Karl Dönitz was a German naval leader, famous for his command of the Kriegsmarine during World War II and for his twenty-three day term as President of Germany after Adolf Hitler’s suicide. 
 
 Dönitz was born near Berlin. He entered the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in 1911. During World War I, he served on surface ships before transferring to submarines. He ended the war a prisoner-of-war of the British. He remained in the navy after the war's conclusion and rose in the ranks of the Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine, becoming a Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) and serving as Commander of Submarines (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, B.d.U.) and later Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine) despite never joining the Nazi Party. 
 
 Following Hitler’s accession to power, Doenitz supervised the clandestine building of Nazi Germany's U-boat fleet iin direct violation of the Versailles Treaty clauses still in effect. Under his command, the U-boat fleet fought the famous Battle of the Atlantic. In 1936, he was appointed by Hitler to be Commander-in-Chief of the U-Boat fleet. From 1940-42, he waged an unsuccessful campaign to destroy the British merchant marine and starve out the British isles. But protected by British and U.S. naval armed escort, Britain's lifelines in foodstuffs, ammunition, and raw materials enable her to continue waging war against Germany while drawing the United States ever closer into the conflict, as U-boat commanders repeatedly damage or sink U.S. ships. In 1943, Doenitz replaced Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine. 
 
 On July 20, 1944, Doenitz rushed to Hitler’s side to reaffirm the navy's and his personal oath of unquestioning loyalty to Germany's fuehrer. Doenitz publicly heaps adoring praise over Hitler and condemns the July 20th conspirators as a criminal and cowardly gang of traitors. 
 
 On May 2, 1945, according to Hitler's last will and testament, Doenitz succeeded Hitler as Reich head of state after the fuehrer committed suicide in his bunker deep underneath Berlin's Chancellery on April 30. As Reich head of state, Doenitz signed the Allied terms for Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 
 
 After the war he was charged and convicted of “crimes against peace” and “war crimes” and served ten years. He was released in 1956. On his repatriation he moved to a small village near Hamburg. During his later years he wrote two autobiographies covering different periods in his life. He died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1980. ||||| Home 
 
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 Robert von Greim 
 
 Surname Greim Given Name Robert Born 22 Jun 1892 Died 24 May 1945 Country Germany Category Military-Air Gender Male 
 
 Contributor: C. Peter Chen 
 
 ww2dbaseRobert Greim was born to a Bavarian police captain. During WW1, he served in the German artillery and later, in 1915, transferred to the air service. After achieving 8 aerial kills as a fighter pilot, he was named the commanding officer of Jagdgruppe 10 and later Jagdgruppe 9. He would achieve a total of 28 kills when the war ended. He was awarded the Pour le Mérite medal in Oct 1918 and at the same time was awarded the Military Order of Max Joseph; the latter made him a knight (Ritter) and allowed him to add the style "von" to his name. During the inter-war years, Robert von Greim was unable to remain in the small German military, thus he planned to change his career by studying law. Before he became established as an attorney, however, he was invited by the Republic of China to modernize the Chinese Air Force. In China, he founded a flying school despite his belief that Chinese people made poor pilots. As the Nazi party gained influence, he returned to Germany. In 1933, he was asked by Hermann Göring to build the German Air Force, and readily accepted. In 1934, he was made the commandant of Luftwaffe's first fighter pilot school. In 1938, he was given command of the Luftwaffe department of research at the rank of Generalmajor. Later in the same year, he was made the commanding officer of Jagdgeschwader 132 "Richthofen". When the European War began in 1939, he was made a commanding officer at the Luftflotte level and played a role in the invasion of Poland, Norway, Soviet Union, as well as the Battle of Britain. In the Battle of Kursk, his personal involvement in the deployment of ground support missions won him Oak Leaves to his the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross medal. On 25 Apr 1945, Generaloberst Greim flew into enveloped German capital of Berlin as a passenger in a Fw 190 fighter, and then flew from Gatow toward the Channcellery in a Storch aircraft; the Storch aircraft was damaged by anti-aircraft fire, causing a wound to Greim's right foot, but his mistress Hanna Reitsch was able to land in the Tiergarten. After seeing Adolf Hitler, he was promoted to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) and was given command of the Luftwaffe; he was the last German officer to be promoted to that rank and would become the last commanding officer of the Luftwaffe. He left Berlin on 28 Apr on Hitler's orders. He was captured in Austria by US soldiers on 8 May. As he was to be transferred to the Soviets, fearing torture, he committed suicide less than a month later. He was buried at a community cemetery in Salzburg, Austria. 
 
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 All visitor submitted comments are opinions of those making the submissions and do not reflect views of WW2DB. ||||| Telegram written by Karl Dönitz, the last leader of the Third Reich, to the head of the Luftwaffe expected to fetch up to $30,000 
 
 Marooned on a naval base in north-west Germany, pinned down by advancing Allied forces and with Adolf Hitler dead, the last leader of the Third Reich hammered out a surrender order. 
 
 
 
 Seventy years later his telex will be auctioned in New York, the flimsy sheet of pink expected to fetch US$20,000 to US$30,000 as rare a relic from the world’s deadliest conflict. 
 
 In it, Karl Dönitz tells the head of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Robert von Greim, that he has signed an unconditional surrender and that all hostilities will cease at 1am on 9 May 1945. 
 
 “This was unavoidable in order to prevent the complete destruction of certain parts of the front, which was expected to occur in a short time, and, in so doing, to save as many people as possible for Germany,” the telegram explains. 
 
 Tom Lamb, history expert and curator of Wednesday’s sale at Bonhams, said it was the first German telegram he had ever seen. 
 
 “The Germans had a scorched-earth policy as they pulled out so they burnt, destroyed every piece of paper they had,” he said. “And if they didn’t do it, the Russians did it, so the survival of this is extraordinary.” 
 
 Von Greim received the telegram at 10.40pm on 8 May. He fled Germany and was arrested by US forces outside Prague. The telegram was found in his attache case. 
 
 It was kept by the interrogating US army officer and is being offered for sale by a private American collector. 
 
 Von Greim was to be swapped in a prisoner exchange with the Soviets but took cyanide and killed himself on 24 May 1945. 
 
 Lamb expects significant interest in the document, not only from US collectors but from German and British ones as well. “This is a very important historical document and it could go to any country that values that,” he said. 
 
 More than 300 lots of second world war memorabilia, the majority collected by veterans, are up for grabs. There are flags, uniforms, recordings, notes, cigarette cases and mementos of all kinds from Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Russia and the US, as well as India, China and Japan. 
 
 The most expensive lot is two logbooks valued at US$150,000 to US$200,000 and owned by Robert Lewis, the US co-pilot of the Enola Gay B-29 bomber that dropped the world’s first atomic bomb. 
 
 Lewis, who shunned the spotlight during his lifetime, wanted the items sold only after his death, a wish his youngest son is working to honor, and to find a publisher for his father’s book. 
 
 “He didn’t want of this stuff to sit in a basement, in a dark room on a shelf in a cardboard box with the door marked museum archives,” Steven Lewis said. “He wanted the public to know.” 
 
 The Lewis collection includes his flying logs from 1942-47, plans for the 6 August 1945 Enola Gay mission, and photographs. 
 
 
 
 The atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima killed 140,000 people by December 1945. When Lewis saw the huge mushroom cloud, he uttered the famous remark, “My God, what have we done?” 
 
 Japan eventually surrendered on 15 August 1945 after the Americans dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. 
 
 Steven Lewis says his father was never conflicted about the mission despite the catastrophic loss of life. “He said, ‘Steven, I couldn’t get over the power,’ and he said, ‘I hoped that it would be enough to end the war,’ and that’s the way he felt. 
 
 “That was a mission that he got chosen because he was the best at what he did and everyone on that crew was.” 
 
 War memorabilia auctions are a relatively new field, but Lamb expects interest to grow as the last veterans pass away and collections shift into second and third generations. “What I’m trying to do here is to bring to the public attention that this is a valid field,” he said. 
 
 It was “an extraordinary, extraordinary conflict”, he said. “There has never ever been a struggle or a battle as long, as involved, as expensive in lives, in money, in the history of mankind.”
– Tomorrow at Bonhams auction house in New York, more than 300 lots of WWII memorabilia—uniforms, flags, cigarette cases—from nearly 10 countries will go on the selling block. But one piece of memorabilia is especially rare, somehow making it out of war-torn Germany before it could be thrown into the fire pit. The surrender order signed by Nazi Adm. Karl Doenitz, who took over the Third Reich for Hitler after he perished, is expected to bring in between $20,000 and $30,000 during tomorrow's sale, the Guardian reports. "This is a very important historical document, and it could go to any country that values that," Tom Lamb, curator of the sale, tells the paper. Doenitz's note—put together while he was holed up on a military base in northwest Germany—to Robert von Greim, the head of the German air force, spelled out an "unconditional" end to fighting as of 1am on May 9, 1945. "This was unavoidable in order to prevent the complete destruction of certain parts of the front … and, in so doing, to save as many people as possible for Germany," the telegram reads, per the Guardian. The surrender note was found in von Greim's briefcase when he was captured by US forces in Austria on May 8, 1945; he killed himself a couple of weeks later. Doenitz, for his part, was convicted of war crimes, served 10 years, and died in 1980 in Hamburg, per the Jewish Virtual Library. The fact that the surrender papers even made it to auction is "extraordinary," Lamb says. "The Germans had a scorched-earth policy as they pulled out, so they burnt, destroyed every piece of paper they had," he tells the Guardian. "And if they didn't do it, the Russians did it." (A handwritten notebook of WWII code-breaker Alan Turing was sold for $1 million earlier this month.)