Eight Days In May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Ullrich - B

        This is an effort by an esteemed  German historian to sort through the chaotic week between Hitler's suicide on April 30th and Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8th. It was sort of a "temporal no man's land" between the past and future. National Socialism had collapsed, but the Allies were not yet in control. 

       Hitler spent his last day bidding farewell to his staff and tending to some of the details of the war. He shot himself in the head and his wife Eva took cyanide at about 3:30 PM. Their bodies were burned and their remains buried in a bomb crater. A few hours later, a telegram from Bormann advised Adm. Donitz that he was now the leader of the nation.

       On the 1st, the Battle of Berlin continued unabated. Donitz "saw his main task as to continue the war on the eastern front long enough to allow as many soldiers and refugees as possible to escape capture by the Red Army." In the Fuhrerbunker, the Goebbels' followed Hitler's suicide path and everyone else tried to escape. From the east, Walter Ulbricht, who would run E. Germany for years, arrived in Berlin from Moscow. 

        On the 2nd, Berlin radio announced that the Fuhrer was dead. The reaction was rather muted. The Wehrmacht announced a cease fire and the surrender of the city. The civilian population was relieved and the conquerors were jubilant. The plunder and rape of German women by the Red Army began immediately. Ulbricht would allow no discussion of this, would take no action, and prohibited abortions. That evening, 600,000 men surrendered in Italy. Werner von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans in Bavaria.

      On the 3rd, Donitz's government discussed trying to surrender in the west, but to continue to fight the Russians. The military and civilian leadership of Hamburg surrendered the city to the British. German leadership offered to surrender all forces in the northwest to Montgomery, but he refused to accept the surrender of Army Group Vistula fighting the Russians. He offered to accept a tactical surrender of those in the north, including occupied Denmark and the Netherlands. 

     On the 4th, Donitz approved the partial surrender in the west. "Along with entire army groups, individual armies and divisions also tried to save themselves from Russian captivity by surrendering to the Americans or the British." That afternoon American and French soldiers took Hitler's redoubt at Obersalzberg. 

    On the 5th, the people of Prague took to the streets to rebel against the remaining power Germany had in the protectorate. The following morning, Waffen-SS troops attacked the civilian rebels, but soon abandoned the city. The Russians would arrive on the 9th. As the Reich continued to collapse, not just German soldiers, but millions of slave laborers and concentration camp survivors fell into the hands of the Allies. Neither the western powers nor the Russians were equipped to effectively process, house, or feed them.

   The 6th saw continued efforts by the German high command to surrender in the west. Eisenhower let it be known that the only option was unconditional surrender of the Reich's remaining fighters. 

   On the 7th, Donitz authorized an unconditional surrender and Jodl signed it in Reims early in the morning. It took effect on the following midnight. Stalin insisted on a surrender to the Red Army too, and that took place in Berlin on the 8th. Of the three million men fighting on the eastern front, about half surrendered to the British and Americans, and half to the Russians. The war in Europe was over. 

    "Most Germans, even those critical of the regime, regarded May 8, 1945, not as a day of liberation but as an unprecedented national catastrophe." The Donitz government, although it had nothing to do, continued for two weeks before it was abolished and its members arrested. The Allies noticed two themes in the German population. They tried very hard to curry favor with the occupiers, while claiming their surprise at all of the exposed atrocities. Most Germans felt that they were victims. All of the senior ministers, generals and gauleiters were collected in a hotel in Belgium. Fifty-two of the highest ranking Nazis were at the Palace Hotel in Mondorf. Almost all were transferred to Nuremberg for their trials. And as unlikely as it seemed in May, 1945, Germany revived and is now a "nation defined by stability, freedom, and peace." This a very good, precise and concise history of that fateful week.