Prisoner No 2
In 1947, Donitz was transferred to Spandau prison. Reports from witnesses and other prisoners suggest that the 56-year-old ex-Admiral would have served a hard sentence. Conditions in Spandau were described as a “cruel and unusual punishment.” The German leaders were ill fed, ill clothed and treated with indignity.
As prisoner no 2, Donitz’s daughter Ursula described her distress on visiting her father to find him ‘Looking terrible.” In wooden shoes and dreadful clothes “when the Russians controlled the prison, ” Ursula explained, “The men went hungry.”
Visits prohibited physical contact and only lasted for half an hour. The family was also only allowed to talk about family matters. Politics were forbidden. In this way, Donitz knew very little about what was going on in the world outside. But when he found out that Theodor Heuss had been elected President of West Germany in 1953, he declared him a puppet who had not been elected by the German state and until he was, he Donitz, remained President.
Afterward, Donitz never spoke or wrote of his time in prison. Clearly, this was a time he wished to forget. But nor did he want to loose his dignity by complaining about his treatment. So he bore it with typical fortitude. He also continued in his staunch belief of Hitler and the Third Reich. On December 27, 1947, Albert Speer reported how ” Donitz has in no way revised his view of Hitler. To this day, Hitler is still his commander in chief” and reported that 2 years later, “Schirach, Raeder, and Donitz are distinctly cool toward me…. They disapprove of my consistent and basic rejection of the Third Reich.”