Flensburg Government - Formation

Formation

In his last will and testament, Hitler designated Dönitz as his successor. Dönitz was not to become Führer (a post which Hitler abolished in his will), but rather President (Reichspräsident), a post Hitler had abolished in 1934. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was to become Chancellor (Reichskanzler). Martin Bormann was designated "Party Minister", granting him de facto control of the Nazi Party. Hitler condemned both Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler as traitors and expelled them both from the Nazi Party and the German government. Göring was at that time in Bavaria under arrest by SS-guards. Himmler was with Dönitz but was not informed of his condemnation by Hitler.

On the evening of 30 April, Dönitz received a message from the Reich chancellery, issued by Bormann, informing him that Hitler had named him as his successor, in place of Göring. On 1 May, Dönitz received a further communication from the Reich chancellery, issued by Bormann and Goebbels, informing that Hitler had committed suicide and that accordingly the 'Führer's testament' was in effect, so that Dönitz was now Reich President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Later that day, Goebbels committed suicide and Bormann fled the Führerbunker and disappeared, and Dönitz asked finance minister Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, also at Flensburg, to replace Goebbels as Chancellor. Von Krosigk refused. Instead, the two agreed that von Krosigk would become the 'Leading Minister'.

On the night of 1 May, Dönitz gave his first nationwide radio address, in which he spoke of Hitler's "hero’s death" and vowed the war would continue "to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy." However, Dönitz had known before he accepted the reins of power that Germany's position was untenable and that the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of offering meaningful resistance. During his brief period in office he devoted most of his efforts to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German troops would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Russians, as he feared they would face Soviet reprisals. Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk made his first radio broadcast in his capacity as Leading Minister of the Reich on 2 May.

The Cabinet Schwerin von Krosigk, the nominal administration of the Flensburg government, had its first meeting in Mürwik, near (and now part of) Flensburg on 5 May. The Naval Academy at Mürwik, overlooking the Flensburg Fjord, near the Danish border, served as headquarters of the Dönitz administration throughout its existence.