Who became Germany's leader upon the death of Adolf Hitler?

Admiral Karl Doenitz became Germany’s leader after Adolf Hitler died in April 1945.

In Hitler’s political testament, written shortly before his suicide, he named Doenitz as Reich President and supreme commander of the armed forces. Joseph Goebbels was designated Reich Chancellor, so the succession technically divided the offices that Hitler had concentrated in himself. Because Goebbels killed himself soon afterward, Doenitz became the effective head of the collapsing German state.

Doenitz had commanded Germany’s navy and previously led its U-boat forces. He formed the short-lived Flensburg government in northern Germany and focused on negotiating the country’s surrender to the Western Allies while trying to move German troops and civilians away from the advancing Soviet forces.

The title can cause confusion: Doenitz was not Hitler’s successor as “Führer” in exactly the same constitutional form. Still, in standard trivia usage, he is the accepted answer because he became Germany’s head of state and leading authority during the final days of Nazi Germany.