Hitler's Last Day: Minute By Minute Part 2

As she leaves the bunker the aviatrix Hanna Reitsch is carrying a number of personal and official letters. Eva Braun has given her a final letter to her sister Gretl who is staying with their parents in Hitler's mountain home in Obersalzberg. The letter makes no mention of Fegelein's death. The Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, have given Reitsch letters for Magda's oldest son Harald, who is being held as a British prisoner of war in Britain.

Magda Goebbels is dressing in her bedroom in the upper bunker. This older bunker is starker than the Fuhrerbunker and her small room is typical with its concrete walls and minimal furnis.h.i.+ngs: a single bed, a chest of drawers and only a bare bulb for light. Magda proudly pins the golden party badge that Hitler gave her two days ago onto the front of her dress. It is his personal badge, marked with the number 1; the badge of the premier figure in the n.a.z.i Party. She feels it is the greatest honour of her life. Hitler has worn the badge on his uniform for 12 years. During his chancellors.h.i.+p Magda has often stood in as an unofficial first lady, accompanying the Fuhrer on formal occasions, sitting in pride of place at official dinners while Eva Braun is hidden away, confined to her room. The badge confirms her status in the hierarchy.

Magda Goebbels was born in Berlin to an unmarried chambermaid. Her mother went on to have a long-term relations.h.i.+p with a Jewish hotel manager, Richard Friedlander. They lived as a family in the Jewish quarter of Berlin; Magda went to a Jewish school and celebrated Jewish festivals. As a teenager she chose to take her stepfather's surname. Her first love was a young man called Victor Arlosoroff who was a charismatic leader of the Berlin Zionist movement. Magda became a keen supporter, attending Zionist meetings. When she was 19 and he was 20, Magda and Victor became engaged, but the relations.h.i.+p ended suddenly on Victor's 21st birthday and within months Magda was engaged to a man she had met on a train the day after their break-up.

The man on the train was Gunther Quandt, a hugely wealthy industrialist. He was 38, twice Magda's age, when they married in 1921. As a condition of their marriage Magda reverted to her original surname, Richter, as Gunther didn't want to appear to be marrying a Jew. Magda's mother separated from Richard Friedlander at the same time. He was not invited to the wedding. That year Gunther and Magda had a son, Harald, who would be 18 in 1939 and immediately join the Luftwaffe. They divorced amicably after seven years and Magda was given a generous settlement.

Shortly after her divorce Magda was taken by a friend to a n.a.z.i rally where she heard Joseph Goebbels speak. She was electrified by his high-octane oratory and approached him afterwards, offering to work for him as a volunteer. They started a relations.h.i.+p, and in 1931 the girl who grew up in the Jewish quarter of Berlin married the man who spearheaded the exclusion of all Jews from the city and inst.i.tuted the regulation yellow star whereby all Jews were identified. Adolf Hitler was their best man.

Magda never saw her stepfather Richard Friedlander again. His name is on the list of those who died in Buchenwald.

The six Goebbels children, Helga, Hilde, Helmut, Holde, Hedda and Heide, who are aged between four and 12, are sleeping in three bunk beds in the room next door to their mother. Joseph Goebbels' bedroom is separate from theirs, down the main staircase and at the far end of the Fuhrerbunker, next door to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun's suite. When the children arrived a week ago they were told that Germany was on the verge of winning the war and that they had come to the bunker to be ready to join in the victory celebrations with the Fuhrer. In fact Joseph and Magda decided to join their leader when they realised that defeat was imminent. They want to face death at his side. They have come to end their lives, and the lives of the children.

Magda has spent much of the week lying in bed. She suffers from angina. She can bear to see the children only for brief periods. Most of the work of looking after the children has fallen to the secretaries and kitchen orderlies. Magda has confided to the other women in the bunker that she is terrified that when the time comes she will be too weak to bring herself to kill them.

This evening Magda has written to her oldest son, Harald. When his plane was shot down over Italy in 1944, he was missing for several months. The Goebbels were delighted when they finally learned that he had been captured by the British, which they consider the safest possible outcome, though they don't know where he is being held. He is in fact in the prisoner-of-war camp in Latimer House, Buckinghams.h.i.+re, where he is very popular with the young RAF officers who interrogate him. Latimer House is a camp for high-ranking Germans and Harald, who is there because of his family connections rather than his rank, is much younger and more affable than most of his fellow prisoners.

Magda Goebbels tries to explain to Harald why she has brought his younger brother and sisters into the bunker: 'The world which will succeed National Socialism is not worth living in and for this reason I have brought the children here too. They are too good for the life that will come after us and a gracious G.o.d will understand me if I myself give them release from it...

'Be proud of us ... Everyone must die one day and is it not better to live a fine, honourable, brave but short life than drag out a long life of humiliation?

'My Beloved Son 'Live for Germany!

'Your Mother'

Joseph Goebbels has also written to his stepson. He tells him that he should be proud of his mother. He also warns him: 'Do not let yourself be disconcerted by the worldwide clamour which will now begin. One day the lies will crumble away of themselves and the truth will triumph once more. That will be the moment when we shall tower over all, clean and spotless, as we have always striven to be and believed ourselves to be...

'May you always be proud of having belonged to a family which, even in misfortune, remained loyal to the very end to the Fuhrer and his pure sacred cause.'

He signs off with the words, 'All good things and my heart-felt greetings, Your Papa.'

Magda and Joseph entrust these letters to Hanna Reitsch, and Magda also gives her a diamond ring. Hitler's parting gift to Reitsch is a cyanide capsule.

'I couldn't have a better master.'

In his study, Hitler is talking to Heinz Linge, his valet.

'I would like to let you return to your family.'

'Mein Fuhrer, I have been with you in good times, and I want to stay with you in the bad,' Linge replies.

Thirty-two-year-old Linge was a bricklayer in Bremen when the glamour of the Waffen SS inspired him to join up. Having been sent to guard Hitler's mountain residence, the Berghof, he was selected to be Hitler's chief valet shortly after war broke out in 1939. Linge is a subdued, steadfast man with a large, round face and pale-blue eyes. He is devoted to the Fuhrer, and tells people, 'I couldn't have a better master.'

Hitler looks at him calmly. 'I did not expect anything else from you.'

He pauses and leans against his writing desk. 'I have another personal job for you. What I must do now is what I have ordered every commander to do: hold out to the death. This order also applies to me, since I feel that I am here as the Commandant of Berlin...'

Linge's head is swimming.

'You should put two blankets in my bedroom and get hold of enough petrol for two cremations. I am going to shoot myself here together with Eva Braun. You will wrap our bodies in woollen blankets, carry them up to the garden, and there burn them.'

Linge is trembling. He stutters his reply: 'Jawohl, Mein Fuhrer!' and leaves the room.

During these last weeks in the Fuhrerbunker Hitler has spent most of his time in his study. It is a small room with an oppressively low ceiling. There's a desk and a stiff upright sofa, more like a wooden bench, upholstered in blue and white linen. There is a small rectangular table where he eats his meals with the secretaries, and a side table with a radio. He has a portrait of Frederick the Great on the wall. The wall of the corridor outside is also hung with valuable paintings which have been brought down from the Reich Chancellery for safety. The concrete floor of the corridor is lined with a red carpet and there are comfortable armchairs in which Hitler's generals often drink and sleep. The bunker's diesel generator is across the corridor and fills the Fuhrerbunker with the drone of its engine and the stench of its fuel.

In London, thousands of people are sleeping on the platforms of the Underground. Over the last five years a real community spirit has flourished there are bunk beds, toilets and even libraries. The menace of V1 (Vergeltungswaffe-1, Retaliation Weapon 1) flying bombs and V2 rockets is over. Churchill himself said so in the House of Commons on 26th April.

The last fatality as a result of Hitler's vengeance weapons was on 27th March. Thirty-four-year-old Ivy Millichamp of 88 Kynaston Road, Orpington (the town had suffered disproportionately as the Germans had been fooled into setting the wrong coordinates in order to hit central London) had gone into the kitchen to boil a kettle when a V2 landed on the street. Seventy people were injured. Ivy Millichamp's husband, asleep in the front room, survived. Ivy was killed outright.

Despite Churchill's announcement that the threat is over, thousands are choosing to stay underground at night. Ma.s.s Observation an organisation set up to gauge public opinion explained the appeal: 'Some come from solitary bed-sitting rooms with a gas-ring, and find they can spend evenings in light and gaiety, surrounded by company.'

00.35am.

In Berlin Robert Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch climb out of the armoured vehicle which has brought them to the Brandenburg Gate, where a light aircraft is waiting. They squash into the small two-seater plane. Reitsch is at the controls with von Greim behind her, his crutches jammed down by his feet. They set off down the makes.h.i.+ft Tiergarten runway. The plane picks up speed and soars into the night sky. It's immediately illuminated by Russian searchlights and comes under fire but they make it into the clouds. Reitsch looks down at the cloud bank, s.h.i.+ning in the silver moonlight, 'still, serene, idyllic', and thinks that it looks like a giant quilt wrapped over the flaming city. She heads for Rechlin airfield, where von Greim will issue his first instructions for the Luftwaffe.

Hanna Reitsch is the only woman to be awarded the German Iron Cross (First Cla.s.s). She won it for her bravery as a test pilot. Before and after the war she set more than 40 gliding and alt.i.tude records. In February 1944 she suggested to Hitler that the Luftwaffe develop a plan she called Operation Suicide, in which pilots sacrificed their lives for the Fatherland in the style of j.a.panese kamikaze pilots. Hitler agreed to the plan but, to Reitsch's disappointment, felt that it wasn't the right 'psychological' moment to put it into operation.

00.45am.

Following Hitler's instructions, Heinz Linge puts through a call to Hitler's driver, Erich Kempka, in the underground car park, to ask him to source some petrol.

'Petrol?'

'Yes, petrol. We need about 200 litres.'

'A mere 200 litres?' Kempka quips sarcastically. Petrol is desperately scarce. 'Is this a joke? What are you going to do with 200 litres of petrol?'

'Believe me, Erich, I cannot tell you on the phone, but this is not a joke. We need 200 litres of petrol delivered to the exit of the Fuhrerbunker as soon as possible. Do whatever you need to do to get hold of it.'

Linge puts down the phone and pours himself a couple of gla.s.ses of schnapps to help him get over the shock of the implication of this order.

Kempka orders an a.s.sistant to syphon off whatever remnants of petrol he can find in the cars in the underground garages. The concrete roof has fallen in and most of the cars are covered in masonry.

'When the Chief has won the war, I can play my own part in the film of our life story.'

1.00am.

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler emerge from their rooms, her arm through his. She is in her black dress. It is a simple, elegant dress, decorated around the neck with sequins. Black is the traditional colour of German wedding dresses, though white is now more fas.h.i.+onable. As a girl, dreaming of marriage, Eva was photographed dressing up in her grandmother's black lace wedding dress. Hitler has not changed his clothes and is wearing his usual black trousers and grey military jacket. Walther Wagner, the civil magistrate, greets them nervously. The couple take their seats on one side of the empty map table, flanked by their witnesses; Wagner sits opposite.

Braun and Hitler met in October 1929 at the Hoffman photographic studio in Munich shortly after she had started working there as an a.s.sistant. Hitler was one of Hoffman's main customers, commissioning endless propaganda portraits. She was 17 and he was 40. One day he came into the studio, wearing his beige belted Burberry raincoat just as she was climbing a ladder to reach some files from a top shelf. Braun was embarra.s.sed because she had shortened her skirt that morning and she could tell that the man with the 'funny moustache' was looking at her legs. She was worried that he would notice that her hem was uneven.

1929 was the year when Hitler became a household name in Germany and the n.a.z.i Party's popularity began to soar as German unemployment rose in the wake of the Wall Street Crash. Eva Braun was soon in love with this increasingly powerful man and did all she could to insinuate herself into his circle. From about 1931 Hitler started to invite Braun to cafes, to the opera, and eventually to stay.

The first four years of their relations.h.i.+p were very difficult for Eva Braun. Hitler showed her very little interest or concern. She stayed in Munich, working at the photographic studio, living with her strict Catholic parents, while he worked in Berlin, surrounding himself with adoring fans. He rarely called. He frequently let her down. Twice she attempted suicide, and it was after the second attempt in May 1935, when her sister Ilse found her in a coma, after she had taken an overdose of the sedative Vanodorm, that he decided to accept her as his official mistress.

Hitler's relations.h.i.+p with Eva Braun was always hidden from the public, but it was now made known to his staff and immediate circle. He bought her a house in Wa.s.serstra.s.se in Munich and in the following months had a suite of rooms refurbished for her in the Berghof, his mountain home in Obersalzberg. She still had to hide away when there were official visitors, but privately she became mistress of the Berghof. Their relations.h.i.+p became steady, comfortable. She knew that her job was to keep him relaxed, and she was good at it. He loved her quality of 'Gemutlichkeit', cosiness. He used to say, 'Eva gives me a rest. She keeps my mind off things I don't want to think about.' Always a pa.s.sionate photographer and film maker who loved to star in her own home movies, Eva Braun dreamed of Hollywood. She would tell people, 'When the Chief has won the war, I can play my own part in the film of our life story.'

Braun's nickname for Hitler is Chief (German 'Chef'); he calls her 'Tschapperl' which translates as 'wench, b.u.mpkin or idiot'.

The two-page marriage certificate is laid out on the map table in the Fuhrerbunker conference room. Wagner reads out the preliminary questions about the couple and fills in the information with a thick blue-ink pen. Hitler omits the names of his parents and gives his address as the Reich Chancellery. Braun, apparently fl.u.s.tered, gives two different street numbers 8 and 12 as her address on Wa.s.serstra.s.se (12 is correct). Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann give their details as witnesses. The bride and groom are then asked to confirm that they are of 'pure Aryan descent and free of any hereditary diseases that would exclude them from marriage'.

Hitler's descent, and in particular the absence of any hereditary diseases, was in fact very much in doubt. His paternal grandmother was unmarried at the time of his father's birth and the ident.i.ty of his paternal grandfather was never confirmed, but it was widely believed to be his foster father, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, whose surname he took. The change of spelling to Hitler was thanks to a phonetic transcription by the pastor of Dollersheim who kept the register of births and deaths. Johann Nepomuk Hiedler was also the grandfather of Hitler's mother, Klara, so that Hitler's parents seem to have been uncle and niece. The family was certainly beset with health issues. Adolf was one of only two of their six children to survive childhood. The other, his sister Paula, had a learning disability. Hitler himself is believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the underside of the p.e.n.i.s or, in some cases, on the perineum. The popular British army marching song, sung to the tune of Colonel Bogey, that began, 'Hitler has only got one ball/The other is in the Albert Hall', may have been more accurate than the troops ever imagined.

Having received satisfactory responses, Walther Wagner then reads out the marriage vows: 'Mein Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, are you willing to take Fraulein Eva Braun as your wife? If you are, answer, "I do".'

Adolf Hitler repeats, 'I do.'

'Fraulein Eva Braun, are you willing to take our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, as your husband? If you are, answer, "I do".'

Eva Braun repeats, 'I do.'

Hitler places a gold ring on Eva's finger, and she places one on his. The rings have been taken from the bodies of murdered Gestapo prisoners. The couple discover the rings (hastily obtained from the Gestapo treasury) are too big.

Wagner then declares 'this marriage is legal before the law'. When he drew up the doc.u.ment Wagner expected the ceremony would be completed before midnight and he dated it '28 April 1945'. He now handwrites '29' on top of the '28'. Then he pa.s.ses the pen to Hitler as the first named and the first to sign.

The two words 'Adolf' and 'Hitler', side by side and far apart, both slope steeply downward. 'Adolf' is diminished to three zigzag lines with a cross, representing the horizontal of the 'f', on the lowest line. 'Hitler' is more ornate, beginning with a complex loop, but the following letters are tightly compacted.

Eva Braun's signature is in tidy schoolgirl italics. She automatically begins her surname with the letter B, then crosses it out and signs, 'Eva Hitler, geb (nee) Braun'. Goebbels and Bormann then sign as official witnesses. Goebbels uses the t.i.tle Dr, and like Eva writes neatly in the correct place. Martin Bormann's signature is a big confident illegible scrawl. The final signature, 'WWagner', is easy to read.

'How I love him! What a fellow! Then he speaks. How small am I! He gives me his photograph. With a greeting to the Rhine-land. Heil Hitler! I want Hitler to be my friend. His photograph is on my desk.'

The witnesses to the marriage are the only two senior n.a.z.is who have stayed with Hitler in the bunker. They have been locked in a battle for primacy of position since 1933. Both are ruthlessly ambitious. Witnessing Hitler's marriage and facing death at his side is their final reward.

Goebbels is not a medical doctor but uses the t.i.tle he earned by completing a doctoral thesis about 19th-century Romantic literature at the University of Heidelberg in 1921. A very short, thin, dark-haired man with a deformed foot, Goebbels was mockingly known as 'our little doctor' by those in Hitler's circle who conformed to the strapping blonde Aryan ideal which his propaganda promoted.

As Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels has been instrumental in creating the myth of the Fuhrer, the great leader who will save the nation, whom he has frequently presented in biblical terms, calling Hitler 'holy and untouchable' and even antic.i.p.ating his death in Christ-like imagery: 'An hour may come when the mob rages around you and roars, "Crucify him!" Then we shall stand firm as iron and shout and sing "Hosanna!"'

Goebbels' personal relations.h.i.+p with Hitler is intense. In 1926 Goebbels demanded that 'the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler' be expelled from the National Socialist Party. But three weeks later Hitler embraced him publicly and Goebbels swept away his previous objections to Hitler's views on communism, foreign policy and private property. His private diary takes on a h.o.m.oerotic charge, and an adolescent tone: 'How I love him! What a fellow! Then he speaks. How small am I! He gives me his photograph. With a greeting to the Rhineland. Heil Hitler! I want Hitler to be my friend. His photograph is on my desk.' Hitler initially rewards this enthusiastic little man with promotion, but later cools. Hitler never allows any of his inner circle to feel secure in their position.

Martin Bormann is the Fuhrer's private secretary. His name is largely unknown to the public but as the person who controls communication between Hitler and the rest of the world he is arguably the most powerful person in the country, in some ways more powerful than the Fuhrer. In the isolation of the bunker he decides what information Hitler gets, and who is allowed to communicate with the leader. He controls. .h.i.tler's finances. Among Hitler's entourage he is nicknamed the 'Brown Eminence' and is widely loathed. Eva certainly detests him. She has always felt herself in compet.i.tion with him for Hitler's attention and has resented the fact that he is the person who gives her an allowance and to whom she has to go if she incurs extra expenses. He is a short, overweight, graceless man who understands the power of secrecy. He has never courted publicity and has always worked as a functionary. The only time he has ever come to the public's attention was in 1923 when, together with Rudolf Hoss, who went on to become Commandant of Auschwitz, he was arrested for the murder of his elementary school teacher Walther Kadow. Kadow moved in the same far-right circles and was suspected of having betrayed a colleague. Hoss and Bormann lured him into a forest where they beat him with maple saplings until he collapsed. They then slit his throat and finally shot him in the head. Hoss was sentenced to ten years' hard labour, Bormann to one year in prison. On the grounds that it was impossible to decide whether Kadow had died from the beating, the throat-slitting or the shooting, both were found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

For the last four years Bormann has stayed constantly at Hitler's side, keeping the same unconventional hours, present but silent. His ability to listen matches. .h.i.tler's ability to speak. He is ruthlessly efficient and always carries a notebook which he whips out whenever the Fuhrer expresses an opinion or even hints at an instruction.

1.25am.

Landing safely at Rechlin airfield, 150km north of Berlin, an emotional Hanna Reitsch is exhilarated by the successful flight. Robert Ritter von Greim, pale with pain, immediately addresses the handful of staff who remain at the airfield and gives the order for all aircraft to support the relief of Berlin. His words are pointless. The airport has been devastated by Allied bombing. The few planes that are left will make no difference.

1.30am.

After the marriage ceremony in the Fuhrerbunker, the couple go back to their private rooms for champagne, tea and sandwiches with their senior staff. Hitler goes briefly to check on Traudl Junge's progress with typing the testaments, then joins the party. He turns down the champagne but, most unusually, as he is normally teetotal, he accepts a small gla.s.s of Hungarian wine, sweetened with sugar. Walther Wagner stays for 20 minutes. He has a gla.s.s of champagne and a liverwurst sausage, and then sets off back to his Home Guard post in a wine cellar on Unter den Linden. He will be shot in the head two days later, caught in the crossfire of a street battle.

Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, is struck by Eva's composure. He congratulates her as 'Frau Hitler' and her eyes light up. For a moment she lays her hand on his forearm and smiles.

Hitler's mind is still on his political testament; he sends both Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels away from the party, at different moments, to add more names to the list of appointments which Traudl Junge is still typing. Junge is tired and very frustrated by the constant changes.

It really makes no odds to us if we kill someone.

Heinrich Himmler Three hundred kilometres away, in his headquarters in the police station in Lubeck near the Baltic coast, Heinrich Himmler is poring over astrological charts with the astrologer Walther Wulff and Walter Sch.e.l.lenberg, the SS head of foreign intelligence.