf Frieden. Feldpost aus der Heimat und von der Front, Paderborn, 2006, p. 252, letter from Gerda J., Hamburg/Altona, 7.7.45. This was only an inspired guess at what had happened. Precise details of Hitler’s suicide were not known at this time beyond the small circle of those directly involved in the last drama in the bunker.
13. Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945, pb. edn., Munich, 2008, p. 143 (5.5.45).
14. Die Niederlage 1945: Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Percy Ernst Schramm, Munich, 1962, p. 419.
15. Herbert Kraus, ‘Karl Donitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches”’, in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches—Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Ruckschau, Munich and Zurich, 1995, p. 11.
16. Herbert Kraus, ‘Gro?admiral Karl Donitz’, in Gerd R. Ueberschar (ed.), Hitlers militarische Elite, vol. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, p. 51.
17. Die Niederlage 1945, p. 419.
18. DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 61.
19. Jurgen Forster, ‘Die Wehrmacht und das Ende des “Dritten Reichs”’, in Arnd Bauerkamper, Christoph Kle?mann and Hans Misselwitz (eds.), Der 8. Mai 1945 als historische Zasur: Strukturen, Erfahrung, Deutungen, Potsdam, 1995, p. 57.
20. Kraus, ‘Karl Donitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches”’, pp. 3–4, 8–11.
21. Heinrich Schwendemann, ‘ “Deutsche Menschen vor der Vernichtung durch den Bolschewismus zu retten”: Das Programm der Regierung Donitz und der Beginn einer Legendenbildung’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 16.
22. BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.
23. Quoted in DRZW, 10/1 (Rahn), p. 55; see also, for Donitz’s unquestioning loyalty to Hitler and his fanatical exhortations to fight on, pp. 57–60, 67.
24. IfZ, ZS 145, Schwerin von Krosigk, Bd. III, fo. 62, 7.12.62.
25. KTB/SKL, part A, vol. 68, pp. 333–4-A, Kriegstagebuch des Ob. d. M., 25.4.45. Donitz had already a week earlier, at the Soviet breakthrough on the Oder front, provided naval forces for the fight on land.—Schwendemann, pp. 14–15.
26. BA/MA, RM7/851, Seekriegsleitung, fo. 169, Hitler to Donitz, 29.4.45; Schwendemann, p. 15.
27. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, ed. Max Domarus, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 2237.
28. Major-General Dethleffsen recalled shortly after the war his own lack of surprise since he had heard hints earlier in April from the Chief of the General Staff, Hans Krebs, that Donitz was being viewed by Hitler as his successor. Others, however, according to Dethleffsen, were more taken by surprise at the appointment.—BA/MA, N648/1, NL Dethleffsen, Erinnerungen, fo. 57.
29. IWM, FO645/155, interrogation of Karl Donitz, 12.9.45, pp. 19–20.
30. Karl Donitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, Da Capo edn., New York, 1997, p. 442.
31. See Rolf-Dieter Muller and Gerd R. Ueberschar, Kriegsende 1945: Die Zerstorung des Deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 101 and Kraus, ‘Karl Donitz und das Ende des “Dritten Reiches”’, pp. 9, 11. It has, however, been suggested—if without supporting evidence—that Donitz’s presumption that Hitler wanted him to pave the way for a capitulation might have been gleaned before the Grand- Admiral left for Plon, or from conversations with Himmler.—Jorg Hillmann, ‘Die “Reichsregierung” in Flensburg’, in Hillmann and Zimmermann, p. 41. Hitler’s desperate comment, during his temporary breakdown on 22 April, that there was no more fighting to be done—a view he swiftly revised—and that should it come to negotiations Goring would be better than he was, can scarcely be regarded as evidence for a mandate to come to terms with the enemy at his death. See Reimer Hansen, Das Ende des Dritten Reiches: Die deutsche Kapitulation 1945, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 48–50; Walter Ludde-Neurath, Regierung Donitz: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reiches, 5th edn., Leoni am Starnberger See, 1981, p. 46; Marlis Steinert, Die 23 Tage der Regierung Donitz, Dusseldorf and Vienna, 1967, p. 45.
32. DRZW, 10/1 (Zimmermann), pp. 469–70; DRZW, 9/1 (Forster), p. 626; Schwendemann, p. 15.
33. See Hitler’s Testament: Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, p. 2237 (not, however, known to Donitz at the time).
34. Schwendemann, pp. 27–8.
35. IWM, FO645/158, interrogation of Wilhelm Keitel, 10.10.45, p. 27.
36. IfZ, ZS 1810, Gro?admiral Karl Donitz, Bd. II, fo. 55, interview for the Observer, 18.11.74.
37. One woman in Berlin wrote as late as 21 May that ‘there is still no certain news about Adolf’.— Anonyma, p. 221.
38. See Christian Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (2006), pp. 153–73, and Goeschel’s monograph, Suicide in Nazi Germany, Oxford, 2009, ch. 5, for extensive analysis of the phenomenon. See also Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, London, 2008, pp. 728–33.
39. Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany, pp. 153–4.
40. Joseph Goebbels, Tagebucher 1945: Die letzten Aufzeichnungen, Hamburg, 1977, pp. 549, 556.
41. Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, p. 2237.
42. Goeschel, ‘Suicide at the End of the Third Reich’, p. 155.
43. MadR, 17, p. 6737.
