In human history, there are many people who have taken the wrong position buried by history, no matter how much credit he has done, it will be the same ending. And Marshal Carl Dönitz is the one buried by history. He once made a decision that saved 2 million German civilians and 300,000 German soldiers, and saved Germany from destruction.
Born in 1981 on the outskirts of Berlin, Dönitz was a recognized military prodigy who made a name for himself in World War II and terrified the Allies. During World War I, he was captured as a submarine commander during an attack on a British merchant ship, and during his days as a prisoner of war, he carefully pondered the future naval battles, so he developed the famous "wolf pack tactics". At the beginning of World War II, he rejected The admiral Raeder's proposal and abandoned the construction of large surface ships, allowing German submarines to play their best.
After Hitler went to war with the United States, Dönitz directly extended his clutches to the East Coast of the United States, and due to the lack of anti-submarine technology, German submarines brought immeasurable losses to American surface ships. Of course, these were just the tip of the iceberg of his record, and when Germany was about to face total destruction, Hitler made a crazy decision to let the Germans die to the last man.
After the fall of East Prussia, Hitler did not care about their lives, and fierce street battles with the Allies continued to be fought in German cities. Hitler did not let the citizens leave, equipped them with weapons, formed a stormtrooper to rush forward, and sent whoever ran to the gallows, and the Germans were attacked like never before, but all this changed with Dönitz's presidency.
Although Dönitz is president in name, he has the power of the presidency. Because he was appointed president of Germany at that time, Goebbels was made chancellor, but after Hitler committed suicide, Goebbels followed closely behind, so in principle Dönitz monopolized power.
Immediately after taking office, he proposed a unilateral peace with the Allies on the Western Front, although he was rejected. However, this decision led to a ceasefire in most of the Western Front, and the Allies also changed their attitude towards the German people, no longer bombing systematically, and began to protect the occupied areas and the lives and property of the Germans.
Then Dönitz used all his navy at once to rescue East Prussian refugees, and he gathered the vast majority of the army to resist the Soviet offensive, hundreds of thousands of civilians fled the Eastern Front every day, and more than 2 million civilians left East Prussia, and the vast majority of them were women and children. It is hard to imagine how terrible the scene would have been if they had been stopped by the Soviets, and all this was consuming the last strength of the German military.
At that time, the United States did not agree to Dönitz's unilateral surrender and refused to accept refugees from the Eastern Front. So if there is a full surrender, the German army will not be able to protect the refugees on the Eastern Front, and he thought of a good way, that is, immediate truce, full surrender. But it took two days to inform the soldiers on all fronts, the Americans agreed, and began to receive refugees, and in 48 hours, Germany exploded with amazing cohesion and frenzied efforts to save the refugees in the east.
The United States also understood Dönitz's operations, took the initiative to distribute the American Star-Spangled Banner to the refugees to prevent Soviet bombers from bombing the fleeing refugees, in just 48 hours, three or four million people fled the Eastern Front, this is only a rough count, after the fact, not only saved the civilians, but also gave up the death to the end, which allowed Germany to avoid complete destruction. But because Dönitz served the Nazis, his position was wrong, dooming the world to not recognize him.
It is his duty and mission that Dönitz is still cleaning up the mess left by Hitler so that Germany will not perish. From the perspective of German history, he is a hero of national salvation, and from the perspective of the world, he is the president of a defeated country, and he has merit with one country and is guilty of the world.