Why did Hitler stay in Berlin?
- Thread starter Baal
- Start date
And if that doesnt work they shoot them all. By 1945 the Swiss Army is in a lot better shape then Hitler and a small band of SS guards.
The Swiss would have to be high as a kite to accept Hitler and give him sanctuary.
The SS guards can be disarmed and interned until 'the end of the war', as the rules say. Hitler may be accepted, but then immediately detained and turned over to the Allies as soon as requested.
He'd have more luck with the Ratlines.
He'd have more luck with the Ratlines.
Who wanted to be the one to tell Albert Kesselring that troops were being pulled out of Italy to threaten Switzerland if they don't hide the Fuhrer? By early 1944, any threats by the Reich against Switzerland are going to ring very hollow.
You can I think add the Red Army to that list. Through Austria, which it was busy occupying at the time.
And the Red Army wouldn't have been so polite as to leave the gold in Swiss bank vaults.
Hitler stayed in Berlin for the same reason Joseph and Magda Goebbels committed suicide in the end (I’m not calling the cold-blooded murder of their children suicide, but Joseph Goebbels and his wife definitely took their own lives out of their own free will). For them there was no world worth living in beyond the Third Reich. Hitler could have tried to make a run for Switzerland or Argentina even, but what would be the goal? Without the Third Reich, all is lost. So just like how Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels felt there was no point in living in a word without Hitler, I think Hitler simply did not want to live in a world with Germany destroyed, and more importantly, him no longer in charge of it. So there’s no point in leaving Berlin if all is lost without it anyway.
Because Joseph Goobles convinced him too
Goobles was actually one of the most competent people in the third Reich, he knew the war was over
He believe that Hitler would leave a greater legacy if he died in Berlin rather than if he ran and hid with the very real risk of capture
He was right
Goobles was actually one of the most competent people in the third Reich, he knew the war was over
He believe that Hitler would leave a greater legacy if he died in Berlin rather than if he ran and hid with the very real risk of capture
He was right
Good point. He was the one arguing against the National Redoubt scenario people like Goering, Bormann, and Ley were pushing for.
Then technically the Soviets were certainly in Austria, but they had not reached the Austrian Tyrol, bordering Switzerland.
But indeed, if by some madness the Swiss welcomed Hitler*, the Soviets would have pushed a little more to look for him.
(*This would never have happened, there were many skirmishes between Switzerland and the Third Reich during the war and even if Switzerland did not join the Allies it let American bombers fly over its airspace, which it never allowed the Germans).
It is not German military tradition to commit suicide in the case of failure. Who told you that it was?
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Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
IIRC Hitler supposedly promoted von Paulus to Field Marshal just before the fall of Stalingrad, in the belief that no German FM ever surrendered, and was most put out when Paulus did. If true then it shows the mindset that very senior German commanders were not taken prisoner.
It was not a tradition. It simply happened to be that no German Feldmarschalls had ever been captured. And it was not because they all committed suicide before it got to that. They just never got into the unenviable position where they had to choose between committing suicide or having the shame of being the first Feldmarshall to be captured. Hitler decided to put Friedrich Paullus in that position, in the hopes that it would shame Paullus into continuing to hold out in the pocket and tie down Soviet divisions.
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I've seen some people here writing that Hitler killed himself because he knew it was over, but to me it seems like the opposite was true. Hitler spent his last days planning counteroffensives with troops that didn't exist, theorizing about how Germany was going to solve it's oil issues of all things. I think he was incapable of accepting that he had lost, and when it became and undeniable fact which he couldn't look away from, the only way to not accept it was by ending his life.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Yes, I follow. Still, it follows that Hitler, the supreme commander, would believe it would be shameful to allow himself to be captured when the nation was destroyed.
He'd admitted to staff a few times he knew the war was lost.
Also, the real life version of That Scene from Downfall was, indeed, him recognize the war was lost.
Rommel committed suicide because his superiors told him to. Not because he was about to be captured (he was not).
THC
On the documentary about the battle of the Bulge, they comment at the end that the only thing Model could do was to comitt suicide since he failed, so I tough it was a standart thing to do