Hitler's Last Days (19 page)

A survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp shows his arm tattooed with his identification number.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Stanley Moroknek Wilton Gottlieb]

CHAPTER 22

BERLIN, GERMANY

APRIL 20, 1945
MIDNIGHT

T
HE MAN WHO WILL BE
dead in ten days is marking his fifty-sixth birthday.

Adolf Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun, is in the mood to dance, but the F
ü
hrer merely slumps on the blue-and-white couch in his underground bunker's sitting room. He stares into space, paying no attention to the playful Eva or to the sleek blue dress she is wearing. Even though she knows that Hitler doesn't like her to dress provocatively, on this occasion Eva does as she pleases.

The two of them, along with three of Hitler's female secretaries, sip champagne. It is the end of another long and depressing day for the F
ü
hrer.

Adolf Hitler once dreamed of establishing Berlin as the world's most cosmopolitan city, despite its citizens having long considered him to be an unsophisticated bore. Back in the days when Germany held free elections, only 23 percent of the people of Berlin supported Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party. Even now, thirteen years later, Berlin is considered the least Nazi of all cities in Germany. So Hitler planned to spite Berliners during the grand postwar rebuilding by renaming the city Germania, thus wiping Berlin off the map forever.

A banner tied to a bombed-out building in Berlin reads, “We salute the first worker of Germany: Adolf Hitler.” It was put up to celebrate Hitler's birthday in 1944.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

The advancing Russians know nothing about Germania. And they are also not waiting until the end of the war to wipe Berlin off the map.

Moving quickly, the armies of Joseph Stalin, premier of the Soviet Union, have the city almost completely surrounded. It is just a matter of time before it falls.

Russian soldiers pose near the Reichstag in Berlin on May 1, 1945. Six days later, Germany will formally surrender.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Only Hitler's most faithful followers remain in the bunker. Many of the elite officers are running for their lives, desperately hoping to get out of Berlin, hoping to adopt anonymous new identities. Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, continues to prove his loyalty by remaining in the bunker. Hitler is glad. It has been said that Bormann is so threatening he can “slit a throat with a whisper.” A testimony to his character comes from none other than Hitler, the most callous of men. The F
ü
hrer deems Bormann to be utterly “ruthless”—and thinks him indispensable.

Bormann is now upstairs on the top floor of the bunker, hard at work despite the late hour and the approaching danger.

There is still time for Hitler to find a way out of Berlin. The Soviets are closing in, but some roads remain open. As recently as yesterday, the F
ü
hrer was planning to escape to his Eagle's Nest retreat, high in southern Germany's mountains. Hitler even sent some members of the household staff ahead to prepare for his arrival. But he has since changed his mind, deciding to stay in the bunker, hoping against hope that the phantom divisions seen only by him will somehow repel the Russians.

Quietly, Hitler announces he is going to bed. He looks awful as he stands to walk the five steps into his bedroom—face pale, back stooped, eyes bloodshot from fatigue, his entire body shaking. He is beyond medical help. Hitler had his cocaine eyedrops administered to him this morning, but tomorrow he is sending Dr. Morell ahead to the Eagle's Nest, explaining that “drugs can't help me anymore.”

With those words, Hitler admits defeat. There will be no Germania, just as there will no longer be a Nazi Germany—or an Adolf Hitler. The F
ü
hrer can hear Russian artillery shelling Berlin, the explosions resounding through the city, thundering closer and closer to the Tiergarten, the Reichstag, and then, inevitably, shaking the ground directly above him in the Reich Chancellery Park. Hitler does not know if the bunker's thick roof can handle a direct hit, but he likes his chances inside his underground fortress better than on top, out in the open. Earlier today, Hitler walked up the steps into the garden and spoke to a group of young boys from the Hitler Youth who had distinguished themselves in the face of Russian tanks. With the rumble of artillery as a backdrop, Hitler reviewed the rows of assembled young soldiers, his frail body all but swallowed up inside his brownish-green overcoat. Despite his obvious palsy, he shook each and every young man's hand. Then, the F
ü
hrer's mind clearly elsewhere, he exhorted them to save Berlin. “
Heil Euch,
” he barked as words of praise before descending once again into the bunker—“Hail to you.”

Martin Bormann (left) and Rudolf Hess leave a meeting in 1935. Hess was Hitler's deputy führer.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

That ceremony marked the last time Adolf Hitler would ever see the light of day.

On April 20, 1945, his fifty-sixth birthday, Hitler left his bunker to greet members of the Hitler Youth. This is the last known photograph of Hitler alive.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

That was hours ago. Now, Eva Braun helps Hitler to bed, assisting him as he changes out of his uniform and into his plain white nightshirt. Thanks to years of living nocturnally, his body is “bright white,” in the words of one secretary.

Eva does not get in bed with her beloved Adolf. Instead, she steps back into the sitting room, closing the door dividing the two rooms behind her.

A Berlin street fills with smoke after an American bombing raid in February 1945.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Now that the F
ü
hrer is asleep, it's time to party.

“Eva Braun wanted to numb the fear that had awoken in her heart,” Traudl Junge, one of the secretaries sipping champagne in Hitler's sitting room, will one day remember. “She wanted to celebrate once again, to dance, to drink, to forget.”

Eva beckons the three young women to follow. The group climbs the steps to the second floor. They sweep through the bunker, rounding up everyone, even serious Martin Bormann.

The party marches through the secret underground tunnel connecting the bunker with the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler keeps a small apartment. The paintings have been removed and the furniture has been transferred down into the bunker, but there is still a record player in the room—and one very special record: “Blood Red Roses Speak of Happiness to You.”

Eva Braun knows the words by heart. She and Adolf Hitler have listened to this record by the Max Mensing Orchestra over and over again. The F
ü
hrer enjoys classical music—and even the solos of Jewish pianist Artur Schnabel—but the dance orchestra sound of “Blood Red Roses” is
their
song.

Champagne bottles are uncorked. The music is turned up loud. Eva Braun, so desperate to dance, whirls around the room, alone and with anyone else who will dance with her. Blond and vivacious, she is the life of the party.