You're Hitler, March 1945

I can’t help but think of Bart making crank calls to the Southern Hemisphere verifying the Coriolis Effect after Lisa informs him about it. At one point he calls a Mercedes car phone in Buenos Aires to have an elderly man speaking German (with toothbrush mustache) fumbling around with his cane and car keys wind up missing the call.

Classic Simpsons moment right there, and that episode as a whole (Bart vs. Australia).

I wouldn’t do any of those - I would leave the bunker with an mp44 on each hip and go down fighting in a hail of gunfire.

Charge those filthy Reds, sword in hand and go down within sight of the enemy’s guns, aiming for the Centre. Just like I would have done at Gettysburg, had I been a Confederate Brigadier.

Hmm…interesting question.  It assumes for the sake of argument that Hitler might have been willing to recognize in March 1945 that the end was near, a point which in itself could generate a lot of debate.  On the one hand, his behaviour right up until the last few days of his life suggests that he was deluding himself that victory could still be achieved as late as April 1945.  On the other hand, John Keegan has argued that Hitler was essentially rational until the end, and that he must have known since the fall of Stalingrad in February 1943 that the war was lost.  Similarly, the director of the movie Downfall has suggested that Hitler’s rants in the Fuhrerbunker, in which he demanded that various (at this point largely non-existent) armies launch war-winning attacks against the Red Army, were simply a case of cynical manipulation of his underlings rather than evidence of self-delusion.

Anyway, right off the bat, I’d draw a distinction between what options Hitler might realistically have considered and what I might have done if I’d been in his place.  Hitler’s options from his perspective might have gone like this:

“Stay in the Reich Chancellery bunker and command the Battle of Berlin” is more or less what he did – though “command the Battle of Berlin” is a job that, in practical terms, was actually done by generals like Heinrici more than by Hitler – so that’s obviously a realistic option and one that fits his character.

“Take an U-Boat to South America” would have presented some logistical problems during the Battle of Berlin, since Hitler would have needed to leave Berlin and get to the coast, but in March 1945 this would not have posed any difficulties.  The choice of a port of embarcation would have needed to be considered.  France was in Allied hands at that point, so to get to the open sea without having to take the long and narrow route through the Danish Straights and the Kattegat, Hitler would have had to board the sub in northwest Germany – probably Wilhelmshaven or Bremen or Hamburg.  I can’t recall if those cities were already in Allied hands at that point.  The big problem is that getting from there to South America would require a long-range Type IX submarine, which were a minority in the German fleet; the more numerous Type VIIs probably didn’t have the range to get all the way to South America without at-sea refuelling.  An added problem is that the Atlantic was a hazardous place for U-boats in 1945, since the Allies by then had good air cover for their convoys.  On the other hand, a U-boat carrying Hitler into exile would have done its best to avoid the convoy lanes, so that would have increased its chances of crossing the Atlantic to South America.  The next big problem, however, becomes “where in South America?”  It’s not as if any old country would do.  Brazil, which occupies a large portion of South America’s northeast corner and east coast , was an Allied nation.  Argentina had Axis sympathies, but it’s much further away.  I think Paraguay was also Axis-leaning, but it’s even harder to reach by submarine: it’s completely landlocked.

“Risk taking a U-boat to Japan” is out of the question because, to my knowledge, no German U-boat had the range to sail halfway around the world without refuelling.  Japan did have large, long-range subs which could (and in a few cases did) sail from Japan to Germany, but it’s pretty improbable that Hitler could have arranged with Japan for him to escape in this manner.  The organizational problems would have been large, and the Allies would probably have found out about it by monitoring and decoding the required radio traffic.  Besides, Germano-Japanese cooperation in WWII was nothing to write home about.  Furthermore, I can’t picture Hitler hiding out in Japan, in a country whose language and culture were utterly alien to him, among “Asiatic” people he regarded as racial inferiors.  It also begs the question of why he would have bothered to hide in a country that was itself close to military collapse under attack from the Allies, since this wouldn’t have bought him much time.

By the way, Hitler was hardly the sailor type.  Spending weeks aboard a WWII sub would be tough on most people; in his case, the prospect would have been a nightmare.

“Fly to Norway to continue the fight” would have been practical from a flying point of view but not from a combat point of view.  Germany’s military / industrial infrastructure (what was left of it in 1945) was in Germany, not Norway.

“Travel to your home in the Alps” is, I believe, what he wanted Eva Braun to do.  From Hitler’s point of view, however, Berchtesgaden would simply have been a comfortable place to wait for the Allies to capture him – a scenario which could hardly have appealed to him.

The “shave your mustache and hide among the chaos of Germany 1945” option is precisely what Heinrich Himmler did.  He was soon captured and identified by the Allies, at which point he committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule.  Had Hitler tried the same thing, I expect that the outcome would have been similar.

“Surrender to the West” would have been a more palatable option than “surrender to the Red Army” (which even Hitler at his most irrational would never have been foolish enough to do), but not by much.  The best he could have expected from surrendering to the West was to be tried and executed as a war criminal, assuming that he didn’t simply get shot on sight by a G.I. who’d seen Frank Capra’s film “Prelude to War”, which at one point shows still pictures of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito while the narrator says, “If you ever see them, don’t hesitate.”  As for surrendering to the Russians…well, as I recall, one of the lines of dialogue which Alec Guiness has in the film in which he portrays Hitler addresses the problems with doing so: “They want to parade me naked through the streets of Moscow!”  Frankly, I think that Stalin would have come up with much more unpleasant retribution ideas than that one.

One option which isn’t on the list is one that I might have taken if I’d been in Hitler’s place.  There were vague plans in 1945 to set up a Nazi partisan organization, code-named Werwolf, that would keep fighting after Germany had been overrun.  The plan was more myth than anything else, but if there had been actual substance to it I might have allowed myself to be persuaded to go underground with this group and maintain a kind of “Nazi government in internal exile”.  I doubt, however, that it would have been able to sustain itself for long, with Germany completely occupied by the Allies.

The National Redoubt if planned well ahead of time with underground factories, could have extended the War in Europe into 1946.  Of course, it was a propaganda ploy to divert American forces South and Goebbels last success in the Third Reich.

First I cannot stand Hitler. However AB always seems to start conversations to entertaining to pass up. So… as Hitler I would go out in a blaze of glory with my remaining devotees, with exception of sending the Hitler Youth home so they might live. There’s no sense in letting them die so young for a lost cause.

@ABWorsham:

If I remember correctly Himmler would have escaped the check point he was discovered at had he not had an over abundant amount of paperwork which raised suspicion.

Didn’t know that. Thanks Worsham. Thank God for his obsessive security and paranoia then.

A couple of extra thoughts on this subject:

Hitler was pretty much a physical wreck by 1945.  John Keegan’s book The Mask of Command gives a vivid portrait of his physical decay after Stalingrad and later after the 1944 attempt on his life, with one observer commenting that in six months he aged about ten years.  He had Parkinson’s disease, he was under enormous stress, he was sleeping badly, and he was being given all kinds of bizarre medications by his quack doctor, Thedor Morrell.  By the end of his life, he apparently couldn’t walk very far without having to stop to take a rest.  So any escape option involving physical exertion (let alone combat) would have been hard to manage.

Folks interested in the concept of Hitler escaping from Berlin in April 1945 may want to read the following novels: The Trial of Adolf Hitler, by Philippe Van Rjndt, and The Berkut, by Joseph Heywood.  In the first book, Hitler tries to commit suicide in the manner which he apparently did actually use (a combination of poison and a self-inflicted pistol wound) but he survives nonetheless (the author invokes as a parallel Rasputin’s initial survival of a multi-method assassination attempt) and decides that fate wants him to live after all – so he and and SS guard devise an on-the-spot escape plan.  He ends up being discovered and tried before the United Nations many years later.  In the second book, Hitler escapes as part of a carefully-arranged secret plan rather than an impromptu one and goes into hiding, with a crack team of Soviet security personnel hot on his trail under personal orders from Stalin to find him and bring him back alive – which they ultimately do.

@toblerone77:

First I cannot stand Hitler. However AB always seems to start conversations to entertaining to pass up. So… as Hitler I would go out in a blaze of glory with my remaining devotees, with exception of sending the Hitler Youth home so they might live. There’s no sense in letting them die so young for a lost cause.

Are you kidding?

You fool! You have to Send the children in first wave! :P

(I hope my sarcasm is appreciated)

LOL Garg. That’s why you are A&A.org’s Villain!

yea charge the reds and save the kids

How else to perpetuate you’re twisted sh…

@Gargantua:

@toblerone77:

First I cannot stand Hitler. However AB always seems to start conversations to entertaining to pass up. So… as Hitler I would go out in a blaze of glory with my remaining devotees, with exception of sending the Hitler Youth home so they might live. There’s no sense in letting them die so young for a lost cause.

Are you kidding?

You fool! You have to Send the children in first wave! :P

(I hope my sarcasm is appreciated)

I actually listened to a podcast about a guy who was drafted at 15 in 1945. The only reasons he survived was he got severely sick during boot camp in Norway and was delayed from being sent to Berlin. When he did get assigned to a different front, his commanding officer instructed him and his comrades to go home as quickly as they could. His Colonel was a 70 year old draftee who probably lost his life for sending the boys home.

He later moved to the US and started a family business which his son runs today.

The podcast is The History of WWII Podcast Hosted by Ray Harris Jr.

Would Spain have been open to taking him in in secret? Or would that be too close in Europe?

I don’t know what Francos opinion of Hitler was by the end of the war but it may have been worth a shot.

@Quintus:

Would Spain have been open to taking him in in secret? Or would that be too close in Europe?
I don’t know what Francos opinion of Hitler was by the end of the war but it may have been worth a shot.

I don’t know what Franco’s opinion of Hitler was in 1945, but Hitler’s opinion of Franco took a very negative turn in October 1940 when the two men met to discuss, among other things, Hitler’s proposal for Spain to facilitate a German plan to seize Gibraltar (Operation Felix) and possibly even to join the war.  Franco presented Hitler with such a long list of conditions that Hitler dropped the proposal in disgust, later stating that “I would rather have four of my own teeth pulled out than go through another meeting with that man again.” Which is saying a great deal, considering that whenever Hitler had dental surgery done, he would allegedly insist that his dentist, Dr. Blaschke, perform the procedures with the strictest possible minimum of anaesthetic.

@Quintus:

Would Spain have been open to taking him in in secret? Or would that be too close in Europe?

I don’t know what Francos opinion of Hitler was by the end of the war but it may have been worth a shot.

Since Franco did not want to join Hitler in 1940, when everybody believed that Germany would win the war, then why should Franco help Hitler in 1945 when Germany had lost the war ? It is rational to believe that the Allies would have put a lot of pressure on Franco to make him deliver Hitler to them. Spain was poor and depended on international trade. I don’t think Franco was eager to starve just to protect Hitler