Read Hitler's Last Days Online
Authors: Bill O'Reilly
Hitler's Last Days (28 page)
Count Two, “waging aggressive war” or “crimes against peace,” included “the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances.”
Count Three, “war crimes,” was the more traditional violations of the laws of war, including the killing or mistreatment of prisoners of war, use of slave labor, and use of outlawed weapons.
Count Four, “crimes against humanity,” involved actions related to the concentration camps, including murder, extermination, enslavement, persecution on political or racial grounds, involuntary deportation, and other inhumane acts against civilian populations.
The Nazis had kept thorough notes about their atrocities, including numbers of people arrested, numbers of people sent to the gas chambers, and experiments they performed on human beings. Those documents, as well as Nazi propaganda films and documentary films made by the Allies as the camps were liberated, were used as evidence, along with the testimony of thirty-three witnesses.
Twenty-four defendants were indicted, but one was absent (Bormann), one was deemed medically unfit, and one committed suicide before trial. In that first trial, eighteen of the twenty-four were found guilty; of these, twelve were sentenced to death. In the twelve subsequent trials at Nuremberg from 1946 to 1949, 177 political and military leaders of the Third Reich as well as German doctors, lawyers, and business leaders were tried. Twenty-four were sentenced to death by hanging, 118 were given time in prison, and thirty-five were acquitted.
A
DOLF
H
ITLER'S WILL AND MARRIAGE
certificate were found in an envelope stored in a suitcase at the bottom of a dry well outside Munich, Germany. A Jewish American intelligence agent was shown the location after interviewing Wilhelm Zander, an aide to Martin Bormann. Zander had left Hitler's bunker on a courier mission before the F
ü
hrer committed suicide, the agent discovered.
This is a translation of the will.
My Private Will and Testament
As I did not consider that I could take responsibility, during the years of struggle, of contracting a marriage, I have now decided, before the closing of my earthly career, to take as my wife that girl who, after many years of faithful friendship, entered, of her own free will, the practically besieged town in order to share her destiny with me. At her own desire she goes as my wife with me into death. It will compensate us for what we both lost through my work in the service of my people.
What I possess belongsâinsofar as it has any valueâto the Party. Should this no longer exist, to the State; should the State also be destroyed, no further decision of mine is necessary.
My pictures, in the collections which I have bought in the course of years, have never been collected for private purposes, but only for the extension of a gallery in my home town of Linz on Donau.
It is my most sincere wish that this bequest may be duly executed.
I nominate as my Executor my most faithful Party comrade, Martin Bormann.
He is given full legal authority to make all decisions. He is permitted to take out everything that has a sentimental value or is necessary for the maintenance of a modest simple life, for my brothers and sisters, also above all for the mother of my wife and my faithful co-workers who are well known to him, principally my old Secretaries Frau Winter, etc. who have for many years aided me by their work.
I myself and my wifeâin order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulationâchoose death. It is our wish to be burnt immediately on the spot where I have carried out the greatest part of my daily work in the course of twelve years' service to my people.
Given in Berlin, 29th April 1945, 4 a.m.
[
Signed] A. Hitler
[Signed as witnesses:]
Dr. Joseph Goebbels
Martin Bormann
Colonel Nicholaus von Below
April 20, 1889 | Â Â | Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary, to Alios and Klara Hitler. |
January 3, 1903 | Â Â | Hitler's father dies. |
1907 | Â Â | Hitler moves to Vienna, Austria, to study but is rejected by both the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and the Vienna Institute of Architecture. |
1909â1913 | Â Â | Hitler begins to attend political meetings. He supports himself with menial jobs and by selling postcards he has illustrated. |
1913 | Â Â | Hitler moves to Munich, Germany. |
1914 | Â Â | World War I begins. Hitler volunteers for the German army and serves as a runner on the western front. |
1919 | Â Â | When the war is over, Hitler joins the intelligence/propaganda section of the army. He joins the German Workers' Party, a right wing, anti-Semitic, anti-communist group. |
1921 | Â Â | Hitler becomes the leader of the party, now called the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party for short. |
1923 | Â Â | Hitler and his party are among a group that tries to overthrow the Bavarian government. Hitler is arrested and spends nine months in jail. While there, he writes his autobiography, |
September 1930 | Â Â | The Nazi Party wins 107 seats in parliament. It is now the second-largest political party in Germany. |
1932 | Â Â | Hitler runs against Paul von Hindenburg for president of Germany. He loses but accepts the post of chancellor, second in command, in January 1933. |
March 1933 | Â Â | The Enabling Act is passed, which gives Hitler full power. He rules that the Nazi Party is the only one allowed in the country. |
August 1934 |   | Von Hindenburg dies, and Hitler assumes the title of Führer. |
1935 | Â Â | Hitler builds the German army and begins a draft. |
March 12, 1938 | Â Â | The Nazi army occupies Austria, the country of Hitler's birth. |
November 9â10, 1938 | Â Â | Kristallnacht |
1939 | Â Â | Germany signs a nonaggression treaty with Russia. Germany invades Poland and splits the country with Russia. |
1940 | Â Â | The Nazis occupy Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France. |
June 22, 1941 | Â Â | Germany attacks Russia, despite their treaty. |
December 7, 1941 | Â Â | The Japanese attack the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. |
February 2, 1943 | Â Â | Germans surrender in Stalingrad, USSR. |
June 6, 1944 | Â Â | The Allied forces invade France on the beaches of Normandy. |
July 20, 1944 | Â Â | Hitler survives an assassination attempt. |
January 1945 | Â Â | Soviet troops enter Germany. |
April 1945 | Â Â | Berlin is surrounded by Soviet troops. |
April 30, 1945 | Â Â | Hitler and new wife Eva Braun commit suicide. |
May 2, 1945 | Â Â | German forces in Berlin surrender. |
May 7, 1945 | Â Â | Germany signs unconditional surrender. |
May 8, 1945 | Â Â | V-E (Victory in Europe) Day. |
August 14â15, 1945 | Â Â | Japanese armed forces surrender after the U.S. drops two atomic bombs. |
November 20, 1945âOctober 1, 1946 | Â Â | The major war crimes trials at Nuremberg take place. Twenty-four individuals and six Nazi organizations are indicted. Twelve additional trials are held between December 9, 1946, and April 1949. |
RECOMMENDED READING
Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell.
Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow.
New York: Scholastic Nonfiction, 2005.
Giblin, James Cross.
The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
. New York: Clarion, 2002.
Lace, William W.
The Nazis.
San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books, 1998.
Marrin, Albert.
Hitler
. New York: Viking Children's Books, 1987.
Nardo, Don.
Hitler in Paris: How a Photograph Shocked a World at War
. North Mankato, Minn.: Capstone, Compass Point Books, 2014.
Samuels, Charlie.
The Third Reich, 1923
â
1945
. Tuson, Ariz.: Brown Bear Books, 2013.
George S. Patton
Gitlin, Martin.
George S. Patton: World War II General and Military Innovator.
Edina, Minn.: ABDO Publishing Company, 2010.
Hatch, Alden.
General George Patton: Old Blood and Guts.
New York: Sterling Publishing, 2006.
Oleksy, Walter G.
Military Leaders of World War II
. New York: Facts on File, 1994.
The Holocaust
Bachrach, Susan D.
Tell Them We Remember
:
The Story of the Holocaust
. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1994.
Fishkin, Rebecca Love.
Heroes of the Holocaust
. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone, Compass Point Books, 2011.
Lee, Carol Ann.
Anne Frank and the Children of the Holocaust.
New York: Viking, 2006.
Wood, Angela Gluck.
Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People
. New York: DK Publishing, 2007.
World War II
Adams, Simon.
Eyewitness: World War II
. New York: DK Publishing, 2014.
Ambrose, Stephen E.
The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won
. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2001.
Nicholson, Dorinda Makana
Å
nalani.
Remember World War II: Kids Who Survived Tell Their Stories.
Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2005.
Raum, Elizabeth.
A World War II Timeline
. North Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, 2014.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Dear Uncle Adolf: The Germans and Their F
ü
hrer
. Michael Kloft, director. DVD. First Run Features, 2011. 60 minutes, NR.
The Nazis: A Warning from History
. Laurence Rees, writer and producer. DVD. BBC Video, 2005. 300 minutes, NR.
The World at War
. DVD. A&E Home Video, 2004. 1,357 minutes, NR.
Barron, Leo.
Patton at the Battle of the Bulge: How the General's Tanks Turned the Tide at Bastogne
. New York: Penguin, NAL Caliber, 2014.
Blumenson, Martin.
The Patton Papers
. Vol. 2,
1940â1945
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
Brighton, Terry.
Patton, Montgomery, Rommel: Masters of War
. New York: Crown Publishers, 2008.
Fest, Joachim.
Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich
. Translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Freytag von Loringhoven, Bernd, and Fran
ç
ois D'Alan
ç
on.
In the Bunker with Hitler
. New York: Pegasus Books, 2005.
Giblin, James Cross.
The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler
. New York: Clarion, 2002.
Hirshson, Stanley P.
General Patton: A Soldier's Life
. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.
Kershaw, Ian.
Hitler
,
1936â1945: Nemesis
. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.
O'Reilly, Bill and Martin Dugard.
Killing Patton
. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2014.
Patton, George S.
War As I Knew It
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947.
Showalter, Dennis.
Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century
. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2005.
Stone, David.
Hitler's Army: The Men, Machines, and Organization, 1939â1945
. Minneapolis, Minn.: MBI Publishing, Zenith Press, 2009.
I
TRAVELED TO MANY OF THE
sites mentioned in this book and spoke to people who remembered the last months of World War II in Europe. My research also took me to various archives, museums, and the official U.S. Army histories. In particular, the presidential libraries of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and the National Archives were of great assistance.
The Topography of Terror site in Berlin offered a chilling look at Nazi Germany. It is built atop the former site of Gestapo headquarters, next to a small remaining section of the Berlin Wall.
