Hitler's Last Days (17 page)

It is clear that the Americans no longer need to proceed under radio silence.

George S. Patton and his Third Army are now across the Rhine and prepared to invade the German heartland. Patton will take great pride in boasting of this accomplishment, at great expense to the British: “Without benefit of aerial bombardment, ground smoke, artillery preparation, and airborne assistance, the Third Army at 2200 hours, Thursday, 22 March 1945, crossed the Rhine River.”

Montgomery's Twenty-First Army Group crossed the Rhine the evening of March 23, 1945. To be ready for this earth-shaking event, Churchill wrote a speech congratulating Field Marshal Montgomery for the first “assault” crossing over the Rhine River in modern history. The speech was recorded and, through some error by the British Broadcasting Corporation, was broadcast. The Third Army had been across the Rhine River for some twenty-four hours.

On March 31, 1945, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (in the beret) and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (second from right) cross the Rhine with American troops to observe the Allied advance into Germany.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

The bombed-out Chancellery, May 1, 1945.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the family of Raymond N. Born]

 

CHAPTER 20

BERLIN, GERMANY

APRIL 10, 1945
NIGHT

N
OBODY STANDS AS
A
DOLF
H
ITLER
enters the conference room.

The F
ü
hrer's entire body quivers as he assumes his usual place before the war map table. Hitler's hands shake, his head nods uncontrollably, and he is bent at the waist, too weak to stand upright. The distant thunder of Allied bombing shakes the concrete walls. Yet the F
ü
hrer's eyes shine brightly behind his rimless pale green eyeglasses, showing no fear whatsoever as he gazes down at the current location of his armies. Most of what he sees, however, is not real; he is too deluded to know the truth. In his desperation to end the war on his terms, Hitler imagines nonexistent “ghost” divisions as he scrutinizes the map, and pictures thousands of tanks in places where there are none at all.

Meanwhile, private conversation hums as if the F
ü
hrer had never even entered the upper-level room. German officers and Hitler's secretaries gossip and chitchat as if the most feared man in the world were not in their presence.

An Allied bomb explodes nearby. The room shudders. Lights sway, flickering temporarily, then return to full strength. All talk ceases. The military officers know better than to appear afraid, while the secretaries train their eyes on Hitler, waiting for his response.

“That was close!” Hitler says to no one in particular.

Weak smiles fill the room. Just weeks ago such informality would have been an unforgivable lapse in protocol, but living underground is taking its toll on Hitler's staff. They live in a world where the walls are made of hard rock, like a cave-dwelling prehistoric Germanic tribe. The cement corridors are narrow, painted the color of rust, and the ceilings are low. Rooms are all painted a dull gray, and the walls weep as moisture seeps through the rock. The residents have their own water supply from a deep artesian well. The energy for the switchboard, lights, and heat comes from a sixty-kilowatt diesel generator. The air comes from up above, but through a filter to ensure its purity.

The bunker is hardly pleasant. There are three separate security checkpoints just to get in, and all entrances are manned by guards carrying machine pistols and grenades. In this way, Hitler's headquarters is, in fact, a prison.

“The whole atmosphere down there was debilitating,” one German soldier who served in the bunker will later remember. “In the long hours of the night it could be deathly silent, except for the hum of the generator.… Then there was the fetid odor of boots, sweaty woolen uniforms, strong-smelling cleaning disinfectants. At times toward the end, when the drainage backed up, it was as pleasant as working in a public urinal.”

The bunker's residents must endure the claustrophobia of rarely going up to the garden to feel the sun on their faces. The group has become so used to the sight of their F
ü
hrer that even the lowest level staffers no longer feel the need to cut short their conversations when Hitler is in their presence.

Yet the informality belies the truth: Everyone—with the exception of Adolf Hitler—is terrified. “You felt it to the point of physical illness,” one German officer will later write. “Nothing was authentic except fear.”

And yet Adolf Hitler is convinced that the war can still be won.

Aboveground, the Allies are bombing around the clock—the United States Army Air Forces in the daylight and the British Royal Air Force by night. Berlin is a city in ruins. Of its 1,562,000 homes and apartments, one third have been completely destroyed. Almost fifty thousand citizens have died, more than twice the number who died as a result of the German bombings of London. Those still alive sleep most nights in subways and cellars. Despite the chaos, there is an amazing sense of routine to life on the streets of Berlin: Mail is delivered each day; the Berlin Philharmonic performs concerts at night; the subway runs on time; bakeries open their doors each morning.

One quiet reality, however, pervades life in Berlin: The Russian army is less than forty miles away. Refugees pouring into the capital from the east, seeking to escape the brutal oppressors, tell horror stories of murder and rape. And while some wealthy Berliners are secretly making plans to flee the city and perhaps find sanctuary in Switzerland, most citizens are stuck. They cannot run. The Russians are to the east, and the Americans, British, Canadians, and French are to the west. So they remain, enduring the bombings, going about their business as best they can.

*   *   *

Last month Hitler was visited by Joachim Peiper and Otto Skorzeny. His two favorite soldiers are soon to fight no more. In Vienna, Austria, Peiper and his First SS Panzer Division have been defeated and disgraced in a last-ditch attempt to stop the Russian advance. Furious, Hitler has ordered Peiper and his men to remove the armbands bearing his name from their uniforms. Shortly after that, Peiper flees west and is captured by the Americans.

Hitler (right) and his personal adjunct,
SS Group Leader Julius Schaub, visit the destroyed Chancellery in April 1945.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Skorzeny, a native of Vienna, hears that the Russians are about to enter that city and races there on April 10 with a team of commandos. He finds Vienna in flames. Instantly recognizing that the city will fall by morning, he and his commandos retreat. Their war is over. Skorzeny orders his men to hide themselves, while he escapes into the mountains, where he vacillates between suicide and fleeing Germany while he can still get out alive. In time, he chooses a third option—he surrenders to the Allies.

*   *   *

In the pale artificial light of the bunker, Adolf Hitler continues to stare, hour after hour, at his map table; he waits for some sign that all will be well. He is determined that the war end on his own terms. “Think of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans,” he tells his personal secretary, referring to the ancient Greek warrior king of Sparta. “It does not suit us to let ourselves be slaughtered like sheep. They may exterminate us, but they will not be able to lead us to the slaughter.”

Thus the F
ü
hrer has begun a scorched-earth policy designed to deprive Germany's approaching conquerors of any form of sustenance. On March 19 he wrote a directive that orders: “All military, transportation, communications, industrial, and food supply facilities, as well as all other resources within the Reich which the enemy might use either immediately or in the foreseeable future for continuing the war, are to be destroyed.”

Otto Skorzeny in November 1943. He fought fifteen saber duels as a young man.
In one, he received a deep cut on his cheek, which left him with a scar.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

This is all Hitler can do: prepare for the end. His attempt to cleanse mankind of perceived racial imperfections is over. As will soon be his life.

So as Hitler passes the time in the bunker, sleeping most days and staying up until dawn most nights to scrutinize plans for battles that will never be fought, he finds a most unusual way to maintain his optimism.