by Trevor Hoyle
9
In the Führerbunker
Berlin, April 1945
These are dark days. As Schwerin von Krosigk remarked to me only yesterday: ‘All this week there has been nothing but a succession of Job’s messengers. How will it end? How can it end?’
Living down here, hidden away from the daylight and fresh air, it is indeed difficult to gain a true perspective on what is happening throughout the country. All the reports are bad. We hear that the Americans are over the Elbe and that the Russians have crossed the Oder and are marching on Dresden and threatening Berlin itself. In the north a combined force of Japanese and Americans are meeting little resistance as they approach Bremen and Hamburg, and in the south the French are swarming along the upper Danube, having already taken Vienna. Even the Führer’s sacred Bavaria is threatened by General Patton and his merciless armoured brigades.
But the worst news of all came this morning. Goebbels sent a personal messenger from his headquarters in the cellars beneath the Propaganda Ministry with an urgent dispatch which dealt a blow to the heart: the Blackshirts have capitulated. Our hopes had all been pinned on their holding the Low Countries and opening a corridor through to Berlin as a means of escape, but now we hear that Montgomery has entered into negotiations with Eisenhower in the hope of saving the remnants of the 7th Army. As a final cruel sting in the tail the message added that the Leibstandarte AH, the Führer’s personal SS Division, had been a party to the surrender and is now no more.
The conditions down here, twenty metres below ground underneath the Chancellery, leave a lot to be desired. Our quarters are perpetually damp and even the air-conditioning cannot get rid of the smell of many human beings forced to live like animals on top of one another, day in and day out. The Führerbunker consists of eighteen rooms (little more than concrete cubicles) divided by a central passageway which is used as a general sitting area and, further along behind a wooden partition, a space where the daily staff conferences are held. On either side of this narrow passage are the private rooms: on the left Hitler’s bedroom and study, and next to these Eva’s bedroom, bathroom and dressing-room. A small anteroom adjoining these is used by the Führer’s personal SS bodyguard.
My two rooms – bedroom and office – along with Stumpfegger’s bedroom and first-aid station are on the right of the passage; further along are the rooms which contain the emergency telephone exchange, the guardroom and the Diesel power house. At our end of the Bunker we are fortunate in having the emergency exit which leads up four flights of concrete stairs to the Chancellery garden. But even the close proximity of this isn’t much of a comfort, for there is a general standing order that no one is allowed outside until after dark and then only for a maximum period of forty-five minutes. It’s like living in a submarine moored permanently at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Cold, damp, depressing.
Every day there is a constant stream of visitors: Doenitz, Bormann, Keitel, Jodl, Kesselring, Christian, Speer, Krebs, and dozens of aides and adjutants ferrying messages back and forth. I try, as much as possible, not to get too involved in the continuous and wearying round of staff meetings, map conferences, Orders to General Staff, and so on. I find it very tedious and there isn’t much to be gleaned by listening to their endless inane chatter, so I stay in my room writing my diary and reading Carlyle’s History of Frederick the Great (the Führer’s personal copy, which I borrowed). Sometimes I while away the hours by chatting (!) to Eva in the comparative privacy of her bedroom. We are rarely disturbed there, which is convenient.
Much of the current activity, I gather, is concerned with persuading the Führer to move south to Obersalzberg. Bormann puts in an appearance several times a day, emerging from the SS Bunker under the Party Chancellery and making a dash (brave soul!) to be by the Führer’s side, imploring him to move his headquarters before the Russians encircle the city. His pleadings are backed by Himmler, Goebbels and Krebs, and all four are passionate in their entreaties to withdraw south while the opportunity remains. But the Führer is unmoved. He listens to their pleas, slumped in his chair, his face ashen, and when they have finished launches into his battle plans for the week ahead; it’s as though they haven’t spoken – indeed I’d be very surprised if he hears a single word they say.
After one of these abortive ‘conferences’, which go on for three hours or more, Goebbels took me to one side and told me in the strictest confidence that he was concerned for the Führer’s sanity. He didn’t actually mention that word but instead spoke delicately of ‘his mental condition’. Was there nothing to be done? he wanted to know. Couldn’t I prescribe something which would restore his mental faculties to their usual peak of sustained intellectual brilliance?
I answered that I was apportioning the remaining supply of drugs on a very careful rota to ensure they would last out till fresh supplies arrived. ‘When these are gone,’ I said sombrely, ‘he will not live three days. You have my word as an experienced medical practitioner.’
‘Thank God you are still loyal, Theo,’ Goebbels said fervently. ‘There are some close to the Führer I view with the greatest suspicion. Though it may not be apparent, both Goering and Himmler are panic-stricken, out of their wits with fear. It will not be long before the rats desert the sinking ship.’
His dark intelligent eyes and lean sallow face were grave in aspect and he was himself obviously in the depths of depression.
‘I have never let you down, Herr Reichsminister,’ I said to him fiercely, ‘and I do not intend to start now.’
He patted my shoulder and there was a glint of life in his eyes. ‘Good man. As long as we remain faithful to the Führer there is hope yet that we shall conquer all. The Reich will triumph. His will be done!’
*
A touching little scene in the Chancellery garden during the afternoon. Reichsjugendführer Axmann, leader of the Hitler Youth Movement, brought a squad of boys along to receive the Führer’s blessing. These are the last-ditch defence troops about to be sent into action against the Russian onslaught which every day advances ten kilometres towards Berlin.
Grasping the opportunity for a little sunshine and fresh air additional to our quota, Eva and I stood near the concrete observation tower and watched as the Führer hobbled along the line of boys, most of them not more than fourteen years old, shaking their hands, patting their unblemished cheeks, and pinning medals to their warriors’ chests. They stood proudly, conscious of the historical immensity of the occasion, and made a beautiful picture for the film camera which Goebbels, always ready to use every conceivable situation for propaganda purposes, had arranged for with his usual unobtrusive efficiency.
I am almost prepared to swear that the Führer had tears in his eyes as he reached the end of the line. He looked up from his stooping crouch and seemed to turn away abruptly as if overcome by the unflinching patriotism in those young faces of the future, faces unlined by five years of war or any of life’s tribulations and harrowing disappointments. It was a glorious moment and one I shall always treasure.
Due to the events of the day, that same evening in the Führerbunker was one of melancholy reflection and nostalgia for the bright dead days of long ago. There were several of us gathered together, sitting on hard straight chairs in the anteroom to the Führer’s quarters, listening to the non-stop monologue which is his mode of conversation whenever he’s had a little too much wine and is in a contemplative frame of mind. It went on for some considerable time and I must confess I dozed off once or twice, so my recollection of what was said is sketchy and incomplete. However the gist of it was to the effect that he had missed his true path in life, taken the wrong direction, regretted his mistakes, etc, etc.
One of the adjutants present (I think it was Rittmeister Boldt) asked what on earth the Führer could mean by such a declaration, obviously playing the part of the slimy fawning toad for the evening. Hitler replied that he was not, never had been and what’s more had no ambition to be, a politician. ‘Many people have commente
d on the fact – probably you yourself have noticed it – that I have an artistic nature,’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ Boldt assented at once, nodding his stupid empty head like a mechanical doll’s.
‘I appreciate the finer things of life, the aesthetic virtues. I should, by rights, have been an artist. My nature rebels against regimentation, something that should be obvious to anyone with eyes in his head.’
We all nodded at how obvious this obviously was.
He went on, ‘But I was persuaded to thwart my artistic inclinations and instead to lead the German people along the road of National Socialism in order that they might fulfil their historic destiny. It is untrue that I, or anybody else in Germany, wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked exclusively by those international politicians who either came of Jewish stock or worked for Jewish interests. After all my offers of disarmament, posterity cannot place the responsibility for this war on me. My true nature was violated and I was forced, against my better judgement, to become Führer of the Fatherland. What couldn’t I have been? What couldn’t I have achieved as an architect, say, or a painter of landscapes? All gone, wasted, my talents cast aside and not allowed to flower.’
‘Some seeds fall on stony ground,’ a voice murmured, possibly under the mistaken impression that this was apposite to the Führer’s melancholic meanderings.
Fortunately Hitler was listening only to the sound of his own voice and he rambled on in this vein for the next twenty minutes. Finally he took it into his head to send one of the secretaries for his horoscope, the one drawn up on 30th January, 1933, and we spent the next hour perusing this sacred document in the hope that it might point to a way out of the present difficulties.
The predictions (I must admit) were shattering. It forecast that war would break out in 1939, that the Allies would win victory after victory until the summer of ’42, and then would follow a series of defeats until, in the autumn of 1944, the tide would turn against us and the Reich would be subject to tremendous pressure. In the spring of 1945, stalemate – and then in May a new and unexpected factor would suddenly emerge to change the course of the war. Further inactivity would follow till August, and finally peace. The three years after this would be a difficult time for Germany but from 1948 onwards it would rise to its former greatness.
Otto Guensche, Hitler’s SS adjutant, was the first to voice the puzzlement that many in the room felt. He sat by the Führer’s right elbow, a large heavily-built man with a vee of wrinkles descending from a receding hairline, and inquired what this ‘new and unexpected factor’ could be. Everyone waited in a hush of expectancy.
‘What can it mean?’ the Führer said, looking round the circle of curious faces. ‘It can mean only one thing: the wonder weapon.’
I saw the light of hope and enthusiasm die in the eyes of those gathered in the small cramped smelly room, for we all knew that insurmountable technical problems had forestalled the development of the so-called ‘Atomic Bomb’ and many of us had long since lost all faith in it as a credible means of saving the Reich, even were it to be used as a propaganda threat. All through 1944 we had been waiting with growing impatience for the announcement that it was ready to be tested; the rumour had it that the Bomb would be detonated in Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, wiping out a major city or two as a demonstration and a warning of its awesome effect. Nothing had come of this grandiose scheme and the Bomb was nowadays rarely mentioned, and even then as a sour joke. The fact that the Führer still believed it to be a decisive factor in winning the war for the Allies only gave rise to greater fears as to his – to use Goebbels’ euphemistic phrase – ‘mental condition’.
*
It is now two days since the Führer’s birthday (20th April) and the atmosphere down here in the Bunker is strained to the limit of desperation and despair. Sporadic artillery fire has been heard in the southern suburbs and our intelligence service reports that it is the Russian pincer movement tightening its grip on Berlin.
Yesterday the Führer ordered an all-out attack and took personal command of battle operations. As head of the force he placed SS Obergruppenführer Steiner, with explicit instructions to deploy every man, every tank and every aircraft in the defence of the city. The final briefing conference was tense and, on occasion, traumatic. He summoned the remnants of his senior staff, including Steiner and Karl Koller, the General der Luftwaffe, and told them that he would not accept failure, no matter what excuses they might have to offer. Towards the end he had worked himself up into a frenzy, stamping his feet on the concrete floor and screaming at them: ‘Any commanding officer who keeps men back will forfeit his life within five hours! You will guarantee with your heads that absolutely every man is employed!’
For twelve hours we awaited the outcome of the battle. Had the Russians been repulsed or were they making headway? The Führer sent message after message demanding confirmation that the attack had been launched but the reports were conflicting: Himmler telephoned to say that it had taken place and the enemy advance had been halted; then came a report from the Luftwaffe saying that no such encounter had taken place. Hitler was in a ferment, grey-faced, shaking, eyes bloodshot with rage and fatigue, and I was twice called upon during the afternoon to administer additional injections to regulate his pulse and blood-pressure. He was becoming less and less aware of his surroundings, staring through people as though they didn’t exist.
At four o’clock in the afternoon a special conference was called, with Bormann, Burgdorf, Keitel, Jodl and Krebs attending. It turned out to be an exhausting marathon which went on till the early hours of the next day. Nothing, it appears, had been done: General Steiner hadn’t ordered the attack: the battle was a mythical one, existing only in the Führer’s brain.
Then he went berserk.
Screaming abuse, spittle bubbling on his lips, his discoloured complexion a mass of grey blotches, he dragged himself up and down the concrete chamber denouncing them all as traitors. He said that the Army General Staff should be hanged ‘to the last craven coward’, that he had been betrayed by a conspiracy of ‘treason, corruption, and lies’, and that he was done with the lot of them; they could sink or swim without him.
When Jodl summoned up the nerve to speak the Führer turned on him with all the viciousness of a rabid dog. ‘If the German people are to be conquered in the struggle,’ he spat in Jodl’s face, ‘then they are too weak to face the test of history and are fit only for destruction. We shall not surrender. We shall never capitulate, no never! We may be destroyed, but if we are we shall drag half the world with us – a world in flames. There will be no one left to triumph over Germany.’
Bormann, I could see, was in a funk of indecision. He was wringing his hands and nervously avoiding the inflamed stare from those blue-grey demonic eyes, now filmed with a haze of exhaustion.
‘We must go south,’ he kept whining. ‘Within hours all the escape routes will be cut off. We must go south to Obersalzberg and set up new command headquarters. It is the only hope. We must go south.’
Hitler stood stock-still (as still as it is possible to be when the entire left side of the body – face, arm, leg – is twitching uncontrollably) and fixed Bormann with a terrible madman’s glare.
‘I will never leave Berlin – never! I have taken up an immovable position. I cannot change it. I shall take over the defence of Berlin but I shall not fall into enemy hands alive or dead. I will shoot myself and have my body burnt. It is all over, finished. The Third Reich is no more. I shall stay in Berlin and wait to meet the end.’
Jodl, Keitel and Krebs were plainly distressed at this. They looked at one another in the manner of three bewildered schoolboys who have just been informed by the headmaster that henceforth they will have to teach themselves. Jodl spread his hands piteously. ‘But what are we to do? After you have been directing and leading us for so long how can you suddenly send us away and expect us to lead ourselves? It is not possible.’
‘What are we to do without you?�
� asked Krebs, and Keitel looked on blankly, totally bemused and bewildered. They were three lost sheep.
The Führer was supporting himself on the corner of the table, his knuckles pressing whitely and his breathing shallow and quick like an animal with one leg caught fast in a steel trap. He said in a low voice, all the strength and resolve drained out of it:
‘I have no orders to give you. If you require orders then you should seek them from the Reich Marshal.’
Krebs blinked and stepped back at these astounding words. ‘There isn’t a single German soldier who would fight under the Reich Marshal,’ he said.
‘There is no question of fighting now,’ Hitler said, astounding them even more. ‘There is nothing left to fight with. If it’s a question of negotiating, Goering can do that better than I.’
This, plainly, was a bombshell, and the dank concrete room was filled with an unbearable claustrophobic silence. But even worse was to follow. While we were still taking in the enormity of these momentous utterances a courier arrived with a top secret message. Hitler read it and his eyes started to bulge out of his head. He choked and gasped for breath and I had to steady him to prevent his legs giving away completely. The paper fluttered out of his hand and Jodl picked it up and read it aloud.
Mein Führer!
In view of your decision to remain at your post in the fortress of Berlin, do you agree that I take over, at once, the total leadership of the Reich, with full freedom of action at home and abroad, as your deputy, in accordance with your decree of 29th June 1941? If no reply is received by ten o’clock tonight I shall take it for granted that you have lost your freedom of action, and shall consider the conditions of your decree as fulfilled, and shall act for the best interests of our country and our people. You know what I feel for you in this gravest hour of my life. Words fail me to express myself. May God protect you and speed you quickly here in spite of all.
