Because allied announced war aims were unconditional surrender

When the Soviets are raping your women and the Allies are past the Rhine (a hugely symbolic and embarrassing development) you make a last stand to defend your home. A combination of fighting off an invasion of their country (though they did deserve it) and a lingering love for Hitler's ideology explains it. Watch the movie Die Bruecke, it portrays the time really well.

yes but your home is lost anyway, wouldn't it be better to start building a new 1??
and what does unconditional surrender means?? the allies say what happens and that's it?? still better...

oh please.

Because they were ordered to.

with start building a new one i mean instead of losing your life protecting a home you'll lose anyway :)

Hitler actually kept fighting out of spite if i remember, he felt that the German people betrayed him and he attempted to fight until germany was destroyed

ok santa, but why they listened??
were they that afraid for Hitler??

what's out of spite??

ah, googled, it, out of hate or something like that...
but then again, why did they listen??

Who had the power? Why did slaves not run away as soon as slaveholders turn their back? Why did holocaust victims not revolt more? Bottom line is that power is control and hitler held the reigns of power.

How old are you? I can think of anyone past the 6th grade who doesn't know what UNCONDITIONAL and SURRENDER mean when put together. Spite I will grant a little leeway on though considering it rhymes with Sprite.

Uncondition surrender means that you surrender but cannot make any terms. Meaning that when you lose or surrender the people who beat you determine EVERYTHING that you have to do. You cannot go into a negotiation with said winning party and say "hey even though we killed millions of your people, enslaved and slaughtered an entire culture to near extinction in europe, and cost billions of damage across 4 continents we insist that when we surrender we get to keep our borders and not pay anything out of pocket for others loses that were a direct cause of our actions."

"How old are you? I can think of anyone past the 6th grade who doesn't know what UNCONDITIONAL and SURRENDER mean when put together."

14 years old, but i'm Dutch and better in English then my parents, classmates and even then my teacher at some points, like speaking...
so i don't think it's my fault if i don't know something since no one around can learn me... :)
and i already thought something like that but wasn't sure so i asked, sorry for making you mad... :) :) :)

"Spite I will grant a little leeway on though considering it rhymes with Sprite."
lol

"You cannot go into a negotiation with said winning party and say "hey even though we killed millions of your people, enslaved and slaughtered an entire culture to near extinction in europe, and cost billions of damage across 4 continents we insist that when we surrender we get to keep our borders and not pay anything out of pocket for others loses that were a direct cause of our actions.""

"lol"

Many German units did surrender. With Hitler and those around him knowing they'd be tried and executed after the war, they had no desire to surrender. Everyone else tried to surrender individually at the first opportunity.

also, i doubt you know what WARME and FRIKANDEL mean when put together, while i can't think of anyone past 6th grade who doesn't know... (and even if you google those words i doubt you know what it means unless you search on pictures...:))

ok, thanks, Charles, could you also tell me what their conditions were??
or also unconditional??

Without knowing dutch...im gonna have to go out on a limb and say that Warme=Warm in english and Frikandel i have no idea but it is probably something food related.

Hmmm...
If you just slaughtered 6 million innocent people, attacked about every country in the world and you just chose a frustrated Austrian bachelor with a square mustache as your leader... then the point where you take rational decisions as a country is very, very, very far behind you.

so, if you knew uncoditional was probably something diplomatic related you have not enough to understand your message...
of course it becomes logical with the context (right word?) but if i had to ask about the context it would take longer...

redhouse, good point, but still, i thought they were idealistic, so just a bit out of their mind, this is suicidal, very out of their mind or brainwashed, and you can't brainwash a whole country to become Hitler's martyr...

Also, compared to Italy, whose army fairly readily surrendered at any opportunity , the Germans were ignited as a whole country before and during the start of the second great war. Hitler's speech, regardless of how exaggerated they might have been, were what a distraught and battered German economy and moral needed. He rallied a starving economy under the fervor of an elitist point of view and brought a shambled country to the foreground of a modernizing world with an explosive growth of manufacturing. The only thing that Germany suffered from was Hitler's obsession with bigger things. Giant tanks, giant cannons, giant planes, and giant battleships. This obsession slightly hampered the advancement of basic Germany infrastructure and mobility. As some might remember, the Germans were still using HORSES as a major form of moving war supplies while the allies were driving jeeps.

i just read about gideon force where a whole italian division surrendered to like 800 colonial british troops in east africa in 41, crazy story.

so, in comparison to Italy who apparently just surrendered when it went bad (also unconditional??), Hitler stopped them from surrendering with his speeches??
the part about about Hitler making wrong choices is a different topic i think...

The Germans did try to unconditionally surrender, but only to the American and British forces. They were determined not to surrender to the Soviets as they knew what the Soviets would (and actually did) do to their country. However, the Americans and British refused as the terms were unconditional surrender to all Allied parties.

also, when does it become 'certain' that you will die defending your home? At what point does it become inevitable? I mean many men may have felt like surrendering, but they had officers in charge who may have disagreed, or even friends who would have shot them for deserting them fatherland (and thus destroying their dreams)

That said, moving towards the end of the war a number of germans tried moving away from the russians in order to surrender to the western powers. (fearing that soviet justice would involve work camps in siberia and eventual, possibly a less appealing punishment that being shot on the front.)

With Hitler refusing to give up (unlike in World War 1, where surrender followed by the negotiations for the treaty of Versailles ended the war)

and how did the war actually ended??
all i know about WWII is from my father, Hitler shot himself right??
what happened after that??
unconditional surrender after all??

oh, and what did the Russians do then??

There was an unconditional surrender eventually of course, after the German military effectively ceased to exist.

"When the Soviets are raping your women "

I swear if this were 1933 Invictus would be goosestepping with the German American Bund. Regurgitating neo-Nazi propaganda about Asiatic rapist hordes with the half-hearted qualifier "oh but I suppose they deserved the invasion, those valiant defenders of the homeland".

Order 0143 and Stalin's rebuke of Ehrenberg, point to the fact that the Soviet army were under orders to treat the population humanely.