Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II

by Nicholas Best

  Krebs took an interpreter with him and a staff officer, Colonel von Dufving. Carrying a white flag, the three of them set off after midnight, walking cautiously forward until they came at about 2:00 a.m. to the Excelsior Hotel, across the road from the station. Russian soldiers met them there and led them to the command post of the 102nd Guards Rifle Regiment. A few minutes later, after refusing to surrender their personal weapons, Krebs and his companions crossed the suspension bridge over the Landwehr Canal and were taken in a Jeep to meet General Chuikov at his forward headquarters near Tempelhof airport.

  PART FOUR

  TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1945

  16

  THE GERMANS WANT TO TALK

  CHUIKOV’S COMMAND POST WAS A FIVE-STORY apartment building off Belle-Alliancestrasse, named for the Anglo-German victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. It was an ugly place, with smashed windows and a cement eagle over the entrance, carrying a swastika in its claws. Chuikov’s men had installed field telephones in one of the dining rooms and laid out a large map of Berlin on the table. The hall was adorned with a pair of large black pillars. It was here that Chuikov waited in the early hours of May Day for the German surrender party to arrive.

  He was not alone as he paced the room. War correspondent Vsevolod Vishnevsky had persuaded him that there ought to be some journalists present to record the scene. Vishnevsky had joined him with Yevgeni Dolmatovski, a poet in civilian life, and Matveï Blanter, a composer who was in Berlin to write an anthem for the forthcoming victory.

  Blanter wasn’t in uniform, so he was told to hide in the cupboard when the Germans appeared. The other two correspondents stood with Chuikov’s aide-de-camp and posed as a trio of important-looking staff officers advising their boss. It was thus that Krebs and his party found them when they arrived at ten minutes to four that morning, just as the sky was beginning to lighten in the east.

  Chuikov was the hero of Stalingrad, the man who had masterminded the single biggest defeat in German history, but he did not introduce himself when Krebs was shown in. He had decided beforehand to play his cards very close to his chest, giving nothing away and showing no surprise at anything Krebs might say. The bemedaled German gave the Nazi salute with one hand and proffered his service book with the other, to show who he was. Chuikov said little in return, an anonymous Russian peasant keeping his own counsel and deliberately failing to respond in kind.

  Krebs saw that he would have to do the talking He didn’t mind, because he had a scoop that he knew would shake Chuikov out of his reticence. He delivered it with a flourish: “I shall speak of exceptionally secret matters,” he announced grandly. “You are the first foreigner to whom I give the information that on 30 April Hitler passed from us of his own free will, ending his life by suicide.”1

  Krebs paused dramatically, expecting astonishment on all sides. But Chuikov wasn’t impressed.

  “We know this,” he lied.

  Krebs was visibly taken aback. Chuikov let him stew for a bit before asking how it had happened. Krebs told him and then produced Hitler’s will and a letter from Göbbels requesting peace negotiations.

  “Do these documents relate to Berlin or to the whole of Germany?” Chuikov demanded.

  Krebs said he could only speak for the army. Dönitz was the new head of state, the man the Russians must deal with to end the war.

  Chuikov decided to consult Marshal Zhukov. Going to another room, he rang his superior at Strausberg, just outside Berlin, and told him that Hitler was dead and the Germans wanted to parley. Telling Chuikov to remain on the line, Zhukov in turn got in touch with Moscow. It was beginning to get light in the Russian capital, but Stalin had only just gone to bed at his dacha in Kuntsevo, snatching a few hours’ sleep before the May Day parade. Zhukov told the duty officer to get him up again.

  Coming to the phone, Stalin was happy to hear of Hitler’s death.

  “So that’s the end of the bastard. Pity he couldn’t be taken alive. Where’s his body?”

  “Krebs says it was burned.”2

  Stalin wanted to know when Hitler had died. Zhukov put the question to Chuikov, who put it to Krebs. Krebs said half past three on the afternoon of April 30. The information was relayed back to Stalin. Then came another question: “Ask Krebs whether they want to lay down their arms and surrender, or just want to start talking.”

  After much obfuscation, Krebs decided that the Germans were seeking a temporary cease-fire in order to conduct peace talks. But that wasn’t good enough for Stalin.

  “There can be no negotiations,” he told Zhukov. “Only unconditional surrender. No talks either with Krebs or any other Hitler types. Unless anything else happens, don’t call me again until morning. I need to get some sleep before the parade.”

  Stalin went back to bed while the discussions continued. To concentrate the Germans’ minds, Zhukov announced that he would unleash all the firepower at his disposal if they hadn’t agreed to unconditional surrender by 10:00 a.m. But Krebs was adamant that he had no power to surrender. Instead, he urged the Russians to recognize the new German government and then negotiate a peace agreement, perhaps excluding the British and Americans. Chuikov replied that there would be no negotiations and no separate peace. Unconditional surrender was Germany’s only option.

  The talking continued well into the morning, while Vishnevsky scribbled in his notebook. A breakfast of tea and sandwiches was served, with a glass of cognac for Krebs, which he drank with shaking hands. He had learned by now that his host was Chuikov, the victor of Stalingrad. Toward the end of the meeting, the composer Blanter collapsed and fell out of the cupboard, having apparently fainted from lack of air. What Krebs made of an unknown civilian being carried out of the room in the middle of the discussion is a secret that died with him.

  Chuikov was relaying every word back to Moscow, where the final decisions would be taken. But there was unlikely to be a swift response, with Stalin asleep and the May Day parade occupying everyone’s thoughts. Chuikov decided to take advantage of the lull by setting up a telephone line between his headquarters and the Chancellery, so that he would be able to speak directly to Göbbels and Bormann when the time came. It was arranged that von Dufving and Lieutenant Neilandis, the two officers who had accompanied Krebs, should return to the German side of the line with two Russian signalers and a length of telephone cable to make the connection. They set off soon after first light with a white flag, leaving Chuikov and Krebs to continue talking at Chuikov’s headquarters. Neither man was prepared to give an inch as Krebs kept refusing to surrender and Chuikov waited for confirmation from Moscow that Krebs’s stance was unacceptable and only unconditional surrender would do.

  * * *

  WHILE KREBS talked to Chuikov, other Germans were also seeking peace, quite independently of anything going on at the bunker. At four thirty that morning, a German radio station calling itself the “headquarters for the defense of Berlin” sent a message to the Russians asking for a Soviet officer to come to the northeast corner of the Zoological Gardens. Representatives of the Wehrmacht would meet him there to discuss the terms for a cease-fire.

  A Major Bersenev duly presented himself. Carrying a flag of truce and a demand for unconditional surrender, he reached the zoo at 5:00 a.m. and stood waiting for twenty minutes, uncomfortably aware that the Germans had him in their sights but had promised not to shoot. Bersenev was bitter about what happened next:

  At last I saw two Germans with a white flag come round the corner of the street about two hundred metres away, and walk towards me.

  I took a few steps forward, towards them. Suddenly one of them dropped, and straight away I heard shots, bullets were whistling round me. The firing was coming from the Germans’ direction. I felt a blow in my left hip and in my knee, and I fell. As I fell I hit my head hard against the pavement, and lost consciousness.

  I came to near my car. My orderly had risked his life to drag me out of range, and then he and my driver lifted me into the car. My leg was hanging limp
and my head was ringing. I just said, “Take me to the Divisional Commander,” and then lost consciousness again.3

  It was a familiar story. Some Germans wanted to surrender, but others wouldn’t let them. Much the same happened to Neilandis and von Dufving as they tried to run their cable to the Chancellery. They had reached Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, waving a white flag and yelling at their own people not to fire, when the Russian officer unrolling the telephone line was shot in the head. Neilandis picked up the extension reel and carried on, while von Dufving went ahead with the flag. But the firing continued from the German side, making it impossible for them to cross. Von Dufving therefore remained with the Russians at the front while Neilandis hurried back to Chuikov’s headquarters to complain. They got across eventually, but it was lunchtime before they managed to establish a telephone link with the Chancellery.

  * * *

  JUST UP THE ROAD, the fight was still going on at the Reichstag, even though the red flag now flew from the roof. Choked with dust and smoke, desperate for water, the German defenders were doggedly refusing to give in. The upper stories of the building had been cleared, but the cellars and the dressing station in the basement remained in their hands. It wasn’t until late afternoon that they decided they had had enough and called for a senior Russian officer to come and negotiate. With a coat covering his badges of rank, Lieutenant Berest went forward and introduced himself as a colonel. The Germans laid down their arms soon afterward, emerging nervously from the basement with their hands in the air as they stepped uncertainly into the daylight.

  Almost three hundred came out, “smiling like obedient dogs” as they wondered if they were going to be shot. Two hundred had been killed in the fighting, and another five hundred lay wounded in the basement. The German defense of the Reichstag had been stubborn and fanatical, according to the Russians, but a German survivor later claimed that they had greatly exaggerated the fighting for propaganda purposes and he himself had seen very little. Yet some Germans had certainly fought stubbornly, because a handful still refused to surrender and were not finally persuaded to lay down their arms until their own side ordered them to the following day.

  But the Reichstag had fallen, to all intents and purposes. So had the Spandau Citadel, a seventeenth-century fortress at the junction of the Havel and Spree rivers. The flak tower in the Zoological Gardens was in the process of surrendering. The only significant building that remained in German hands on the afternoon of May 1was the Reichs Chancellery. It was an object of even greater interest to the Russians now that they had learned from Krebs that there was an underground bunker in the garden where Adolf Hitler had spent his last days. All eyes were turned in that direction, and all guns were trained on the target as Zhukov’s deadline for a surrender passed and the Russians opened up on the Chancellery with every weapon they had.

  * * *

  AT RUHLEBEN, there was very little fighting that day as the Russians bypassed the area around the Reichssportsfeld and concentrated their fire on the Chancellery. With life hanging by a thread and a gaggle of SS girls in their midst, the men in Helmut Altner’s unit had followed the Chancellery’s lead as they waited for the next attack. Sent to wake up a man for sentry duty, Altner found him under a blanket with a naked girl. Her firm breasts hit Altner full in the eyes as the man got up and the blanket slipped from her shoulders.

  Later, if Altner’s memory was correct, his friend Windhorst showed him a proclamation for the armed forces that had been printed during the night. Due to be broadcast on the radio next morning, it was still supposed to be secret and should never have fallen into Windhorst’s hands:

  It is announced from Führer Headquarters that our Führer Adolf Hitler fell for Germany at his command post at the Reichs Chancellery this afternoon while fighting against Bolshevism to his last breath. On 30 April the Führer appointed Grand Admiral Dönitz as his successor.4

  Altner was shocked, but only for a moment. “I feel as if I had been hit on the head. But then it is all the same to me, it hardly bothers me, for the time is over when I once thought that the heavens would collapse if that man no longer lived. Then we discuss it, and the news that is so meaningful begins to pale. Only the thought that I must really be free now, as the man to whom I swore an oath is no longer alive, makes me happy. But Windhorst says that Hitler has declared that the oath applies to his successor.”

  Other soldiers took the news harder than Altner. A heated discussion broke out in the cellar as Sergeant Major Kaiser spread the word that Hitler was dead. The announcement was followed by a gasp and then a sudden silence when Kaiser suggested that, far from fighting Bolshevism to his last breath, Hitler might have taken poison to avoid being beaten to death by the troops. Kaiser’s words would have been treasonable once, grounds for immediate execution. But not anymore.

  Everyone wondered if Hitler’s death meant the end of the war. Not for the moment, certainly, because it was still going on outside. Some new SS girls arrived after lunch, unfamiliar faces flirting with the soldiers around the table in the knowledge that they would probably all be dead by tomorrow. Altner was surprised that the company commander was tolerating the situation, until he saw that the company commander had a girl, too. He told himself that if they all carried on like that, the girls who had arrived yesterday would be disappointed that night. They would have to hang back and wait their turn until the new ones had been “tried out.”

  * * *

  HILDEGARD KNEF was in a deep sleep. After a dreadful night dodging the enemy, she and Ewald von Demandowsky had reached the Kurfürstendamm at dawn. It had been Berlin’s most fashionable street once, but it was a war zone now as the Russians approached. Knef and Demandowsky had found shelter with a friend of Demandowsky’s mother, a little old lady of eighty-two. While a tank trundled past with a dead man dangling from the turret, the old lady had taken them to her apartment and given them water, smiling cheerfully and chatting as she made them a cup of coffee. The old lady was so serene and unruffled that Knef wondered if she had any idea of what was happening in the street outside.

  The house was rolling like a trawler in the barrage. Looking in the mirror, Knef failed to recognize the bloodstained, sweaty figure, with a dirty face and torn hands, that she saw in the glass. Certain that she was about to die, she had tried to write a last letter to her mother, telling her that it was all over and there was no way out, thanking her for a nice life. But the words hadn’t come and her tears had stained the page. Knef had torn the letter up and fallen asleep instead.

  Now she was being woken again, sitting bolt upright as the old lady told her that the Russians had arrived and were in the cellar next door. They had to leave at once. The Russians would destroy the house if they found any soldiers there.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the old lady apologized. “You’ll have to leave. The other tenants insist on it.”5

  She thrust some cigarettes into Demandowsky’s hands as compensation. He and Knef stood on the doorstep with no idea of where to go. The other tenants swore at them through the cellar grating, telling them to disappear before the Russians spotted them. They ran off up the road, past the body of a blue-faced boy with a swollen tongue hanging from a tree. “I Am a Coward,” read the placard on his chest. “I Was Too Afraid to Fight for My Fatherland.”

  They hadn’t got much farther when they ran into a German officer with clusters on his collar.

  “Where have you come from?” he demanded.

  “Schmargendorf. We lost the others.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday, yesterday morning.”

  The officer was skeptical. Knef and von Demandowsky looked like deserters to him.

  “Follow me,” he said.6

  They were taken to a command post on Albrecht-Achillesstrasse. Another officer ordered them to stand in line and await sentence. They had deserted their company in the face of the enemy. They didn’t need to be told that the sentence for that was summary execution.

  * * *
>
  BACK IN THE BUNKER, Colonel von Dufving had managed to get through with the telephone line. He had been arrested by the SS as a traitor when he returned to his own lines, but had talked his way out of it. The telephone cable had proved to be too short, so an extension had been added, only to be cut in half by shellfire. But von Dufving had persevered, and now there was a line connecting the Chancellery with Chuikov’s headquarters near the airport.

  Krebs was on the phone at once, asking to speak to Göbbels. Göbbels told him to come back to the Chancellery, bringing the Russians’ demands with him, so that they could discuss it in person. To prevent any misunderstandings, Krebs repeated the list of demands to Chuikov before he left:

  1. Surrender of Berlin.

  2. All those surrendering to give up their arms.

  3. The lives of all ranks to be spared.

  4. Help for the wounded.

  5. Talks with the Allies by radio.

  Chuikov nodded his agreement. It was eight minutes past one, by his watch, when Krebs set out. He appeared very reluctant to go, searching for his gloves and then a nonexistent haversack, looking for any excuse not to leave the safety of Russian headquarters. It seemed to Chuikov that Krebs was longing to be taken prisoner, preferring to take his chances with the Russians rather than go back to the madhouse and die like a rat in a trap with the rest of them. But Chuikov wasn’t going to help him out. Krebs was more use to him in the bunker.

  Göbbels wasn’t pleased to see him when he got back. Krebs was supposed to be returning with a guarantee of safe conduct for them all, a ticket out of there for anyone of any importance in the bunker. Instead, all he had come back with was an invitation to surrender.

  “Surrender?” Göbbels barked. “I’m not going to use the few hours I have left as Chancellor to sign an instrument of surrender.”7

  The others agreed. There was nothing for them in surrender. What they wanted was safe passage out of there, not surrender.