Nazis didn't actually know that Operation Paperclip would happen yet at the time, but they did massively prefer surrendering to the western allies. Germans had built up such a fear of the Red Army (largely due to their own racism and propaganda) that civilians committed suicide en masse.

In Demmin where the Wehrmacht and police blew up bridges and deliberately trapped citizens in the town, people began randomly killing others and then themselves in the street and families began drowning themselves in the river. There are accounts from some Red Army soldiers that dove in and tried to save children whose parents were drowning them.