Hitler

by Joachim C. Fest

  It is my other nemesis that I have been serving a nation with a tragic past, a nation so inconstant, so fickle as the Germans, falling with a strange calm according to circumstances from one extreme to the other.67

  These were the premises whose prisoner he was, the fundamental obstacles in situation and material that he had been forced to accept as he found them. But he had also made mistakes, he concluded, fateful acts of thoughtlessness. He had made all sorts of unnecessary concessions. And it is exceedingly illuminating that now, in his searching retrospect, he disavowed one of the few intact human relationships of his life:

  When I regard events soberly and stripped of all sentimentality, I must admit that my immutable friendship with Italy and with the Duce can be placed on the debit side of the ledger, as one of my errors. One might even say that the Italian alliance proved more useful to our enemies than to ourselves… and in the end it will contribute to our—if the victory proves not to be ours after all—our losing the war….

  Our Italian ally hampered us almost everywhere. For example, he prevented us from employing revolutionary policies in North Africa… for our Islamic friends suddenly saw in us voluntary or involuntary accomplices of their oppressors. The memory of the barbarous reprisals against the Senoussis is still very much alive among them. Moreover, the Duce’s ridiculous claim to be regarded as the “sword of Islam” arouses just as much laughter today as it did before the war. This title belongs by rights to Mohammed and to a great conqueror like Omar. Mussolini had it conferred on himself by a few poor devils whom he paid or terrorized. There was a chance for us to pursue a grand policy toward Islam. But we missed that opportunity, like so much else, because of our loyalty to the Italian alliance….

  From the military point of view it is hardly any better. Italy’s entry into the war almost immediately enabled our enemies to have their first victories, and made it possible for Churchill to inspire his countrymen with fresh courage and the Anglophiles all over the world with new hope. Although the Italians had already shown themselves incapable of holding Abyssinia and Cyrenaica, they had the nerve to plunge into the totally senseless campaign against Greece without asking us, without even informing us…. That forced us, contrary to all our plans, to intervene in the Balkans, which in turn resulted in a catastrophic delay for the beginning of the war against Russia…. We should have been able to attack Russia starting with May 15, 1941 and… end the campaign before the winter. Then everything would have turned out differently!

  Out of gratitude, because I could not forget the Duce’s attitude during the Anschluss, I always refrained from criticizing and condemning Italy. On the contrary, I tried to treat her as our equal. Unfortunately the laws of life show that it is a mistake to treat as equals those who are not really equal…. I regret that I did not follow the dictates of reason, which prescribed to me a brutal friendship in regard to Italy.68

  On the whole, to his mind it was his soft-heartedness, his lack of toughness and implacability, which led to his failure after he had been so close to triumph. In this last document, too, he revealed his own unmistakable brand of radicalism. “I fought against the Jews with open vizard; before the war started, I gave them fair warning….”69 He regretted not having ruthlessly eliminated the German conservatives from public life, of having supported Franco, the nobility, and the church in Spain rather than the Communists, and, in France, of having failed to liberate the working class from the hands of a “bourgeoisie of fossils.” Everywhere, he now thought, he should have fostered the uprising of the colonial peoples, the awakening of the oppressed and exploited nations. The Arabs, the Iraqis, the entire Near East, which had hailed the German victories, should have been incited to revolt. The German Reich was now collapsing not because of its bellicosity and sins against moderation, but because of its incapacity for radicalism, its fixation on morality. “What might we have done!” he grieved. Hugh R. Trevor-Roper has commented on the remarkable lucidity with which Hitler in these soliloquies analyzed-the strengths and weaknesses of his concept of world power. He was in no doubt about the principle. He realized that Europe could be dominated by a continental power that controlled western Russia, drew upon the reserves of Asia, and simultaneously presented itself as the advocate of the colonial nations by linking political revolution with slogans of social liberation. He also knew that he had gone to war with the Soviet Union over the question of who would assume this part. The issue had gone against him, he believed, because he had not been able to fight on consistently revolutionary principles. He had entered the war with the fuss-and-feathers diplomats and generals of the old school, additionally hampered by his friendship with Mussolini, and had not been able to free himself from these burdens. His radicalism had not been sufficient; he had revealed too many bourgeois sentiments, too much bourgeois halfheartedness. He, too, had been split—this was the conclusion of his meditations. “Life forgives no weakness!”70

  His decision to call it quits came on the night of April 28 and in the early hours of the morning of April 29. Shortly before 10 P.M., in the midst of a conversation with Ritter von Greim, Hitler was interrupted by his valet, Heinz Linge. Linge handed him a Reuter’s report that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had made contact with the Swedish diplomat Count Bernadotte in order to negotiate a surrender in the West.

  The shock that followed this report was more violent than all the emotions of the past week. Hitler had always regarded Göring as opportunistic and corrupt; thus the Reich Marshal’s betrayal came as no surprise. But Himmler had always made loyalty his watchword and prided himself on his incorruptibility. His conduct now signified the breach of a principle. For Hitler it was the gravest imaginable blow. “He raged like a madman,” Hanna Reitsch described the ensuing scene. “He turned purple, and his face was almost unrecognizable.” In contrast to the preceding outbursts, however, this time his strength gave out after a short time, and he withdrew with Goebbels and Bormann for a conversation behind closed doors.

  Once more, his single decision brought all the others in its wake. As part of his revenge Hitler had Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s liaison man, subjected to a short, sharp interrogation, then shot in the chancellery by members of his escort squad. He then sought out Greim and ordered him to attempt to get out of Berlin in order to arrest Himmler. He would not hear of any objections. “A traitor must never be my successor as Führer,” he said. “See to it that he does not!”

  Hastily, he had the small conference room prepared for a civil wedding ceremony. A district magistrate named Walter Wagner, who was serving in a nearby militia unit, was fetched and asked to marry the Führer and Eva Braun. Goebbels and Bormann were the witnesses. Because of the special circumstances both parties requested a war wedding, which could be performed without delay. They attested that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of hereditary diseases. The record noted that the applications had been accepted, the banns “examined and found in order.” Then Wagner, according to the record, turned to the parties :

  I come herewith to the solemn act of matrimony. In the presence of the above-mentioned witnesses… I ask you, My Leader Adolf Hitler, whether you are willing to enter into matrimony with Miss Eva Braun. If such is the case, I ask you to reply, “Yes.”

  Herewith I ask you, Miss Eva Braun, whether you are willing to enter into matrimony with My Leader Adolf Hitler. If such is the case, I ask you too to reply, “Yes.”

  Now, since both these engaged persons have stated their willingness to enter into matrimony, I herewith declare the marriage valid before the law.

  The participants then signed the document. Hitler’s new wife was so agitated by the circumstances that she began signing her maiden name. Then she crossed out the initial letter B and wrote, “Eva Hitler, née Braun.” The entire party then went together to the private rooms, where the secretaries, Hitler’s diet cook, Frâulein Manzialy, and several of the adjutants had gathered for drinks and melancholy reminiscences of times past.

  From this
point on, it seems, the direction of events finally slipped from Hitler’s hands. It is likely that he would have wished to stage the concluding act more grandiosely, more disastrously, with a greater display of lofty emotion, style, and terror. Instead, what now took place seemed oddly hapless, improvised, as though in view of the many seemingly miraculous reversals in his life he had up to this very moment never really considered the possibility of an irrevocable end. At any rate, the gruesome idea of having this wedding on the verge of a double suicide, as if he feared nothing so much as “illegitimacy” on his deathbed, marked the beginning of a trivial departure. It demonstrated how spent he was, drained of even his histrionic effects, even though the Wagnerian reminiscence of joining his beloved in death might in his eyes give the procedure a saving note of tragedy. But, henceforth, whatever else might remain associated with his name, his death contributed nothing to mythology. Possibly he was now giving up more than the right to direct the life he had always regarded as a role to be played.

  For all its casual character, this marriage represented a significant step. It was not only a gesture of gratitude toward the one living being aside from the dog Blondi who, as Hitler once remarked, remained faithful to him to the last. It was also a definitive act of abdication. As the Führer, he had repeatedly declared, he must not be married. The mythological conception he had of his status could not be reconciled with ordinary human ties. Now he was abandoning this stand, with the implication that he no longer believed in the survival of National Socialism. In fact he did remark to his guests that the cause was done for and would not spring to life again.71 Then he left the group and went into one of the adjacent rooms to dictate his last will.

  He produced a political and a private testament. The former was dominated by violent polemics against the Jews, by asseverations of his own innocence, and appeals to the spirit of resistance: “Centuries will pass, but the ruins of our cities and monuments will repeatedly kindle hatred for the race ultimately responsible, who have brought everything down upon us: international Jewry and its accomplices!”

  Twenty-five years had passed. He had experienced an unprecedented rise, undreamed-of triumphs and defeats, despairs and downfall, and he himself had remained unchanged. Down to the very phrasing, the ideological passages of the testament might have been taken from the first document of his political career, the letter to Adolf Gemlich in 1919, or from one of his speeches as a young local agitator. The phenomenon of early and total rigidity, of the rejection of all experience, which was so typical of Hitler, was confirmed for the last time in this document.

  In a special section he expelled Göring and Himmler from the party and from all of their offices. He named Admiral Dönitz as his successor in the posts of President, Minister of War, and supreme commander of the armed forces. His comment that in the navy the sense of honor still survived, that any thought of surrender was alien to it, was obviously intended to be understood as an injunction to continue the struggle even beyond his death, to ultimate doom. At the same time, he appointed a new government, headed by Goebbels. The document concluded: “Above all I call upon the leaders of the nation and all followers to observe the racial laws scrupulously and to implacably oppose the universal poisoner of all races, international Jewry.”72

  His personal testament was considerably shorter. Whereas the political document asserted his claims on history, the personal one expressed the custom’s official’s son who had remained behind all the disguises. It read:

  During the years of struggle I did not think I could responsibly undertake to establish a marriage. But now, before the completion of this earthly course, I have decided to take as my wife the girl who after long years of faithful friendship entered this city, already almost besieged, of her own free will, in order to share my fate with me. At her request she is joining me in death as my wife. Death will compensate us for what my work in the service of my people robbed from us both.

  All that I own—in so far as it had any value—belongs to the party. If this ceases to exist, to the state; and if the state also is annihilated, no further decision on my part is necessary.

  My paintings in the collections I bought over the years were never collected for private purposes, but always only for the expansion of a gallery in my hometown of Linz on the Danube. It would be my heartfelt wish if this bequest could be duly carried out. I appoint as executor of my will my most faithful party comrade, Martin Bormann. He is legally entitled to make all final decisions. He may transfer any personal mementos, or whatever is needed for the maintenance of a modest middle-class standard of living, to my brother and sisters, and particularly to my wife’s mother, and to my faithful associates who are well known to him—principally my old secretaries, Frau Winter, etc., who for many years have sustained me by their work.

  I myself and my wife choose death to escape the disgrace of removal or surrender. It is our desire to be burned at once at the place in which I have performed the greater part of my daily work in the course of twelve years of service to my people.

  The two documents were signed at four o’clock in the morning on April 29. Three copies were prepared, and in the course of the day arrangements were made to have them taken out of the bunker by different routes. One of the people selected for this messenger service was Colonel von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, who took with him a postscript directed to General Keitel. That was Hitler’s last message and ended with the characteristic sentences:

  The people and the armed forces have given their all in this long and hard struggle. The sacrifice has been enormous. But my trust has been misused by many people. Disloyalty and betrayal have undermined resistance throughout the war. It was therefore not granted to me to lead the people to victory. The Army General Staff cannot be compared with the General Staff in the First World War. Its achievements were far behind those of the fighting front.

  The efforts and sacrifices of the German people in this war have been so great that I cannot believe that they have been in vain. The aim must still be to win territory in the East for the German people.73

  At various times during the past weeks Hitler had expressed anxiety that he might have to appear as an “exhibit in the Moscow zoo” or as the principal actor in a “show trial staged by Jews.”74 These fears were intensified when, in the course of April 29, the news of Mussolini’S death reached him. The Duce and his mistress, Clara Petacci, who had hastily joined him that same day, had been caught by partisans and on the afternoon of April 28 shot without formalities in the small north Italian hamlet of Mezzagra. The bodies were taken to Milan and suspended by the heels from the roof of a garage on the Piazzale Loreto, where a screaming mob beat, spat upon, and stoned the corpses.

  Under the impact of this news, Hitler began making the arrangements for his own death. He charged many members of his entourage, including his servant Heinz Linge, his chauffeur Erich Kempka, and his pilot Hans Baur, with the task of seeing that his remains did not fall into the enemy’s hands. The preparations he made seemed like a last manifestation of his lifelong efforts to conceal his real self. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between Hitler’s crawling into a hole to die, as it were, and the end of Mussolini, who called upon his remaining adherents to go together to the Valtellina and there “die with the sun in our faces.”

  But Hitler also feared that the poison he had provided might not bring about death fast enough or reliably enough. Consequently, he ordered the effect of the poison to be tried out on his Alsatian dog. At midnight Blondi was coaxed to the toilet in the bunker. Sergeant Tornow, who was in charge of Hitler’s dogs, forced the animal’s mouth open while Professor Haase, one of the medical staff, reached into the dog’s gullet and with forceps crushed an ampoule of poison inside. Shortly afterward Hitler entered the room and glanced expressionlessly at the corpse. He then invited the occupants of the two adjacent bunkers to come to the conference room for farewells. With a faraway expression, he went down the row, silently s
haking hands with each person. Several said a few words to him, but he did not answer, or only moved his lips inaudibly. Shortly after three o’clock in the morning he had a telegram sent to Dönitz complaining about inadequate military measures, and in a kind of stale, repetitive gesture he once more commanded the admiral to proceed “instantly and unsparingly against all traitors.”

  Late in the forenoon the military conference took place as usual. With no sign of emotion, Hitler received the information that the Soviet troops had by now occupied the Tiergarten, Potsdamer Platz, and the subway on Vosstrasse, in the immediate vicinity of the chancellery. Then he ordered delivery of 200 liters of gasoline. At two o’clock he had his lunch in company with his secretaries and his cook; at the same moment, two Soviet sergeants raised the Red flag on the dome of the nearby Reichstag. After the meal he summoned his most intimate associates, including Goebbels, Bormann, Generals Burgdorf and Krebs, his secretaries, Frau Christian and Frau Junge, and several orderlies. Together with his wife, he shook hands with all of them and then, mute and stooped, he vanished inside his room. And as though this life, which had so largely been governed by staged happenings and had always aimed at glaringly dramatic effects, could only end with a preposterous climax, at this time a dance began in the chancellery canteen (if we are to believe the accounts of the participants), a dance in which the weeks of strained nerves sought violent release. Even repeated remonstrances that the Führer was about to die could not bring it to a halt.75 It was April 30, 1945, shortly before 4 p.m.

  What happened thereafter has never been completely and unequivocally clarified. According to the statements of most of the survivors of the bunker, a single shot sounded. Shortly afterward, Rattenhuber, the commander of the SS guards, entered the room. Hitler was sitting hunched over, face smeared with blood, on the sofa. Beside him was his wife, an unused revolver in her lap; she had taken poison. In contrast to this version of things, most Soviet accounts have held that Hitler also ended his life by poison. But there are contradictions in the Soviet story. On the one hand, it denies that any traces of a bullet were detectable in the fragments of a skull that were found later. On the other hand, the story attempts to say who in Hitler’s entourage had been assigned to deliver the “mercy shot” to make sure of his death. These contradictions tend to indicate that the Soviet version of Hitler’s suicide has a political coloration. It sounds like a last echo of the attempts constantly made during Hitler’s lifetime to refute him by belittling him, as though a certain mentality could not bear to concede abilities and strength to the morally reprehensible. It was the story of the Iron Cross or his gifts as political tactician or statesman all over again: he was now begrudged the courage required for the obviously sterner death by a bullet.76