London, September 27, 2000
Hitler
screamed: 'You have all betrayed
me'
Hitler's
last days
In
the final extract from his biography of Adolf
Hitler, Ian Kershaw charts Hitler's
despair in his Berlin bunker as he realised
that he had lost the war
THE
atmosphere in the bunker on April 20, 1945,
Hitler's 56th birthday, was more funereal than
celebratory. There was no trace of the pomp and
circumstance of earlier years. The gaunt ruins
of the Reich Chancellery were a stark reminder,
if one was needed, that there was no cause for
celebration. Hitler felt this himself. His
birthday with the Russians at the gates of
Berlin was an embarrassment to him. He trudged
down the assembled line of his staff to receive
their murmured birthday greetings with a limp
handshake and a vacant expression. Afterwards,
Hitler drank tea in his study with Eva Braun. It
was approaching nine o'clock in the morning
before he finally went to bed, only to be
disturbed almost immediately by General Burgdorf
with the news of a Soviet breakthrough and
advance towards Cottbus, some 60 miles southeast
of Berlin.
After breakfast, playing with his
alsatian puppy for a while, and having his valet
administer his cocaine eyedrops, he slowly
climbed the steps into the Reich Chancellery
park. Waiting with raised arms in the Nazi
salute were delegations from the Courland army,
from the SS-Division "Berlin", and 20 boys from
the Hitler Youth who had distinguished
themselves in combat. Was this what Berlin's
defence relied on, one of Hitler's secretaries
wondered? Hitler muttered a few words to them,
patted one or two on the cheek, and within
minutes left them to carry on the fight against
Russian tanks.
By now, most of the leading
figures in the Reich -- at least those in the
Berlin vicinity -- were assembled. No one spoke
of the looming catastrophe. They all swore their
undying loyalty. Everyone noticed that Goering
had discarded his resplendent silver-grey
uniform with gold-braided epaulettes for khaki
-- "like an American general", as one
participant at the briefing remarked. Hitler
passed no comment.
The imminent assault on Berlin
dominated the briefing. The news from the
southern rim of the city was catastrophic.
Goering pointed out that only a single road to
the south was still open; it could be blocked at
any moment.
Hitler was pressed from all sides
to leave at once for Berchtesgaden. He objected
that he could not expect his troops to fight the
decisive battle for Berlin if he removed himself
to safety. Nevertheless, Hitler seemed
indecisive. Increasingly agitated, he declared
moments later that he would leave it to fate
whether he died in the capital or flew in the
last moment to the Obersalzberg.
There was no indecision about
Goering. He had sent his wife Emmy and daughter
Edda to the safety of the Bavarian mountains
more than two months earlier. Half a million
marks had been transferred to his account in
Berchtesgaden. Goering lost no time at the end
of the briefing in seeking a private word with
Hitler.
It was urgent that he go to
southern Germany, he said, to command the
Luftwaffe from there. He needed to leave Berlin
that night. Hitler scarcely seemed to notice. He
muttered a few words, shook hands
absent-mindedly, and the first paladin of the
Reich departed, hurriedly and without fanfare.
It seemed to Albert Speer, standing a few feet
away, to be a parting of ways that symbolised
the imminent end of the Third Reich. It was the
first of numerous departures. Most of those who
had come to proffer their birthday greetings to
Hitler and make avowals of their undying loyalty
were waiting nervously for the moment when they
could hasten from the doomed city.
Convoys of cars were soon heading
out of Berlin north, south and west, on any
roads still open. Dönitz left for the
north, armed with Hitler's instructions to take
over the leadership in the north and continue
the struggle. Himmler soon followed. Speer left
later that night in the direction of Hamburg
without any formal farewell.
Late in the evening, the remaining
adjutants, secretaries, and the Führer's
young Austrian diet cook, Constanze Marzialy,
gathered in his room for a drink with Hitler and
Eva Braun. There was no talk here of the
war.
Hitler's youngest secretary,
Traudl Junge, had been shocked to hear him admit
for the first time in her presence earlier that
day that he no longer believed in victory. He
might be ready to go under; her own life, she
felt, had barely begun. Once Hitler -- early for
him -- had retired to his room, she was glad to
join Eva Braun, and the other bunker "inmates",
even including Bormann and Morell 's doctor in
an "unofficial" party in the old living room on
the first floor of Hitler's apartment in the
Reich Chancellery.
In the ghostly surrounds of a room
stripped of almost all its former splendour,
with the gramophone scratching out the only
record they could find -- a schmaltzy prewar hit
called Red Roses Bring You Happiness -- they
laughed, danced and drank champagne, trying to
enjoy an hour or two of escapism -- before a
nearby explosion sharply jolted them back to
reality.
When Hitler was awakened at 9.30
the following morning, it was to the news that
the centre of Berlin was under artillery fire.
The dragnet was closing fast. As the day wore
on, he seemed like a man at the end of his
tether, nerves ragged, under intense strain,
close to breaking point.
The drowning man clutched at yet
another straw. The Soviets had extended their
lines so far to the northeast of Berlin that it
opened up the chance, thought Hitler, for the
Panzer Corps, led by SS-Obergruppenführer
Felix Steiner, to launch a successful counter
attack.
Throughout the day he ex- uded
confidence in Steiner's attack. When told of the
inadequacies of Steiner's forces, Hitler
replied: "You will see. The Russians will suffer
the greatest defeat, the bloodiest defeat in
their history before the gates of the city of
Berlin."
It was bravado. At the briefing
that began at 3.30pm on April 22, Hitler looked
haggard, stony-faced, though extremely agitated,
as if his thoughts were elsewhere. He twice left
the room to go to his private quarters. Then, as
dismaying news came through that Soviet troops
had broken the inner defence cordon and were
within Berlin's northern suburbs, Hitler was
told -- after a frantic series of telephone
calls had elicited contradictory information --
that Steiner's attack, which he had awaited all
morning, had not taken place after all.
At this, he seemed to snap. He
ordered everyone out of his briefing room, apart
from Keitel, Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf. Even for
those who had long experience of Hitler's
furious outbursts, the tirade that thundered
through the bunker for the next half an hour was
a shock. One who witnessed it reported that
evening: "Something broke inside me today that I
still can't grasp."
Hitler screamed that he had been
betrayed by all those he had trusted. He railed
at the long-standing treachery of the army. Now,
even the SS was lying to him. The troops would
not fight, he ranted, the anti-tank defences
were down. As Jodl added, he also knew that
munitions and fuel would shortly run out.
Hitler slumped into his chair. The
storm subsided. His voice fell to practically a
whimper. The war was lost, he sobbed. It was the
first time any of his small audience had heard
him admit it. They were dumbstruck. He had
therefore determined to stay in Berlin, he went
on, and to lead the defence of the city. He was
physically incapable of fighting himself, and
ran the risk of falling wounded into the hands
of the enemy. So he would at the last moment
shoot himself.
All prevailed on him to change his
mind. He should leave Berlin and move his
headquarters to Berchtesgaden. The troops should
be withdrawn from the western front and deployed
in the east. Hitler replied that everything was
falling apart. He could not do that. Goering
could do it. Someone objected that no soldier
would fight for the Reich Marshal. "What does it
mean: fight?" asked Hitler. "There's not much
more to fight for, and if it's a matter of
negotiations the Reich Marshal can do that
better than I can."
By dawn the next morning, areas
close to the city centre had started to come
under persistent and intense artillery fire.
Around midday the spearhead of Kon- ev's army,
skirting round Berlin to the south, met up with
forward units from Zhukov's army, heading round
the city to the north. Berlin was as good as
encircled. About the same time, Soviet and
American troops were smoking cigarettes together
at Torgau, on the Elbe, in central Germany. The
Reich was now cut in two.
Amid the burning ruins of the
great city, living conditions were deteriorating
rapidly. Food was running out. The water-supply
system had broken down. The old, infirm,
wounded, women and children, injured soldiers,
refugees, all clung on to life in the cellars,
in packed shelters, and in underground stations
as hell raged overhead.
In Hitler's bunker there was a
"doomsday" mood alleviated only by alcohol and
food from the Reich Chancellery cellars. In the
early hours of April 28, despairing calls were
made from the bunker to Keitel and Jodl urging
all conceivable effort to be made to relieve
Berlin as absolute priority. Time was of the
essence. There were at most 48 hours, it was
thought.
As so often, the bunker inmates
thought they smelt the scent of disloyalty and
treason. These suspicions seemed dramatically
confirmed. Heinz Lorenz appeared in the bunker
when a message was picked up from Reuters
confirming that the Reichsführer-SS,
Heinrich Himmler, had offered to surrender to
the western Allies, but that this had been
declined.
For Hitler, this was the last
straw. That his "loyal Heinrich", whose SS had
as its motto "my honour is loyalty", should now
stab him in the back: this was the end. It was
the betrayal of all betrayals. The bunker
reverberated to a final elemental explosion of
fury. All his stored-up venom was now poured out
on Himmler in a last paroxysm of seething rage.
It was, he screamed, "the most shameful betrayal
in human history".
By now, Soviet troops had forced
their way into Potsdamer Platz and streets in
the immediate vicinity of the Reich Chancellery.
They were no more than a few hundred yards away.
It was time to make preparations. As long as
Hitler had had a future, he had ruled out
marriage. His life, he said, was devoted to
Germany. There was no room for a wife. But Eva
Braun had chosen to come to the bunker. And she
had refused Hitler's entreaties to leave. She
had committed herself to him once and for all,
when others were deserting. The marriage now
cost him nothing. He did it simply to please Eva
Braun, to give her what she had wanted more than
anything at a moment when marrying him was the
least enviable fate in the world.
Not long after midnight on April
29, in the most macabre surrounds, with the
bunker shaking from nearby explosions, Hitler
and Eva Braun exchanged marriage vows. Goebbels
and Bormann were witnesses. The rest of the
staff waited outside to congratulate the newly
wedded couple. Champagne, sandwiches and
reminiscences -- with somewhat forced joviality
-- of happier days followed.
A short time later, Hitler
dictated his last will and testament. His last
words for posterity were a piece of pure
self-justification. Despite all its setbacks,
the six-year struggle would one day go down in
history as "the most glorious and valiant
manifestation of a nation's will to
existence".
It had turned 4am when Hitler,
looking weary, took himself off to rest. He had
completed the winding-up order on the Third
Reich. Only the final act of selfdestruction
remained.
The mood in the bunker sank to
zero-level. Despair was written on everyone's
face. All knew it was only a matter of hours
before Hitler killed himself and wondered what
the future held for them after his death. There
was much talk of the best methods of committing
suicide. Secretaries, adjutants and any others
who wanted them had by then been given the
brass-cased ampoules containing prussic
acid.
At dawn, Soviet artillery opened
up an intensive bombardment of the Chancellery
and neighbouring buildings. The battle for
Berlin would in all probability be over that
evening. Hitler sent for Bormann. It was around
noon. He told him the time had come; he would
shoot himself that afternoon. Eva Braun would
also commit suicide. Their bodies were to be
burnt. Hitler took lunch as usual around 1pm
with his secretaries and his dietician. Eva
Braun was not present. Hitler was composed,
giving no hint that his death was imminent. Some
time after the meal had ended, the secretaries
were told that Hitler wished to say farewell to
them. They joined Martin Bormann, Joseph and
Magda Goebbels, General Burgdorf and General
Krebs, and others from the inner circle of the
bunker community. Looking more stooped than
ever, Hitler, dressed as usual in his uniform
jacket and black trousers, appeared alongside
Eva, née Braun, who was wearing a blue
dress with white trimmings. He held out his hand
to each of them, muttered a few words and,
within a few minutes and without further
formalities, returned to his study. Eva Braun
followed him. It was shortly before 3.30pm. For
the next few minutes, Goebbels, Bormann and the
remaining members of the bunker community
waited. The only noise was the drone of the
diesel ventilator. In the upstairs part of the
bunker, Traudl Junge chatted with the Goebbels
children as they ate their lunch. After waiting
ten minutes or so, still without a sound from
Hitler's room, Linge took the initiative. He
took Bormann with him and cautiously opened the
door. In the cramped study, Hitler and Eva Braun
sat alongside each other on the small sofa. Eva
Braun was slumped to Hitler's left. A strong
whiff of bitter almonds -- the distinctive smell
of prussic acid -- drifted up from her body.
Hitler's head drooped lifelessly. Blood dripped
from a bullet-hole in his right temple. His
7.65mm Walther pistol lay by his foot.
write
to David Irving
