The Dönitz Testament - Was Hitler's Successor President of Germany Until 1980?

TL;DR

Dönitz's 1975 political testament claimed he remained Germany's legitimate Reich president until his 1980 death, a document suppressed by West Germany until 2015.

Key Points

• 1.Hitler appointed Dönitz Reich President in his April 29, 1945 testament. Hitler split the Führer role on death — Goebbels became Reich Chancellor while Dönitz, head of the German Navy, became Reich President, ruling from Plön then Flensburg-Mürwik from May 1–23, 1945.
• 2.The Dönitz government lasted only 23 days and received no formal Allied recognition. Churchill referred to him as 'the designated head of the German state,' but the Allies officially viewed Dönitz only as military commander; the Berlin Declaration of June 5, 1945 formally ended German statehood.
• 3.British forces arrested Dönitz on May 23, 1945 on Churchill's direct order. Dönitz, Colonel General Jodl, and Albert Speer were seized in Schleswig-Holstein, tried at Nuremberg, and Dönitz received a 10-year prison sentence, released from Spandau in 1956.
• 4.Neo-Nazi lawyer Manfred Roeder's 1974 contact triggered Dönitz's political rethinking. Roeder argued the German Reich never ceased to exist and that Dönitz was still legally Reich president; when Dönitz denied this, Roeder declared himself successor and self-styled 'Reichskanzler,' later imprisoned for 8 years for urban terrorism.
• 5.Dönitz wrote a political testament in 1975 transferring his 'office' to the West German president. Signed at age 84, it claimed Allied powers had recognized him as head of state, called himself 'the last head of state of the German Reich,' and formally transferred his authority to the Federal Republic's president.
• 6.The testament was suppressed by the West German government for over 30 years. Delivered to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in January 1981, it was locked in his personal safe; rediscovered in 1992 in presidential files, publicly revealed only in a 2005 newspaper letter, and the document itself not published until 2015.
• 7.Revisionist theories argue the Dönitz government was the last legitimate united German government. Since a legal government cannot be dissolved by a foreign military power, some argue West and East Germany were Allied puppet states, making Dönitz technically president of a unified Germany until his death on December 24, 1980.