Original subtitles

On the first day of May 1945,

a 63-year-old naval officer sat in a

makeshift headquarters in northern

Germany and read a telegram that would

make him the most powerful man in what

remained of the Third Reich. Grand

Admiral Carl Donuts, the commander of

the German Navy, had just been named as

Adolf Hitler's successor. The telegram

informed him that he was now the

president of the Reich and Supreme

Commander of the Armed Forces.

What it did not tell him was that Hitler

was already dead, having taken his own

life the previous afternoon in a Berlin

bunker surrounded by Soviet forces.

For the next 23 days, Donuts would lead

a collapsing nation, issue orders that

affected millions of lives, and face

decisions that no military training

could have prepared him for. His tenure

is often reduced to a footnote in

histories of the Second World War,

overshadowed by the drama of Hitler's

final hours and the celebrations of

Allied victory.

But those 23 days contain their own

desperate struggles, calculated gambits,

and human tragedies.

They reveal what happens when a

professional military man inherits an

ideological catastrophe and attempts to

manage its ending. This is the story of

what donuts actually ordered during his

brief reign and why those orders

mattered far more than most people

realize.

To understand why Hitler chose donuts,

we need to understand what had happened

in the final weeks of April 1945.

The Reich was fragmenting. Soviet forces

had encircled Berlin. American and

British troops were pushing deep into

western Germany. and Hitler isolated in

his underground bunker beneath the Reich

Chancellery had just learned of two

devastating betrayals.

First came Herman Guring, the Reich's

Marshall, long designated as Hitler's

successor, sent a telegram from Bavaria

on April 23rd suggesting that he should

assume leadership since Hitler was

trapped in Berlin. Hitler interpreted

this as an attempted coup and stripped

Guring of all his offices.

Then came Heinrich Himmler. On April

28th, Hitler learned through a BBC

broadcast that the SS chief had been

secretly negotiating surrender terms

with the Western Allies through a

Swedish intermediary.

For Hitler, this was the ultimate

treachery from the man who had commanded

his most loyal forces.

In his final testament dictated in the

early hours of April 29th, Hitler needed

a successor who had not betrayed him.

Carl Donuts fit that requirement. The

Grand Admiral had remained focused on

naval operations, had never involved

himself in the political intrigues that

consumed so many Nazi leaders, and had

consistently shown what Hitler

considered unwavering loyalty.

Donuts also commanded the only German

military branch still conducting

organized operations across multiple

theaters.

The telegram arrived at Donuts's

headquarters in Plone in the northern

state of Schleswick Holstein late on

April 30th. It was signed by Martin

Borman, Hitler's private secretary, and

it informed Donuts of his appointment

while deliberately omitting news of

Hitler's death.

Borman was still hoping to escape Berlin

and wanted to preserve his own political

position in whatever government emerged.

Dunit initially believed Hitler was

still alive. His first message back to

the bunker pledged his loyalty and

promised to do everything possible to

relieve Berlin and continue the fight.

It was not until the following evening,

May 1st, that a second telegram arrived

confirming that Hitler had died the

previous afternoon. Only then did Donuts

fully understand that he was not merely

acting as a deputy, but was now the sole

leader of the German state. His first

act was to form a government. This might

seem absurd given the circumstances, but

Donuts understood that he needed the

appearance of legitimate authority to

issue orders that would be obeyed. He

appointed Count Lutzwaren Vonrosk, who

had served as finance minister since

1932, as the leading minister and

foreign affairs head. He retained

several existing ministers and military

commanders, creating a cabinet that

could theoretically function. But donuts

had no interest in governing in any

traditional sense.

Within hours of confirming Hitler's

death, he had identified his single

overriding objective, saving as many

German soldiers and civilians as

possible from Soviet captivity.

Everything else was secondary. His

entire 23 days in power would be

organized around this goal. This

priority was not irrational. German

forces and civilians in the east faced a

genuine humanitarian catastrophe.

The Soviet advance had been accompanied

by widespread violence against the

civilian population.

Millions of Germans were already fleeing

westward in chaotic conditions. German

soldiers who surrendered to the Red Army

faced imprisonment in Soviet labor camps

where mortality rates would prove

devastatingly high. In contrast,

surrender to American or British forces

offered far better prospects for

survival and eventual release.

Donuts's strategy was therefore simple

in concept, but enormously complex in

execution. He would continue military

resistance against the Soviets as long

as possible while seeking immediate

surrender in the West.

Every day that German forces held the

Eastern front was another day for

refugees and soldiers to flee westward.

Every local surrender to British or

American commanders was another group of

Germans who would escape Soviet

captivity. This was not a strategy that

the Western Allies were prepared to

accept. The Americans and British were

committed to unconditional surrender and

to their alliance with the Soviet Union.

They had agreed at Yaltta that Germany

must surrender simultaneously to all

Allied powers. Any separate peace with

the West would be a betrayal of Stalin.

Donuts knew this. His gamble was that

local Allied commanders faced with the

practical reality of Germans desperately

surrendering to them would accept these

surreners even if their political

leaders disapproved.

And for a few crucial days, that gamble

worked. The mechanism that made Donuts's

strategy possible was already in

operation when he took power. Operation

Hannibal, the naval evacuation of German

civilians and military personnel from

the Baltic coast, had been running since

January 1945.

Donuts had actually initiated this

operation himself in his capacity as

naval commander, and he now ensured its

continuation and expansion.

The scale of Operation Hannibal is

difficult to comprehend.

Between January and May 1945, the German

Navy evacuated somewhere between 800,000

and over 2 million people across the

Baltic Sea, depending on which

historical estimates you accept. This

makes it the largest naval evacuation in

human history, dwarfing the famous

rescue at Dunkirk, which saved

approximately 338,000

troops. The evacuation was conducted

under appalling conditions. Soviet

submarines and aircraft attacked the

refugee ships. In one single incident on

January 30th, 1945,

the Soviet submarine S13 torpedoed the

passenger liner Wilhelm Gustaf, killing

an estimated 9,000 people in the

deadliest maritime disaster in history.

Other ships met similar fates. Yet, the

evacuation continued because the

alternative was worse. Under Donuts's

leadership as furer, the final phase of

Operation Hannibal reached its desperate

climax. He ordered every available

vessel, from major warships to small

fishing boats, pressed into evacuation

duty. Naval personnel, who might

otherwise have been assigned to combat

operations, were diverted to rescue

missions. The German Navy's final

significant act was not fighting, but

saving lives. On May 2nd, Donuts made

his first major diplomatic move. He sent

Admiral Hans Gayorg Fonfriedberg, the

new commander of the German Navy, to

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's

headquarters at Lunberg Heath.

Fredberg's instructions were to

negotiate the surrender of all German

forces in northern Germany, including

those retreating from the east.

Montgomery was willing to accept the

surrender of combat forces facing him,

but he refused to accept the surrender

of troops still fighting the Soviets.

This was consistent with Allied policy.

Friedberg reported back to Donuts, who

authorized him to accept Montgomery's

terms.

On May 4th at 6:18 in the evening,

Fredberg signed an instrument of

surrender covering German forces in the

Netherlands, northwestern Germany, and

Denmark. This partial surrender

immediately accomplished part of

Donuts's objective. German forces in

these areas could now stop fighting and

be processed as prisoners of war by the

British rather than potentially being

transferred to Soviet custody. It also

freed up naval resources for continued

evacuation operations in the Baltic.

But Donuts wanted more. He sent

Freedberg onward to General Dwight

Eisenhower's headquarters at Rimes to

negotiate a broader western surrender.

Here, the German delegation encountered

much harder resistance. Eisenhower's

chief of staff, General Walter Beetle

Smith, made clear that only

unconditional surrender to all Allied

powers simultaneously would be accepted.

Partial surrenders or deals that

excluded the Soviets were not on the

table.

Friedberg reported back to Donuts in

despair. The Grand Admiral then sent

General Alfred Yodel, the chief of

operations for the German armed forces

to Rams with instructions to negotiate

whatever delays he could manage.

Every additional day of delay meant more

refugees crossing to the west, more

soldiers escaping Soviet encirclement.

Yodel arrived at Rimes on May 6th, and

spent hours trying to convince

Eisenhower staff to accept staggered

surreners or extended timelines.

Eisenhower communicating through Bedell

Smith refused to negotiate. He gave

Yodel an ultimatum. Sign the

unconditional surrender document by

midnight or Eisenhower would close

Allied lines to all German soldiers and

civilians attempting to surrender from

the east. This threat struck directly at

Donuts's core objective. If Allied lines

closed, the entire evacuation effort

would collapse. Refugees and soldiers

fleeing westward would have nowhere to

go. Donuts authorized Yodel to sign. At

2:41 in the morning on May 7th, 1945,

Yodel signed the instrument of

unconditional surrender at Eisenhower's

headquarters in Reigns. The surrender

was to take effect at 11:01 in the

evening on May 8th, Central European

time. This 45-hour delay before the

surrender took effect was a final

concession that Jodel had managed to

extract, giving German forces additional

time to move westward. The Soviets were

furious. They had not been adequately

represented at the reign signing and

considered it a western attempt to

minimize their role in Germany's defeat.

Stalin demanded a second formal

surrender ceremony in Berlin in Soviet

controlled territory with proper Soviet

participation.

The Western Allies agreed.

On May 8th, shortly before midnight,

Field Marshal Wilhelm Kitle signed a

second instrument of surrender at Soviet

headquarters in Carl's Horst, a suburb

of Berlin. This ceremony, not the RAM

signing, is the one that the Soviet

Union and later Russia commemorated as

victory day.

But the surrender documents, whether

signed at Rams or Berlin, did not

immediately stop the fighting or the

evacuations.

Donuts interpreted the terms as narrowly

as possible. He ordered German forces in

the east to continue resisting the

Soviets while enabling as many troops

and civilians as possible to reach

Western lines before the final deadline.

In the final hours before the surrender

took effect, German units on the eastern

front conducted a fighting retreat

westward. Naval vessels continued

pulling refugees from Baltic ports.

Soldiers threw down their weapons and

ran toward American and British

positions.

The German army group center trapped in

Czechoslovakia attempted a mass breakout

toward the Americans. The numbers

involved were staggering.

In the days immediately before and after

the surrender, hundreds of thousands of

German soldiers crossed from Soviet

controlled territory into Western Allied

custody. Many of these surreners were

technically violations of the surrender

terms, which required German forces to

surrender in place to whatever Allied

forces were closest. But Western

commanders on the ground, faced with

desperate men and refugees often

accepted them anyway. Not everyone

escaped. Approximately 3 million German

soldiers were captured by the Soviets,

and many of them would spend years in

Soviet labor camps. Hundreds of

thousands would never return home. The

humanitarian catastrophe that Donuts had

feared became reality for millions of

Germans. Yet his strategy had also

undeniably saved lives. The evacuation

operations, the delayed surrenders, and

the fighting retreat from the east

allowed several million Germans to reach

Western custody instead of Soviet

captivity.

The exact numbers are debated by

historians, but no serious scholar

denies that Donuts's orders during those

final weeks made a substantial

difference in how many people survived

the war's end.

After the surrender, Donuts and his

government entered a strange twilight

existence. The Flynnburgg government, as

it became known, continued to operate

from the Naval Academy at Murwick near

the Danish border for another two weeks.

This seems bizarre in retrospect.

Germany had surrendered unconditionally.

The war was over.

Yet the Allies allowed Donuts'

administration to continue functioning.

The reasons were practical rather than

political. The Allied powers needed some

mechanism for communicating with the

remnants of the German military and

civil administration.

Orders needed to be transmitted to

German units that were still in the

field. Prisoners of war needed to be

processed. The machinery of occupation

was not yet ready to assume all

governmental functions. Donuts's

government provided a useful

intermediary.

During these two weeks, Donuts continued

issuing orders, though his authority was

now entirely dependent on Allied

tolerance.

He worked to ensure the orderly

demobilization of German forces and

their surrender to the appropriate

Allied commands. He attempted to

maintain civil order in areas still

under nominal German control. He

communicated with German commanders to

prevent any unauthorized resistance that

might provoke Allied retaliation against

the civilian population.

Donuts also made one decision during

this period that would prove

controversial among historians.

He kept the Reich government formally in

existence and refused to officially

dissolve the Nazi party. His reasoning

was that only a functioning German

government could negotiate with the

Allies and advocate for German

interests. Dissolving the government

would leave Germans entirely without

representation.

This reasoning ignored the reality that

unconditional surrender meant exactly

what it said. The Allies had no

intention of negotiating with any German

government, and Donuts's continued

existence as nominal head of state gave

him no actual bargaining power. His

decision to maintain governmental forms

was either naive or an attempt to

preserve some shred of legitimacy that

might be useful later. The Allies grew

increasingly uncomfortable with the

Flynnburg arrangement. The Soviets

protested that allowing a German

government to function, even in this

limited capacity, violated the terms of

unconditional surrender.

The Western Allies began to agree.

Press coverage of the Flynnburg

government was embarrassing with

reporters noting the absurdity of Nazi

ministers still holding office while

Allied soldiers patrolled German

streets. On May 23rd, the Allies decided

to end the charade.

Acting on behalf of the Supreme Allied

commander, a British team arrested

Donuts Yodel Schwarren vonic and other

members of the Flynnburg government. The

arrest took place aboard the passenger

ship Patria, which had been serving as

the government's floating headquarters.

Dunit reportedly remained calm and

dignified throughout the process,

requesting only that he be allowed to

pack a bag before being taken into

custody. The manner of the arrest itself

contained a small irony. The British

officer in charge, Brigadier Non Church,

read out a prepared statement declaring

that the acting German government was

dissolved, that the individuals present

were prisoners, and that they would be

held accountable for their actions.

Donuts listened impassively. He had

spent 23 days trying to manage an

impossible situation, and now that

management was no longer his

responsibility. With Donuts's arrest,

the German state effectively ceased to

exist. The Allied powers assumed supreme

authority over Germany through the

Declaration of Berlin on June 5th,

establishing the Allied Control Council

as the governing body for occupied

Germany. There would be no German

government again until the establishment

of the Federal Republic of Germany and

the German Democratic Republic in 1949.

But Donuts's story was not over. He was

held as a prisoner and eventually became

one of the defendants at the

International Military Tribunal at

Nuremberg.

The charges against him focused

primarily on his conduct of submarine

warfare, particularly the controversial

orders regarding the rescue of survivors

from torpedoed ships.

The most damaging evidence against

Dunuts was the so-called Laconia Order

of September 1942,

which prohibited Yubot commanders from

attempting to rescue survivors of ships

they had sunk. This order had been

issued after the Laconia incident when a

Yubot attempting to rescue survivors was

attacked by Allied aircraft, endangering

the submarine and the survivors alike.

Donuts argued that the order was a

legitimate military response to

impossible circumstances.

The Nuremberg Tribunal convicted Donuts

of war crimes and crimes against peace,

but notably did not convict him of

crimes against humanity.

His sentence of 10 years imprisonment

was the lightest given to any major

defendant who was convicted. Part of the

reason for this relatively lenient

treatment was testimony from American

Admiral Chester Nimttz, who acknowledged

that the United States had conducted

unrestricted submarine warfare against

Japan using similar methods to those

employed by German yubot.

Donut served his full sentence at

Spandow prison in Berlin, being released

on October 1st, 1956.

He spent his remaining years in a small

village in northern Germany, writing his

memoirs and occasionally giving

interviews. He never expressed remorse

for his service to the Nazi regime,

though he distanced himself from its

ideological aspects, insisting that he

had been a professional military officer

carrying out his duties. He died on

December 24th, 1980 at the age of 89.

His funeral was attended by hundreds of

former Yubot veterans and became a

source of controversy when some

attendees wore old military decorations

and gave traditional naval honors.

The German government had not authorized

any official military participation in

the ceremony.

What should we make of Donuts's 23 days

as Germany's leader? The question

resists easy answers. On one hand, his

actions during this period were focused

on a genuinely humanitarian objective.

He prioritized saving lives over

continuing a hopeless war for

ideological reasons. His orders enabled

millions of people to escape

circumstances that would have meant

death or decades of suffering. He

negotiated the surrender of German

forces in a manner that minimized

additional bloodshed.

On the other hand, Donuts was a willing

and capable servant of a criminal

regime. His yubot campaigns had killed

tens of thousands of Allied sailors and

merchant mariners. He had

enthusiastically supported Hitler and

praised the Nazi system in speeches and

orders throughout the war. His

humanitarian actions at the end cannot

be separated from his role in enabling

the regime that created the catastrophe

in the first place. The Western allies

who allowed his government to function

for 2 weeks after the surrender were

making a practical calculation, not a

moral endorsement. They needed someone

to transmit orders to German forces and

donuts was available.

Once that practical need ended, so did

their tolerance for his government.

Perhaps the most honest assessment is

that Donuts was neither a hero nor a

monster in those final 23 days, but a

military professional managing an

inherited catastrophe with the tools and

perspectives he possessed. His

priorities were consistent with his

background. He had spent his career

responsible for the men under his

command and he extended that sense of

responsibility to the German military

and civilian population as a whole. What

he could not do was step outside the

framework that had shaped him and

recognize the full moral dimensions of

what had happened. The 23 days of the

donuts government are worth remembering

because they illuminate how wars

actually end. not with neat conclusions,

but with desperate improvisations,

humanitarian emergencies, and painful

compromises.

The formal surreners at Rams and Berlin

were political and ceremonial

necessities.

The actual ending was messier. Millions

of people in motion, commanders making

independent decisions, and a nominal

head of state whose power depended

entirely on others willingness to

recognize it.

Donuts issued orders that were obeyed

because enough people in the chaos found

obedience useful. He negotiated with

enemies who tolerated his existence

because it served their purposes. He

managed a government that governed

almost nothing while claiming authority

over everything. And then he was

arrested, tried, imprisoned, and

eventually forgotten by most of the

world. His 23 days remind us that

history's turning points are often

occupied by figures who are neither

entirely in control nor entirely

helpless. Donuts could not prevent

Germany's defeat or the suffering that

followed. But within the narrow space

available to him, his choices mattered.

The evacuation ships that continued

sailing, the surrenders that brought

soldiers to Western custody, the orders

that prevented final stand resistance in

hopeless positions, these decisions

affected individual human lives in ways

that no grand strategy could have

achieved.

Whether those decisions redeem anything

about his earlier service, or whether

they are simply the final acts of a man

who had enabled catastrophe trying to

limit its consequences, is a question

that each viewer must answer for

themselves.

History provides the evidence.

The moral verdict remains open.

What is certain is that for 23 days in

May 1945,

Carl Donuts held a title that had

belonged to Adolf Hitler, commanded

forces that were surrendering across a

continent, and made decisions that

shaped the final chapter of the most

destructive war in human history. His

orders during those days saved lives.

His earlier orders had helped take them.

Both realities coexist in the historical

record. The Flynnburg government ended

quietly with a British brigadier reading

a statement aboard a passenger ship. The

Third Reich, which had promised to last

a thousand years, had survived its

founder by exactly 23 days. And the

naval officer, who had led it through

those final days, went to prison, then

to obscurity, leaving behind a legacy

that defies simple judgment.

That is what Donuts ordered in his 23

days as furer. Not the continuation of

Nazi ideology, but the management of its

collapse. Not victory, but the salvage

of what could be saved from total

defeat. Not glory, but survival. In the

end, perhaps that is the most telling

detail about those 23 days.

The final leader of Nazi Germany spent

his tenure not trying to win or even to

resist, but simply trying to ensure that

as many of his people as possible would

live to see what came after.

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