Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany (7 page)
Read Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany Online
Authors: Emma Craigie,Jonathan Mayo
Eva Braun’s signature is in tidy schoolgirl italics. She automatically begins her surname with the letter B, then crosses it out and signs, ‘Eva Hitler,
geb
(née) Braun’. Goebbels and Bormann then sign as official witnesses. Goebbels uses the title Dr, and like Eva writes neatly in the correct place. Martin Bormann’s signature is a big confident illegible scrawl. The final signature, ‘WWagner’, is easy to read.
The witnesses to the marriage are the only two senior Nazis who have stayed with Hitler in the bunker. They have been locked in a battle for primacy of position since 1933. Both are ruthlessly ambitious. Witnessing Hitler’s marriage and facing death at his side is their final reward
.
Goebbels is not a medical doctor but uses the title he earned by completing a doctoral thesis about 19th-century Romantic literature at the University of Heidelberg in 1921. A very short, thin, dark-haired man with a deformed foot, Goebbels was mockingly known
as ‘our little doctor’ by those in Hitler’s circle who conformed to the strapping blonde Aryan ideal which his propaganda promoted
.
As Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels has been instrumental in creating the myth of the Führer, the great leader who will save the nation, whom he has frequently presented in biblical terms, calling Hitler ‘holy and untouchable’ and even anticipating his death in Christ-like imagery: ‘An hour may come when the mob rages around you and roars, “Crucify him!” Then we shall stand firm as iron and shout and sing “Hosanna!”’
Goebbels’ personal relationship with Hitler is intense. In 1926 Goebbels demanded that ‘the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler’ be expelled from the National Socialist Party. But three weeks later Hitler embraced him publicly and Goebbels swept away his previous objections to Hitler’s views on communism, foreign policy and private property. His private diary takes on a homoerotic charge, and an adolescent tone: ‘How I love him! What a fellow! Then he speaks. How small am I! He gives me his photograph. With a greeting to the Rhineland
. Heil Hitler!
I want Hitler to be my friend. His photograph is on my desk.’ Hitler initially rewards this enthusiastic little man with promotion, but later cools. Hitler never allows any of his inner circle to feel secure in their position
.
Martin Bormann is the Führer’s private secretary. His name is largely unknown to the public but as the person who controls communication between Hitler and the rest of the world he is arguably the most powerful person in the country, in some ways more powerful than the Führer. In the isolation of the bunker he decides what information Hitler gets, and who is allowed to communicate with the leader. He controls Hitler’s finances. Among Hitler’s entourage he is nicknamed the ‘Brown Eminence’ and is widely loathed. Eva certainly detests him. She has always felt herself in competition with him for Hitler’s attention and has resented the fact that he is the person who gives her an allowance and to whom she has to go if she incurs extra expenses. He is a short, overweight,
graceless man who understands the power of secrecy. He has never courted publicity and has always worked as a functionary. The only time he has ever come to the public’s attention was in 1923 when, together with Rudolf Höss, who went on to become Commandant of Auschwitz, he was arrested for the murder of his elementary school teacher Walther Kadow. Kadow moved in the same far-right circles and was suspected of having betrayed a colleague. Höss and Bormann lured him into a forest where they beat him with maple saplings until he collapsed. They then slit his throat and finally shot him in the head. Höss was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, Bormann to one year in prison. On the grounds that it was impossible to decide whether Kadow had died from the beating, the throat-slitting or the shooting, both were found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder
.
For the last four years Bormann has stayed constantly at Hitler’s side, keeping the same unconventional hours, present but silent. His ability to listen matches Hitler’s ability to speak. He is ruthlessly efficient and always carries a notebook which he whips out whenever the Führer expresses an opinion or even hints at an instruction
.
Landing safely at Rechlin airfield, 150km north of Berlin, an emotional Hanna Reitsch is exhilarated by the successful flight. Robert Ritter von Greim, pale with pain, immediately addresses the handful of staff who remain at the airfield and gives the order for all aircraft to support the relief of Berlin. His words are pointless. The airport has been devastated by Allied bombing. The few planes that are left will make no difference.
After the marriage ceremony in the Führerbunker, the couple
go back to their private rooms for champagne, tea and sandwiches with their senior staff. Hitler goes briefly to check on Traudl Junge’s progress with typing the testaments, then joins the party. He turns down the champagne but, most unusually, as he is normally teetotal, he accepts a small glass of Hungarian wine, sweetened with sugar. Walther Wagner stays for 20 minutes. He has a glass of champagne and a liverwurst sausage, and then sets off back to his Home Guard post in a wine cellar on Unter den Linden. He will be shot in the head two days later, caught in the crossfire of a street battle.
Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, is struck by Eva’s composure. He congratulates her as ‘Frau Hitler’ and her eyes light up. For a moment she lays her hand on his forearm and smiles.
Hitler’s mind is still on his political testament; he sends both Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels away from the party, at different moments, to add more names to the list of appointments which Traudl Junge is still typing. Junge is tired and very frustrated by the constant changes.
It really makes no odds to us if we kill someone
.
Heinrich Himmler
Three hundred kilometres away, in his headquarters in the police station in Lübeck near the Baltic coast, Heinrich Himmler is poring over astrological charts with the astrologer Walther Wulff and Walter Schellenberg, the SS head of foreign intelligence.
As soon as Himmler heard that news of his attempts to start peace negotiations with the Allies had become public, he summoned Schellenberg, who had been involved in setting up the meetings with the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte.
As Schellenberg wrote later, ‘I realised that my position with Himmler would now be so difficult that I should have to face the fact that I might be liquidated.’
In order to protect himself, Schellenberg decided to take Walther Wulff with him to meet Himmler. He knew that the deposed SS chief could never resist having his horoscope read and he hoped that Wulff would be able to keep Himmler calm.
Himmler is chewing on a fat cigar. He smells strongly of brandy and is sweating and shaking and close to tears. He is terrified that he could be arrested or simply shot on Hitler’s orders at any moment. Schellenberg and Wulff are equally tense. Wulff has spent time imprisoned by the Gestapo. He has agreed to help Schellenberg but he is anxious not to aggravate the SS chief with his predictions. As agreed with Schellenberg in advance, Wulff tells Himmler that the stars suggest the best course of action is to send Schellenberg back to Count Bernadotte in Sweden. Schellenberg is committed to trying to rescue the talks about talks. Studying the charts, Himmler finally agrees that Schellenberg can discuss the ending of the German occupation of Scandinavia with Bernadotte.
Himmler’s biggest concern is what the charts have to say about his personal future and that of his mistress, Hedwig Potthas, and his children. He has no idea what to do and keeps asking Wulff whether he should kill himself, or whether he could have a future. He asks Wulff to explain how safe various countries are, in astrological terms. Should he flee, for example, to Czechoslovakia? Wulff advises that the charts aren’t looking good for Czechoslovakia. It is the position of the stars, rather than the position of the Russian army approaching the Czech capital that concerns Himmler. He eventually decides that he will remain in Lübeck but that Schellenberg should travel to Denmark rather than Sweden. With enormous relief, Schellenberg rushes off to pack.
Schellenberg’s nervousness that he might be ‘liquidated’ is based on the fact that Himmler holds it a virtue to overcome any feelings of compassion which might prevent one from carrying out an execution. Addressing SS officials at a secret meeting in 1943, he explained, ‘Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person – with exceptions due to human weaknesses – has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.’
In Villabassa in the Italian Alps, British MI6 agent Sigismund Payne-Best is sitting in his bedroom in the Hotel Bachmann waiting for news. Telephone contact has been made with German army units still fighting in the hills around Villabassa. Payne-Best had sent a message to the German area commander saying that he must come to their assistance – if the
Prominente
are executed by the SS, the Commander would be held responsible by the Allies when the war is won, for allowing such a blatant war crime to take place.
Waiting with Payne-Best is fellow prisoner General Alexander von Falkenhausen. Payne-Best hasn’t told von Falkenhausen about the drunken warning from the SS guard, as the threat of execution will spread panic, and if people try to escape it will lead to reprisals. Payne-Best believes they should stay put and negotiate their way out of the crisis, hoping the German army Commander will arrive and take over. The Englishman knows full well that few of the SS guards have any enthusiasm for the mass execution due to take place later in the day.
General Alexander von Falkenhausen was the German army
Commander-in-Chief in Belgium until his implication in the 20th July 1944 plot to kill Hitler. The would-be assassin was Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, an aristocratic army officer disillusioned by Nazi ideology and by his experiences on the Eastern Front, who planted a bomb in a briefcase in Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia. When it detonated, Hitler was blocked from its full blast by the heavy oak conference table. Four of the 24 people with him died of their injuries but Hitler, who had been leaning over the table at the moment of the explosion, suffered only splinters and small cuts and burns, singed hair and burst ear drums. He was well enough to meet Mussolini later that afternoon, and to show him the scene of his ‘miraculous escape’
.
Hundreds of German army officers like von Falkenhausen were arrested, suspected of being in on the conspiracy, and over 5,000 people were executed – not just army officers but also civilian opponents of the regime. Under an ancient German law known as
Sippenhaft,
members of the suspect’s family could be arrested too. In the hotel with Payne-Best and von Falkenhausen are many relatives of those executed after the bomb plot
.
At Rechlin airfield, Hanna Reitsch takes the controls of a tiny open-top aircraft and von Greim, again, squashes in beside her as they set off for Lübeck. They are now focused on the second part of the mission: to capture Heinrich Himmler. They have decided to head to Admiral Dönitz’s headquarters in the hope that he will have information on Himmler’s whereabouts.
In the Führerbunker the wedding celebrations continue. Adolf Hitler sits quietly while Eva knocks back the champagne. Generals Krebs and Burgdorf are on cognac.
General Krebs is the Army Chief of Staff, recently appointed on the grounds of his readiness to comply with the Führer’s will. His
predecessor, General Guderian, was sacked for disagreeing with what he regarded as Hitler’s suicidal military decisions. Krebs is a much decorated, monocle-wearing infantry general, who joined the military in 1914 and never left. He is a fluent Russian speaker, the only Russian speaker in the bunker, having served as the military attaché in Moscow from 1936 to 1939
.
General Burgdorf is more junior, a large and florid character, who is serving as Hitler’s chief army adjutant. Following the attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944, it was General Burgdorf who undertook the murder of Field Marshal Rommel. Rommel was believed to have had a peripheral involvement but Hitler knew that he could not put the country’s favourite general on trial for treason. Burgdorf was sent to Rommel’s family home on 14th October 1944 with instructions to give Rommel a choice: he would either be tried and executed for treason, or he would commit suicide and his family would be guaranteed immunity from prosecution. Burgdorf told Rommel that he had the poison on him. It would only take three seconds. The man known as the Desert Fox said goodbye to his wife Lucie and their 15-year-old son Manfred (‘I shall be dead in half an hour...’) and left the house with Burgdorf. They drove to a quiet country road, where Rommel took the poison. Hitler sent a message of condolence to Lucie
.
Poor Neville Chamberlain believed that he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong with Stalin
.
Winston Churchill
In Milan, two bodies are being dumped from a removal van onto the cobbles of the Piazzale Loreto. They are the mud-spattered remains of Italy’s deposed dictator Benito Mussolini
and his mistress Clara Petacci. He’s wearing a grey-brown jacket, grey trousers with red and black stripes down the sides and black boots. A crowd swiftly gathers and people start pelting them with vegetables, spitting, kicking and urinating on the bodies; shots are fired into Mussolini’s head. His eyes are still open. A woman fires five bullets into Mussolini’s body shouting, ‘Five shots for my five assassinated sons!’ Piazzale Loreto has been chosen as the site to dump the bodies, as it was here that 15 executed partisans had been publicly displayed in August 1944.
