Eva (11 page)

She put the black dress, which was to be her wedding dress, on her bed.

The morbid appropriateness of its color did not occur to her. She hurried off in search of Liesl.

Adolf Hitler also had last-minute preparations to attend to, although of a vastly more far-reaching nature.

The table in the anteroom to his study had been opulently decorated in preparation for the wedding reception. The gleaming white tablecloth bore the initials A.H. as did the silver dinner set. And the champagne glasses sparkled. Only the flowers were missing. Hitler did not seem to notice any of it as he hurried toward the little hospital room of
Feldmarschall
Ritter von Greim. Just as he took no notice of the fire hoses snaking through the conference room corridor nor the chunks of fallen plaster on the rug. He paid no attention to the two SS officers who stood smoking as they conferred, and did not hide their cigarettes as he shuffled by, and he seemed not to hear the raucous music coming from the general dining area on the upper level of the Bunker. His world was beginning to collapse around him—and he paid it no heed.

In the corridor, Artur Axmann tried to stop him. Only a week before, on the Führer’s fifty-sixth birthday, Axmann had brought a group of his Hitler Youths to the Bunker to be decorated for bravery. The youngest had been twelve years old. He had destroyed a Russian tank. In the Chancellery garden above, Hitler had personally pinned the Iron Crosses on the puny but proud chests of the boys.

Axmann looked haggard and deeply worried. His hectic visits to the Bunker were made between battles in the city above when he could leave his headquarters on Friedrichstrasse from where he directed his Hitler Youth boys who defended the city and desperately tried to hold the Havel bridges from the Russian onslaught.

“
Mein
Führer,” he insisted, “I beg you! You must leave the Bunker. Leave Berlin! The Russians will overrun the Chancellery within days. Perhaps hours. I will personally take the responsibility of getting you out. Safely and unharmed.” He spoke rapidly as he walked beside Hitler who had not stopped. “I pledge to you,
mein
Führer, the life of every single member of my Hitler Youth to get you out to safety.”

Hitler brushed him aside. He seemed not to have heard. He entered the hospital room.

Ritter von Greim, leaning on Hanna Reitsch and a cane, was hobbling across the floor. When he saw Hitler he quickly removed his arm from Hanna’s shoulder, put his cane behind him and stood erect, placing as little weight as possible on his wounded foot.

Hitler did not notice.

“
Herr Feldmarschall,”
he said, “when will you be leaving?”

“We plan to leave here about 2300 hours,
mein
Führer,” Greim answered. “We will attempt to take off around midnight.”

Hitler frowned. “Midnight is still hours away,” he said shortly. “Why delay?”

“It is the time of least enemy ground action,” Greim explained. “The very early morning hours. The only possible way to fly out is in a small, slow, low-flying plane, vulnerable to small arms fire from the ground. A one- or two-seater plane.”

Hitler nodded. “Of course. You must give yourself the best possible chance. Your mission demands it.” He looked at Hanna. “You will accompany the
Feldmarschall?”
he asked.

“Yes,
mein
Führer,” Hanna acknowledged. “Unless you will permit me to stay at your side.”

Hitler shook his head. “I told you already,” he said shortly. “Both of you. You must leave.” He turned to Greim. “You will use the same plane in which you flew in?”

“No,” Greim said. “The Fieseler Storch was destroyed. In the Russian artillery bombardment this morning. We have an Arado-96, a light artillery observation plane, standing by. It has already been fuelled. It is ready for takeoff.”

Again Hitler nodded. He seemed to hear only part of what Greim said.

“Here are your final orders, Greim,” he said. “Your mission is threefold. First—arrest the traitor, Himmler. See that he does no more harm to the Reich. Secondly—as commander in chief of the Luftwaffe use whatever squadrons are available to you to attack the Russian forces that threaten the Chancellery. Keep a corridor open to the west. To link up with the Mecklenburg pocket. Prevent the enemy from overrunning the Chancellery grounds for as long as you can. And third"—he pulled the big envelope from his uniform tunic pocket—"deliver this into the hands of
Grossadmiral
Doenitz. You already know part of the contents. Operation Future. There are also further instructions the Admiral must carry out.”

He gave Greim his hand. “I know you will succeed,” he said. “You must!”

“
Mein
Führer,” Hanna said, close to tears, her voice unsteady with emotion. “I implore you! Leave the city. It is
not
too late. Take my place with the
Feldmarschall.
You
must
live,
mein
Führer. For the German people. The German Reich. You must not die!” Her voice broke.

Hitler regarded her. He was obviously moved. He patted her arm awkwardly. “
Meine liebe, liebe
Hanna,” he said quietly. “Death will be a relief for me. I have been deceived and betrayed by everyone—except a few like you.”

For a moment he looked at them. “
Hals-und-Beinbruch,”
he said. “May you break your neck and your legs"—the traditional German good-luck wish. “I shall not see you again.”

He turned on his heel and with a barely noticeable limp walked from the room.

It was late when the wedding ceremony finally got underway in the small conference room. The plan had been to begin the proceedings much earlier, but it was now close to midnight.

First there had been the delay of finding two suitable rings to be exchanged. Neither the groom nor the bride had been able to provide them. And suddenly everyone in the Bunker who had been wearing wedding rings sported naked fingers. Gold was at a premium. It was all they would have left if flight from the city became necessary. Then someone had suggested the Gestapo treasury. The SS officer who brought the rings over to the Führer Bunker had wondered what the Führer wanted with two wedding rings that had been confiscated from some rotten Jews before they were gassed. When he found out he wisely kept silent. And he was only too pleased to get out of the Bunker
Klapsmühle
—the Bunker nut house. The groom and the bride tried on the rings for size. They were too big.

And then there had been the difficulty in finding a magistrate to perform the civil wedding ceremony. Dr. Goebbels had remembered a justice of the peace, one Walter Wagner, who had married him and his wife, Magda, and a search was mounted to find this man. He had finally been located, fighting in a
Volkssturm
unit near the Friedrichstrasse, and was brought to the Bunker.

The small wedding party assembled in the room included Goebbels and Bormann, who were to be the witnesses.

Bormann stood next to Eva as her witness. Eva had been baffled at the sudden, unaccustomed friendliness of the man, who alone among all the Führer’s close associates had always held her in contempt—and had often shown it, when Hitler was not present. Now the man, whom Eva considered a loathsome, oversexed toad, had been almost deferential. “
Gnädiges Fräulein,
may I, please?” he’d asked when he took her arm. She had been puzzled and uneasy.

Because of the unusual circumstances, both she and Adolf had requested the special war wedding procedure, so that the ceremony could be performed without the customary waiting time. Both of them had solemnly affirmed that they were pure third-generation Aryans and suffered from no hereditary diseases, facts which were duly entered in the records.

And now they stood before the magistrate. Eva in her black taffeta dress with the gold clasps at the shoulder straps, wearing a bracelet set with tourmalines, her diamond-studded watch, and a topaz pendant. Adolf was, as usual, in his uniform.

To the accompaniment of Russian artillery shells and the rockets from “Stalin Organs” exploding above, the nervous magistrate, who had been told to hurry through the formalities, began the ceremony. He looked awkward in his combat dusty civilian clothes and his
Volkssturm
armband.

The oversized rings were exchanged and Justice of the Peace Wagner looked solemnly at the two people standing before him.

“I come now to the solemn act of matrimony,” he intoned. “In the presence of the witnesses here assembled I ask you,
mein
Führer, Adolf Hitler, whether you wish willingly to enter into matrimony with
Fräulein
Eva Braun. If this be so, I ask you to reply, ‘Yes.’ “

“Yes,” said Adolf Hitler.

“Now, herewith I ask you,
Fräulein
Eva Braun, whether you are willing to enter into matrimony with
mein
Führer, Adolf Hitler. If this be so, I ask you to reply, ‘Yes.’ ”

“Yes,” said Eva.

“Now, inasmuch as both the engaged persons have declared their intent to enter into matrimony, I herewith declare their marriage valid before the law,” Wagner intoned, obviously relieved that his momentous duties were discharged.

Eva felt as if she would burst with excitement. She was the wife of the Führer, Adolf Hitler! At last. She was the rightful
Führerin
of the Third Reich, and no one could deny her. After all those long, long years. She did not even notice that her husband did not kiss her at the conclusion of the ceremony. She was used to his not showing her affection in public. The tears of happiness in her eyes were enough.

Bormann was the first to congratulate her. All smiles, he bowed to her and kissed her hand. It disturbed her, and when the magistrate asked the four principals in the ceremony—Hitler, Eva, and the witnesses Goebbels and Bormann—to sign the marriage certificate—in the proper sequence, of course—she began to sign herself
Eva Braun.
She laughed, crossed out the
B
and wrote
Hitler, geb. (née) Braun.

It was done. The wedding party joined the other celebrants at the wedding feast to enjoy the good food, the wine, and the champagne.

And, as Hitler broke with tradition and toasted his new wife with a glass of sweet Tokay wine, a small two-seater Arado-96 observation plane raced along the makeshift airstrip at the historic triumphal arch, the Brandenburg Gate.

Hanna Reitsch was at the controls.
Feldmarscball
Ritter von Greim, who had arrived at the airstrip on crutches, sat stiffly in the second seat.

The Russians had fought their way even closer to the airstrip than when they had arrived in the Storch. The stark ruins ringing the area were tinged with a blood-red glow from the fires. Bright searchlights from Russian antiaircraft batteries lanced the night sky. And the cacophonous sounds of battle assaulted their ears.

They had been told takeoff would be impossible. Russian forces lay in wait a short distance from the end of the runway, ready to shoot down any plane that tried.

Hanna had said nothing. She had taxied to the other end of the airstrip and was now streaking down the runway, taking off
with
the wind instead of against it, as the enemy would expect. Fighting the controls, urging the little plane to gain speed. She hurtled straight at the six massive columns of the great arch looming before them, lifted, and barely cleared the giant bronze statue of Victory and her four-horse chariot—the famed Quadriga—that stood atop the huge gate. She willed the plane to gain altitude. Quickly the Russian searchlight crews found the small aircraft and pinned it in a latticework of blinding beams of light. Hanna climbed as steeply as she dared. Up from the nightmare of fire and smoke, suffering, and terror that was the dying city of Berlin. Up toward a cloud bank four thousand feet above. Tracer bullets zipped in fiery streaks past the shuddering wings. Antiaircraft shells burst in black puffs of destruction and the little Ar-ado-96 slipped into the concealment of the clouds and headed northwest.

Flugkapitän
Hanna Reitsch and
Feldmarschall
Ritter von Greim had departed from Berlin.

And with them went the beginning of Operation Future.

In the Führer Bunker Eva, clad in her blue Italian silk nightgown, climbed into bed with her husband.

On the street above, Justice of the Peace Walter Wagner lay dead, killed on his way back to his
Volkssturm
post.

O
bersturmführer
WILLIBALD LüTTJOHANN
looked at his watch. It was 1547 hours—Monday, April 30. He sat alone in the little temporary hospital room which so recently had been occupied by
Feldmarschall
Ritter von Greim. He had been ordered to keep himself ready to leave the Bunker at any time. That had been two hours ago. But his keyed-up alertness had not left him.

Outside in the conference corridor a macabre spectacle was about to take place. A small group of people—less than a score—was waiting uneasily. They had been summoned to bid their last farewells to their Führer. A pall of depression hung over the scene.