Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany (19 page)

Silence.

‘We’ll help you with repairs around the house.’

The barn door opens slowly and the two soldiers see the frightened face of a young girl. She then slams the door shut. Claus gives their names and their ranks. After a while the door opens and the girl appears with three younger girls holding onto her skirt. She tells them that her name is Barbara and that she’s 15, and she introduces her two sisters and a cousin. Their fathers are away fighting in the war, and her mother died four months ago.

‘Come into the house. I’ve just finished baking bread,’ Barbara says.

‘And I helped make cookies!’ adds the cousin.

The light is beginning to fade when Johannmeier, Lorenz and Zander, the Hitler testament couriers, reach Pichelsdorf Bridge over the River Havel. A battalion of Hitler Youth volunteers are holding up the bridge in the hope that General Wenck’s 12th Army will soon cross it and relieve the centre of Berlin. The three men are exhausted by a traumatic journey through the ruins of Berlin, passing huddled women and children, and exhausted soldiers hiding in burned-out houses. They have succeeded in getting through three lines of Russian soldiers: one at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, the second at the Berlin Zoo station and the third just before Pichelsdorf. They squeeze into the battalion commander’s small concrete bunker and sleep.

Bletchley Park intercepts a message from Karl Hermann Frank, the notoriously violent head of the police in Prague and Reich Minister for Bohemia and Moravia. It is addressed to Heinrich Himmler. Frank wants to know what to do if ‘something happens to the Führer’. He demands to be informed immediately of any developments. Prague is one of the last major European cities still under Nazi control. Frank is trying to retain power, but at the same time anxious to evacuate key German personnel before the Russians arrive. He shares Himmler’s hope that it may be possible to negotiate a peace with the Allies and join forces to defeat the Russians.

At the labour camp in the abandoned theatre in the German town of Triptis, Nina Markovna’s 17th birthday celebrations continue. She is sitting on her bunk trying out chewing gum for the first time. Nina has seen the Americans chewing constantly and so wants to try it herself. All her American admirers are here. Bob, who’d brought a leather suitcase full of sweets, cognac and food, is sitting next to Mike on the next bunk.

‘What’s next?’ Jack asks.

Nina spits out the chewing gum and points to a can with a picture of a pineapple on its label. Bob opens the can.

‘It’s not the whole fruit. It’s just the juice squeezed out of it. Try it!’

Nina has her first fruit juice.

She then moves on to peanut butter. With a spoon she devours a whole jar. The three Americans and her brother Slava are watching wide-eyed and with some concern. Bob gives the remaining two jars to Slava.

‘Take it. Hide it from her!’

The officers who have escaped from the Führerbunker, Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven, reach the underground shelter at Berlin Zoo Station, having made their way past two lines of Russian soldiers, dodging gunfire and leaping over shell craters and decaying bodies. When they get to the Zeiss-Planetarium they decide to go inside to rest. It has taken the three men four hours to scramble along a distance that would normally be a 30-minute walk. They lie down, exhausted and gaze up at the artificial sky of the domed planetarium roof. Beyond it, visible through a shell hole, they can see the real, darkening sky.

In Bletchley Park a message to Hitler is intercepted. It is another telegram from Karl Hermann Frank in Prague. Heinrich Himmler is copied in. The message reads:

‘My Führer,

‘In view of the latest Reich situation, I request immediate reply giving freedom of action in domestic and foreign policy for Bohemia and Moravia in order still to exploit all possible opportunities for the rescue of Germans here from Bolshevism.’

In Berlin, Yelena Rzhevskaya of the Russian SMERSH intelligence unit is interviewing a German nurse. The woman has been caught trying to break through the Russian lines to get home to her mother. She has discarded her uniform cap but is otherwise still dressed as a nurse. She admits she has been working in an emergency hospital in the Reich Chancellery cellars. She tells Rzhevskaya that people there said that Hitler was ‘in the basement’.

Yelena Rzhevskaya and her colleagues waste no time. They follow the route of the Soviet tanks towards the Reich Chancellery, passing through broken barricades and driving over rubble-filled ditches in an American jeep. As they approach the centre of the city the air thickens with acrid fumes, smoke and dust. Rzhevskaya feels the grit on her teeth.

In northern Italy under the shadow of the Alps, the 2nd New Zealand Division has ground to a halt on the banks of the River Piave. As the troops get comfortable for the night, engineers are building a bridge so that the advance to Trieste can continue. (They are calculating the width of the river
based on the information supplied by Geoffrey Cox’s aerial intelligence team who have always proved themselves to be accurate.)

A short while ago, Cox saw a milestone saying that Trieste is only 125 kilometres away. Their orders are to get to the city before Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav forces. Tito, who has fought with the Allies, is desperate to seize the port and make it part of a new Yugoslavia.

At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in the shadow of a brand-new 45,000-ton aircraft carrier, Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, dressed in black, is addressing the thousands of shipyard workers who built the vessel. The carrier was to be called USS
Coral Sea
, but with the death of her husband three weeks ago, the navy decided that she should be named the USS
Franklin D. Roosevelt
.

‘My husband would watch this ship with great pride. So today I hope this ship will always do its duty in winning the war. I pray God to bless this ship and its personnel and to keep them safe, and bring them home victorious.’

Mrs Roosevelt pulls a lever and a bottle of champagne smashes onto the bow. Slowly the USS
Franklin D. Roosevelt
rumbles down the slipway and into the East River. British and American vessels nearby sound their whistles in tribute.

In the dark waters beyond the Kola Inlet on the Norwegian coast, close to the Russian port of Murmansk, the 14 German U-boats that make up the wolfpack codenamed
Faust
are waiting for the very last Arctic convoy to set sail. The convoy of 24 merchant ships plus a Royal Navy escort are about to make their final return to Britain, having delivered munitions, tanks, food and raw materials to the Soviets. The Arctic convoys have been travelling from Britain, Iceland and North America to Russia since 1941.

In Berlin, the Russian SMERSH reconnaissance unit has had to abandon their jeep because the streets of the city centre are blocked by the rubble of ruined buildings. Their street maps are useless as street signs have been destroyed by shelling. Yelena Rzhevskaya asks Berlin citizens for directions to the Reich Chancellery. Most people are helpful; many have white sheets and pillowcases hanging from their windows as signs of surrender, ignoring SS threats of execution for anyone who displays a white flag. Some people are wearing white armbands. Rzhevskaya notices an elderly woman taking two young children across a road. All three are wearing white armbands. The children are neatly dressed, hair combed, but the woman is distressed and, Rzhevskaya notes, hatless. She is crying out to no one in particular, ‘They are orphans! Our house has been bombed! They are orphans!’

Just off the Norwegian coast, in the
Faust
wolfpack, U-boat Captain Willi Dietrich and his crew on board
U-286
have been at sea for the last 12 days. Dietrich has commanded U-boats in the German Navy since 1943 but has never successfully torpedoed an enemy vessel.

U-286
’s sonar detects the merchantmen and Royal Navy ships of the Arctic convoy sailing away from the Kola Inlet. Dietrich sees his opportunity.

Lookouts on the escort frigate HMS
Goodall
spot the wake of a torpedo on the surface of the water heading straight towards them. Her skipper James Fulton orders evasive action. The torpedo shoots past.

In northern Germany, the German speakers in Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job’s 30 Assault Unit (the intelligence-gathering team created by Ian Fleming) have spent the afternoon getting information from the Burgomaster of Hesedorf and other civilians about the location of the German naval arsenal hidden in woods nearby. 30 Assault Unit are now poised at the arsenal’s entrance, ready to go in. With them is an M3 Stuart tank (nicknamed a ‘Honey’ after a US tank driver remarked ‘she’s a honey’) that Dalzel-Job asked the Irish Guards to provide as extra backup; his unit consists of just 30 men and they have no idea what they will find. He gets a colleague to take his photo at the entrance to the arsenal.

In the Arctic seas off Norway, a second torpedo is racing towards HMS
Goodall
. This time it is too late for the frigate to take evasive action. Captain Willi Dietrich in
U-286
has his first hit. The torpedo explodes against the bow of the
Goodall
. Captain James Fulton and 94 crew are killed. Almost all are under the age of 25. The rest of the crew abandon ship. There are 44 survivors. HMS
Goodall
is the 2,779th and last Allied warship lost in the fight against Germany.

In a cellar beneath an apartment block in the town of Thüringen on the outskirts of Berlin, 17-year-old Lieselotte G. (the ‘G’ is for anonymity) is writing her diary. Two weeks ago she returned from boarding school to be with her mother. Lieselotte’s father is a soldier fighting in Riesa, 120 miles to the south. Her brother Bertel is with the
Volkssturm
– the German territorial army – defending east Berlin. Lieselotte is glad she’s home but frequent air raids mean that they have to constantly run to the cellar, and there are power cuts that last up to four hours. A white flag flies outside their apartment.

Now, a week after the Russians started breaking in, Lieselotte has her first opportunity to update her diary.

‘Hundreds of people killed themselves in our district last Sunday. Our pastor has shot himself, his wife and his daughter, because the Russians broke into their cellar and started doing it with his girl. Our teacher Miss K. hanged herself because she is a Nazi. It’s lucky the gas is off, otherwise even more people would have killed themselves; we might have too… I thought a Russian would take me… I would have had an abortion, I don’t want to bring a Russian child into the world.’

The German naval arsenal is bigger than Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job ever imagined. It has 200 stores filled with mines and is linked by over 20 kilometres of roads – all hidden by trees. The Allies had no idea that it was here. Some of the mines are of a revolutionary type Dalzel-Job has never seen before.

30 Assault Unit have based themselves in the arsenal’s large naval officers’ mess. Bizarrely it has a huge white porcelain vomitorium, with chromium handles and, as a joke, a sign in large black letters saying, ‘
Für die seekranke
’ (For the seasick).

Suddenly there are mortar explosions outside – the Germans are in the woods around them.

Michael Hargrave is still in England. Together with two other
medical students, he’s huddled round a fire in their hut back at their transit camp near Cirencester. By now they should have been in Germany and on their way to Bergen-Belsen to help the sick and dying.

At midday the students were told that storms over the continent meant it was too dangerous for their Dakota to fly – two had been lost in the past week, and the RAF weren’t taking any unnecessary risks. Hargrave is flattered by their concern for the students’ safety but depressed they won’t be flying today. They hope to go in the morning.

In Bergen-Belsen the work of saving lives continues. In the past week, the sick have been moved from the camp to a nearby Panzer training school that’s been turned into a makeshift hospital. Even its parade grounds are full of beds and straw mattresses. Soon it will be the largest hospital in Europe, with 13,000 patients.