orgtheory.net

Who was the last leader of the Third Reich?

Karl Dönitz, head of the German Navy. He’s interesting for a few reasons. Technically, Donitz was chosen President of Germany (head of state) and supreme military leader, but not designated Nazi party leader (I think). In other words, even though people consider him the last Fuhrer, he didn’t serve as the charismatic party leader, a defining element of that position. From a Weberian perspective, you might say Germany reverted from a system that employed charismatic authority and went back to rational-legal. The wiki notes that the Third Reich reverted to the Weimar Republic in its governance. You might consider this to be  a trick question. Perhaps the Third Reich only made sense under Hitler and Donitz headed a weird transitional state for a month.

Second, Hitler bypassed the obvious candidates (high ranking Nazis and military leaders) because of his paranoia. A complete egomaniac, he insisted that he’d been betrayed or let down. Thus, the leader of the relatively smaller German navy was the only person was untainted by failure, in Hitler’s eyes.

Third, Donitz got off relatively easy in the Nuremburg trials. You’d think that he’d be hung with the other Nazis, as an anti-Semite who supported the mass murders and total war. He was accused at the Nuremburg trials of permitting slave labor at shipyards and conducting unrestricted naval warfare against neutral ships. Oddly, he got a relatively light sentence (10 years). The wiki notes that at his trial, his lawyer, dressed in uniform, may have surprised the judges and argued that Donitz wasn’t present at the meetings where the worst things were planned. The judges relented and focused mainly on his war against neutral ships. There’s a story of performance and law to be told there.