Hitler's Generals (1996–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Karl Dönitz - Der Nachfolger - full transcript
They were some of the most
treacherous weapons of the war -
the German, U-Boats.
Three out of every four
U-Boat crewmen did not return.
30,000 allied sailors
were their victims.
The man responsible for all this was
rewarded at the end by his Führer.
He became Hitler's successor.
Karl Dönitz, Grand Admiral
HITLER'S HENCHMEN
DÖNITZ
THE SUCCESSOR
He was a true vassal of Hitler
and Hitler was his commander.
If Hitler gave him an order, he obeyed
it even if he didn't agree with it.
Towards the end I could only see
him as a harbinger of death...
a party servant who could not
have been more contemptible.
He was one hundred percent a patriot.
He saw himself as a servant of
his people and his Fatherland.
To some people he is the
saviour of millions of refugees,
to others, a cold technocrat of War.
To the victors he was,
above all, a war criminal.
NUREMBERG TRIAL, 8 MAY 1946.
A man of conviction.
I think that the conduct
of this war was justified
and I acted according to my conscience.
I would do exactly the same again.
Berlin at the turn of the century.
The bourgeoisie was loyal
to Kaiser and Fatherland
as was the Dönitz family.
Karl Dönitz's mother died young, his
father brought up the two sons on his own.
Duty and obedience were
the highest imperatives.
Personal happiness was
of secondary importance.
Karl was considered reserved, but talented.
He wanted to be an officer in the Navy.
The Imperial Fleet, the pride
and joy of an adolescent nation,
the Naval Academy at Flensburg, Mürwik.
Here Karl Dönitz's career
both began and ended.
He enlisted in 1910,
two years later his father died,
and he lost his only support in life.
The young cadet yearned
for a replacement.
Then Lieutenant Commander von
Löwenfeld took him on board
and became his idol and mentor.
The First World War.
Dönitz was considered a brave fighter.
He fell in love and married soon afterwards,
all part of his longing for security.
His second great love, a new weapon,
U-boats, the last trump card.
They promised glory and
the hope of victory,
but in the end,
the whole fleet was forced to surrender.
Dönitz was in British hands when
he learned of Germany's defeat
and the fall of the monarchy.
Anarchy in the Reich.
A world collapsed, not only for Dönitz.
A mutiny by sailors of all people
sparked off the revolution.
It was traumatic to Dönitz.
The returned sailor hated the New Weimar
Republic under the moderate socialist Ebert,
he missed the old rule.
He felt unnerved by the new freedom,
nonetheless he entered the Reich Navy.
He was serving the state,
not of a particular government.
In the Kapp Putsch
1920 insurgent soldiers
trying to overturn the
unpopular Republic.
Dönitz secretly hoped they
would succeed, but in vain.
Everyday life between the two wars,
he commanded torpedo boats.
Naval chief Raeder didn't like Dönitz.
He described him as clever and hard
working, but on a disapproving note,
he reported Dönitz hankered after
recognition and was very ambitious.
Will do any work!
The economic misery of the
Weimar Republic's years of crisis
also affected the Dönitz family.
By now, they had three children.
From the twentieth of the month on all
we got was gruel or soup
or something like that
but it must be said
that my mother was not
a very good housekeeper.
Things were always tight then.
One man used all this
hardship to pick up votes,
he seduced the people with
promises of strong leadership,
the restoration of order
and the end of chaos,
a clear message to Dönitz, as well.
And so Hitler slipped into power.
Dönitz welcomed it as a
fresh start for Germany.
At last, someone who meant business.
I have set myself one goal - namely
to rid Germany of its thirty parties.
Anyone who got in the
way was disposed of.
Order through terror.
The murder of Röhm and
the others Dönitz excused
as necessary in the
defence of the state.
At this moment I was responsible
for the fate of the German nation
and thus the supreme judge
of the German people.
The Navy submitted unconditionally
to the new head of state.
Like all military men,
the ambitious naval officer Dönitz
swore a personal oath
of loyalty to Hitler.
A "Rosy Dawn" for Dönitz
and for U-Boat propaganda.
For we're sailing...
For we're sailing to England.
Blow me down! It’s the English!
Now for some excitement.
Dönitz would provide the excitement.
Hitler valued the expert
knowledge of his specialist
and ordered a new arsenal of U-Boats.
Starting from scratch, Dönitz was to
give Hitler's supremacy under the water.
With zeal and determination he
worked beyond the call of duty.
It was said that he appeared
the following morning
and outlined a clear concept
for building, developing
and testing the U-boat force.
The ability to grasp a situation quickly
and make a decision
was a trademark of his.
More than submarines Hitler
really wanted big battleships.
Dönitz looked on with suspicion.
He thought giant ships like the
Bismarck was superseded and vulnerable.
Great Britain, a defiant island.
Dönitz maintained that only U-Boats
could cut her crucial lines of supply
and starve out their
enemy of past and future.
His words fell on deaf ears, he
didn't belong to the inner circle yet.
The Olympic Games in Berlin.
The Reich put on a facade of peacefulness,
the reality was different.
Beware of Jews!
Hitler was on course for war.
Two years later,
the regime showed its true face.
Dönitz protested to his commanding officer
he did not like these disorderly methods.
The Navy had the privilege of
opening the Second World War.
Dönitz was horrified,
but not from a love of peace.
Britain was far superior at sea,
and he had only 56 U-Boats
despite his demands for 300.
He withdrew and returned in half an hour
aving regained his composure.
That was typical of him.
He composed himself.
He swallowed it, so to speak.
And then he said: "We'll just have to
make the best of a hopeless situation."
For us, sailors, a war with England
was a quite hopeless business.
Such fears had to be pushed under.
An attack on the very first day of war,
the commander of the U-30 torpedoed
the British passengers ship
Athenia without warning.
112 people died.
Pictures of the survivors
were seen all over the world
and kindled hatred of Dönitz's men.
Dönitz have the order to sink the
ship removed from the U-30's warlog.
A visitor to Wilhelmshaven.
When Hitler came to
inspect Dönitz's men,
the U-Boat commander seized the
opportunity to press his demands
for what he had been so far denied -
more boats.
But Hitler still thought, the war
at sea, was of secondary importance.
Dönitz was frustrated,
U-Boats production was going slowly,
a mere two submarines per month.
They had to come up with
a stroke of brilliance.
October, 1939. Lieutenant Commander
Prien was hunting the enemy.
A piece of astonishing
bravado from U-47.
Her commander penetrated the British
Royal Navy's sanctuary at Scarper flow
and sank the battleship "Royal Oak".
For this Dönitz was given
a hero's welcome in Berlin
as if he were Hitler himself.
U-Boat victories were good for morale.
We slipped past them
and were suddenly there,
in the harbour of Scapa Flow,
the hub of British sea power.
We targeted our opponent.
There was a big bang.
The "Royal Oak"
was hit and then it exploded.
It was an indescribable feeling
Karl Dönitz became one of the
best known figures of the war.
I think I first rarely was aware of him
when he sent Günther Prien
in new 47 into Scapa Flow
so that was first put called of
the map as far as I was concerned.
Then, after that, I mean, he appeared
in our newspapers all the time.
He was as well known as Göring and Goebbels
and Ribbentrop and all the rest of them.
I mean, he was very well known.
In Britain, Prime Minister Churchill
sought safeguards against this new threat.
He later admitted, "The only thing that
really frightened me during the war
was the U-Boat peril."
What matter to Hitler
was victories on land.
France was beaten,
the way to the Atlantic ports was open.
Dönitz had long dreamed of having bases
here. At last, access to the Atlantic,
Battle followed battle on
the British convoy roots.
Now England was to be starved.
Tactics of the wolf pack with several
U-Boats attacking at the same time.
In their homeport a proud chief
and reward.
Dönitz managed to create a sense
of pride in his volunteer corps.
Anyone who had been
awarde a U-boat medal
ran around with it on his chest.
We called this medal the best tin-opener
in the world. You were someone.
The U-boat force was only the
size of a small expedition corps.
It was nothing, just a handful of people
but they were wonderfully
suited to propaganda.
First, sailors in dress
uniform look pretty good
and secondly, you could create
a legend around the U-boat.
No wonder U-boat crewmen became
favourites with the Führer
and with the people too.
But life under water was not glamorous,
it was grim.
The cramped conditions, the stench...
and the necessity of doing everything
at very close quarters
with your comrades
imposed a huge and
ever increasing burden
on our everyday life.
The hunt was on.
British bombs against German U-Boats.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender.
A merciless duel of weapons and words.
German U-boats are hunting the enemy.
Their motto is: Attack, hit, sink.
London in flames.
While Göring's Air Force
tried to subdue London,
the British Admiralty took
shelter in a bunker - The Citadel.
Here, there was an atmosphere of crisis,
losses were increasing rapidly.
Over 10,000 sailors had
already been killed,
suffocated in the oil
of their sinking ships,
dead of thirst in the watery wasteland,
dead from exhaustion
or burnt to death,
just before help arrived.
In the middle at Rosmadec
German U-Boat men
celebrated their victories
with their related chief.
They drank to their spoils
and their own survival.
We drove to Pont-Aven and celebrated
and ate oysters and lobster
and drank champagne.
And then.. we were still young.
When we came home with flags on the
periscope of course we celebrated.
Dönitz had gigantic pens
built for his U-Boats.
Concrete roofs, several meters thick,
protected them from the Royal Air Force.
The bunkers at Lorient alone
cost over 400 million Reichmarks.
The U-Boat War soon
reached to its limits.
Dönitz repeatedly asked Göring for help
from the air and for more Navy pilots,
but the Reichsmarschall refused.
To keep up his men's spirits
Dönitz resorted to unusual methods.
Here the chief is playing himself
in the film "U-Boats westwards".
Fighting means making
sacrifices and winning.
The fight continues.
He was no speechmaker or rhetorician.
He hadn’t learnt how to make speeches.
They were always extremely simple.
They appealed to the
people who were around him.
I was able to observe how
he spoke to the troops.
A commander does not normally
call his men together
and make propaganda
speeche like Goebbels,
gesticulating wildly
as if a puppeteer had got
all his strings crossed.
Bombs hit the U-110.
The submarine was forced to surface,
and was boarded.
It offered rich booty, Enigma,
the key to the Wehrmact's secret code.
This machine let British
codebreakers into everything Dönitz
and his commanders
discussed over the radio.
What happened therefore, is that
we read everyone of those signals
and almost every convoy was
sent away from the U-Boat pack
and the defeat of the U-Boats
was not so much a defeat
as the avoidance of any successes.
They had to say,
"We cannot find convoys."
The Germans knew nothing
of this breach of security,
which was to decide the
battle of the Atlantic.
The enemy was listening,
and no one suspected.
Dönitz's U-Boats track down British
convoys more and more rarely.
It wasn't until the 1970's
that the truth came to light.
A new enemy,
the United States - U-Boats of New York.
Operation "Drumbeat"
began on January the 12th, 1942.
Torpedoing ships off the east
coast of the United States
was like shooting ducks on a
pond for the German submariners.
By July, 19th 1942 they had
sunk 500 ships and their crews.
An inferno.
Dönitzs rewarded his men with medals,
with grand words,
with home leave,
and with presents.
On the table in the room
stood a sea chest with an open lid.
We went over to it unsuspectingly
and saw that it was half
full of fob watches.
All manner of them...
with lids and without lids,
with Roman numerals and Arabic numerals,
red and black,
but not one of them had a chain.
You could have dug around
in this pile of watches
like a baker with both arms in dough.
There must have been
hundreds and hundreds.
On the lid of this sea chest
there was a medium-sized sign...
"Present from the Commander
for his U-boat crews."
I remember how uneasy
and uncomfortable we felt
because we couldn’t place these watches
and felt more or less instinctively
that this mass of chainless watches
was a sign of lawlessness and violence.
Autumn 1942, the U-Boat War
was becoming more ruthless.
A German U-Boat, picking up shipwreck
victims, was attacked by allied planes.
As a result,
Dönitz forbade any more rescue attempts.
Humanitarianism now
meant disobeying orders.
There are people on board!
They’re heading this way.
Half-astern, both engines.
I don't think we talked about it.
We dealt with it silently.
We might have said "poor devils"
or some such thing.
It just wasn’t something
we talked about.
Grand Admiral Dönitz,
appointed Commander of the Navy,
leaves his current posting in France.
Now he belonged to the inner circle.
When Hitler stopped trusting,
most of his generals,
he called for Admiral Karl Dönitz. From
then on, he didn't leave his Führer's side.
One day later,
the German 6th Army surrendered.
Stalingrad, the turning point.
And the U-Boats -
Dönitz's voice was finally heard,
Hitler's Armaments Minister
Speer gave top priority
to the building of new submarines.
Concentration camp prisoners were used
as dockyard workers at Dönitz's request.
He also had a suggestion of admiral Fricke's
entered into the naval commands war records.
Fricke wanted ships with Jewish
refugees onboard torpedoed.
The wording is camouflaged.
Jewish transports are to be neutralized
by methods not commonly
used in peacetime.
Dönitz knew what was meant.
I was the harbour and
camp doctor in IJmuiden
and medical officer in a
naval air defence unit.
Our commander was Hans
Erdmann of the Navy Reserve.
In IJmuiden we got a
visit from Admiral Voss.
Voss was the liaison officer
between Navy High Command and
the Führer’s headquarters.
Erdmann told him about what
I had heard was happening
on the Eastern front, in Germany’s name,
and said: "Voss, can't you ask Dönitz
to point out these awful
thing to the Führer?"
To which Voss replied "Erdmann,
we’ve already tried that,
and Dönitz's answer was:
"I’d never be so foolish
as to jeopardise my good
relations with the Führer"."
Victories pushed aside
knowledge of such matters.
Once more there was cheering in the
homeports, it would be the last time.
Then came the catastrophe - the new British
detection equipment proved deadly accurate.
In the single month of May,
1943 Dönitz lost 41 U-Boats,
2000 U-Boat crewmen died,
including Dönitz's son Peter
and in the following year,
his son, Klaus.
I remember
that when my eldest brother died in
May 1944 and the news reached us,
I happened to be staying in Lanke,
at Koralle.
He came to see me...
I was in bed with angina.
For a long time,
maybe not quite hours on end,
we sat there hand in hand
and didn’t say a word.
He just sat there...
An audience at Berghof.
Dönitz broke off from battle,
but only briefly.
His father had taught him to
finish what he had set out to do.
I think that he was responsible
for mass manslaughter.
The U-boat war was well
and truly lost by 1942.
Everything he did after that just
served to nourish his ambition
which had assumed monstrous proportions.
The Devil's admiral. Dönitz was
under the spell of the dictator.
His faith in Hitler had
almost mystical qualities.
The enormous strength radiated by
the Fuhrer has shown quite clearly
that we are all miserable little
creatures compared to him.
Anyone who thinks he
could do better is stupid.
I was one of those young
lieutenants who sat at his feet.
We probably had cushions to sit on.
Later it became part
of our stock repertoire
when we remembered him.
"I’ve come straight from the Führer."
His eyes started to shine,
or so it seemed,
and he would tell us of
the latest developments.
Here he was close to Hitler.
Koralle, Dönitz's headquarter
in the woods near Berlin.
From here, he issued orders
to hold out to the bitter end.
I believe in your
fighting spirit Dönitz.
...under the toughest conditions
A brutal will to attack...
The virtue of being without pity,
even when compassion was asked of him.
Ernst Jünger wanted to talk
about his son to Dönitz.
Maybe he wanted to ask for a
pardon for him, I don’t remember.
He just told us how
he entered a huge room
and Dönitz was sitting
at a desk in a corner.
He, Captain Jünger,
stood in the opposite corner
and presented himself.
Dönitz did not get up from his desk.
He didn't go over to Ernst Jünger.
He didn’t shake his hand
or offer him a chair
but just let him talk
from across the room.
Ernst Jünger was bitterly disappointed
at the coldness of his reception.
Fanatically he swore in young officers,
to the evil spirit of
the murderous Reich.
I'd like to see Germany now
without National Socialism.
It would be full of political
parties and full of Jews
who would take every opportunity to
criticize, to harm and to divide.
We owe everything to the Fuehrer,
the German people owe everything
to National Socialism.
Our soldiers have put one
choice to support our Fuhrer
and our National Socialism
with unrelenting effort.
Blind activity for its own sake,
Dönitz ordered the "Scharnhorst"
to attack an Allied convoy.
A suicide mission with
no chance of success,
the German battleship was sunk,
2000 sailors died.
There were a lot of people in the water
who even then gave a shout
of three cheers for the ship
and went on to sing the song
"On a sailor’s grave
no roses ever bloom.”
I also saw the ship dip at the bow
and then sink very slowly into the sea.
Then it grew dark, pitch-dark.
They couldn’t see anything.
They just heard the
wind and felt the waves.
Then they were...
Then I was alone on the water.
Fight to the end. Dönitz was like
Hitler in this respect, two of a kind.
At issue - the Crimea.
The Army wanted to withdraw.
Dönitz advised they stay.
It cost 80,000 men their lives.
Hitler and Dönitz,
an alliance against reason.
Dönitz was consumed by ambition.
He fawned over his Führer
at every opportunity.
He should have said long befor
"Mein Führer, it’s all over.
"We're bankrupt.
There is nothing more we can do."
Dönitz, a careerist.
Now he was allowed to represent
his Fuehrer officially.
Memorial Day 1944.
What would the Fatherland be today
if the Führer had not united
under National Socialism?
Torn apart into parties,
permeated by the leaking
poison of Judaism
and unprotected by the defences
of our present
uncompromising world view,
we would have succumbed to he
burden of this war long ago.
After the assassination
attempt on his Fuehrer,
Dönitz presented himself as a humble
vassal prepared to do anything.
Anyone who makes any
kind of defeatist remarks
must be ruthlessly exterminated.
I would sooner eat soil than
have my grandchildren brought up
and poisoned by the
Jewish spirit and filth.
After the war, this memorandum
was missing from the files.
Only much later, was one lone copy,
discovered, the evidence of murderous lunacy.
The Allies in Paris.
Their bombers attacked
Dönitz's U-Boat pens,
the submarine war had long
been decided in the air.
On the home front Dönitz had
smaller implements of war tested.
Maritime miracle weapons.
A last, desperate but futile attempt.
These young men had no naval experience.
They had only just learnt
what a compass was.
They were virtually children
who set out against the enemy
and to a large extent never returned.
Dönitz himself found reinforcements.
What do you want to be?
A U-boat sailor.
- And you?
A U-boat sailor, Admiral.
In the spring of 1945 alone,
almost 8000 U-Boat sailors died.
The final battle for Berlin.
Shortly before the end, Hitler sent
Dönitz to the north of the decaying Reich.
The Admiral was told to hold
the German position there.
His destination was Plön.
On April of the 30th he
received a message from Bormann.
Hitler had laid it down in his will that
he, Dönitz, was to be his successor.
Borman did not mention Hitler's suicide.
Humbly Dönitz replied to his Fuehrer:
"My loyalty to you is
everlasting and unconditional.
I shall do everything in my
power to relieve you in Berlin."
The capital was surrounded,
the third Reich facing collapse.
Dönitz kept his promise,
Young Marines were sent to free Hitler.
Most of them paid for this
insane plan with their lives.
On May the 1st,
the admiral learnt of Hitler's death.
Now he was the successor.
German men and women!
Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht...
Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, has perished.
In deepest sorrow and respect
the German people bow down.
The Führer has appointed
me as his successor.
Aware of the responsibility
assume the leadership
of the German people
at this fateful hour.
If you ask me why he
was named successor,
I’ll answer with another question:
"Who else was there?" Göring, Goebbels,
Himmler, Bormann... all finished.
As British tanks pushed
forward into Holstein,
Dönitz moved the German
headquarters from Plön to Flensburg.
The Naval Academy at
Mürwik where it all began.
Conscientiously Dönitz
set to work on his task,
the winding up of the
thousand year Reich.
It was in ruins.
Destroyed like its people.
The new head of state tried to govern.
We arrived in Flensburg and
it was utterly peaceful.
The weather was nice.
It was the beginning of May...
and the Navy had posted
sailors in white outside.
They presented arms when Dönitz or
Keitel or Jodi entered the building.
It was utterly peaceful
and almost unreal.
Dönitz wanted to carry
on fighting in the East
to save as many Germans as
possible from Soviet captivity.
Admiral von Friedeburg
was given his orders,
play for time and surrender in the West.
On the Lüneburg heath fieldmarshal
Montgomery consented to Dönitz's tactics.
Montgomery accepted the partial surrender
of the Wehrmacht on the 4th of May.
The strategy worked.
In the end, over two million
refugees made it to the West.
But while he was saving some people,
he was executing others.
A few young sailors paid for his
moral standards with their lives.
They had heard about the surrender,
and in good faith, decided to go home.
Dönitz would use the same phrase
and the wording struck
me as interesting...
He said,
"I can’t have two moral standards.
I can’t, on one hand,
send my best people to their deaths
and on the other hand
let the cowards go.”
Act two of the fall of the Reich.
Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims.
General Jodel's orders were to
prevent unconditional surrender,
spreading to all fronts.
He was to string the Allies
along with surrender in the West,
but continued fighting in the East.
Not all the victors would accept this.
After conferring with Dönitz on May,
the 7th
Jodl agreed to unconditional
surrender on all fronts.
German men and women!
The foundations of the
German Reich have collapsed.
We have a difficult path ahead of us.
I don’t want to lag behind
you on this thorny path.
If my sense of duty tells
me to stay in office
I shall try to help you
as best I possibly can.
If my sense of duty tells me to
go this step must also be seen
as a service to the
people and the Reich.
The Ersatz Hitlers.
There wasn't much left for them to do.
Dönitz carried on as if nothing had
happened, the last absurd state performance.
Dönitz's last U-Boats
surrendered in London.
No more playing at government.
Two weeks after the surrender, Hitler's
executors were finally forced to step down.
Defiance, disappointment,
mistrust,
arrogance.
Arriving for one last pose
the Admiral thought he was in the right.
Later Dönitz was to reproach Speer.
You got me into this. You told your
fault, if it hadn't been for you,
Hitler would never have had the
idea of making me Head of State.
I still think to this day
that he himself did not finish with
or ever fully come to terms
with his relationship with Hitler.
In his writings
he rejects the Führer principle,
the concept of a totalitarian Führer,
but there is nothing
which leads me to believe
that his relationship with the man
to whom he completely subjugated himself
was laid to rest, one way or the other.
After ten years in Spandau prison,
Dönitz was released in October 1956.
In a garden in Berlin the 65-year-old
and his wife met the press.
In reply to their questions
the former Navy commander
said he would remain silent.
OF 39,000 GERMAN U-BOAT SAILORS,
28,000 DIED.
treacherous weapons of the war -
the German, U-Boats.
Three out of every four
U-Boat crewmen did not return.
30,000 allied sailors
were their victims.
The man responsible for all this was
rewarded at the end by his Führer.
He became Hitler's successor.
Karl Dönitz, Grand Admiral
HITLER'S HENCHMEN
DÖNITZ
THE SUCCESSOR
He was a true vassal of Hitler
and Hitler was his commander.
If Hitler gave him an order, he obeyed
it even if he didn't agree with it.
Towards the end I could only see
him as a harbinger of death...
a party servant who could not
have been more contemptible.
He was one hundred percent a patriot.
He saw himself as a servant of
his people and his Fatherland.
To some people he is the
saviour of millions of refugees,
to others, a cold technocrat of War.
To the victors he was,
above all, a war criminal.
NUREMBERG TRIAL, 8 MAY 1946.
A man of conviction.
I think that the conduct
of this war was justified
and I acted according to my conscience.
I would do exactly the same again.
Berlin at the turn of the century.
The bourgeoisie was loyal
to Kaiser and Fatherland
as was the Dönitz family.
Karl Dönitz's mother died young, his
father brought up the two sons on his own.
Duty and obedience were
the highest imperatives.
Personal happiness was
of secondary importance.
Karl was considered reserved, but talented.
He wanted to be an officer in the Navy.
The Imperial Fleet, the pride
and joy of an adolescent nation,
the Naval Academy at Flensburg, Mürwik.
Here Karl Dönitz's career
both began and ended.
He enlisted in 1910,
two years later his father died,
and he lost his only support in life.
The young cadet yearned
for a replacement.
Then Lieutenant Commander von
Löwenfeld took him on board
and became his idol and mentor.
The First World War.
Dönitz was considered a brave fighter.
He fell in love and married soon afterwards,
all part of his longing for security.
His second great love, a new weapon,
U-boats, the last trump card.
They promised glory and
the hope of victory,
but in the end,
the whole fleet was forced to surrender.
Dönitz was in British hands when
he learned of Germany's defeat
and the fall of the monarchy.
Anarchy in the Reich.
A world collapsed, not only for Dönitz.
A mutiny by sailors of all people
sparked off the revolution.
It was traumatic to Dönitz.
The returned sailor hated the New Weimar
Republic under the moderate socialist Ebert,
he missed the old rule.
He felt unnerved by the new freedom,
nonetheless he entered the Reich Navy.
He was serving the state,
not of a particular government.
In the Kapp Putsch
1920 insurgent soldiers
trying to overturn the
unpopular Republic.
Dönitz secretly hoped they
would succeed, but in vain.
Everyday life between the two wars,
he commanded torpedo boats.
Naval chief Raeder didn't like Dönitz.
He described him as clever and hard
working, but on a disapproving note,
he reported Dönitz hankered after
recognition and was very ambitious.
Will do any work!
The economic misery of the
Weimar Republic's years of crisis
also affected the Dönitz family.
By now, they had three children.
From the twentieth of the month on all
we got was gruel or soup
or something like that
but it must be said
that my mother was not
a very good housekeeper.
Things were always tight then.
One man used all this
hardship to pick up votes,
he seduced the people with
promises of strong leadership,
the restoration of order
and the end of chaos,
a clear message to Dönitz, as well.
And so Hitler slipped into power.
Dönitz welcomed it as a
fresh start for Germany.
At last, someone who meant business.
I have set myself one goal - namely
to rid Germany of its thirty parties.
Anyone who got in the
way was disposed of.
Order through terror.
The murder of Röhm and
the others Dönitz excused
as necessary in the
defence of the state.
At this moment I was responsible
for the fate of the German nation
and thus the supreme judge
of the German people.
The Navy submitted unconditionally
to the new head of state.
Like all military men,
the ambitious naval officer Dönitz
swore a personal oath
of loyalty to Hitler.
A "Rosy Dawn" for Dönitz
and for U-Boat propaganda.
For we're sailing...
For we're sailing to England.
Blow me down! It’s the English!
Now for some excitement.
Dönitz would provide the excitement.
Hitler valued the expert
knowledge of his specialist
and ordered a new arsenal of U-Boats.
Starting from scratch, Dönitz was to
give Hitler's supremacy under the water.
With zeal and determination he
worked beyond the call of duty.
It was said that he appeared
the following morning
and outlined a clear concept
for building, developing
and testing the U-boat force.
The ability to grasp a situation quickly
and make a decision
was a trademark of his.
More than submarines Hitler
really wanted big battleships.
Dönitz looked on with suspicion.
He thought giant ships like the
Bismarck was superseded and vulnerable.
Great Britain, a defiant island.
Dönitz maintained that only U-Boats
could cut her crucial lines of supply
and starve out their
enemy of past and future.
His words fell on deaf ears, he
didn't belong to the inner circle yet.
The Olympic Games in Berlin.
The Reich put on a facade of peacefulness,
the reality was different.
Beware of Jews!
Hitler was on course for war.
Two years later,
the regime showed its true face.
Dönitz protested to his commanding officer
he did not like these disorderly methods.
The Navy had the privilege of
opening the Second World War.
Dönitz was horrified,
but not from a love of peace.
Britain was far superior at sea,
and he had only 56 U-Boats
despite his demands for 300.
He withdrew and returned in half an hour
aving regained his composure.
That was typical of him.
He composed himself.
He swallowed it, so to speak.
And then he said: "We'll just have to
make the best of a hopeless situation."
For us, sailors, a war with England
was a quite hopeless business.
Such fears had to be pushed under.
An attack on the very first day of war,
the commander of the U-30 torpedoed
the British passengers ship
Athenia without warning.
112 people died.
Pictures of the survivors
were seen all over the world
and kindled hatred of Dönitz's men.
Dönitz have the order to sink the
ship removed from the U-30's warlog.
A visitor to Wilhelmshaven.
When Hitler came to
inspect Dönitz's men,
the U-Boat commander seized the
opportunity to press his demands
for what he had been so far denied -
more boats.
But Hitler still thought, the war
at sea, was of secondary importance.
Dönitz was frustrated,
U-Boats production was going slowly,
a mere two submarines per month.
They had to come up with
a stroke of brilliance.
October, 1939. Lieutenant Commander
Prien was hunting the enemy.
A piece of astonishing
bravado from U-47.
Her commander penetrated the British
Royal Navy's sanctuary at Scarper flow
and sank the battleship "Royal Oak".
For this Dönitz was given
a hero's welcome in Berlin
as if he were Hitler himself.
U-Boat victories were good for morale.
We slipped past them
and were suddenly there,
in the harbour of Scapa Flow,
the hub of British sea power.
We targeted our opponent.
There was a big bang.
The "Royal Oak"
was hit and then it exploded.
It was an indescribable feeling
Karl Dönitz became one of the
best known figures of the war.
I think I first rarely was aware of him
when he sent Günther Prien
in new 47 into Scapa Flow
so that was first put called of
the map as far as I was concerned.
Then, after that, I mean, he appeared
in our newspapers all the time.
He was as well known as Göring and Goebbels
and Ribbentrop and all the rest of them.
I mean, he was very well known.
In Britain, Prime Minister Churchill
sought safeguards against this new threat.
He later admitted, "The only thing that
really frightened me during the war
was the U-Boat peril."
What matter to Hitler
was victories on land.
France was beaten,
the way to the Atlantic ports was open.
Dönitz had long dreamed of having bases
here. At last, access to the Atlantic,
Battle followed battle on
the British convoy roots.
Now England was to be starved.
Tactics of the wolf pack with several
U-Boats attacking at the same time.
In their homeport a proud chief
and reward.
Dönitz managed to create a sense
of pride in his volunteer corps.
Anyone who had been
awarde a U-boat medal
ran around with it on his chest.
We called this medal the best tin-opener
in the world. You were someone.
The U-boat force was only the
size of a small expedition corps.
It was nothing, just a handful of people
but they were wonderfully
suited to propaganda.
First, sailors in dress
uniform look pretty good
and secondly, you could create
a legend around the U-boat.
No wonder U-boat crewmen became
favourites with the Führer
and with the people too.
But life under water was not glamorous,
it was grim.
The cramped conditions, the stench...
and the necessity of doing everything
at very close quarters
with your comrades
imposed a huge and
ever increasing burden
on our everyday life.
The hunt was on.
British bombs against German U-Boats.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender.
A merciless duel of weapons and words.
German U-boats are hunting the enemy.
Their motto is: Attack, hit, sink.
London in flames.
While Göring's Air Force
tried to subdue London,
the British Admiralty took
shelter in a bunker - The Citadel.
Here, there was an atmosphere of crisis,
losses were increasing rapidly.
Over 10,000 sailors had
already been killed,
suffocated in the oil
of their sinking ships,
dead of thirst in the watery wasteland,
dead from exhaustion
or burnt to death,
just before help arrived.
In the middle at Rosmadec
German U-Boat men
celebrated their victories
with their related chief.
They drank to their spoils
and their own survival.
We drove to Pont-Aven and celebrated
and ate oysters and lobster
and drank champagne.
And then.. we were still young.
When we came home with flags on the
periscope of course we celebrated.
Dönitz had gigantic pens
built for his U-Boats.
Concrete roofs, several meters thick,
protected them from the Royal Air Force.
The bunkers at Lorient alone
cost over 400 million Reichmarks.
The U-Boat War soon
reached to its limits.
Dönitz repeatedly asked Göring for help
from the air and for more Navy pilots,
but the Reichsmarschall refused.
To keep up his men's spirits
Dönitz resorted to unusual methods.
Here the chief is playing himself
in the film "U-Boats westwards".
Fighting means making
sacrifices and winning.
The fight continues.
He was no speechmaker or rhetorician.
He hadn’t learnt how to make speeches.
They were always extremely simple.
They appealed to the
people who were around him.
I was able to observe how
he spoke to the troops.
A commander does not normally
call his men together
and make propaganda
speeche like Goebbels,
gesticulating wildly
as if a puppeteer had got
all his strings crossed.
Bombs hit the U-110.
The submarine was forced to surface,
and was boarded.
It offered rich booty, Enigma,
the key to the Wehrmact's secret code.
This machine let British
codebreakers into everything Dönitz
and his commanders
discussed over the radio.
What happened therefore, is that
we read everyone of those signals
and almost every convoy was
sent away from the U-Boat pack
and the defeat of the U-Boats
was not so much a defeat
as the avoidance of any successes.
They had to say,
"We cannot find convoys."
The Germans knew nothing
of this breach of security,
which was to decide the
battle of the Atlantic.
The enemy was listening,
and no one suspected.
Dönitz's U-Boats track down British
convoys more and more rarely.
It wasn't until the 1970's
that the truth came to light.
A new enemy,
the United States - U-Boats of New York.
Operation "Drumbeat"
began on January the 12th, 1942.
Torpedoing ships off the east
coast of the United States
was like shooting ducks on a
pond for the German submariners.
By July, 19th 1942 they had
sunk 500 ships and their crews.
An inferno.
Dönitzs rewarded his men with medals,
with grand words,
with home leave,
and with presents.
On the table in the room
stood a sea chest with an open lid.
We went over to it unsuspectingly
and saw that it was half
full of fob watches.
All manner of them...
with lids and without lids,
with Roman numerals and Arabic numerals,
red and black,
but not one of them had a chain.
You could have dug around
in this pile of watches
like a baker with both arms in dough.
There must have been
hundreds and hundreds.
On the lid of this sea chest
there was a medium-sized sign...
"Present from the Commander
for his U-boat crews."
I remember how uneasy
and uncomfortable we felt
because we couldn’t place these watches
and felt more or less instinctively
that this mass of chainless watches
was a sign of lawlessness and violence.
Autumn 1942, the U-Boat War
was becoming more ruthless.
A German U-Boat, picking up shipwreck
victims, was attacked by allied planes.
As a result,
Dönitz forbade any more rescue attempts.
Humanitarianism now
meant disobeying orders.
There are people on board!
They’re heading this way.
Half-astern, both engines.
I don't think we talked about it.
We dealt with it silently.
We might have said "poor devils"
or some such thing.
It just wasn’t something
we talked about.
Grand Admiral Dönitz,
appointed Commander of the Navy,
leaves his current posting in France.
Now he belonged to the inner circle.
When Hitler stopped trusting,
most of his generals,
he called for Admiral Karl Dönitz. From
then on, he didn't leave his Führer's side.
One day later,
the German 6th Army surrendered.
Stalingrad, the turning point.
And the U-Boats -
Dönitz's voice was finally heard,
Hitler's Armaments Minister
Speer gave top priority
to the building of new submarines.
Concentration camp prisoners were used
as dockyard workers at Dönitz's request.
He also had a suggestion of admiral Fricke's
entered into the naval commands war records.
Fricke wanted ships with Jewish
refugees onboard torpedoed.
The wording is camouflaged.
Jewish transports are to be neutralized
by methods not commonly
used in peacetime.
Dönitz knew what was meant.
I was the harbour and
camp doctor in IJmuiden
and medical officer in a
naval air defence unit.
Our commander was Hans
Erdmann of the Navy Reserve.
In IJmuiden we got a
visit from Admiral Voss.
Voss was the liaison officer
between Navy High Command and
the Führer’s headquarters.
Erdmann told him about what
I had heard was happening
on the Eastern front, in Germany’s name,
and said: "Voss, can't you ask Dönitz
to point out these awful
thing to the Führer?"
To which Voss replied "Erdmann,
we’ve already tried that,
and Dönitz's answer was:
"I’d never be so foolish
as to jeopardise my good
relations with the Führer"."
Victories pushed aside
knowledge of such matters.
Once more there was cheering in the
homeports, it would be the last time.
Then came the catastrophe - the new British
detection equipment proved deadly accurate.
In the single month of May,
1943 Dönitz lost 41 U-Boats,
2000 U-Boat crewmen died,
including Dönitz's son Peter
and in the following year,
his son, Klaus.
I remember
that when my eldest brother died in
May 1944 and the news reached us,
I happened to be staying in Lanke,
at Koralle.
He came to see me...
I was in bed with angina.
For a long time,
maybe not quite hours on end,
we sat there hand in hand
and didn’t say a word.
He just sat there...
An audience at Berghof.
Dönitz broke off from battle,
but only briefly.
His father had taught him to
finish what he had set out to do.
I think that he was responsible
for mass manslaughter.
The U-boat war was well
and truly lost by 1942.
Everything he did after that just
served to nourish his ambition
which had assumed monstrous proportions.
The Devil's admiral. Dönitz was
under the spell of the dictator.
His faith in Hitler had
almost mystical qualities.
The enormous strength radiated by
the Fuhrer has shown quite clearly
that we are all miserable little
creatures compared to him.
Anyone who thinks he
could do better is stupid.
I was one of those young
lieutenants who sat at his feet.
We probably had cushions to sit on.
Later it became part
of our stock repertoire
when we remembered him.
"I’ve come straight from the Führer."
His eyes started to shine,
or so it seemed,
and he would tell us of
the latest developments.
Here he was close to Hitler.
Koralle, Dönitz's headquarter
in the woods near Berlin.
From here, he issued orders
to hold out to the bitter end.
I believe in your
fighting spirit Dönitz.
...under the toughest conditions
A brutal will to attack...
The virtue of being without pity,
even when compassion was asked of him.
Ernst Jünger wanted to talk
about his son to Dönitz.
Maybe he wanted to ask for a
pardon for him, I don’t remember.
He just told us how
he entered a huge room
and Dönitz was sitting
at a desk in a corner.
He, Captain Jünger,
stood in the opposite corner
and presented himself.
Dönitz did not get up from his desk.
He didn't go over to Ernst Jünger.
He didn’t shake his hand
or offer him a chair
but just let him talk
from across the room.
Ernst Jünger was bitterly disappointed
at the coldness of his reception.
Fanatically he swore in young officers,
to the evil spirit of
the murderous Reich.
I'd like to see Germany now
without National Socialism.
It would be full of political
parties and full of Jews
who would take every opportunity to
criticize, to harm and to divide.
We owe everything to the Fuehrer,
the German people owe everything
to National Socialism.
Our soldiers have put one
choice to support our Fuhrer
and our National Socialism
with unrelenting effort.
Blind activity for its own sake,
Dönitz ordered the "Scharnhorst"
to attack an Allied convoy.
A suicide mission with
no chance of success,
the German battleship was sunk,
2000 sailors died.
There were a lot of people in the water
who even then gave a shout
of three cheers for the ship
and went on to sing the song
"On a sailor’s grave
no roses ever bloom.”
I also saw the ship dip at the bow
and then sink very slowly into the sea.
Then it grew dark, pitch-dark.
They couldn’t see anything.
They just heard the
wind and felt the waves.
Then they were...
Then I was alone on the water.
Fight to the end. Dönitz was like
Hitler in this respect, two of a kind.
At issue - the Crimea.
The Army wanted to withdraw.
Dönitz advised they stay.
It cost 80,000 men their lives.
Hitler and Dönitz,
an alliance against reason.
Dönitz was consumed by ambition.
He fawned over his Führer
at every opportunity.
He should have said long befor
"Mein Führer, it’s all over.
"We're bankrupt.
There is nothing more we can do."
Dönitz, a careerist.
Now he was allowed to represent
his Fuehrer officially.
Memorial Day 1944.
What would the Fatherland be today
if the Führer had not united
under National Socialism?
Torn apart into parties,
permeated by the leaking
poison of Judaism
and unprotected by the defences
of our present
uncompromising world view,
we would have succumbed to he
burden of this war long ago.
After the assassination
attempt on his Fuehrer,
Dönitz presented himself as a humble
vassal prepared to do anything.
Anyone who makes any
kind of defeatist remarks
must be ruthlessly exterminated.
I would sooner eat soil than
have my grandchildren brought up
and poisoned by the
Jewish spirit and filth.
After the war, this memorandum
was missing from the files.
Only much later, was one lone copy,
discovered, the evidence of murderous lunacy.
The Allies in Paris.
Their bombers attacked
Dönitz's U-Boat pens,
the submarine war had long
been decided in the air.
On the home front Dönitz had
smaller implements of war tested.
Maritime miracle weapons.
A last, desperate but futile attempt.
These young men had no naval experience.
They had only just learnt
what a compass was.
They were virtually children
who set out against the enemy
and to a large extent never returned.
Dönitz himself found reinforcements.
What do you want to be?
A U-boat sailor.
- And you?
A U-boat sailor, Admiral.
In the spring of 1945 alone,
almost 8000 U-Boat sailors died.
The final battle for Berlin.
Shortly before the end, Hitler sent
Dönitz to the north of the decaying Reich.
The Admiral was told to hold
the German position there.
His destination was Plön.
On April of the 30th he
received a message from Bormann.
Hitler had laid it down in his will that
he, Dönitz, was to be his successor.
Borman did not mention Hitler's suicide.
Humbly Dönitz replied to his Fuehrer:
"My loyalty to you is
everlasting and unconditional.
I shall do everything in my
power to relieve you in Berlin."
The capital was surrounded,
the third Reich facing collapse.
Dönitz kept his promise,
Young Marines were sent to free Hitler.
Most of them paid for this
insane plan with their lives.
On May the 1st,
the admiral learnt of Hitler's death.
Now he was the successor.
German men and women!
Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht...
Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, has perished.
In deepest sorrow and respect
the German people bow down.
The Führer has appointed
me as his successor.
Aware of the responsibility
assume the leadership
of the German people
at this fateful hour.
If you ask me why he
was named successor,
I’ll answer with another question:
"Who else was there?" Göring, Goebbels,
Himmler, Bormann... all finished.
As British tanks pushed
forward into Holstein,
Dönitz moved the German
headquarters from Plön to Flensburg.
The Naval Academy at
Mürwik where it all began.
Conscientiously Dönitz
set to work on his task,
the winding up of the
thousand year Reich.
It was in ruins.
Destroyed like its people.
The new head of state tried to govern.
We arrived in Flensburg and
it was utterly peaceful.
The weather was nice.
It was the beginning of May...
and the Navy had posted
sailors in white outside.
They presented arms when Dönitz or
Keitel or Jodi entered the building.
It was utterly peaceful
and almost unreal.
Dönitz wanted to carry
on fighting in the East
to save as many Germans as
possible from Soviet captivity.
Admiral von Friedeburg
was given his orders,
play for time and surrender in the West.
On the Lüneburg heath fieldmarshal
Montgomery consented to Dönitz's tactics.
Montgomery accepted the partial surrender
of the Wehrmacht on the 4th of May.
The strategy worked.
In the end, over two million
refugees made it to the West.
But while he was saving some people,
he was executing others.
A few young sailors paid for his
moral standards with their lives.
They had heard about the surrender,
and in good faith, decided to go home.
Dönitz would use the same phrase
and the wording struck
me as interesting...
He said,
"I can’t have two moral standards.
I can’t, on one hand,
send my best people to their deaths
and on the other hand
let the cowards go.”
Act two of the fall of the Reich.
Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims.
General Jodel's orders were to
prevent unconditional surrender,
spreading to all fronts.
He was to string the Allies
along with surrender in the West,
but continued fighting in the East.
Not all the victors would accept this.
After conferring with Dönitz on May,
the 7th
Jodl agreed to unconditional
surrender on all fronts.
German men and women!
The foundations of the
German Reich have collapsed.
We have a difficult path ahead of us.
I don’t want to lag behind
you on this thorny path.
If my sense of duty tells
me to stay in office
I shall try to help you
as best I possibly can.
If my sense of duty tells me to
go this step must also be seen
as a service to the
people and the Reich.
The Ersatz Hitlers.
There wasn't much left for them to do.
Dönitz carried on as if nothing had
happened, the last absurd state performance.
Dönitz's last U-Boats
surrendered in London.
No more playing at government.
Two weeks after the surrender, Hitler's
executors were finally forced to step down.
Defiance, disappointment,
mistrust,
arrogance.
Arriving for one last pose
the Admiral thought he was in the right.
Later Dönitz was to reproach Speer.
You got me into this. You told your
fault, if it hadn't been for you,
Hitler would never have had the
idea of making me Head of State.
I still think to this day
that he himself did not finish with
or ever fully come to terms
with his relationship with Hitler.
In his writings
he rejects the Führer principle,
the concept of a totalitarian Führer,
but there is nothing
which leads me to believe
that his relationship with the man
to whom he completely subjugated himself
was laid to rest, one way or the other.
After ten years in Spandau prison,
Dönitz was released in October 1956.
In a garden in Berlin the 65-year-old
and his wife met the press.
In reply to their questions
the former Navy commander
said he would remain silent.
OF 39,000 GERMAN U-BOAT SAILORS,
28,000 DIED.