When Hitler appointed unqualified personnel such as Hermann Göring to lead his Air Force, failure ensued. A sign of the close ties between Hitler and his armed forces was his choice of the ardent Nazi Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz to be the next Führer, a man whose "...dedication to National Socialist ideas and his close identification with Hitler's strategy in the last stages of the war made him a logical, not surprising, choice by Hitler as his successor".[62]