Rather more to the point was the knowledge of senior Nazis that they would be executed for war crimes. Hitler had no illusions. Surrender in any form was anathema to him, and his entourage knew that the war could not end as long as he still lived. Hitler’s greatest fear was not execution, but of being captured and taken back to Moscow in a cage. His plan had always been to implicate the military and civilian hierarchy in the crimes of the Nazi state, so that they could not dissociate themselves from it when there was no further hope.
