FOLLOWING MONTGOMERY’S great Rhine crossing in March, Eisenhower was conscious that his armies’ halt on the Elbe opened the possibility of a Soviet sweep across northern Germany and into Denmark. He urged Montgomery therefore to “push across the Elbe without delay, drive to the coast at Lubeck [sic] and seal off the Danish peninsula.”1 Eisenhower tried to tempt the famously cautious field marshal into action by offering to return Simpson’s Ninth Army to the Twenty-First Army Group.2 Trying to ensure that no good deed went unpunished, Montgomery used the offer as an opportunity to denounce both the Simpson transfer that Eisenhower was prepared to reverse and the supreme commander’s strategy generally.3 By his diplomatic standards, Eisenhower got tough, reminding Montgomery of the chain of command: “You must not lose sight of the fact that during the advance to Leipzig you have the role of protecting Bradley’s northern flank. It is not his role to protect your southern flank. My directive is quite clear on this point.”4

Montgomery, as ever when push came to shove, fell into line. He sent the I Canadian Corps north to the IJsselmeer and the North Sea, from which it was to cut both westward and eastward in order to liberate the Netherlands. The Canadians took Arnhem on April 14 and from there made their move northward. Fighting hard against the ubiquitous Generaloberst Blaskowitz, the I Canadian Corps pushed its way through one canal or river crossing after another, reaching the IJsselmeer on April 18.5 The Canadians blasted the poorly armed German defenders with flame-throwing tanks. The Germans defended fiercely but were wiped out; only thirty men survived.6

As the II Canadian Corps attacked eastward, the I Corps turned west, launching the final push to drive the Germans out of Holland. They fought until April 22, when Reichskommissar Arthur Seyß-Inquart threatened to flood the countryside if the Canadians pushed past the Grebbe Line, a centuries-old line of defence, which could leave huge swathes of land flooded. This threat might have been a bluff. Seyß-Inquart, in a doomed effort to avoid the hangman’s noose, had already worked with Speer to resist Hitler’s orders to open the dikes.7 The Canadians, in any case, stopped, and Seyß-Inquart lived up to his promise to allow some airdrops of food to the starving Dutch beginning on April 20. In late April, Blaskowitz also made contact with the deputy commander in chief of the First Canadian Army in order to relieve the food crisis in the Dutch fortresses.8 These mildly conciliatory moves had no effect on the military course of events: Seyß-Inquart refused surrender negotiations until the Third Reich collapsed.9

As the Canadians pushed into the Netherlands, Montgomery sent his Second Army from the Wesel bridgehead northwest toward the Elbe. The first major city it reached was Bremen, and the German garrison there put up stiff resistance. The city’s battle commander, Generalleutnant Fritz Becker, wanted to blow up all bridges leading into the city, including those supplying essential utilities. Playing it by the book, however, Becker sought Speer’s permission in Berlin, but the breakdown of communications prevented him from getting through.10 Johannes Schroers, head of the Bremen police, and Dr. Karl Bollmeyer, president of the local chamber of commerce, discussed the possibility of organizing a coup: they would shoot Becker and local Kreisleiter Max Schümann and then hand the city over to the British. The plan failed, however, when they could not persuade a working-class resister (and future head of IG Metall) to do the dirty work.11

The Gauleiter responsible for Bremen, Paul Wegener, asked the navy not to mine one area of the harbour, but otherwise he and Kreisleiter Schümann insisted on a final defence of the city.12 Becker, a cliché of a Prussian officer, launched it. Charges on the cities’ bridges went off, and they collapsed into the Weser.13 Montgomery’s men fought their way through the city and surrounded Becker and his men garrisoned in an air-raid shelter. Becker collapsed in indecision, and Oberst Ernst Müller, commander of Flak Group South, launched a minor mutiny by ordering a major to lead a surrender party out of the bunker with a white bed sheet and a British POW.14 It was April 27.

After Bremen, Montgomery pulled up to the Elbe, crossed it, and made a dash for Lübeck.15 That left Germany’s second-largest city, its largest port, and the largest commercial centre in northwestern Germany: Hamburg. Two years earlier, Sir Arthur Harris had promised that his July–August 1943 bombing campaign would “destroy” the city. He destroyed much of it, but by May 1945, the familiar silhouette of five churches still graced what was left of the cityscape. Perversely but predictably, the Nazis were to finish the job that Harris had started.

*

THE MAYOR AND GAULEITER of the wealthy, elegant, and aloof city of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, was a non-Hamburger with a long history of right-wing radicalism and anti-Semitism.16 Kaufmann joined the NSDAP in 1922 and received, very tellingly, membership number 95. Hitler rewarded him for his early faith and later work for the party with the appointment as Gauleiter of Hamburg in 1929.17 During his tenure, he concentrated an immense amount of power in his office. By early 1945, Kaufmann was Gauleiter, Reichsstatthalter, head of the Hamburg government (Landesregierung), head of the Greater Hamburg Administration (Staats- und Gemeindeverwaltung), and Reich Defence Commissioner for Wehrkreis X.18 Two characteristics in particular marked his rule of the Hanseatic city: cruelty and corruption.

When the National Socialists seized power in Hamburg in March 1933, Kaufmann unleashed a brutal wave of terror against his enemies: Social Democrats, Communist, Jews, and foreigners.19 As the concentration camps filled with his victims, Kaufmann complained that the treatment of political prisoners was too lax.20 For Hamburg’s Jews, Kaufmann organized what a local newspaper chillingly termed in 1939 a “solution to the Jewish question.”21 Following a September 1941 air raid, Kaufmann urged Hitler to arrange the deportation of Hamburg’s Jews to provide housing for the homeless. These actions may have inspired other Gauleiter.22

Kaufmann rewarded his friends with the same fervour with which he punished his enemies; his reign depended on a level of corruption and patronage that was “without parallel in the history of Hamburg.”23 Within two years, he had given city jobs to no fewer than ten thousand National Socialists, mostly embittered lower-middle-class failures seething with fury at their social and economic superiors—above all, of course, at Hamburg’s wealthy Jews residing in their attractive and spacious turn-of-the-century apartments.24 He created the “Hamburg 1937 Foundation,” over which he had sole control. The so-called foundation raised ten million reichsmarks through donations, compulsory contributions from local businesses, and, above all, stolen Jewish property. Kaufmann spent the funds on the NSDAP and, not surprisingly, himself.25 The level of corruption made most other Gauleiter appear by comparison to be paragons of moral and fiscal rectitude.

There is thus ample reason to view Kaufmann as an unreliable source. In his account, uncritically reproduced in the first, quasi-official postwar history of Hamburg’s capitulation, he portrayed himself as the saviour of the city.26 As he would have it, Kaufmann met Hitler, Bormann, Himmler, Keitel, Jodl, and Dönitz in the Reich Chancellery on April 3.27 When Hitler was informed of the hopelessness of the situation in northwest Germany, he reacted in character: Hamburg was to be a fortress and would be defended to the last, and none of the 680,000 women and children in the city would be evacuated.28 Artillery barrages, low-level bombing attacks, and house-to-house fighting were to be Hamburg’s fate.

Roused to fury by Hitler’s intransigence, Kaufmann then spent the next month heroically saving the city on the Elbe. “What was decisive for me,” Kaufmann wrote after the war, “was my duty to the city and its people entrusted to my care. In the second half of the war, I saw it as my most essential duty to extend to Hamburg and Hamburgers all the help that I could and, if possible, to protect them from the final, difficult sacrifices.”29 If not the good, Kaufmann was at least the sincerely repentant Nazi, a sort of local combination of Collins and Lapierre’s Dietrich von Choltitz and Albert Speer’s Albert Speer. It was an incredible story and, indeed, is only partially true. Kaufmann did play a role in Hamburg’s last days, but he exaggerated it, downplayed the role of other, more important actors, and generously predated his loss of faith in German victory.30

As for all German cities, Hitler’s plan for the end of the war was a tragedy in two acts. The first involved applying scorched earth in Hamburg. On March 22, Hitler ordered the destruction of Hamburg’s harbour.31 It was still largely intact despite the firestorm of July and August 1943—another indication, were one needed, of the ineffectiveness of Arthur Harris’s city-busting campaign. Under Hitler’s order, passed on by Feldmarschall Ernst Busch, head of German Command Northwest (OB Nordwest), all quays and docks were to be destroyed, all ships sunk, all bridges and cranes blown up.32 The sunken ships and newly laid mines would then block all entry to the harbour. Without the harbour, there is no Hamburg.

Kaufmann naturally claimed credit for preventing this destruction, but scorched earth was not in his jurisdiction to block. Under Speer’s very deliberate drafting of regulations, the decision on paralysis and destruction fell to the Armaments Commissioners (under Speer) and the Wehrmacht, not to the Gauleiter. Hamburg’s key figure in this regard was Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Hans Bütow, who received the March 22 order. Bütow responded by demanding 6,000 tons of explosives and an entire engineer regiment in order to do the job.33 He was going to get neither, and he knew it; the deliberately inflated demands bought him time. He then developed an institutional arrangement that scuttled the scorched-earth orders entirely: following negotiations with the city administration, Bütow was given full authority over the preparation of all measures aimed at paralyzing or destroying the harbour.34

The harbour was saved, but industry and bridges remained under threat. Speer and the army, not Kaufmann, worked to save them. In fact, Speer’s confidence in Kaufmann was in such short supply that he appealed directly to the newly appointed chief engineer under OB Northwest, Generalmajor Hubertus-Maria Ritter von Heigl.35 Trying to determine what sort of man Heigl was, Speer asked him what he had done with the scorched-earth orders while serving in East Prussia. Heigl, uncertain of the drift, replied that the scorched-earth order could not be implemented; the necessary munitions and explosives were just not available there.36 The formulation was a deliberately careful one: saying that an order could not be implemented was safer than flatly refusing to implement it. Speer and Heigl recognized their common cause, and Speer came up with one of his time-buying bureaucratic regulations. Army Group North would implement scorched-earth orders only when it did not affect things that were essential for life. (“wenn es sich nicht um lebensnotwendige Dinge handele”) and after both the party and the army had signalled agreement.37 Then, Heigl made a dash for Hamburg.

Without reference to Kaufmann, Heigl worked with Bütow to have the detonation charges removed from Hamburg’s bridges and to prevent any new ones from being added.38 Heigl personally supervised the work in one case, and he ordered the preservation of other road and rail bridges. He then met the city’s commander, Generalmajor Alwin Wolz. Wolz had been commander of the Third Flak Division stationed in Hamburg since May 1944. Before that, he had served in the African campaign, and then as commander of a brigade in Hannover.39 In March 1945, Kaufmann suggested him as battle commander for the city.40 OKW refused, as Wolz had no fighting experience on the eastern front and had also served the now disgraced Rommel.41 The fact that his wife was a wealthy German American and the daughter of New York merchants probably did not help either.42 Kaufmann nonetheless insisted, refusing to accept Berlin’s alternative, and Wolz assumed the post on April 1, 1945.43 Wolz readily agreed to leave the bridges over the Elbe River intact.44 Finally, Heigl drew up preservation orders for specific industries—power stations, food-processing plants, and so on—and had them distributed, sometimes with the enthusiastic help of local industrialists.45

Then came Hitler’s second act. With scorched earth more or less contained, the central issue became the defence of the city. On April 23, Feldmarschall Busch visited Hamburg to discuss the matter with Wolz. The commander spoke truth to power. Wolz told Busch that a defence of the city would have only one consequence: massive loss of civilian life before the inevitable surrender. Referring to a possible British tactical air raid, he said:

Wolz had hoped this dramatic stand would sway Busch. It did not. The field marshal smashed his hand against the table and ranted, “This is nothing but a cheap trick to shift responsibility. You have to arm yourself with a Panzerfaust and throw yourself into battle against the enemy’s tanks. If you fall in battle, then the honour is yours. Hamburg will be defended. That is my order!”47

Wolz retreated, shrugging his shoulders. “You’ll understand, Herr Feldmarschall, that as a soldier I feel I can state my view openly. [However,] Hamburg will be defended.” Wolz gave his chief of staff a wink.48

As a reward for good behaviour, to steel his courage, or perhaps both, Busch gave him a copy of Mein Kampf.49

*

A WEEK BEFORE BUSCH’S VISIT to the port city, Gauleiter Kaufmann made his own rather belated move to save Hamburg. On April 17, he got in touch with Waffen-SS Generalleutnant and police head Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr. Together, they visited Gauleiter Wegener (responsible for the Weser-Ems area of northern Germany, including Bremen). On that day, Kaufmann informed the Danish consul general in Hamburg that he was prepared to surrender and asked for help in contacting the British.50 The consul general pointed him toward two Swedish bankers and a German diplomat who were part of a larger group of civilians and consulate officials from Hamburg, Denmark, and Sweden seeking to block scorched earth and to prevent the defence of Hamburg and Denmark.51 They got in touch with a close contact of the bankers, Sir Victor Mallet, an official from the British diplomatic service posted in Stockholm. Getting the intention right but the actors wrong, Mallet wrote, “Kaufmann has now come around to [Feldmarschall] Busch’s view that the city must be surrendered unconditionally, but only after British troops have reached the Baltic coast.”52 The effort was only secondarily about Hamburg: they hoped to secure a surrender of northern Germany, Denmark, and Norway; keep fighting on the eastern front; and persuade the British to make a dash for the Baltic Sea east of Stettin, thus blocking the Soviets at the Oder.53

It was not the first Nazi effort to make contact with the Allies. Himmler had in fact been trying to position himself as an intermediary for months. From mid-March, he floated via the Swedish foreign minister the idea of using Jews as hostages, releasing some of them as a show of good faith.54 In April, Himmler asked the vice president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, to approach the Allies and to mediate on the SS leader’s behalf.55 Bernadotte agreed under two conditions: that Himmler launch a coup, making himself leader of Germany, and dissolve the National Socialist Party.56 Himmler made several more attempts leading right up to the end of April. One involved offering the release of the (greatly exaggerated) remaining Jews in camps; Himmler claimed that 150,000 were still in Auschwitz and 450,000 in Budapest.57 Another attempt involved an offer to Charles de Gaulle of a German alliance with France against the Anglo-Saxons intent on making France a vassal state (coming from a senior Nazi, this was particularly rich).58 None of these offers came to anything, and on April 29, Hitler learned of Himmler’s efforts, flew into a rage, and expelled Himmler from the party and all offices of state.59

Kaufmann’s comparable effort got no further. Although some Foreign Office officials and Churchill himself reiterated the importance of making a dash for the Baltic in order to cut off the Soviets should they make a surge toward Denmark, the British in the end dismissed the main players as unreliable and Kaufmann as of questionable influence.60 As Mallet was entirely wrong about Busch’s intentions, the call was a reasonable one. Moreover, selecting a senior SS figure and a Gauleiter to lead negotiations with the Allies did not constitute a high point of German diplomacy. The British most likely also took a dim view of the almost vanquished Germans dictating Allied military strategy. In the end, this did not matter: other men had assumed mastery of events in Hamburg. As Mallet reported in his last telegram on the topic, “Hamburg has received an order to surrender from a ‘Lyne.’ Busch does not know who Lyne is or which rank he holds, but he would probably be prepared to capitulate if necessary … Busch wants to know who Lyne is.”61

Major General Lewis Owen Lyne was, thanks in no small measure to the determination of a Captain Thomas Martin Lindsay serving under him, the saviour of Hamburg.

*

AS BRITISH TROOPS moved on Harburg, a southern district of Hamburg, an unusual factory came under artillery fire: one that doubled as a military hospital. Under Kaufmann’s orders, Dr. Hermann Burchard had agreed to transform the Phoenix Rubber Factory into a hospital and to accept wounded Volkssturm troops.62 As British troops approached and the factory/hospital started taking hits, Burchard had a large red cross mounted on the roof.63 The factory’s director, Albert Schäfer, objected on two grounds: the acceptance of Volkssturm soldiers as patients implied support for the defence of Harburg and, as the factory was working in effect for the war effort, the use of a red cross violated the Geneva Conventions.64 To placate Schäfer, Burchard agreed to send a delegation to British lines to explain the hospital and urge them to desist from artillery and air attacks.65

Schäfer leapt at the chance, for he saw within the request a larger possibility: the peaceful surrender of Hamburg.66 Burchard put the plan to the city’s commander, Wolz.67 He was pushing at an open door; Wolz agreed readily to the plan to approach the British.68 He designated Burchard as the military leader of the delegation and sent along Schäfer as the factory owner and local expert.69 Wolz also sent an interpreter, Leutnant Otto von Laun, who spoke imperfect but passable English.70 Wolz gave them no authorization to enter into any negotiations with the British, but he also made no effort to forbid it. Whether the delegation recognized it or not, this could only have meant one thing: Wolz hoped to make contact with the Allies.

On April 27, Burchard, Schäfer, and Laun drove to the front near Lürade, south of Hamburg.71 They got out of their vehicle, and Laun waved the large white flag that they had flown as they drove.72 As they approached an open field on foot, a blast of artillery fire shattered the silence—an SS unit bearing a white flag had passed through the night before, so the British were not taking any chances this time.73 Burchard shouted at them in English: “We are here to negotiate!” Several British soldiers burst from the bushes and surrounded them, as Laun furiously tried to explain in broken English that they were a delegation seeking to negotiate a surrender of the city.74 Eventually, Burchard convinced a skeptical officer of their intentions, and the British took them blindfolded to the battle headquarters of the First/Fifth Battalions, Queen’s Royal Regiment, Seventh Armoured Division.75

The negotiations, such as they were, went badly at first. Burchard and Laun had come armed, which hardly highlighted the pacific character of the visit, and Burchard gave the Hitler salute as he entered an office (and was immediately thrown out).76 Laun tried to save the situation but had limited initial success. The British were unimpressed by his plea regarding the wounded at Schäfer’s factory. If the Germans wanted to save the wounded, a major replied, they could move them elsewhere. Laun only convinced him to act when, showing him letters from British POWs, he told them that British soldiers were also present at the hospital.77

Laun, Burchard, and Schäfer were blindfolded and transported to a guesthouse on the Lüneburg Heath (Lüneburger Heide).78 Captain Thomas Martin Lindsay, an intelligence officer of the Seventh Armoured Division, was waiting for them. Charming and gentle, Lindsay led the negotiations. He quickly agreed to halt the shelling of the hospital.79 Lindsay then moved on to what he wanted to talk about: the surrender of Hamburg. He got nowhere with Burchard or Laun, who took a narrow view of their orders.80

Giving up on the military men, Lindsay went to see Schäfer, the factory chief. He began by playing hardball. Lindsay told Schäfer about the British surrender offer to Bremen, its refusal, and the final battle that flattened what was left of the city. If Hamburg wished to avoid this fate, it had to surrender. Lindsay then softened his pitch: he asked about the mood in the city and the position of the Gauleiter. Schäfer replied that Hamburgers feared nothing more than a final defence of their city; that they only wanted a quick surrender; and that, based on his last words in the Gauhaus, Kaufmann was ready to surrender.81

Captain Lindsay had what he wanted. Keeping the military men under arrest (against their loud protests), Lindsay had Schäfer delivered on April 30, with a letter from General Lyne hidden in his shoe, across British lines. Before leaving, Lindsay and Schäfer raised a glass of whisky to Hamburg’s capitulation.82 The military men got a somewhat rougher treatment. The British showed Laun and Burchard pictures of Bergen-Belsen. Burchard assured them that the Führer could have known nothing about it.83

After making his way through no man’s land and past German mines, Schäfer reported to the commander of an air-raid shelter in Wilhelmsburg, south of Hamburg, and a major accompanied him to Wolz’s headquarters.84 Schäfer handed the letter to Wolz.85 Citing Bremen’s fate following its commander’s refusal to capitulate, and threatening the city with a bombing raid, the letter urged Wolz to surrender: “In the name of humanity, Herr General, we demand the surrender of Hamburg.”86 Wolz put down the letter, smiled, and said in a strong southern German accent, “Herr Engländer will have his reply soon.”87 He then gave Schäfer a warm handshake and dismissed him.

Wolz then immediately set about replying and wrote two letters to Lyne. The first thanked the British general in effusive terms for sparing the hospital and let him know that a Major Andrae had been commissioned with the task of delivering further, highly confidential letters to him.88 The second letter dealt directly with the issue of surrender. It referenced the “extensive military and political consequences for the still-fighting portions of the Reich,” then stated that he was prepared to meet the British to discuss surrender terms.89

The next day, Schäfer saw Gauleiter Kaufmann. “How dare you,” the Gauleiter asked, “pose as a negotiator and go see the British?”90 Maintaining his cool, Schäfer told him what had happened. When he finished, he concluded, “Now, under existing laws, Herr Gauleiter, you can have me hanged.” Kaufmann smiled, stood up, came out from behind his desk, and shook Schäfer’s hand. The Gauleiter was on side.

Not everyone else was. On April 30, Kaufman had asked Großadmiral—and by then, President of the Reich—Karl Dönitz for permission to surrender Hamburg to the Allies, arguing that continued resistance would force the Western Allies to unleash complete destruction upon Hamburg and would give the Soviets the chance to overrun the rest of the north.91 Surrendering cities without a fight, he continued, would allow German troops to be transferred to the eastern front. Dönitz rejected the request and made exactly the opposite point: that the Soviets could be held in Mecklenburg only if the struggle continued in the west.92

On May 1, Captain Lindsay accompanied the blindfolded Burchard and Laun to German lines and instructed them to ask General Wolz to meet them at the same spot within the next twenty-four hours. If he failed to show, Lindsay continued, the Seventh Armoured Division would order a devastating bombing raid and hand the city over to the Red Army for street-by-street fighting.93

The pressure on Wolz ratcheted up further: an officer of the Eighth Parachute Division appeared the same day at Wolz’s office and declared that his division was still preparing to defend Hamburg to the bitter end.94 In addition, the navy in Hamburg was also refusing to surrender. To top it all off, Wolz learned that he was to be replaced. Dönitz’s appointee, General der Flieger Joachim Köhler, was making his way to Hamburg.

As he did, Wolz acted on Lindsay’s request: he sent Major Andrae and his interpreter, a Hauptmann Link, back toward British lines. At 19:00, they crossed the front at Meckelfeld and were subsequently transported—blindfolded, of course—to Lyne’s headquarters. Lyne was waiting for them.95 Andrae handed the British general the letters. Lyne read them, put them down, and informed the Germans that he had been authorized to negotiate the surrender of Hamburg. He told the Germans that he expected Wolz to be at the British line at Meckelfeld by 21:30 the next day. The Germans requested a twenty-four-hour extension of their deadline. Lyne consulted Montgomery and then agreed. Andrae and Link returned to Hamburg and reported the news to Wolz.

By the morning of May 2, three obstacles of stubborn German military persistence stood in the way of Hamburg’s surrender: naval forces in Hamburg’s ports, further armed forces inside and outside the city, and Dönitz in Flensburg. Wolz dealt with all three.

The commander first neutralized his would-be successor. Launching an eleventh-hour coup, he prepared to arrest Köhler upon his arrival.96 He then dealt with the army. Wolz ordered his forces to avoid enemy contact and to retreat from the front slowly. He gave the same order to the Waffen-SS and ordered that anyone who wished to defend the Reich should do so outside the city limits.97 As he did, the threat from another division was removed. The commander of the Eighth Parachute Division, a Major Bode, had shown up just as the general had given his order to the SS. As it happened, Bode had served on Wolz’s staff previously, and the general easily convinced the major of the merits of surrendering Hamburg.98 With the army and Waffen-SS secure, that left the navy. Here, Konteradmiral Bütow, who had spared the harbour, again came to Hamburg’s aid: he ordered all marine units out of the city.99

An hour later, Wolz’s named successor, Köhler, arrived in Hamburg. Wolz delayed for an hour, saying he had urgent business. He then invited the general to a briefing, where he outlined the chaos engulfing Hamburg. Köhler declined to assume command, so Wolz had no need to order his arrest.100

Another hour later, at noon, the Hamburger Zeitung published an appeal by Kaufmann to Hamburgers. Referring to the announcement on the same day that Hitler had “fallen in battle,” the Gauleiter urged the city to “trustingly place your fate and your future in my hands. Follow me with unshakable faith and discipline on this difficult journey. I will act in the interests of the city and its people.” Kaufmann also included a passage rarely quoted by his apologists: “what [Hitler] has left us is the eternal idea of the National Socialist Reich.”101 The important thing for Wolz was that the Gauleiter was no longer in the way.

As word about Kaufmann’s appeal and rumours about a surrender drifted back to Berlin, the telephones in Wolz’s and Kaufmann’s offices started ringing.102 Dönitz called Kaufmann immediately, but the Gauleiter stood his ground. Speer, a confidant of Kaufmann, phoned Dönitz and threatened to resign from the government if Dönitz did not agree to Hamburg’s capitulation.103 When it became clear to Dönitz that Kaufmann and Wolz would go ahead anyway, he tried to claim the decision as his own. Dönitz was still labouring under the delusion that he would have a leading role in Germany’s postwar government. In the late afternoon of May 2, he called Kaufmann and stated that Hamburg would be declared an open city; at 20:30, Busch sent out the order.104

But that order had long been overtaken by events. At 21:00 that evening, Wolz left Hamburg with Major Andrae, the interpreter Link, and, at Kaufmann’s request, a retired mayor from the pre-Nazi era (and brother of Hermann Burchard), Wilhelm Amsinck Burchard-Motz.105 After crossing British lines, they were taken first to Major General John Michael Kane Spurling. After a rough start attributed by Wolz to language problems, the German general indicated his willingness to surrender unconditionally.106 The mood improved immediately, and Spurling took him to General Lyne. The two men agreed on the basic conditions: British troops would march into Hamburg at 13:00 the next day; Hamburg’s police would secure bridges and maintain order; flak guns would not be destroyed; the Volkssturm would assemble and prepare to surrender; and Kaufmann, the head of the police, and the mayor would wait for Spurling at the city hall from 13:00.107

After the meeting, Lyne allowed Wolz to return to Hamburg only to call him back again. Dönitz was making his own, characteristically hamfisted intervention. Generaladmiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg (Dönitz’s successor as Chief of the Naval Staff) and General Hans Finzel (Chief of Staff of OB Northwest) had made contact with the British to discuss peace. As a surrender in the northwest obviously implicated Hamburg, Lyne recalled Wolz and forced him to join the delegation, which was sent to the Second Army Tactical Air Command headquarters near Lüneburg. The head of Second Army, General Miles Dempsey, had the senior officers dispatched to see Montgomery and kept Wolz with him.

Dempsey took Wolz to a large room and sat with his back to a window. He had Wolz and his staff officer placed directly in front of him, staring into the light. As soon as everyone was seated, Dempsey said to the interpreter, “I am commander of the Second Army. I understand he is prepared to surrender Hamburg. I make these conditions”: that no documents be destroyed; law and order be maintained; stocks of food, fuel, and stores of all kinds must be protected; the radio station be handed over intact; no airplanes be flown; and Allied prisoners of war and displaced persons by war be controlled and provided for.108 Wolz agreed, and the two sides worked out the details of the surrender. Dempsey, his voice firmer, added a final condition: “[General Wolz] will precede the British troops.”109

At noon, Wolz, “a large, florid man of sinister appearance” according to Commodore Hugh T. England, signed the surrender of Hamburg. At the end of the proceedings, Dempsey remarked to the commodore, “This has been a very satisfactory morning.”110

While Wolz spoke with Dempsey, Dönitz’s men—Friedeburg and Finzel—arrived at Field Marshal Montgomery’s headquarters just outside the village of Wendisch Evern, on the Lüneburg Heath. “Who are these men?” asked Montgomery. “What do they want?” The commanders offered the surrender of three German armies then facing the Russians. Montgomery refused: he would accept only the surrender of the forces facing his own. Otherwise, Montgomery continued, “I shall go on with the war and will be delighted to do so…. All your soldiers will be killed.”

The men left around noon to report back to Dönitz and returned to Montgomery by 17:30. Within the hour, they surrendered all German forces in Holland, Denmark, and northwest Germany. It was May 3, 1945. Wolz had bought enough time to deliver the city to the Allies.

Notes

1. Chandler, Papers of Eisenhower, 4:2568.

2. Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 719.

3. Ibid., 719–21.

4. Ibid., 721. Churchill shared these concerns. See UKNA, FO 954/23, cited in Leif Leifland, “Hamburgs Kapitulation im Mai 1945: Querverbindungen nach Schweden,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte 78 (1992), 247.

5. Weigley, Eisenhower’s Lieutenants, 721.

6. West Europe, April 18, 1945, UKNA, HW 1/3713, TOO 1330.

7. Sereny, Albert Speer, 499–501.

8. Report from Commander in Chief Netherlands, Blaskowitz, to OKW, May 1, 1945, UKNA, H1/3744.

9. Seyß-Inquart attempted in the last days to secure permission to negotiate with the Allies, writing to the already dead Führer on May 2. Telegram from Seyß-Inquart to Hitler, May 2, 1945, BArch R 3/1623.

10. Ludwig Plate, “Überschwemmungen zur Verteidigung Bremens im April 1945,” in Kriegsende in Bremen: Erinnerungen, Berichte, Dokumente, ed. Hartmut Müller and Günther Rohdenburg (Bremen: Ed. Temmen, 1995), 20.

11. Hartmut Müller, “‘Es waren schöne warme Frühlingstage’: Bremen am Vorabend der Einnahme durch britische Soldaten,” in Kriegsende in Bremen, ed. Müller and Rohdenburg, 16; Charles Whiting, Bloody Bremen: Ike’s Last Stand (London: Leo Cooper, 1998), 138–9.

12. Herbert Schwarzwälder, Bremen und Nordwestdeutschland am Kriegsende 1945, vol. 3, Vom “Kampf um Bremen” bis zur Kapitulation (Bremen: Carl Schünemann Verlag, 1974), 87.

13. Naval Section: Naval Headlines, 1398, May 2, 1945, UKNA, HW 1/3744.

14. Peter Groth, “‘Bremen war nur noch ein Wrack’: die Einnahme Bremens durch die Engländer im April 1945,” in Kriegsende in Bremen, ed. Müller and Rohdenburg, 44; Schwarzwälder, Bremen und Nordwestdeutschland am Kriegsende 1945, 3:65.

15. Weinberg, World at Arms, 815.

16. See Frank Bajohr, “Gauleiter in Hamburg,” 271–5. Kaufmann was born in Krefeld.

17. Jan Heitmann, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg: die kampflose Übergabe der Stadt an die britischen Truppen und ihre Vorgeschichte (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990), 39.

18. Bajohr, “Gauleiter in Hamburg,” 270.

19. Ibid., 274–5.

20. Ibid., 276.

21. Hamburger Fremdenblatt, January 7, 1939, quoted ibid., 291.

22. Ibid., 291–2.

23. Ibid., 277.

24. Ibid., 278; Bajohr, “Die Zustimmungsdiktatur: Grundzüge nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft in Hamburg,” in Hamburg im “Dritten Reich,” ed. Forschungstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005), 88–9.

25. Bajohr, “Gauleiter in Hamburg,” 279.

26. Kurt Detlev Möller, Das letzte Kapitel: Geschichte der Kapitulation Hamburgs (Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, 1947). For a discussion of the history of and problems associated with Möller’s book, see Joist Grolle, “Schwierigkeiten mit der Vergangenheit: Anfänge der zeitgeschichtlichen Forschung in Hamburg der Nachkriegszeit,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte 78 (1992): 1–66.

27. Karl Kaufmann, “Die Kapitulation von Hamburg,” June 1946, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 98 [p. 2].

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., fol. 97 [p. 1], quoted in Manfred Asendorf, “Karl Kaufmann und Hamburgs langer Weg zur Kapitulation,” in Kriegsende und Befreiung: Beiträge der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland, ed. Detlef Garbe, Heft 2 (Bremen: Ed. Temmen, 1995), 12.

30. Kaufmann traces his realization that the war was lost all the way back to 1943. “Kapitulation von Hamburg,” fol. 97 [p. 1]. In making this claim, he attempted to hitch his wagon to Speer’s star, citing the armament minister’s own 1943 loss of faith (ibid.). More recent evidence has shown that Speer did not cease believing in final German victory until early 1945. Mierzejewski, “When Did Albert Speer Give Up?,” 392. In his report, Kaufmann claims to have been “entirely in agreement” with the city’s battle commander, General Alwin Wolz, over the need to preserve Hamburg throughout 1945. Kaufmann, “Kapitulation von Hamburg,” fol. 99 [p. 3].

31. Möller, Das letzte Kapitel, 51.

32. Ibid., 50–1.

33. Ibid., 51.

34. Ibid., 52–3.

35. “Bericht des Generalmajors a. D. Ritter von Heigl über seine Tätigkeit in Nordwestdeutschland vom April bis Juni 1945,” Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.23.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., 2.

38. Ibid., 2–3.

39. Details from Möller, Das letzte Kapitel, 46.

40. Wolz, “Die Übergabe Hamburgs an die 7. englische Panzerdivision am 3. 5. 1945,” Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 71–7, p. 1.

41. Ibid.; Möller, Das letzte Kapitel, 47.

42. Dr. Ascan Klée Gobert [soldier under Wolz’s command in the Third Flak Division], “Ein Beitrag zur Kapitulation Hamburgs,” 1945 [likely March], Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 139 [p. 2] verso.

43. Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs,” 1; Möller, Das letzte Kapitel, 47.

44. “Bericht von Heigl,” 3.

45. Ibid.

46. Report by Major Nietmann, September 9, 1946, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 137.

47. Ibid. Emphasis in the original.

48. Ibid.; Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs,” 1–2.

49. Report by Major Nietmann.

50. Leifland, “Hamburgs Kapitulation,” 245, citing original Danish Foreign Ministry sources.

51. Dr. Heinrich Riensberg, a shipping official (Schiffahrtssachverständiger) of the German representation in Stockholm, and Swedish bankers Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg. The papers are held in the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9: report by Dr. Karl-Henz Krämer, June 4, 1945, with cover letter from May 12, 1947, fol. 162; report by Dr. Heinrich Reinsberg, May 9, 1945, fol. 64–70; and “Unterhaltung mit Direktor Bertram vom Norddeutschen Lloyd Bremen,” January 9, 1947, fol. 168.

52. Telegram from Mallet to the Foreign Office, April 18, 1945, UKNA, FO 188/487.

53. Asendorf, “Karl Kaufmann,” 21.

54. See Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 724–5. Himmler “issued notification” of the release of 2,700 Jewish prisoners at this point. Whether they were actually released is unclear.

55. Ibid., 726.

56. Ibid., 726–7.

57. Ibid., 727.

58. Ibid., 728–9.

59. Ibid., 729.

60. Leifland, “Hamburgs Kapitulation,” 248–50. The official records cited by Leifland are UKNA, FO 371/46748 and FO 188/487.

61. Quoted ibid., 250–1. The quotation has been translated back into English from German and likely differs from the original. I have not consulted it, but it can be found in UKNA, PRO, FO 188/487.

62. Albert Schäfer to the Hamburg Senate, January 21, 1947, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 154 [p. 2]; Miles Hildyard, It Is Bliss Here: Letters Home 1939–1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 312. Schäfer refers to Burchard as “Prof. Burghard.”

63. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 2.

64. Ibid., 3.

65. Evidently on the suggestion of a doctor responsible for the Volkssturm, Werner Lochmann. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 80.

66. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 3.

67. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 81.

68. Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs,” 2.

69. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 81.

70. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 3.

71. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 83.

72. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 3.

73. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 83–4.

74. Ibid.; Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 3–4.

75. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 84–5.

76. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 4.

77. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 86.

78. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 4.

79. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 87

80. Ibid., 88–91.

81. Details in this paragraph from Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 4–5.

82. Heitmann, Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 99.

83. Details from this paragraph ibid., 95–9. See also Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 6–7.

84. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 100.

85. He also handed him a letter from Lindsay explaining that the two others had been kept back because they had not been blindfolded the entire time. Lindsay to Wolz, April 29, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9.

86. Hildyard, It Is Bliss Here, 31. English translation of letter from Lyne to Wolz, April 29, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9.

87. Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 7.

88. Wolz to Lyne, April 30, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9 [letter beginning, “Für die liebenswürdige Berücksichtigung …”].

89. Wolz to Lyne, April 30, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9 [letter beginning, “Die Gedanken …”].

90. Quotations in this paragraph from Schäfer to Hamburg Senate, 8.

91. Letter from Kaufmann to Dönitz and Busch, April 30, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 9.

92. Telegram from Dönitz to Kaufmann, April 30, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 10.

93. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 112.

94. Details in this paragraph from Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs,” 4.

95. Details in this paragraph from Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 123–4.

96. Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs,” 4.

97. Ibid., 4, and Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 127.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid.

100. Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs,” 5.

101. Kaufmann, “Drahtfunkansprache des Gauleiters an die Hamburger am 1. Mai 1945, 23:00 Uhr,” Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 12.

102. Heitmann, Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Hamburg, 130–1.

103. Ibid., 131.

104. Order from OB Nordwest (Busch) to Kauffmann [sic], Wolz, and others, May 2, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 35.

105. Dr. W. A. Burchard-Motz, “Bericht über die Teilnahme an den Kapitulationsverhandlungen für Hamburg am 2./3. Mai 1945,” Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 144–51.

106. Wolz, “Übergabe Hamburgs”, 5.

107. Ibid., 6; letter to Polizeipräsident, “Einmarsch der Besatzungstruppen in Hamburg,” May 3, 1945, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 38.

108. Hugh T. England, Commodore, “Surrender of Hamburg,” n.d., Pyman Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (LH).

109. Ibid.; act of surrender signed by Alwin Wolz, n.d. [night of May 2–3, 1945], Staatsarchiv Hamburg, III.9, fol. 22–3.

110. England, “Surrender of Hamburg.” Emphasis in the original.