Götterdämmerung Averted: Winston Churchill, Flensburg and the Unthinkable

ABSTRACT

This article explores the anti-Soviet undertakings of Winston Churchill and the Flensburg Reich government during the spring of 1945. It contends that British and German strategic goals closely aligned as the Second World War in Europe ended. These objectives were to halt Soviet expansion westwards and to prepare for a potential new military confrontation with the USSR. It links British contingency planning to attack the Soviet Union (Operation Unthinkable) directly to Churchill’s attempts to prolong the existence of the Flensburg government after V-E Day. The article argues that Churchill sought to use the remnants of the Nazi leadership as an anti-communist tool against the Soviet Union. It also presents the case that Reich President Karl Doenitz pursued a similar arrangement. Finally, the article asserts if Churchill had been able to secure American support, then an armed conflict between the western allies, backed by the Nazi government, and the Soviet Union was plausible.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful and indebted to Professor Richard Toye and Dr Ryan McLean for the insightful comments and the constructive feedback, which they provided for this article. Also, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, radio broadcast, May 2, 1945, R62/10, German Federal Archives (henceforth BArch).

^2. Winston Churchill to Harry Truman, May 12, 1945, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States (henceforth OFH) https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments.

^3. Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 40; Off the Record: the Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, ed. Robert Ferrell (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 57.

^4. Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, file notes, May 15, 1945, FO 1093/191, The National Archives in Kew (henceforth TNA).

^5. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, April 12, 1919, 11; Western Mail, 12 April 1919, 5.

^6. John Charmley, Churchill: End of Glory (New York: Harcourt, 1993), 375.

^7. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Young Statesman, 1901–1914 (New York: Houghton, 1967), 274.

^8. Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 178.

^9. FO minute by Frank Roberts, Oct 4, 1944, FO 371/39414, TNA.

^10. Anthony Eden to Orme Sargent, Oct 12, 1944, FO 371/39414.

^11. Quoted in Anna Cienciala, “Great Britain and Poland Before and After Yalta (1943–1945): a Reassessment,” Polish Review 40, no. 3 (1995), 281–313, at 283.

^12. John Colville, The Fringes of Power Downing Street Diaries 1939–1945 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985), 566.

^13. Harold Macmillan, War Diaries: Mediterranean 1943–45 (London: Macmillan, 1984), 611–12.

^14. Winston Churchill to Franklin Roosevelt, April 5, 1945, OFH.

^15. Dwight Eisenhower to British Chiefs of Staff, April 11, 1945, FO 1093/191.

^16. COS (45) 92, April 9, 1945, FO 1093/191.

^17. Churchill to Harry Truman, April 18, 1945, OFH.

^18. Elie Abel and W. Averell Harriman, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 450–1.

^19. Harry S. Truman, 1945: Year of Decision (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1955.), 271–2.

^20. George Patton, War As I Knew It (New York: Houghton, 1947), 654.

^21. Churchill to Truman, April 20, 1945, FO 1093/192.

^22. Truman, Year of Decision, 273–4.

^23. Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 310.

^24. Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History 1929–1969 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1973), 216.

^25. Richard Raack, Stalin’s Drive to the West 1938–1945: the Origins of the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 116–7.

^26. Ultra-intercept, “Alfred Jodl to High Command Officers Only,” April 25, 1945, HW 1/3728, TNA.

^27. Heinrich Schwendermann, “The Program of the Dönitz Government and the Beginning of a Legend,” in Jörg Hillmann, John Zimmermann End of the war in Germany in 1945 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2002), 9–35; Michael Jones, After Hitler (London: John Murray, 2015), 189–202; Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: the Final Collapse of the Third Reich (New York: Liveright, 2021), 377–81.

^28. Barry Turner, Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich (London: ‎Icon Books, 2015).

^29. Peter Padfield, Dönitz: the Last Führer (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

^30. Jörg Hillmann, “The Reich Government in Flensburg,” in End of war in Germany, 92.

^31. Leon Goldensohn, The Nuremberg Interviews (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 69, 75.

^32. Doenitz Broadcast, May 1, 1945, R62/11, BArch.

^33. Walter Ludde-Neurath, Unconditional Surrender: a Memoir of the Last Days of the Third Reich and the Doenitz Administration (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 120.

^34. Macmillan, War Diaries, 750.

^35. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London: Orion, 1970), 488.

^36. Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: the End of the Myth (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1983), 133.

^37. Karl Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (London: Cassell, 1959), 446.

^38. Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk broadcast, 2 May 1945, R62/10, BArch.

^39. John Toland, The Last 100 days: the Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe (New York: Random House, 1966), 747–8.

^40. Gary Boegel, Boys of the Clouds: an Oral History of 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion (Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 2005), 363–4.

^41. Gottlob Herbert Bidermann, In Deadly Combat: a German Soldier’s Memoir of the Eastern Front (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 172.

^42. Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery (London: Harper Collins, 1958), 332.

^43. James Cramer, oral history interview, 8 Aug. 2001, Imperial War Museum Archives, no. 21877, reel 6.

^44. Kenneth Strong, Intelligence at the Top (London: Cassell, 1968), 202–3.

^45. Dwight Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 426.

^46. Memoirs Montgomery, 372; Han Woltersdorf, Gods of War: Memoir of a German Solider, (Novato, CA.: Presidio, 1990), 121.

^47. Joachim Schultz-Naumann, The War Diary of the German Armed Forces High Command from April to May 1945 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991), 72.

^48. Doenitz, Memoirs, 465.

^49. The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960), 395.

^50. JIC (45) 148 (0), “Russian Strength on July 1, 1945,” May 8, 1945, CAB 81/128, TNA.

^51. Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, ed. David Dilks (London: Cassell, 1971), 739.

^52. The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. Mary Soames (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 530.

^53. Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (London: Cassell & Co., 1953), 495.

^54. Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, eds. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 693.

^55. Operation Unthinkable, final report by Joint Planning Staff, May 22, 1945, CAB 120/691.

^56. Churchill to Eden, May 11, 1945.

^57. Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 1939–1965, ed. Kenneth Young (London: Macmillan, 1973), 433–4.

^58. Quoted in Jonathan Walker, Operation Unthinkable: the Third World War (Cheltenham: History Press, 2013), 48.

^59. M19/MS/BM/173/3, signed Lieutenant Colonel D. Nelson, May 12, 1945, FO 371/46732.

^60. Geoffrey Harrison to Christopher Warner, May 20, 1945, FO 371/46732.

^61. Diaries Lockhart, 434.

^62. Earl of Halifax to Foreign Office, May 14, 1945, FO 371/46913.

^63. Operation Unthinkable, final report by Joint Planning Staff, May 22, 1945, CAB 120/691.

^64. Ludde-Neurath, Unconditional Surrender, 204, 229–30.

^65. Quoted in Toland, Last 100 Days, 660.

^66. Sargent to Churchill, May 2, 1945, FO 954/10B/473.

^67. Sargent to Churchill, May 12, 1945, FO 954/10B/502.

^68. Marlis Steinert, Capitulation 1945: The Story of the Dönitz Regime (London: Constable, 1969), 190.

^69. Marlis Steinert, “The Allied Decision to Arrest the Dönitz Government,” The Historical Journal 31, no. 3 (1988), 651–663, at 665.

^70. Bernard Montgomery to Churchill, May 6, 1945, CHAR 20/218/2, Churchill Archives Centre.

^71. Churchill to Sargent, May 14, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^72. Dispatch from Edward Ward, May 14, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^73. Sargent to Brendan Bracken, May 16, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^74. AC Bouquet to Churchill, May 16, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^75. New York Times, May 15, 1945, 5.

^76. Daily News, May 15, 1945, 1.

^77. Victor Montagu to Richard Law, May 17, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^78. Steinert, ‘Allied Decision’, 656.

^79. Schultz-Naumann, War Diary, 106–7.

^80. Ludde-Neurath, Unconditional Surrender, 213, 218.

^81. Schultz-Naumann, War Diary, 103, 196–7.

^82. New York Times, May 16, 1945, 1.

^83. The Times, May 17, 1945, 4.

^84. Robert Murphy to Edward Stettinius Jr., May 22, 1945, OFH.

^85. Cavendish-Bentinck to Alexander Cadogan, April 8, 1945, FO 1093/191.

^86. Bohlen, Witness to History, 222.

^87. Harry C. Butcher, Three Years with Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 711.

^88. Murphy, Among Warriors, 312.

^89. Steinert, Capitulation 1945, 260.

^90. Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990), 33

^91. George Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1982), 51.

^92. John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 208.

^93. Ball, Past Has Another Pattern, 54.

^94. Summary of Naval Messages, No. 1416, May 20, 1945, HW 1/3773, TNA.

^95. Dwight Eisenhower to British Chiefs of Staff, May 18, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^96. William Harrison to William Strang. May 20,1945, FO 371/46914.

^97. Churchill to Eden, May 19, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^98. Colville, Downing Street Diaries, 600.

^99. V.G. Lawford to A. Bevir, May 19, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^100. Christopher Steel to Sargent, May 19, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^101. Archibald Clark Kerr to Foreign Office, May 22, 1945, FO 371/46914.

^102. Stettinius Jr. to Jefferson Caffery, May 22, 1945, OFH.

^103. Caffery to Stettinius Jr., May 22, 1945, OFH.

^104. Hansard, House of Commons debates, vol. 535 cc. 1574, Dec 14, 1954.

^105. Steinert, “Allied Decision,” 660.

^106. R.W.B. Izzard, “Interrogation of Leading German Personalities,” Aug 9, 1945, GBR/0014/MISC 31, Churchill Archives Centre.

^107. Sargent to Frederick Bovenschen, June 11, 1945, FO 371/46732.

^108. Alansbrooke, War Diaries, 694–5.

^109. Churchill to Hastings Ismay, May 27, 1945, Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 648.

^110. Abel and Harriman, Special Envoy, 478.

^111. Quoted in Michael Dobbs, Six Months: From World War to Cold War (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 449.

^112. Anthony Eden, The Reckoning (London: Cassell, 1965), 537.

^113. Truman to Churchill, June 11, 1945, OFH.

^114. Churchill to Truman, June 14, 1945, OFH.

^115. JIC (45) 164 (0) Political Intelligence Report, May 17, 1945 CAB 81/129.

^116. Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers 1940–1945 (New York, 1972), 212.

^117. Reinhard Gehlen, The Service (London, 1972), 120–22.

^118. Two excellent examples of such scholarship are: Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988); David Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain Became A Refuge For Nazi War Criminals (London, 2001).

^119. Albert Speer, Spandau: the Secret Diaries (London, 1975), 219, 223.

^120. Memoirs Montgomery, 380.

^121. Memoirs Ismay, 392.

^122. Hastings Ismay to Churchill, June 8, 1945, CAB 120–691.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Gerth

Matthew Gerth is an Associate Professor in the School of Law and Political Sciences at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) in Lebanon. He is a political and intelligence historian, whose research focuses on Atlantic world anti-communism during the Cold War. He has recently published articles in this field with Australian Journal of Politics and History, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, and International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. His new book, Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War: A Very British Witch Hunt (April 2023) is now available from the University of London Press and the University of Chicago Press. The author can be contacted at [email protected]