The World at War (80 page)

ALBERT SPEER

The situation in the
bunker was a fantastic one, an unrealistic one, one can't really describe how the moods went on and off like waves. Sometimes they were all exhilarating, and were thinking well now, with the Western troops coming for the release of Berlin. Goebbels was exclaiming one of the biggest decisions Hitler just made, he is now determined no more to fight against the West, only to the East in Berlin and this will mean the Western powers will join us in our fight against Russia. And then a few minutes afterwards everybody was speaking about suicide and how they are preparing it. Goebbels in some detail of course, saying how he will let his children killed, which were already in the bunker, so one didn't really get a picture which is one sided. It was really a troubled picture I got from this visit. One of the odd things in this last period was those who were in power were still fighting for their power and mainly Bormann was seeing a chance for himself. When Goring was teletyping a message to Hitler and said if he was not contradicting him, he takes over power because obviously Hitler, now encircled in Berlin by the Russian troops, and is no more able at act properly, Bormann made a double meaning to this message. It was quite harmless, it was not such a treachery as Bormann was telling Hitler, but Hitler immediately went in rage and he stripped
Goring of all his power and Bormann was triumphant. He was now, it was the peak of his whole career – Himmler was out of the game, now Goring was out of the game, Bormann was the second.

GERTRUD 'TRAUDL' JUNGE

Member of Hitler's stenographer pool

He stood at the table with motionless, expressionless face and his hands on the table board and then he began, 'My Last
Will'. Then he dictated me at first his private will and then his political testimony. I must confess that I was at first in a very excited mood because I expected that I would be the first and only one who knows, who is going to know the explanation and declaration why the war had come to this end and why Hitler couldn't stop and why the developments and why the catastrophe. I thought now will come the moment of truth and I was heart thumping when I wrote down what Hitler said. He used nothing new, he came out with old phrases. He repeated his accusations, his revenge swearing to the enemy and to the Jewish capitalist system, and then he announced – in the second part of the political testament – he announced a new government. And then I was like banged on the head because an hour before he had said, 'All is gone, there will be no National Socialist idea any more. Germany is totally destroyed, the people are totally exhausted, there will be no further life in German – in German in the old sense.' And so it was a total contradiction to his own words. Then I finished and I went out and he urged me, 'Please hurry up, to write it in typewriting. Bring it to my room and then join us, I have married
Eva Braun meanwhile.' It was another news for me which me very much surprised. I was not prepared for that because I could not think what would be the use of this act, only to die as a wife.

ALBERT SPEER

A few weeks earlier I tried to persuade Eva Braun to go back to Munich but she said, 'No, I stay, I want to go to the end with Hitler,' and when I saw her again in the bunker, the 23rd April, I was together with her, she was the best behaving of the whole entourage, leaving all the men far behind her concerning superiority above the situation. She was not mocking the situation, but she had worked out that she will now go to die with Hitler and possibly this was in some way the peak of her life, to die with the man she loved.

TRAUDL JUNGE

An orderly said, 'Come to Hitler, come to the Führer, he wants to say farewell,' He came towards me and his face was already dead, it was like a mask. He looked at me but I had the feeling that he looked through me and he gave me a shake of my hand and he murmured something but I didn't understand, I had not understand what he said at the last. But Eva Braun who stood beside him and who shook hands to all the others embraced me very heartily and looked at me with a sad little smile and said, 'Please try to get out of here, please try to come to Munich again and give my regards to my beloved Bavaria.' And then she and Hitler shut the door and retired. I had an absolute need for fleeing and I fled these stairs upside the next level and there I found the children of Goebbels. They were totally forgotten, nobody had cared for them and I tried to hold them back, that they wouldn't go down in the other part and be witness to what was happening there. And so I took a book and read them a fairy tale and gave them some fruit. We had a conversation and I was with one ear always hearing for what happened. And suddenly there was a bang, there was a shot and it was obviously within the bunker. The little boy of Goebbels, he noticed, and he noticed there was another sound. He said, 'Oh, that was a bullseye, that was a bullseye.' And I thought, Yes, you are right, that was really a bullseye, and I knew that was the shot that made an end with Hitler and with the National Socialist era and probably with us all.

ALBERT SPEER

Now I was in the middle of the Chancellery, which I had built in 1938. I wanted to see the whole building for the last time, and I went through the Chancellery, through the courtyard, and it was a dark night, but knowing my building so well I could, with my imagination, glimpse every detail of it. This was a farewell to maybe my life's work and the plane was already awaiting me in the big avenue leading to it. It was small, one engine and it was early in the morning. We started, just the pilot and me, the start was a difficult one because this avenue on both sides with high trees and we had to get very quick up in the air to avoid the column of victory standing in the middle of the avenue, and we just passed it. Being a little higher we were conscious the plane was only for daylight action and was always lighted up by the explosions of the engine. We feel very uncomfortable with it, mainly because what we were seeing was all buildings being in fire and shells exploding and gunfire, and only there was one spot in the west where there was absolute darkness. It was a very small spot and we knew that the Russians didn't close their circle yet, and this was our direction.

GRAND ADMIRAL KARL DÖNITZ

Head of State May 1945

When I got the telegram from the headquarters of Hitler, I knew that now I was Chief of the German State. But I knew too that Himmler had opinion that he had the biggest chance to be the successor of Hitler and that's why I thought to be necessary that I spoke to Himmler at once because this man was still powerful, and in the country I had no power at all because the Navy was swimming on the water and he got my demands that he at once had to come to me, but he answered the telephone that it was not possible for him to come. And then I let him see that it was necessary that he had to come and then he came. I didn't know what would be the end of this discussion, it was a question and that's why I put under a piece of paper my revolver on the table. He was sitting down and I gave him the telegram which I have got and which it was said that I am the Chief of State. When he had read the telegram, he got pale and he stood up and bowed and told me please let me be the second man in your state. Then I told him that I have no position at all for him in my state, then he was not content. He spoke against that but he had no success, I didn't change my opinion from that time of discussion. Then I stood up and he had to go, and he went home and I was very glad that the end of the discussion with Himmler was like that because I had the feeling that he wouldn't do anything against me.

GENERAL ANTONOV

The soldiers and officers fought in the Chancellery, Captain Shipavalov's battalion heroic fight with the SS. The heroic woman Major Nikulina [a political worker] together with some officers managed to get on to the roof and ordered the Fascist coat of arms that was there to be taken. Also they took out Hitler's own standard and showed it to me. Marshal Zhukov came and asked where is Hitler? I answered that he had not been found yet, but Goebbels had been found. In the evening the soldiers found two bodies near the bunker, since it was dark I ordered that they should be guarded and strict patrol kept. In the morning representatives of the Commission of the Command came, including an interpreter Elena Rzhevskaya. They took the bodies and examined them and within two weeks they established that they really were Hitler and Eva Braun. That's how the war in Berlin finished for us.

DR FAUST SHKAVRAVSKI

Soviet pathologist

The bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned very much, especially Eva Braun's body. Hitler was less burned but nevertheless one could not say who he was by his looks. His hands and lower legs were totally burned off, the body was very dark, like coal. Part of the cranium just was not there, only some small bits of bone were visible. We looked for other things such as metal inserts or pathological changes – for instance in Goebbel's case, one leg was shorter than the other. In Hitler's case the teeth were important; the thing about Hitler's mouth was that it was filled with what looked like more than a hundred grams of gold. Quite extraordinary. In front of his teeth was a gold band about as thick as a pencil. Hitler had – can't remember exactly, but I think – five of his own teeth, three artificial silicate teeth, which were attached to small pins on a golden base. The rest were all gold teeth. They were very unusual teeth and were therefore very important in the identification of the body.

CHRISTA RONKE

Berlin schoolgirl

We hoped the US Army would come earlier to Berlin than the Russians, but then we heard the Russian artillery coming nearer and nearer and suddenly we saw the first Russian soldiers. They knocked at our door, came in and said if there were German soldiers in the house and asked for weapons. And then they left, but the next Russians were quite different. One of them raped me and other inhabitants of the house. After this my mother and I thought over how to change. My mother changed into an old, ugly woman and I changed into an ugly, sick child. I cut my hair and had a tooth lost here – I looked very ugly. And I was lying in bed when the next Russians came and my mother always said this word, that should be in Polish or in Russian 'sick child', when the Russians returned. Even one Russian soldier felt pity and gave me a piece of bread.

FRIEDRICH LUFT

Berlin civilian

It sounds quite blasphemous but we were lucky having two dead bodies of two women who were living next door. They were killed when we were shelled during the last days of the war and we brought them down and we weren't able to bury them because the shelling was still going on so we put them on the grass here and covered them up with two big carpets. Then we went back into our house again and when the Russians came along and they asked us where are your women, we want to have your women, 'Frau, Frau' they said in German or what they called German, I found the trick to take them to these two dead bodies. I opened the carpet and said, 'This is my Frau here, I can't supply you with any women, these are the only women here.' And the Russians kneeled down, some of them, and made the cross and said little prayers, which was astounding, and got up again and kissed me because they thought I was a widower and gave me presents, gave me cigarettes, gave me bread, clapped me on the shoulder and went off again and got what they wanted probably the next house or on the next street. These were things which happened in those days.

GRAND ADMIRAL DÖNITZ

Now I was Chief of State the programme which I had was clear. I was to end the war as soon as possible and still in this time to save as many people as possible. I wished to help the population of the German eastern provinces who were escaping on land and on the Baltic Sea to the western part of Germany with all means which I could. All warships of the Germany Navy and all German merchant ships which I had were sent to the eastern German ports to fetch these poor fleeing people. I did not want to be obliged to sign a general capitulation including Russia at once, but intended to try to get the first capitulation only with the British and the Americans to win time for the retreat of the German soldiers and population from east to west. The British enemy under the command of Field Marshal Montgomery we got a partial capitulation on 5 May 1945, but General Eisenhower did not agree to my demand for capitulation only with the Americans and he required that Germany capitulate at once to Russia. Eisenhower at least agreed that we got a further period of forty-eight hours before the capitulation was enforced. We did everything to use these forty-eight hours to get the soldiers and the fleeing population to the west. In the Baltic Sea all ships were running without delay, saving wounded soldiers and other soldiers and fleeing civilians. We could bring over the Baltic Sea in the last months of the war two to three million men, the number of fleeing people who saved themselves on land amounted to millions too, and from the military front in the east we could bring 1,850,000 soldiers into the west of Germany. But still 1,490,000 soldiers became Russian prisoners.

CHRISTA RONKE

We went westward some miles and there was shooting and bombing and then suddenly we saw a German soldier coming down from a tree. He didn't know what had happened and we told him to get off his uniform and another minute we saw three German soldiers hanging on a tree – I think they had deserted. And then we stopped at a big villa where some people had done suicides and we lived in the cellar there.

LIEUTENANT J GLENN GRAY

US Army Intelligence

Being a conqueror seems very dubious to me but at the time it seemed quite right, we were convinced of our virtue and of German vice and it was very pleasing. Unfortunately the innocent were in the same position as the guilty. I didn't feel unhappy at all about having to interrogate and arrest Gestapo or even some worse characters, the so-called Security Service people. But totally innocent people were also humiliated in the same way as the guilty. I feel today that this kind of total victory, unconditional surrender, was probably a huge mistake, and we learned the wrong lessons from it, as our recent experience in Vietnam seems to prove. After the war when I became a civilian I began to feel that being a conqueror, a total victor, is quite bad for both and perhaps worst for the victor because he feels unduly virtuous, and I think that conviction has steadily grown since World War Two. We haven't won a war, we haven't lost a war either. If we have to have wars I would sooner see them inconclusive than end with total victory or defeat. It's a harder lesson to learn but perhaps better for the character of both nations.