Hitler's Last Day: Minute By Minute Part 20

In Mauthausen concentration camp, prisoner Henry Wermuth is getting ready for what he called later 'the performance of my life'. Three days ago the 22-year-old arrived at the camp his eighth and has decided that if he is to survive he must steal some extra food. The rumble of guns in the distance gives him hope that the Allies are not far away if he can only survive until they get here.

For the first time Wermuth is alone; his father died on the way to Mauthausen. Together they had survived Auschwitz, where, convinced that they were destined for the gas chambers, his father had said calmly, 'Should we be ga.s.sed, breathe deeply, my son, breathe deeply, to get it over with quickly.' They were never sent to the gas chambers, but their forearms were tattooed. Wermuth is B3407, his father B3406.

Wermuth's barracks at Mauthausen contain two rows of three-tier bunk beds for about 6,000 prisoners. Last Friday night, his first night, he was allocated a middle bunk made for one person to sleep in. He had to share it with four others, one of whom is suffering from diarrhoea. It was so unbearable that Wermuth got out and slept under a blanket on a nearby table. He often dreams he has a machine gun and is shooting crowds of Germans. He only stops when he sees a small child in his gunsight.

In Auschwitz a small loaf of bread was shared between four people; here it is one loaf between eight. Wermuth can feel his strength diminis.h.i.+ng. But he has a plan.

At six o'clock as usual, the sealed metal container carrying watery soup arrives in the hut, and is placed on the floor just a few feet from Wermuth. He knows that it will be five minutes before it'll be dished out by a kapo (a prisoner given authority over the inmates) so he hasn't long.

Wearing his blanket like a robe over his right shoulder, Wermuth walks up and down, brus.h.i.+ng over the soup container with his blanket as he does so. On the fourth pa.s.s he quickly bends down and opens the clasp that keeps the lid shut. Again he starts walking back and forth, then suddenly crouches, lifts up the lid, pulls out a bowl and dips it deep into the soup.

Then Wermuth walks slowly back to his bunk with the bowl and pulls out a spoon hidden under his thin mattress. He knows that he can't drink the soup openly, so crawls under the bed, taking care not to spill any.

Suddenly the bed is surrounded by angry inmates, and he only has time for a couple of spoonfuls before the rest is stolen from him. They leave him alone to lick the bowl. Wermuth reckons that if stealing the soup doesn't prolong his life by much, the thrill of carrying it out has revived his fighting spirit.

Mauthausen will be liberated by the Americans five days later. An inmate spots something unusual, and climbs onto the table that had been Wermuth's bed on his first night for a better look.

'Ein amerikanische Soldat!' he shouts.

Wermuth, lying in his bunk, too weak to move, pulls the blanket over his head and weeps for the loss of his family. He turns to share the moment of liberation with his last surviving bunkmate, but he has already died.

About 6.30pm

The Commandant of Berlin, General Weidling, arrives in the bunker and is met by Goebbels, Bormann and the generals, who show him Hitler's study where the double suicide took place. He is sworn to secrecy. He immediately summons Colonel von Dufving, his Chief of Staff, and a number of other staff members, to join him in the bunker, without giving a reason.

The stone columns of the great entrance hall of the Reichstag are covered in blood. The first Russian soldiers to force their way in are met with a storm of grenades and Panzerfaust fire from the balconies around the central staircase. As reinforcements flow into the building, climbing over the dead and injured, the Russians gradually make their way up the stairs, firing from sub-machine guns, lobbing grenades. Many of the German defenders the Hitler Youth, the sailors, the SS race down back staircases to hide in the cellars. Others are forced further and further upwards as the building catches fire.

'They rape our daughters, they rape our wives,' the men lament. There is no other talk in the city. No other thought either. Suicide is in the air.

Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, diary entry, April 1945 Plonzstra.s.se Cemetery, Berlin Records, 30th April 1945: Gerhard N., b.1914 Rudigerstra.s.se Suicide by shooting Ilse N., b.1914 Rudigerstra.s.se Suicide by shooting Irma N., b.1944 Rudigerstra.s.se Suicide by shooting It was not only Russians who were guilty of rape as they advanced through Germany. Saul K. Padover, an American officer, wrote in 1946, 'The behaviour of some troops was nothing to brag about, particularly after they came across cases of cognac and barrels of wine. I am mentioning it only because there is a tendency among the naive or malicious to think that only Russians loot and rape.' Many Allied soldiers discovered that s.e.x was readily available to them. Major Bill Deedes of the 12th King's Royal Rifle Corps, and future journalist, wrote later, 'The Germans were very hungry. The girls would get at my riflemen for a tin of sardines.'

In the town of Berchtesgaden, near Hitler's mountain home, Albine Paul gave her 11-year-old daughter, Irmgard, a small envelope containing a teaspoon of pepper. Pepper was very hard to obtain during the war and Albine had to overcome her reluctance to use the black market in order to get hold of some. She was terrified about the expected arrival of the Russians. The town had taken many refugees from the east who had brought hideous stories of the Soviet army raping and murdering women of all ages. Albine told Irmgard that if an enemy soldier threatened to harm her, she was to throw the pepper in his eyes. In the end, however, it was not the Russians but American, French and Moroccan troops that liberated Berchtesgaden. The local women feared the French and the Moroccan soldiers the most, but Irmgard was horrified to overhear a local official telling the story of a group of American soldiers gang-raping a 16-year-old girl in the former n.a.z.i headquarters in Stanga.s.s, Berchtesgaden. Although she understood that this was terrible it would be several years before Irmgard would understand what the word rape, Vergewaltigung, meant. She had not yet learned the facts of life. Nor did she fully understand the conversations between her mother and her aunt about the many abortions carried out in Berchtesgaden during the American occupation.

Corporal Bert Ruffle is hiding in a latrine in Stalag IV-C, a POW camp in the Sudetenland. He fled before the guards came to his hut to get the night s.h.i.+ft out for construction work at the oil refinery. Keeping true to his vow that he would never do hard labour again, Ruffle slipped out and headed to the latrine.

It's been a day of rumours in the camp: that the Russians are near Berlin, that Montgomery has crossed the Rhine, and that Hitler has finally gone mad.

7.00pm

Geoffrey c.o.x is staring at the diners in the restaurant of the Royal Danieli Hotel in Venice. Men in linen suits are eating with well-dressed women wearing expensive jewellery. The last of the day's sun bounces off the water of the lagoon into the room. To c.o.x it is an unpleasantly decadent scene he can only think about the ambulances carrying wounded New Zealanders, and the Germans he saw lying dead in a ditch the day before. He hurries away.

Geoffrey c.o.x and the Eighth Army will reach Trieste on 2nd May, shortly after Marshal t.i.to's Yugoslav Fourth Army. A stand-off ensues, which some see as the first confrontation of the Cold War. Churchill is keen to keep the Stalin-backed Yugoslavs out of the city, but needs President Truman's backing. On 12th May he sends a letter to Truman stating, 'An iron curtain is drawn down on their [Russian] front. We do not know what is going on behind. There seems little doubt that the whole of the regions east of the line Lubeck-Trieste-Corfu will soon be in their hands.' Truman has already made up his mind to resist further Soviet expansion and demands that t.i.to withdraw. Stalin fails to back the Yugoslavs over Trieste, and so they reluctantly pull out of the city. But not empty-handed. Before the Allied Military Government moves in, t.i.to's forces strip factories, hotels and homes of their contents.

In the early dusk of the smoke filled skies, the three officers who have escaped the bunker, von Loringhoven, Boldt and Weiss, are setting off in a rowing boat they have found in a sailing club on the Pichelsdorf peninsula. Like the three men carrying Hitler's testaments, they are also heading for the Wannsee bridgehead. It is another dark and moonless night. The three men hold their oars and let the boat glide silently downstream. They can hear the conversations of the Russian soldiers occupying the villas along the river banks. These are the very same houses that have, until only recently, been used as weekend getaways by the top n.a.z.is, and before that belonged to Jewish families who were brutally forced out.

As the bunker telephones are no longer working, a technician called Hermann Gretz brings a drum of cable to Misch's switchboard. He heads out, taking the other end to the Russian command in nearby Zimmerstra.s.se. Now the Fuhrer is dead, those remaining in the bunker want to establish contact with the enemy forces.

In Plon Castle Admiral Donitz is on the telephone to Heinrich Himmler. After hearing of his appointment as. .h.i.tler's successor, one of Donitz's first actions was to ask his adjutant to call Himmler. He feels it is very important that he gets his support. At their meeting that afternoon, Himmler had given him the impression that he saw himself as a natural successor to the Fuhrer. The SS chief initially refused to come to Plon, but now reluctantly agrees when Donitz calls him back and speaks to him in person.

'Moment, moment...'

7.30pm

Gretz returns from the Russian command and plugs in the cable. Misch tests it, but says the line is dead. Gretz double-checks. It is dead. He goes back to the Russians in Zimmerstra.s.se.

In the upper bunker Magda Goebbels is putting her children to bed. The littlest, Heide, has a sore throat. Her mother finds her a red scarf.

This is their last night's sleep. This time tomorrow they will each be given an injection of morphine. Their mother will tell them that this is a vaccination that all the soldiers are getting to protect them against disease.

Once they are dozing, Ludwig Stumpfegger, one of the Reich Chancellery doctors, the only one whom Magda has been able to persuade to carry out this task, will crush a cyanide capsule between each child's teeth.

The three testament couriers are reunited at the Wannsee bridgehead. While waiting for his colleagues, Johanmeier has found a small German army unit and used their radio to make contact with Admiral Donitz. Donitz has instructed them to go to Pfaueninsel, a small wooded island further south along the River Havel, and wait for a seaplane which he is sending to rescue them.

8.00pm

Gretz the technician reappears in the Fuhrerbunker switchboard office. 'The cable wasn't earthed. Try it again.' Misch plugs it in and hears a Russian voice. 'Moment, moment,' he says and pa.s.ses the connection to General Krebs, who has been secretly brus.h.i.+ng up the Russian he learned when he was the military attache in Moscow before the war. Krebs arranges to meet the Russian General Zhukov later that evening.

Constanze Manziarly is mas.h.i.+ng potato and frying eggs, creating a dinner that she knows the Fuhrer won't eat. Those in Hitler's immediate circle are keeping his death secret from the staff in the Reich Chancellery, and the kitchen orderlies who a.s.sist her have no idea that this meal is a charade.

8.15pm

Back in the map room, Goebbels and Bormann are drafting a letter for Krebs to take to General Zhukov. Goebbels is adamant that they will not offer an unconditional surrender.

In the Reichstag fierce fighting continues. Two Russian soldiers, bearing a red flag and heading for the roof, are mown down as they reach the second floor.

About 8.30pm

The three officers who are supposed to be delivering Hitler's testaments have reached Pfaueninsel in the middle of the River Havel. The island's white castle looms through the darkness. This will be the landmark to guide the seaplane which Admiral Donitz is sending. The men clamber ash.o.r.e. They manage to find some civilian clothes in the castle and they dispose of their army uniforms. They begin the long wait for the seaplane to arrive. At dawn they will be joined by the three officers who have broken out of the bunker von Loringhoven, Boldt and Weiss.

About 8.30pm/9.30pm UK time

General Eisenhower's staff are sending a telegram to the Russian General Antonov, requesting that he advance no further into Austria than 'the general area of the Linz' and the River Enns.

A guard at Stalag IV-C has found Corporal Bert Ruffle hiding in the latrine and he's marching him to the Commandant's office.

Noel Coward is in a suite at the Savoy Hotel in London (his London home having been bombed in 1941). Pencil in hand, he is updating a diary which also doubles up as his appointments book. He has an impressive set of friends lunch dates with Fred Astaire, Laurence Olivier or Greta Garbo are not uncommon. But today has been a quiet Monday, the papers full of speculation about the war.

He's writing, 'These supremely melodramatic days are somehow anticlimactic and confusing. The Sunday Express announced Germany's unconditional surrender to all three Allies. This headline is mischievous and misleading as it is not true, although it probably will be in the next day or two. Rumours of the death of Hitler and Goering. Mussolini shot yesterday and hung upside down and spat at. The Italians are a loveable race.'

Coward has written two of the most successful songs of the war 'London Pride' and 'Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans' (a favourite of Churchill's after Coward played it for him at Chequers), and is the screenwriter of the most popular wartime film, the navy drama In Which We Serve. Today filming resumed on Coward's latest screenplay after the weekend break. It's called Brief Encounter and is being made at Denham Studios, with Celia Johnson and newcomer Trevor Howard.

'When, oh when, is this bleeding b.l.o.o.d.y sodding WAR going to finish??'

8.45pm

Bert Ruffle is saluting the Commandant of Stalag IV-C, who then stands and returns the salute. The Commandant asks him why he was evading work.

'Sir, I was ready for work when, a quarter of an hour before I was to go on parade, my stomach was filled with pain. I was very sick and I felt as though the world had come to an end. It took me all my time to come to this office, as you can see, sir.' Ruffle holds out his grubby hands.

'I am shaking like a leaf in the wind. I shall be OK for work tomorrow, Sir.'

The Commandant tells him that he should have reported sick earlier, and lets Ruffle go without punishment. Ruffle walks back to his hut feeling extremely lucky, given that his old friend 'Lofty' Whitney is serving seven days in the jail for leaving Stalag IV-C without permission.

They give us rooms and huge beds... and we sleep in the same house with them, never thinking of knives in the dark. These people want us to like them.

Matthew Halton, Canadian Broadcasting Company In Braunau-am-Inn, where Hitler was born 56 years ago, BBC correspondent Robert Reid is spending the night with an Austrian farmer and his wife. When the correspondents are far from an army base, they often knock on the door of a German house asking for a bed for the night. Almost without fail they are invited in, and almost without fail, as they enjoy German hospitality, they will notice the s.p.a.ce on the wall where a picture of Hitler once hung.

Reid is enjoying a large candlelit meal and plenty of beer. The farmer and his wife have brought out photographs of their relatives living in Seattle and Chicago and they are telling him about how they hated Hitler and the n.a.z.is. But Reid is unconvinced by their claim too many of the civilians he's met in Germany have said the same. Two weeks ago he was reporting from Buchenwald concentration camp, an experience he will never forget. There, Reid interviewed a British officer named Captain C.A.G. Burney who'd been in the camp for 15 months.

Reid: How would you like to sum up your whole experience here?

Burney: Well, I couldn't politely say it over the microphone.

Reid: But has it been shocking?

Burney: It's been shocking, but on the other hand it's so stunning it's almost unreal, and I think probably when one has been back among civilised people for a while one just forgets it.

Reid: You really feel like you've been out of civilisation, do you?

Burney: Oh yes, absolutely out of the world.

About 9.30pm