Draft:Karl Dönitz



Karl Dönitz was a German Navy Grand Admiral and, following Adolf Hitler's suicide, the 4th President of Germany during the final days of Nazi Germany. He is infamous for developing the "wolfpack" tactic which would sink so many allied ships in WWII.

Second World War
At the start of the War, Dönitz was in charge of the German U-Boats. He would later be promoted to Grand Admiral and made Supreme Commander of the entire Navy. Prior to that he was served on a submarine in WWI, getting captured by the British.

Dönitz was also involved in war crimes. On his request, U-Boat production was carried out by inmates on Concentration camps. Dönitz also issued orders to his sailors that prevented them from saving the crews of sunk allied ships.

Flensburg government
Shortly before he died, Hitler named his successors in his political will. Dönitz was to be his successor as President and Joseph Goebbels as Chancellor. The latter committed suicide a day into his tenure and was replaced by as "Leading Minister".

Dönitz set to work shutting down the Thousand Year Reich. He entered into negotiations with the Allies. Initially he proposed to surrender the German forces on the western front and continue fighting the Soviet Union in the East. Doing this allowed over 2 million German refugees to escape to the West. In the meantime Dönitz attempted to distance himself from more well-known war criminals such as Heinrich Himmler and Joachim von Ribbentrop, refusing to give them positions in his Cabinet.

Eventually on 7 May 1945, exactly seven days after Hitler's suicide, Dönitz agreed to unconditional surrender. The Flensburg government was permanently dissolved a few weeks later on 23 May.

Nuremberg trials
Dönitz got a surprisingly light sentence (ten years in Spandau), mostly because the allies made his unrestricted submarine warfare policy a major issue at trial only to remember they themselves did something very similar. On the other hand he was found guilty of "planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression" and "crimes against the laws of war." He remained showed no remorse or repentance for his role in WWII...but did try and downplay his commitment to the Nazis as a political outfit.