Hitler's Last Witness (10 page)

25
Josef von Manowarda (1890–1942) was a bass baritone contracted to the Berlin State Opera from 1935.

26
Lida Baarová (1914–2000) was a Czech actress and mistress of Joseph Goebbels.

27
Hedi (1910–1988) and Margot (1912–2000) Höpfner were dancers and former child stars.

28
Albert Speer (1905–1981) was Hitler's architect; from 1942 he was Reich minister for Armaments and War Production.

29
Berta Helene Amalie Riefenstahl (1902–2003) was a dancer, actress, film director and photographer; her idealised representations of the human body and filming of the masses for best effect were perfect for Nazi propaganda purposes.

30
The joke related by Misch originated from the Bavarian comedian Karl Valentin (1882–1948).

31
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (1891–1944), field marshal, committed suicide as an alternative to a prejudiced trial and the detention of his family (
Sippenhaft
) ‘on Hitler's orders'.

32
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (1900–1945, suicide); as Reichsführer-SS and chief of police he had under his control the SS, the security service (SD) and the Gestapo.

*
See footnote on p. 4. (TN)

**
Unterscharführer = Unteroffizier (corporal), the basic NCO rank. (TN)

Chapter Five

My Reich – The Telephone Switchboard

TO AVOID ANY DANGERS
to our alertness caused by routine, we rotated our duties daily. Best of all I liked to be on telephone duty. The position required there to be two men always present, for each of the three eight-hour shifts. Telephoning all round the world was fun. I was also interested in telephone technology. I soon developed the urge to be an expert, and volunteered eagerly for every course. I was extraordinarily successful in this endeavour, which would much later win me the dubious ‘advancement' to being Hitler's personal bunker telephonist.

The Reich Chancellery telephone switchboard on which we were trained was a very modern Siemens installations with push buttons, not plugs or cables. It was the engineers' pride and joy. I knew a girl at the Reichspost, and she just had to have a look at it. I agreed with Gruppenführer Albrecht, who was in charge of the Reich Chancellery staff, that I could invite her for a demonstration and initiate her into the mysteries of the button keyboard. There were buttons of various colours – white, green and yellow. One line was reserved for Hitler. If it was occupied, a red button lit up.

This particular button had its own story. It was first introduced after Hitler's number caused a number of problems. One night, a colleague on duty made a mistake with the internal dialling and reached the telephone in Hitler's private rooms. ‘Hey, comrade, what's the time?' he asked unsuspectingly.

‘What . . . what time is it?' the Führer responded.

‘Well, what time
is
it? I've forgotten my watch!'

When only a few days later he was roused from bed for a similar type of incident, something had to be done. Subsequently, all calls for Hitler went exclusively through the telephone switchboard. The Führer's suite could only be called from there; dialling it directly was no longer possible.

Dialling Hitler's extension 120050 brought the caller through to me.
[1]
Whoever wanted to speak to Hitler had to go through me. I would answer by saying ‘Reich Chancellery' or merely ‘Chancellery'. The telephone number in the Berlin public directory under Reich Chancellery was the telephone switchboard in the New Chancellery. Although the number of the Führer's suite was not listed, it was not by any means a secret. At least, I was never cautioned not to pass it on. That would later have its bitter consequence. Because the telephone lines in the Reich capital remained for the most part intact to the end of the war, during the battle for Berlin a host of outraged citizens were always ringing in.

I also had my own extension number. I could be reached in my service room under 120050–127. When it rang, it also did so in the house of my future parents-in-law at Rudow. Hermann Gretz, the Reich Chancellery telecommunications engineer, had installed it that way so that I could be reached when I was away.

Naturally, I did not want my female friend from the Reichspost, to whom I had shown the Siemens installation, to go without seeing more of the Holy of Holies. An RSD colleague, Michel Graf, said it would be no problem and accompanied us with his great ring of keys on a private tour of the New and Old Reich Chancelleries. Right at the end, when we were in the area of the Führer-suite, a door opened suddenly, and my female friend literally fell into Hitler's arms. ‘
Mein Führer
, may I introduce you to Frau Lehmann of the Reichspost.' I hastened to explain: ‘She is finding out about our telephone switchboard.' Hitler sized her up in a friendly manner and gave her his hand: ‘Is that so? Very good. Yes, yes, show her everything here.'

I even took my Gerda into the Reich Chancellery once. We never came across Hitler, but Gerda did not mind at all. She had come only reluctantly anyway, when I invited her. With her, I walked along my usual everyday routes through the corridors of the building. Gerda was interested in me and my workplace, not in Hitler, and she never met him in person.

As a telephonist, I was responsible for the tone quality of the connection, so I controlled the volume at the switchboard. To do that, it was necessary to listen in to the conversation. After putting a call through, I would always put on the headphones and press the yellow button, which gave me access to that line. In this way I could reassure myself that everything was working free of interference. Whether the caller or recipient was aware acoustically of my listening in I cannot say. There was, additionally, an apparatus that secured against eavesdropping. I was seldom able to follow any part of these conversations, all I overheard was broken fragments. If it was any more, I never spoke a word of it.

Of course, a host of reports reached me long before the public was told of them, and even often before Hitler got them. He would joke about this: ‘Why are you asking me? I am the last one here to find out anything!' This advantage in information as to war events, particularly as regards the later bombing raids on Berlin, was to prove extremely useful to me. Apart from that, I would never have dared to pass information outside.

All despatches came to us; we collected them together and then took them to Hitler. Those that I gave him personally he would mostly read at once. He would reach out for his reading glasses and take a step to one side – I would wait until he had chosen those reports to which he wanted to give more attention. The servants had to leave reading glasses scattered everywhere so that ‘the boss' had a pair quickly to hand, to avoid having to carry them with him constantly. It was extremely rare that he would wear his reading glasses when strangers were around. Poor vision is a weakness, and he did not like it to be seen.

While reading through the paperwork, his face would be a mask. It was impossible to tell by his expression if the news was good or bad. If a file interested him, he would put it under his left armpit; on the others he would inflict a tear ten centimetres long and hand them back. These had to be taken directly to the paper shredder in the hallway and destroyed immediately. Initially, I was not entrusted with this job. Only after I had been there a while was I allowed to bring him the collected brief reports about all events considered important by the press staff.

My colleague Erich Kraut began one day to keep some of these despatches for a collection. I was not aware that anything had happened, but only wondered now and again why he was never around any more. When I mentioned it once to another colleague, he told me: ‘He went away'. Whoever failed to perform his position adequately ‘went away'. That meant either he went into a concentration camp or to the fighting front. I supposed that in Kraut's case it would be to the latter. In 1934, he had been a drummer at the cadet institution at Lichterfelde when people had been shot to death there, in connection with the Röhm Putsch, but he had never said anything about it to me.
[2]
I first knew about it in connection with the hoarded despatches. I should like to have known more but dared not enquire. It interested me a lot, but in these things one had to be cautious. Why he kept some of these despatches I could not explain. Espionage? I have no idea. Officially we were not informed about such events and their consequences. Now and again, one would become aware that such-and-such was seen no more. Few words were spoken on how we of the bodyguard were to behave, and what was in store for us in the event of a lapse. ‘You all know where you are,' we were told. That had to suffice, and in general it did. As regards myself, it most certainly did.

Never would it have occurred to me to steal official papers. Back to the slush and filth of the battlefield? Not on your life. I admit to having risked a peep at a despatch in order to find out what was happening in the world. For example, I remember seeing a report about the development of the atom bomb. It stated that the American research was at least nine months behind the German. I knew Hitler's attitude to the atom bomb: ‘Nobody will win a war with it.' Of that he was convinced. The Western Allies had threatened that, if Germany used the atom bomb, they would assemble 15,000 aircraft in North Africa and use them to drench all Germany with poison gas. Hitler had experienced gas attacks in the First World War, and he panicked at the thought of them. He would never be able to justify taking the responsibility on himself, he emphasised, and therefore he had no interest in using an atom bomb.

Even when, occasionally, I glanced through the highly important reports I brought to Hitler, every scrap of paper that passed through my hands went to the paper shredder without a detour. Every slip that I received from ‘the boss' for destruction went there immediately. Had I left it lying around only briefly, any of the office girls might have found it.

Neither this way, nor through my service at the telephone switchboard, did I ever learn anything about what went on later in the concentration camps. I can only explain it by there being a flow of signals and orders only in one direction. I was only confronted by what came in and what was intended for Hitler. As in every undertaking or administration, not everything makes its way through to the highest level: ‘Should we show that to the boss?' ‘Ought the boss to be burdened with that?' ‘Is this really for the eyes of the boss only?' A great deal was sifted out beforehand. I often noticed that the pile in the in-box was considerably greater than what the Reich press chief finally put together for Hitler. Often when I was on the way to Hitler, somebody would come up to me and take away some papers. On the other hand, much of what Hitler ordered will have made its way in personal conversations down the chain of command. None of us would then have been an intermediary to it.

I only ever noticed one single report regarding concentration camps. This was a report by the Swedish newspaper
Svenska Dagbladet
about an inspection of a German concentration camp by a party from the International Red Cross. The newspaper had printed a report by Graf Bernadotte containing the results of the inspection; the despatch had the translation.
[3]
I brought this report to Lorenz at Dietrich's press office. Before I handed it over, contrary to the rules, I read it. It contained nothing disturbing. There had been no ‘Complaints', and points such as ‘Rations' and ‘Accommodation' were listed individually and assessed. I remember very clearly the sentence: ‘A report was not necessary'. I am unaware if the report ever reached Hitler.
[4]

When, later, I learnt of the dreadful occurrences in the eastern occupied territories, it struck me that Hitler, whenever he met Himmler, would always have talked to him in private. Whatever it was that they discussed behind closed doors I never discovered, neither directly or indirectly, unlike other times when one could ask the table waiters or adjutants for snippets of what they had heard. Never once with colleagues did I ever discuss concentration camps. That it was best to steer clear of this topic with whomsoever one spoke, even one's best friend, was absolutely clear. ‘You never spoke about it with your closest colleagues?' I have been asked over and again, and then they answer their own question: ‘Did you fear to speak about it?' One always felt a little bit of fear.

1
The RSHA, the chief of the security police and the security service SD at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, had the telephone number 120040; the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP was listed in the official Berlin directory as 120054.

2
During the so-called Röhm Putsch, Hitler had the SA leader Ernst Röhm and his followers shot and other SA leaders killed or held captive. In the wake of this putsch, on 30 June 1934 at the
SS-Leibstandarte
barracks, Berlin-Lichterfelde, there were numerous shootings. See Joachin Fest,
Hitler
, Frankfurt/Main, Berlin 1973, p. 636: ‘The SA-leaders mentioned in the “Reich List” were captured, brought to the cadet academy Lichterfelde and in contrast to their comrades at Munich lined up against a wall and shot without further ado.'

3
Folke Bernadotte Graf von Wisborg (1895–1948 murdered) was a Swedish officer, from 1943 vice-president and later president of the Swedish Red Cross. After a meeting with Himmler on 19 February 1945, Bernadotte organised the rescue of about 15,000 concentration camp inmates from more than twenty countries. The inmates, mainly women, were evacuated to Sweden in white buses.