Hitler's Last Witness (9 page)

Naturally, Christmas was a very busy time with its gift deliveries. I would have to travel through Berlin and its environs, delivering presents, for example, to Wilhelm Furtwängler,
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Josef von Manowarda,
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Lida Baarová
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and Olga Chekhova. A duty driver from the Reich Chancellery chauffeured me. I remember standing lost in the Great Hall of the Furtwängler villa, astonished that the room was totally bare – no paintings on the walls, no mirrors, nothing. In the centre was a magnificent grand piano – but otherwise emptiness reigned. I was so impressed that, when the conductor appeared, I almost spluttered my usual ‘The Führer Adolf Hitler is pleased to . . .' opening line. As would almost all recipients of these gifts, Furtwängler enquired as to the Führer's health. Mostly no more than a couple of empty phrases would be exchanged, and then I would find myself outside again. On the other hand, when I called on the sisters Hedi and Margo Höpfner, the dancers known as the ‘prancing jackdaws of the Reich',
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their mother invited me to stay for tea and then we had a really long chat.

These excursions with my valuable freight of presents gave me great pleasure, but I did not always get to visit where I wanted: a colleague got a run to Max Schmeling and I did not ask him in time if he was willing to do a swap. The gifts from the highest level were almost never bought specially. Mostly Hitler would choose something from the stock of presents he had received himself. One can scarcely believe the small and large tokens of admiration people sent him, not only on the standard occasions but throughout the whole year from all corners of the Reich. I was especially impressed by a farmer's wife from Westphalia who sent a home-baked loaf every week. On one of his journeys, Hitler had happened to stay at her farm, tried her home-made bread and praised her highly for it. We had instructions to take the loaf down to the kitchen as soon as the mail van brought it. Only very close to the end of the war did the aromatic packages stop arriving.

Frequently, we would go over the guest list for a dinner. This would usually not take much time. It was important to apply some simple rules, but above all never to seat two guests from the same profession close to each other: two lawyers together, two medical men – that could only lead to friction. An invitation to dinner from Hitler was never turned down; even the short-notice ‘stand-by candidates' would put in an appearance promptly. Should an empty place threaten, I would call the local Gau leader myself and ask if there were any visiting Gauleiters staying in Berlin. Then the answer might come back: ‘Yes, so-and-so is in Hotel Excelsior.' Then I would telephone the Herr Gauleiter at Hotel Excelsior and give him my ‘The Führer Adolf Hitler is pleased to . . .' line. The Gauleiter in question would generally be highly delighted to receive a personal invitation from Hitler, although the latter of course had not even been aware that the Gauleiter was in Berlin. Everything had been arranged by me. Until immediately before the reception of the guests, Hitler would, as a rule, not know who was going to come. He would be given the guest list on a slip of paper just beforehand. Only Dr Goebbels and Albert Speer would dare to turn down an invitation.
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It was an unwritten rule at these dinners that the politics of the day should not be a topic of discussion. The conversation revolved mostly around the old days. Hitler's private guests were never subjected by us, his private bodyguards, to any kind of security control.

My colleagues and I, about twenty of us in Hitler's closest proximity, could go wherever we liked completely unchecked. Even on journeys, nobody from the RSD would go through our bags. I never saw Hitler carrying a weapon. I never saw the golden pistol he was said to possess, nor did any colleague ever say they had seen it. The inside pockets of his trousers were not of cloth but leather. His valets informed me of that. If he carried a weapon there was no sign of it – in contrast to Göring, whose revolver bulged in his coat pocket.

Once when Göring gave me his things in the foyer, the revolver fell out of his greatcoat pocket with a loud metallic thump on the cloakroom table. It looked like a Colt from the Wild West. Even Hitler used to make fun of Göring's love of gimmicks and showmanship. ‘If it gives him pleasure . . .' he would then say, as if he were speaking about a child who wanted to wear odd socks.

It was an important part of our duties to receive Hitler's personal guests and their escort. If the gentlemen had to wait, then we would keep them company.

I remember a visit by Leni Riefenstahl.
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She was a very attractive woman. When I reported her presence to Julius Schaub, the successor to Wilhelm Brückner as chief adjutant, he muttered in his native Bavarian dialect: ‘She's probably come for more money – hmm.' I served Frau Riefenstahl tea, assuming that Hitler, sitting in the corner of his study, would invite her in after a short delay. After a while, he let me know that he did not wish to receive Frau Riefenstahl today. She left again. I would strongly dispute any romance between Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl. She always got his approval to film in the Reich Chancellery. All day long her crew would turn every door handle and chair leg for this or that documentary. Occasionally I would stand by and watch.

At the beginning of the war, Hitler would frequently receive artists and film actors. Once, there was a well-known comedian among the guests who told me some of his best jokes, but I no longer remember his name.
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He remarked that it was a good thing Hitler's surname was not Kräuter (meaning weeds), for then everybody would be shouting ‘Heil Weeds!' He also told a joke about a man named Adolf Pflaumenmus, who was desperate to have a change of name. The man at the registry asked him what he preferred to be called. ‘Alfred Pflaumenmus!' he replied. I do not know how Hitler would have reacted to this, but like everybody else he probably gave a smile of amusement.

I cannot state for a fact that Hitler had a sense of humour. I never heard him laugh out loud. That may be because I did not know him until after the war began. The Old Campaigners told me that the warlord Hitler was a quite different personality to the pre-war Hitler. ‘The boss' himself had a small fund of jokes, which he liked to bring out from time to time. He was very fond of telling Blondi, his Alsatian bitch: ‘Now Blondi, what do young women do?' Blondi would then lay on her back with her legs up.

When Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had to wait twenty minutes for Hitler, he began to get impatient.
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His adjutant had come to see us in the service room after finding out that Hitler was still not ready to receive Rommel, and I was sent to placate him. I asked about North Africa and succeeded in distracting him. Rommel retrieved his greatcoat from the cloakroom, felt around in the pockets and drew out a stack of photos. He sat on the cloakroom table and told me to do the same. While sitting on the table, he spread out his North Africa photos, which he wanted to present to Hitler. We looked at them together. When I saw whisky bottles in the photos, I asked, ‘Alcohol in the heat, Herr Generalfeldmarschall?'

He praised me with: ‘A justified question,' and explained that alcohol is good for thinning the blood in high temperatures. A whisky and soda make the body feel much lighter. Naturally I tried it out later on a hot day in Munich with my colleagues and, well, I can confirm that the field marshal was right.

Hitler's guests, irrespective of whom they were, were mostly very friendly to us bodyguards, because of our proximity to Hitler. Nobody could ever know whether whatever was said beyond irrelevancies might not get to his ears. Although we youngsters would not have taken it upon ourselves to repeat to Hitler something we had picked up on such occasions, the Old Campaigners did it all the time. It was therefore thoroughly advisable to keep on the right side of them and not to do or say anything that it were better for Hitler not to know.

If the guests thought they ought to converse with us while we escorted them to his presence, mostly they would enquire after his health. Himmler, a guest very rarely, used to joke: ‘Is the Führer healthy? I hope he is well. Take good care of the Führer – you know what will happen otherwise.'
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1
Wilhelm Brückner (1884–1954) was Hitler's chief adjutant until the end of 1940.

2
Otto Meissner (1880–1953) was from 1919 to 1945 head of the Berlin presidential office.

3
The Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP was his private Chancellery to which mainly private petitions, requests and enquiries would be made. From 1939, the front organisations of the euthanasia programme were subordinated to the Kanzlei des Führers.

4
Named after the industrialist Johann August Friedrich Borsig (1804–1854), who had a house built for himself here at Voss-Strasse 1. Albert Speer blended the ‘palace' into the structure of the New Reich Chancellery.

5
According to Heinz Linge, the servant and bodyguard member was Eugen Bussmann. See Linge,
With Hitler to the End
, London 2009, p. 20 n.

6
Martin Bormann (1900–1945) was from 1933 chief of staff to Rudolf Hess; from 11 May 1941 head of the Party chancellery; and from 12 April 1943 Hitler's secretary.

7
In all probability this was the report of high casualties among the
SS-Leibstandarte
.

8
Max Wünsche (1915–1995) served with the bodyguard from 1 October 1938 to December 1940 with one short break.

9
Hitler left Berlin on the evening of 9 May 1940 to travel to his temporary headquarters, code-named Felsennest, near Bad Münstereifel in the Rhineland, from where he oversaw the Western Offensive, which began on 10 May.

10
Paula Hitler (1896–1960) was Hitler's only (full) sister.

11
Alois Hitler (1882–1956) was Hitler's half-brother by their father.

12
Albert Bormann (1902–1989) was head of Adolf Hitler's private Chancellery, and brother of Martin Bormann.

13
On 15 March 1938, after the annexation of Austria, Hitler stayed at the Hotel Imperial and went from there to the Heldenplatz. From there, he announced to a quarter of a million people: ‘the entry of my Homeland into the German Reich'. On 11 September 1945, the Allied Control Council founded by the Allies for Austria and chaired by Soviet Marshal Ivan Konyev met at the Hotel Imperial.

14
The Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg for the attack on the enemy France on 10 May 1940.

15
Hitler did not return until after Paris fell. He arrived there on 23 June 1940, the day after signing the armistice at Compiègne.

16
According to Heinz Linge, Bussmann was not a servant of Hitler, and Linge's deputy, until 1942: prior to that it had been Hans Junge. Heinz Linge,
With Hitler to the End,
London 2009, p. 20.

17
Adolf Dirr (1907–?) was one of the first eight members of the
SS-Begleitkommando des Führers
founded on 29 February 1932. See Peter Hoffmann,
Die Sicherheit des Diktators
, Munich/Zürich 1975, pp. 64f.

18
Max Amann (1891–1957) was Hitler's sergeant in the First World War, later owner of the NSDAP publishing house Franz-Eher-Verlag.

19
The Munich Putsch, or Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch, was an attempt by Hitler, Erich Ludendorff and other National Socialists to move the Bavarian state government to overthrow the Reich government. The putsch came to grief, thirteen National Socialists and one passer-by being killed. Hitler, who took flight in panic when the shooting began, was sentenced by the Munich People's Court to a minimum of five years for high treason, but on 20 December 1924 he was released from Landsberg after only eight months.

20
In the 1920s, the owners of the Kaiserhof sympathised with the Nationalist Right. The upper floor of the hotel was used temporarily as the provisional NSDAP Party HQ. Hitler was staying there on the day of his swearing-in as Reich chancellor on 30 January 1933.

21
The RSD had been grounded as the Führer protection squad, a protection service for the Chancellor alongside the SS bodyguard. On 1 August 1935, it formally became the RSD, with Himmler as its head and commanded by the later Gruppenführer Johann Rattenhuber. Instructions did not pass through Himmler, but to Rattenhuber from Hitler personally, his adjutants or later Bormann. The setting up of the various bodyguards involved all kinds of competence wrangling between the involved administrations, offices and persons. See Peter Hoffmann,
Die Sicherheit des Diktators
, Munich/Zürich 1975, pp. 44ff. In Misch's accounts, a slightly deprecatory tone slips in when he talks of RSD members; control of weapons and the searching of guests was the prerogative of the RSD, but probably ‘beneath the dignity' of the SS bodyguard.

22
By virtue of the
Gesetz über das Staatsoberhaupt des Deutschen Reiches
of 1 August 1934, the offices of Reich president and Reich chancellor were merged.

23
Wolfgang Wagner (b.1919) was an operatic director, and grandson of the composer Richard Wagner. His mother Winifred was a close confidante of Hitler. The engagement mentioned by Misch took place with Ethel Drexel. Wagner was married to her from 1943 to 1976.

24
Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954), conductor and composer, was appointed head of the Berlin State Opera and vice-president of the Reich Chamber of Music in 1933 by Goebbels.