Guarding Hitler

by Mark Felton

  Acknowledging the inevitable failure of the last German offensive in the West, a dispirited Hitler returned to Berlin on 16 January aboard his private train, the Führersonderzug. As the long train wound its way through the devastated capital Hitler reportedly looked out at the ruins from his Pullman carriage, both surprised and depressed by the grim sights that greeted him.3 He needed no more than to look out the window to see the reality of his military failure. Arriving at Grunewald Station at 9.40am, Hitler climbed down from the Führersonderzug for the last time and was driven in a convoy of armoured Mercedes to the Reich Chancellery, passing through bomb-damaged streets whose gutted and roofless apartment buildings and shops bore silent witness to the final collapse of the Third Reich.

  Arriving at the New Reich Chancellery at 10.00am, an hour later he received Generaloberst Heinz Guderian who delivered a gloomy situation report concerning the predicted Soviet offensive. At midday he presented SS-Gruppenführer Kruger with a decoration, had a forty-minute lunch and then presented Generaloberst Ferdinand Schörner, Commander of Army Group North, with the Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross. In the afternoon Hitler watched the weekly newsreel.4

  A huge Soviet winter offensive began just two days later. By the end of the month the Soviets were only 100km from Berlin. Hitler continued to live in his apartments in the Old Reich Chancellery until mid-February before moving into the Führerbunker to sleep. Until mid-March 1945 Hitler also continued to take his meals in the New Reich Chancellery and to hold his military situation conferences there inside his enormous study. The grand hallway outside was still intact, though the artworks and priceless tapestries had been removed to protect them from the bombing. Although Hitler continued to come up from the Führerbunker into both Chancelleries to work in his study, and used some of the building’s other rooms, he did not see the vast amount of damage that had been caused to both buildings by British and American aerial bombing. Staff officers visiting the Reich Chancellery for meetings had to take long and circuitous routes to reach Hitler’s study, as corridors had been reduced to rubble by direct hits.5 Soon the Reich Chancellery would start to come under artillery and rocket fire from the advancing Red Army.

  The Western Allies thought that Hitler was still at the Adlerhorst, his headquarters beneath Kransberg Castle, and they determined to try and kill him. Although Hitler had already been gone for two months, a squadron of P-51 Mustangs launched a precision attack on Kransberg Castle and its environs on 19 March, dropping high explosive and incendiary bombs that killed ten civilians and did huge damage to both the Castle and surrounding buildings. The Adlerhorst was still functioning as a headquarters at the time of the raid. On 11 March, one week before the raid, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief West, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, had moved into the Castle with his large staff. He immediately ordered that all sensitive documentation and cipher machines be removed from the Castle, after which he moved with his staff into Haus III, the purpose-built OKW command bunker at the Adlerhorst. Kesselring and his staff escaped harm during the 45-minute American air raid.

  By 28 March, with US forces only 19km from the Adlerhorst, Kesselring ordered the evacuation, by means of all the remaining motor transport, of civilian employees and the families of soldiers who were serving at the headquarters. He then ordered that the Adlerhorst complex should be blown up. This was only partially successful. When the US Army arrived they discovered that the Führerbunker and several other structures had been reduced to burned-out shells, but two buildings were captured intact. The first was Haus V or ‘Pressehaus’, used by Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. The second was the largest building on the site, Haus VII, the ‘Wachhaus’ with its long concrete tunnel that connected directly with the Castle.

  In Berlin, guarding the Reich Chancellery complex proved to be increasingly challenging as bomb damage had destroyed perimeter walls and fences. It was impossible to guard everywhere, and military stragglers and civilians often entered the complex, especially as the chaos grew worse with the approach of the Red Army. But military officers attending conferences in Hitler’s office were still forced to pass through stringent security checkpoints from where their cars deposited them.

  SS-Begleitkommando and RSD checked the names of visiting generals and their adjutants against log book entries. SS-Begleitkommando guards were posted in all of the ground floor corridors and passageways that led to Hitler’s office, and all visitors were constantly stopped and their identity documents perused by these sentries, irrespective of rank. Approaching Hitler’s office down the long gallery visitors would have been checked again outside the anteroom. All visitors were then required to hand over their side arms to the SS guards, who logged them. Their briefcases were then carefully searched for bombs or other weapons. But the visitors were not physically frisked as had been done at the Wolf’s Lair, which, with hindsight, was a glaring security omission as a potential assassin could have concealed a small gun, knife or explosive charge on his person, as several young officers had in fact done during previous assassination attempts.6

  Once suitably searched and cleared, visitors then entered the heavily guarded anteroom to Hitler’s study where SS orderlies would serve them with refreshments while they waited. Hitler’s orderly SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche would appear and invite the senior officers’ adjutants to come in to the Führer’s study and set out maps and reports on Hitler’s large marble-topped table ready for the conference. The adjutants would then go back into the anteroom to wait with their superiors, the rule that these younger officers were not permitted in the Führer’s conferences still firmly in force.

  Generalleutnant Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hitler’s 50-year-old Chief of the Army Personnel Department since the demise of General der Infanterie Rudolf Schmundt from injuries sustained in the Wolf’s Lair bombing, would then appear and invite the conference attendees into Hitler’s study where the Führer would shortly appear. Burgdorf, one of Hitler’s more unquestioning military officers, had played a central role in convincing Erwin Rommel to kill himself rather than face a treason trial for his part in the July Bomb Plot. He was seen as ultra-loyal by the Nazis but held in contempt by many in the army.

  On their departure from the Reich Chancellery the generals and their staffs would go through the same series of security checkpoints, and have their documents repeatedly checked by sentries, until they left the premises.

  Because of the constant bombing raids and air raid alerts Hitler decided to move his headquarters underground into the Führerbunker beneath the Old Reich Chancellery gardens in mid-March 1945. Although now safe from aerial attack, the Führerbunker was completely inadequate for use as a military headquarters as it was too small to accommodate sufficient staff or visiting generals attending conferences. It came to be described by many who visited it during the last weeks of the war as a fetid hole in the ground or a ‘concrete coffin’.

  Hot and stuffy, and furnished with only the bare essentials, the Führerbunker was a far cry from the vast complex at the Wolf’s Lair, or Hitler’s main Western Front HQ at the Adlerhorst. The reason was that the bunker was never designed to be anything other than an air raid shelter for use by Hitler and his inner circle, a temporary refuge from the real business of government conducted in the Reich Chancellery above.

  Most in Hitler’s inner circle expected the Führer to flee Berlin before the Soviets managed to encircle the ruined city. As the Red Army closed in on Berlin, Hitler’s personal pilot Hans Baur, promoted by Hitler on 30 January 1945 to SS-Gruppenführer, frantically tried to preserve the F.d.F aircraft for the expected escape south to Berchtesgaden. Standing by in Pöcking, near Passau in Lower Bavaria, was a brand new aircraft for Hitler’s exclusive use that would be the perfect getaway vehicle from the ruins of the Thousand Year Reich.

  On 26 November 1943 Hitler had attended a demonstration of new Luftwaffe aircraft types at Insterburg in East Prussia. One aircraft in particular had caught his eye. The giant Junkers Ju 290 was a long
-range transport, maritime patrol aircraft and heavy bomber first introduced into Luftwaffe service in August 1942 to replace the slower and smaller Condor. With a crew of nine, the Ju 290 was 28.64m long with a wingspan of 42m. Capable of a maximum speed of 440km/h it had a range of 6,150km and a maximum service ceiling of 6,000m. Hitler asked Göring for one to be assigned to the F.d.F. for his personal use. The Ju 290 had made several successful trips to Japan via the Arctic Ocean and Manchuria and proved to be an excellent maritime patrol aircraft and transport, seeing service at Stalingrad and in Tunisia.

  The aircraft destined for Hitler’s squadron was a former maritime reconnaissance aircraft that had been extensively refitted. A Ju 290A-7, it was given the code KRzLW. Hitler’s passenger cabin was protected by 12mm of armour plating and 50mm thick bulletproof glass. As on his main Condor, a special parachute seat and escape hatch was fitted.

  The plane was ready for Hitler’s use from February 1945, just as the situation around Berlin was turning very bad. Baur was able to visit Pöcking and test-flew the new plane once. If Hitler, Eva Braun and the inner circle were going to escape death or capture in Berlin, the Ju 290 was going to be their salvation. It had the range to carry them to a neutral country like Spain and Baur prepared for what he thought would be an inevitable final rescue mission. Even if Hitler did not leave Germany at this point, most felt certain that he would nonetheless flee Berlin for Berchtesgaden and continue to direct the war from his mountaintop hideout in Bavaria. But Hitler had no intention of leaving the capital and instead continued to use both the partially wrecked Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker to direct the resistance to Stalin’s encroaching Soviet juggernaut. Baur was left frustrated and increasingly concerned for the safety of the remaining aircraft that made up the F.d.F.

  The Führerbunker had its genesis in air raid shelters built under and adjoined to buildings on Wilhelmstrasse and Vossstrasse in 1935. When the New Reich Chancellery complex was completed in January 1939 it included more air raid shelters. One was the Vorbunker, or Upper Bunker. Architect Leonhard Gall submitted plans in 1935 for a large reception hall-cum-ballroom to be added to the Old Reich Chancellery. Completed in 1936, the Vorbunker had a roof that was 1.6m thick, the bunker’s thick walls partially supporting the weight of the large reception hall overhead.7

  There were two entrances into the Vorbunker; one from the Foreign Ministry garden and the other from the New Reich Chancellery. Both led to a reinforced steel gas-proof door leading to a set of small rooms. On the left was the Water Supplies/Boiler Room, to the right the Airfilters Room. Moving forward there was a middle Dining Area with a Kitchen to the left, which was where Hitler’s cook/dietician Frau Constanze Manziarly prepared the Führer’s meals. There was also a well-stocked Wine Store. To the right of the Dining Area was the Personnel/Guard Quarters. Moving forward again, there was a Conference Room in the middle and on the left two rooms that originally housed Hitler’s physician Dr Theodor Morell and, following his departure in April 1945, Dr Goebbels’ wife Magda and her six young children. To the right of the Conference Room was a room used for guest quarters, two storerooms and then a stairway set at right angles connecting to the Führerbunker that was 2.5m lower than the Vorbunker and west-southwest of it. Steel doors could close off the Vorbunker and Führerbunker from one another and the SS closely guarded all entrances and exits.

  Hitler’s Führerbunker, or Lower Bunker, was built in 1942–43, 8.5m beneath the Old Reich Chancellery Garden 120m north of the New Chancellery at a cost of 1.4 million Reichsmarks. It was deep enough to withstand the largest bombs that were being dropped by the British and Americans over the city.

  Designed by the architectural firm Hochtief under Albert Speer’s supervision, the Führerbunker was one of about twenty bunkers and air raid shelters used by Hitler’s inner circle, bodyguards and military commanders in the region of the Reich Chancellery. Many cellars in the surrounding buildings were also utilised as auxiliary bunkers during the Battle of Berlin.

  The Führerbunker suffered from noise caused by the steady running of aeration ventilators twenty-four hours a day and also had a problem with cool moisture on the walls, as Berlin has a high ground water level.

  Entry into the Führerbunker was via the Vorbunker, passing down the dogleg staircase, which led to a guarded door giving access to a long Hall/Lounge, where RSD and SS-Begleitkommando sentries checked identity papers before permitting entry to the Führerbunker proper. This was through double steel gas-proof doors set into the bunker’s 2.2m thick protective wall. The Führerbunker was divided along a central corridor that gave access to an emergency exit staircase at the far end that led up to the surface in the Reich Chancellery Garden. This corridor was divided into two long rooms. The first of these on entering the Führerbunker was the Corridor/Lounge. A door on the left led to the Toilets and Electricity Switch Room. From the Toilets a connecting door led to the Bathroom/Dressing Room with Eva Braun’s Bedroom on the right of the Bathroom. A door connected the Bathroom with Hitler’s Sitting Room. To the right of this room was Hitler’s Study, dominated by a large painting of King Frederick the Great that Hitler would spend much time staring at as the Soviets fought their way into Berlin’s suburbs, hoping that he could emulate Frederick and turn back the Bolshevik horde with some final grand military gesture. A door connected Hitler’s Sitting Room with Hitler’s Bedroom. A door on the right of Hitler’s Study led back into the central corridor, this section called the Conference Room. The last three rooms on the left of the Führerbunker were not connected to Hitler’s suite and consisted of the Map Room where Hitler held most of his military situation conferences during the last weeks of the war, the Cloakroom and a Ventilation Room.

  The left side of the Führerbunker consisted, moving from the staircase connecting it with the Vorbunker to the emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery Gardens, of a series of rooms. First was the Generator/Ventilation Plant Room. This was connected to the Telephone Switchboard Room where SS-Oberscharführer Rochus Misch of the SS-Begleitkommando worked, Martin Bormann’s Office and the Guard Room. Hitler’s loyal valet SS-Obersturmbannführer Heinz Linge lived here. Next were two rooms: Goebbels’ Office and the Doctor’s Room. The last two rooms on the right of the central Conference Room were Goebbels’ Bedroom and the Doctor’s Quarters. Parts of the two bunkers were carpeted and one section of this material was recently discovered in a British regimental archive. It reveals that the carpet had a pattern of yellow flowers and blue leaves on a fawn background.8 The rooms were furnished with expensive pieces taken from the Reich Chancellery above and there were several framed oil paintings on the walls. But the interior, in keeping with Hitler’s other field headquarters, could not be described as anything other than Spartan and functional.9

  By mid-April the end was fast approaching on all fronts for Hitler’s Germany. On 11 April US forces had crossed the River Elbe placing them only 100km west of Berlin. British and Canadian forces had crossed the Rhine and were pushing into the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany. On 18 April Army Group B, the last major German formation west of Berlin, was surrounded and surrendered with the loss of 325,000 men. In Italy, the Allies’ Spring Offensive had seen their forces cross the River Po and push German forces into the foothills of the Alps. But the greatest threat came from the east where Stalin was poised to unleash hell.

  On 16 April the Red Army commenced the operation to capture Berlin, assaulting the Seelow Heights, the last significant German defence line east of the city.10 The fighting was fierce, the Soviets suffering heavy casualties, but by the 19th they had broken through and there was now no longer a proper defence position left to protect the city.11

  On 20 April, Hitler’s 56th birthday, Soviet artillery came in range of the Berlin suburbs and opened fire.12 By the next evening T-34 tanks had arrived on the outskirts. As the Red Army began to close a ring around Berlin and started to fight through the city suburbs in several directions aiming for the nearby Reichstag building, ef
forts were taken to increase the protection afforded to the Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker. On 22 April 1945 Kampfgruppe Mohnke (Battle Group Mohnke) was formed out of all available elite guard units from across Berlin and sent to defend the government quarter, Sector Z (Citadel), from the Soviets.13 Its commander, 34-year-old SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke had been one of the founding members of the SSStabswache (Staff Guard) in Berlin in 1934. A highly decorated Waffen-SS field commander, by 1945 Mohnke commanded the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Division (LSSAH). He had been wounded in Hungary and whilst recovering in Berlin was appointed by Hitler to command the defence of Sector Z.14

  Kampfgruppe Mohnke consisted of several units. SS-Wachbataillon I, the section of the LSSAH that was retained in Berlin on ceremonial guard and security duties when the rest of the LSSAH was sent to the Western Front, numbered about 800 men. On 15 April, one regiment of two battalions had been formed out of the remaining Wachbataillon troops, reinforced by other SS and Wehrmacht stragglers. It was placed under the command of SS-Standartenführer Anhalt until he was killed-inaction on 24 April. SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Kaschula then assumed command. SS-Hauptsturmführer Mrugalla commanded its I Battalion while SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Scha¨fer led the II Battalion.

  Another unit, SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Ausbildungs-und Ersatz Bataillon I under 32-year-old SS-Sturmbannführer Arthur Klingermeyer, was brought in from Spreenhagen. In January 1945 this unit consisted of twelve companies. On 15 April two battalions under Klingermeyer had been transferred to Berlin. Both battalions were later merged together and given some reservist reinforcements. There was the LSSAH Flak Kompanie and the 800-man SS-Begleitkommando under SS-Sturmbannführer Franz Scha¨dle and the usual RSD close-protection detachment.