Hitler. Part 28

IV.

The news trickling in during the day could scarcely have been worse. Wenck's troops, without a.s.sistance from the 9th Army (whose encirclement was by now accepted as practically a foregone conclusion), had been pushed back south of Potsdam. There was a 'doomsday' mood in the bunker, alleviated only by copious supplies of alcohol and food from the Reich Chancellery cellars. Hitler told Below he had decided to give Weidling, the Commandant of Berlin, the order to break out. All his staff should go, as well as Bormann and Goebbels. He would stay behind and die in the capital. By evening, amid worsening news, he had changed his mind. An attempt to break out would be useless. He gave Below a poison-capsule, should it come to 'a difficult situation'.

The fate of the encircled 9th Army, with its eleven divisions almost four times as strong as the forces at Wenck's disposal, took Hitler back, like a long-playing record, at the third briefing of the day to what he saw as constant disobedience and disloyalty in the army. Only Schorner, commander of Army Group Centre, was singled out for praise as 'a true warlord'. Donitz, too, stood in high favour for holding to his promise to send naval units to the defence of Berlin, and to Hitler's personal protection. The faint hope in Wenck was still not totally extinguished. But Hitler was looking to the last stand in the 'Citadel'. Firm command and reliable troops for the defence of the 'Citadel' were vital. His fear of capture surfaced again. 'I must have the absolute certainty,' he said, following news that enemy tanks had for a short time forced their way into Wilhelmstrae, 'that I will not be dragged out through some crafty trick by a Russian tank.' He saw it as only a question of time before the Soviets brought up heavy artillery to sh.e.l.l the 'Citadel' from close range. 'It's a matter then of a heroic struggle for a last small island,' he commented. 'If the relief doesn't arrive, we have to be clear: it's no bad end to a life to fall in the struggle for the capital of your Reich.'

Not everyone was willing to join a suicide pact. Hermann Fegelein, the swashbuckling, womanizing, cynical opportunist who had risen to high position in the SS through Himmler's favour then sealed his bonds to Hitler's 'court' through marrying Eva Braun's sister, had disappeared from the bunker. His absence was noticed on 27 April. And that evening he was discovered in civilian clothes in his apartment in Charlottenburg, worse the wear from drink, and with a good deal of money in bags packed for departure. He rang Eva Braun to have his sister-in-law intercede. (It seems, in fact, that he may have been more attracted to Eva Braun than he was to her sister; and that he had been in touch with her beforehand from his apartment, attempting to persuade her to leave the bunker before it was too late.) But it was to no avail. He was hauled back into the Reich Chancellery that evening in deep disgrace, stripped of his epaulettes and collar flashes, reduced to the ranks, and kept in an improvised cell until Hitler was ready to see him.

In the early hours of 28 April, despairing calls were made from the bunker to Keitel and Jodl urging all conceivable effort to be made to relieve Berlin as absolute priority. Time was of the essence. There were at most forty-eight hours, it was thought. 'If no help comes within that time, it will be too late,' Krebs told Keitel. 'The Fuhrer pa.s.ses that on again!!!' From Wenck, there was nothing but silence.

As so often, the bunker inmates thought they smelled the scent of disloyalty and treason. Bormann telegraphed Puttkamer that evening: 'Instead of spurring on the troops who should liberate us with orders and appeals, the men in authority are silent. Loyalty has given way to disloyalty. We remain here. The Reich Chancellery is already a heap of ruins.' In his desk diary, the entry was of high treason and betrayal of the country.

An hour later, the suspicions seemed dramatically confirmed. Heinz Lorenz appeared in the bunker. He had just picked up a message from Reuters, sent by the BBC in London and confirmed in Stockholm. He gave one copy to Bormann, whom he found sitting with Goebbels and Hewel. The other copy he handed to Linge to pa.s.s on to Hitler. It confirmed the truth of a disturbing story broadcast in the morning news of Radio Stockholm, relayed to Hitler in mid-afternoon, though initially seeming to lack substance: that the Reichsfuhrer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, had offered to surrender to the western Allies, but that this had been declined. Hitler had at first received the news of Himmler's discussions about capitulation 'with complete contempt'. He had immediately telephoned Admiral Donitz, who had said he knew nothing of it. Donitz then in turn contacted Himmler, who categorically denied the report and recommended ignoring it rather than putting out a denial on the radio. But Hitler continued to brood on it. Perhaps he was expecting something of the sort. His distrust of Himmler had grown in recent weeks. The disobedience, as he saw it, of Sepp Dietrich in Hungary and of Felix Steiner in the failure to attempt the relief of Berlin showed, it seemed, that even the SS were now disloyal to him. As the day wore on, so it appeared to Below, Hitler's bitterness towards Himmler mounted.

And now it all fell into place: the earlier story had been correct, and Himmler's denial a lie. More than that: the Reuters report had added that 'Himmler had informed the western Allies that he could implement an unconditional surrender and support it.' It amounted to an implication that the Reichsfuhrer-SS was now de facto head of state, that Hitler had been disempowered. This was a bombsh.e.l.l. This could on no account be tolerated. This was base treason.

Whether Hitler had earlier been aware of Himmler's tentative steps towards the western powers through the intermediacy of Count Folke Bernadotte, Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross and a close relative of the King of Sweden, is uncertain. The Reichsfuhrer's dealings with Bernadotte had stretched back some two months. SS-Brigadefuhrer Walter Sch.e.l.lenberg, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service in the Reich Security Main Office, had instigated the meetings and acted as intermediary. Bernadotte's initial aim had been to bargain for the release of prisoners particularly Scandinavians from concentration camps. From Himmler's point of view, urged on by Sch.e.l.lenberg, Bernadotte offered a possible opening to the West. As Germany's military situation had drastically deteriorated, Himmler, still hesitant and evidently under great nervous strain, had become more amenable to gestures at humanitarian concessions aimed at showing himself in as good a light as possible. Like most n.a.z.i leaders, he was looking to survive, not throw himself on the funeral pyre in the Berlin Gotterdammerung Gotterdammerung. In March, he had agreed, in contravention of Hitler's wishes, to allow concentration camps to be handed over to the approaching enemy, not destroyed. He had conceded the release of small numbers of Jews and other prisoners, to be sent to Switzerland and Sweden. At his second meeting with Bernadotte at the beginning of April, he had also consented to let Danish and Norwegian women and the sick in camps be taken to Sweden. At the same time, he still regarded the camp prisoners as his 'hostages' bargaining counters in any negotiations with the West.

Bernadotte had brushed aside Sch.e.l.lenberg's suggestion almost certainly prompted by Himmler that he might sound out Eisenhower about the possibility of a surrender in the west. Such a proposition, Bernadotte had pointed out, had to come from the Reichsfuhrer himself. Himmler was, however, in a state of chronic indecision as well as extreme nervous tension. He saw clearly the writing on the wall; the war was irredeemably lost. But he was well aware that Hitler would take Germany down into perdition with him rather than capitulate. Himmler, in common with most n.a.z.i leaders, wanted to save his own skin. And he still hankered after some role in a post-Hitler settlement. As dogmatic as. .h.i.tler in the fight against Bolshevism, he harboured the notable illusion that the enemy might overlook his part in monstrous crimes against humanity because of his value to the continuation of the struggle against the mortal enemy not just of Germany, but also of the West. He could not, however, even now free himself from his bonds with Hitler. He still hankered after Hitler's favour, and was distressed at the way he had fallen into discredit after his failure as commander of Army Group Vistula. Not least: now, as before, he feared Hitler.

A third meeting with Bernadotte on 21 April, at which the Reichsfuhrer-SS looked extremely drawn and in a highly nervous state, made no progress on the issue of overtures to the West. Himmler still remained ultra-cautious, unwilling to risk any initiative. Possibly, as Sch.e.l.lenberg later suggested, he had already decided by lunchtime on 22 April that the time had come to act, though this seems doubtful. What certainly convinced him was the news which Fegelein telephoned through to him from the Fuhrer Bunker that day of Hitler's extraordinary fit of pent-up fury and his uncontrolled tirade against treachery on all sides not least directed at the SS on account of Steiner's failure to launch the ordered counter-offensive culminating in his announcement that he would stay and die in Berlin. At this, Himmler's indecision evaporated.

On 23 April, Count Bernadotte had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to Sch.e.l.lenberg's suggestion to meet Himmler for a fourth time that evening. The meeting took place in the Swedish Consulate in Lubeck, eerily lit by candles because of a power cut. 'Hitler is very probably already dead,' Himmler began. At any rate, his end could be no more than a few days away. Before now, his oath of loyalty had prevented him from acting, Himmler went on. But with Hitler dead or on the verge of death, the situation was different. He now had a free hand. There could be no surrender to the Soviet Union. He was, and always would be, the sworn enemy of Bolshevism. He insisted that the struggle against Bolshevism must continue. But he was ready to declare Germany defeated by the western powers, and begged Bernadotte to pa.s.s his offer of capitulation to General Eisenhower in order to prevent further senseless destruction. Still by candlelight, Himmler drafted a letter to Sweden's Foreign Minister, to be handed to him by Bernadotte, and pa.s.sed on to the western Allies.

Himmler, like Goring (if in a different way), had taken the news of Hitler's outburst on 22 April to imply the Fuhrer's effective abdication. Like Goring, Himmler was soon to be disabused of such presumption. His immediate instinct, however, now that his own decision had been clarified, was to build a cabinet, invent (at Sch.e.l.lenberg's suggestion) the name for a new party the 'Party of National Concentration' and ponder whether he should bow or shake hands when he met Eisenhower. It apparently never occurred to him that his offer of capitulation might be turned down. But that outcome as good as certain to all beyond the perimeters of the detached mental world of n.a.z.i leaders at this juncture was precisely what had happened by the time, during the course of the afternoon of 28 April, the sensational news filtered out that the Reichsfuhrer-SS was willing to capitulate.

For Hitler, this was the last straw. That his 'loyal Heinrich', whose SS had as its motto 'My honour is loyalty', should now stab him in the back: this was the end. It was the betrayal of all betrayals. The bunker reverberated to a final elemental explosion of fury. All his stored-up venom was now poured out on Himmler in a last paroxysm of seething rage. It was, he screamed, 'the most shameful betrayal in human history'.

When the outburst subsided, Hitler retired to his rooms with Goebbels and Bormann for a lengthy discussion. As soon as he reappeared, he sent for the imprisoned Fegelein and subjected him to a fearsome verbal a.s.sault. Fegelein's recent disappearance now appeared to have sinister significance: joining the base treachery of the Reichsfuhrer-SS. Hitler's paranoid suspicions were running riot. Possibly Himmler was plotting to a.s.sa.s.sinate him; or to hand him over to the enemy. And Fegelein was part of the plot. Out of consideration for Eva Braun, Hitler's first, relatively lenient, reaction to Fegelein's desertion had been to have her disgraced brother-in-law a.s.signed to Mohnke's troops for the defence of Berlin. But Gunsche and Bormann had persuaded Hitler to hand him over to a court martial instead. One was now hastily improvised. After the merest formalities, Fegelein was summarily sentenced to death, immediately taken out, then shot in the back by an SD man even before he could be put in front of a firing-squad. For some of the bunker inmates, there was a sense of shock that one from within the 'inner circle' was guilty of such 'betrayal', and had been so peremptorily dispatched. For Hitler, it was the closest he could come to revenge on the Reichsfuhrer-SS himself.

V.

By now, Soviet troops had forced their way into Potsdamer Platz and streets in the immediate vicinity of the Reich Chancellery. They were no more than a few hundred yards away. A breakdown in communications for most of the day had left the bunker inmates desperate for any news of Wenck's army (which remained, hemmed in, south of Potsdam). In the prevailing climate within the bunker, even the lapdog Keitel and the ever-reliable Jodl were now coming under suspicion of treachery for not bringing about the relief of Berlin.

Soon after midnight, following Fegelein's execution, Hitler commissioned Greim to deploy the Luftwaffe in making every effort to aid Wenck through attacks on Soviet positions blocking his route to Berlin. It was the faintest of faint hopes. He had a second commission for Greim one, if anything, even more important. Greim was to leave Berlin and fly to Donitz in Plon to ensure that the traitor, Himmler, was arrested better still, liquidated forthwith. To this end, an Arado 96 training plane had been ordered to Berlin from Rechlin and, astonishingly, had defied all odds in touching down on the East-West Axis. Protesting their wish to stay with Hitler in the bunker, Greim, on crutches and far from recovered from his injured foot, and his companion Hanna Reitsch nonetheless accepted the commission, were driven in an armoured vehicle to the plane, waiting close to the Brandenburg Gate, managed to take off, and, even more remarkably, to negotiate the heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire to fly to Rechlin, from where they later flew to Plon. The perilous journey was pointless. The few planes Greim was able to order into the defence of Berlin made not the slightest difference. And by the time he reached Donitz's headquarters, the Grand Admiral had nothing to gain by having Himmler arrested, let alone shot. Even avoiding death in the bunker was no consolation to Greim and Reitsch. 'It is the greatest sorrow of our lives that we were not permitted to die with the Fuhrer,' they chorused some days later. 'One should kneel in reverence at the altar of the Fatherland and pray.'

After Greim and Reitsch had left, Hitler became calmer. It was time to make preparations. As long as. .h.i.tler had had a future, he had ruled out marriage. His life, he had said, was devoted to Germany. There was no room for a wife. It had also been politically inconvenient. No one outside the inner circle was to know of Eva Braun's existence. She had been forced to accept that she was no more than an appendage, there when Hitler wanted her to be, stored well out of sight for the rest of the time. But she had chosen to come to the bunker. And she had refused Hitler's own entreaties to leave. She had committed herself to him once and for all, when others were deserting. The marriage now cost him nothing. He did it simply to please Eva Braun, to give her what she had wanted more than anything at a moment when marrying him was the least enviable fate in the world.

Eva Braun had dropped a hint earlier in the day that this would be her wedding night. Now, following the departure of Greim and Reitsch, not long after midnight on 29 April, in the most macabre surrounds, with the bunker shaking from nearby explosions, Hitler and Eva Braun exchanged married vows in the conference-room in front of one of Goebbels's minor officials, city councillor Walter Wagner, dressed in n.a.z.i uniform with a Volkssturm armband, who had been brought to the bunker in an armoured car to conduct the bizarre ceremony. Goebbels and Bormann were witnesses. The rest of the staff waited outside to congratulate the newly wedded couple. Champagne, sandwiches, and reminiscences with somewhat forced joviality of happier days followed.

Just before the wedding ceremony, Hitler had asked his youngest secretary, Traudl Junge, to go with him to the room where his military conferences took place. It had been about 11.30 p.m. when he said that he wanted her to take down some dictation. She was still wondering what this might be at such a late hour when, leaning on the table, he started to dictate his last will and testament.

He began with a brief Private Testament. He referred first to his marriage to Eva Braun, and her decision to come to Berlin and die at his side. He disposed of his possessions to the party or, should it no longer exist, to the state; he still hoped his collection of paintings would go to a gallery in Linz; and he appointed Martin Bormann as executor to see that relatives and his long-serving staff had some reward for their support.

He came to the more significant part. 'This is my political testament,' he declared. Traudl Junge paused for a moment, expectantly. But she had heard it all before. His last words for posterity were a piece of pure self-justification. The rhetoric is instantly recognizable, redolent of Mein Kampf Mein Kampf and countless speeches; the central idea of the responsibility of international Jewry for the death, suffering, and destruction in the war remained unchanged, even as he himself now looked death in the face. 'It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939,' he dictated. 'It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or who worked for Jewish interests ... Centuries will pa.s.s away, but out of the ruins of our towns and cultural monuments the hatred will ever renew itself against those ultimately responsible whom we have to thank for everything: international Jewry and its helpers.' The conspiracy theory continued unabated. He attributed the rejection of his proposal on the eve of the attack on Poland partly to the business interests of 'leading circles in English politics', partly to the 'influence of propaganda organized by international Jewry'. and countless speeches; the central idea of the responsibility of international Jewry for the death, suffering, and destruction in the war remained unchanged, even as he himself now looked death in the face. 'It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939,' he dictated. 'It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or who worked for Jewish interests ... Centuries will pa.s.s away, but out of the ruins of our towns and cultural monuments the hatred will ever renew itself against those ultimately responsible whom we have to thank for everything: international Jewry and its helpers.' The conspiracy theory continued unabated. He attributed the rejection of his proposal on the eve of the attack on Poland partly to the business interests of 'leading circles in English politics', partly to the 'influence of propaganda organized by international Jewry'.

He came to a key pa.s.sage an oblique reference to the 'Final Solution' relating once more to the fulfilment of the 'prophecy' of 1939: 'I also left no doubt that, if the nations of Europe are again to be regarded as mere blocks of shares of these international money and finance conspirators, then that race, too, which is really guilty of this murderous struggle, will be called to account: Jewry! I further left no one in doubt that this time millions of children of Europe's aryan peoples would not die of hunger, millions of grown men would not suffer death, and hundreds of thousands of women and children not be burnt and bombed to death in the towns, without the real culprit having to atone for his guilt, even if by more humane means.'

Despite all its setbacks, the six-year struggle, he went on, would one day go down in history as 'the most glorious and valiant manifestation of a nation's will to existence'. He himself could not forsake Berlin. The forces there were too small to hold out against the enemy and the inevitable side-swipe against those deemed to have betrayed him 'our own resistance is gradually devalued by deluded and characterless subjects'. He would choose death at the appropriate moment.

Again, he gave an indication of his own fear of what he saw as the still dominant power of the Jews: 'I do not wish to fall into the hands of enemies who, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of their whipped-up ma.s.ses, will need a spectacle arranged by Jews.'

A renaissance of National Socialism, he avowed, would eventually emerge from the sacrifice of the soldiers and his own death alongside them. He ended with an exhortation to continue the struggle. He begged the heads of the armed forces to instil the spirit of National Socialism in the troops. His long-standing scapegoat, the officer corps of the army, did not even now go unscathed: 'May it at some time be part of the concept of honour of the German officer as is already the case in our navy that the surrender of a district or a town is impossible and that above all the leaders have to proceed here with a shining example in most loyal fulfilment of their duty unto death.'

In the second part of his Testament, Hitler went through the charade of nominating a successor government for what was left of the Reich. The tone was vindictive. Goring and Himmler were formally expelled from the party and from all their offices for the damage they had done through negotiating with the enemy 'without my knowledge and against my wishes', for attempting to take power in the state, and for disloyalty to his person. Nor was there any place in the new government for Speer. The new head of state and head of the armed forces was Grand Admiral Donitz less of a surprise than at first sight, given his specially high standing in Hitler's eyes in the closing phase of the war, and in view particularly of the responsibility he had already been given a few days earlier for party and state affairs as well as military matters in the northern part of the country. Significantly, however, Donitz was not to inherit the t.i.tle of Fuhrer. Instead, the t.i.tle of Reich President, dropped in 1934 on Hindenburg's death, was reinvented. Goebbels, who had been pressing for so long for full control over internal affairs, was rewarded for his loyalty by being appointed Chancellor of a Reich that scarcely any longer existed. Bormann, another who had proved his loyalty, was made Party Minister. Goebbels who, together with Bormann, kept bringing Fraulein Junge the names of further ministers for typing in the list probably engineered the dismissal at this late point of his old adversary Ribbentrop, and his replacement as Foreign Minister by Arthur Sey-Inquart. Hitler's favourite general, Schorner, was to be Commander-in-Chief of the Army, while Gauleiter Karl Hanke, still holding out in Breslau, was to take over from Himmler as Reichsfuhrer-SS and Chief of the German Police. The tough Munich Gauleiter, Paul Giesler, was made Interior Minister, with Karl-Otto Saur replacing Speer as Minister for Armaments. The pointless job of Propaganda Minister fell to Goebbels's State Secretary, Werner Naumann. Old survivors included Schwerin-Krosigk (Finance), Funk (Economics), Thierack (Justice), and Herbert Backe (Agriculture). Hitler commissioned them with continuing the task 'the work of coming centuries' of building up a National Socialist state. 'Above all,' the Political Testament concluded, 'I charge the leadership of the nation and their subjects with the meticulous observance of the race-laws and the merciless resistance to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.'

It was turned 4 a.m. when Goebbels, Bormann, Burgdorf, and Krebs signed the Political Testament, and Nicolaus von Below added his signature to the Private Testament.

Hitler, looking weary, took himself off to rest. He had completed the winding-up order on the Third Reich. Only the final act of self-destruction remained.

For Fraulein Junge, however, the night's secretarial duties were not yet over. Soon after Hitler had retired, Goebbels, in a highly emotional state, white-faced, tears running down his cheeks, appeared in the anteroom, where she was finishing her work. He asked her to draft his own coda to Hitler's will. Hitler, he said, had ordered him to leave Berlin as a member of the new government. But 'if the Fuhrer is dead, my life is meaningless', he told her. Of all the n.a.z.i leaders, Goebbels was the one who for weeks had a.s.sessed with some realism the military prospects, had repeatedly evoked the imagery of heroism, looking to his own place in the pantheon of Teutonic heroes, and had accordingly brought his wife and children to the bunker to die alongside their adored Leader in a final act of Nibelungentreue Nibelungentreue. It was, therefore, utterly consistent when he now dictated: 'For the first time in my life, I must categorically refuse to obey an order of the Fuhrer.' His wife and children joined him in this refusal. He would, he continued, lose all self-respect quite apart from the demands of personal loyalty were he to 'leave the Fuhrer alone in his hour of greatest need'. Betrayal was in his mind, as in that of his master. 'In the delirium of treachery, which surrounds the Fuhrer in these critical days of the war,' he had Fraulein Junge type, 'there have to be at least a few who stay unconditionally loyal to him even unto death, even if this contradicts a formal, objectively well-founded order which finds expression in his Political Testament.' Consequently, he together with his wife and children (who, were they old enough to judge, would be in agreement) were firmly resolved not to leave the Reich capital 'and rather at the Fuhrer's side to end a life which for me personally has no further value if it cannot be used in the service of the Fuhrer and by his side'. It was 5.30 a.m. before this last act in the nocturnal drama closed.

VI.

The mood in the bunker now sank to zero-level. Despair was now written on everyone's face. All knew it was only a matter of hours before Hitler killed himself, and wondered what the future held for them after his death. There was much talk of the best methods of committing suicide. Secretaries, adjutants, and any others who wanted them had by now been given the bra.s.s-cased ampoules containing prussic acid supplied by Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger, the SS surgeon who had joined the 'court' the previous October. Hitler's paranoia stretched now to doubts about the capsules. He had shown his alsatian b.i.t.c.h Blondi more affection in recent years than any human being, probably including even Eva Braun. Now, as the end approached, he had the poison tested on Blondi. Professor Werner Haase was summoned from his duties in the nearby public air-raid shelter beneath the New Reich Chancellery building nearby. Shortly before the afternoon briefing on 29 April, aided by Hitler's dog-attendant, Sergeant Fritz Tornow, he forced open the dog's jaws and crushed the prussic acid capsule with a pair of pliers. The dog slumped in an instant motionless to the ground. Hitler was not present. However, he entered the room immediately afterwards. He glanced for a few seconds at the dead dog. Then, his face like a mask, he left without saying anything and shut himself in his room.

The bunker community had by this time dwindled still further. Three emissaries Bormann's adjutant, SS-Standartenfuhrer Wilhelm Zander, Hitler's army adjutant Major Willi Johannmeier, and Acting Press Chief Heinz Lorenz had left that morning as couriers on a perilous, and fruitless, mission to deliver copies of the Testament to Donitz, Schorner, and the n.a.z.i Party's headquarters, the 'Brown House' in Munich. By this time, normal telephone communications had finally broken down, though naval and party telegraph wires remained usable, with difficulty, to the end. But dispatch runners brought reports that Soviet troops had brought up their lines to a mere 400500 metres from the Reich Chancellery. The Berlin Commandant General Weidling informed Hitler that they had begun a concentrated attack on the 'Citadel'; resistance could only be sustained for a short time. Three young officers, Major Bernd von Loringhoven (Krebs's adjutant), his friend Gerhard Boldt (the Chief of Staff's orderly), and Lieutenant-Colonel Rudolf Wei (General Burgdorf's adjutant), decided to try a last chance to escape from their predestined tomb. They put it to Krebs that they should break out in the attempt to reach Wenck. He agreed; so, following the midday conference, did Hitler. As he shook hands wearily with them, he said: 'Give my regards to Wenck. Tell him to hurry or it will be too late.'

That afternoon, Below too, who had been a member of Hitler's 'household' since 1937, decided to try his luck. He asked if Hitler would permit him to attempt to get through to the west. Hitler readily agreed. Below left late that night, bearing a letter from Hitler to Keitel which, from Below's memory of it (the letter itself was destroyed), repeated his praise for the navy, his attribution of blame for the Luftwaffe's failure exclusively to Goring, and his condemnation of the General Staff together with the disloyalty and betrayal which had for so long undermined his efforts. He could not believe, he said, that the sacrifices of the German people had been in vain. The aim had still to be the winning of territory in the East.

By this time, Hitler had learned that Mussolini had been captured and executed by Italian partisans. Whether he was told the details how Mussolini had been hanged upside down in a square in Milan, together with his mistress Clara Petacci, and stoned by a mob is uncertain. If he did learn the full gory tale, it could have done no more than confirm his anxiety to take his own life before it was too late, and to prevent his body from being seized by his enemies. During the late-evening briefing, General Weidling had told Hitler that the Russians would reach the Reich Chancellery no later than 1 May. There was little time remaining.

Nevertheless, Hitler undertook one last attempt to ascertain the possibilities of relief, even at this late hour. With nothing heard throughout the day of Wenck's progress (or lack of it), he cabled five questions to Jodl in the most recent OKW headquarters in Dobbin at eleven o'clock that evening, asking in the tersest fashion where Wenck's spearheads were, when the attack would come, where the 9th Army was, where Holste's troops were, and when their their attack might be expected. attack might be expected.

Keitel's reply arrived shortly before 3 a.m. on 30 April: Wenck's army was still engaged south of the Schwielow Lake, outside Potsdam, and unable to continue its attack on Berlin. The 9th Army was encircled. The Korps Holste had been forced on to the defensive. Keitel added, below the report: 'Attacks on Berlin not advanced anywhere.' It was now plain beyond any equivocation: there would be no relief of the Reich capital.

Hitler had, in fact, already given up. Before 2 a.m. he had said goodbye to a gathering of around twenty to twenty-five servants and guards. He mentioned Himmler's treachery and told them that he had decided to take his own life rather than be captured by the Russians and put on show like an exhibit in a museum. He shook hands with each of them, thanked them for their service, released them from their oath to him, and hoped they would find their way to the British or Americans rather than fall into Russian hands. He then went through the same farewell ceremony with the two doctors, Haase and Schenck, and the nurses and a.s.sistants, who had served in the emergency hospital established below the New Reich Chancellery.

At dawn, Soviet artillery opened up intensive bombardment of the Reich Chancellery and neighbouring buildings. Hitler inquired soon afterwards of the commandant of the 'Citadel', SS-Brigadefuhrer Mohnke, how long he could hold out. He was told for one to two days at most. In the last briefing, in the late morning, Berlin's commandant, General Weidling, was even more pessimistic. Munition was fast running out; air-supplies had dried up and any replenishment was out of the question; morale was at rock-bottom; the fighting was now in a very small area of the city. The battle for Berlin would in all probability, he concluded, be over that evening. After a long silence, Hitler, in a tired voice, asked Mohnke's view. The 'Citadel' commandant concurred. Hitler wearily levered himself out of his chair. Weidling pressed him for a decision on whether, in the event of a total ammunitions failure, the remaining troops could attempt to break out. Hitler spoke briefly with Krebs, then gave permission which he confirmed in writing for a break-out to be attempted in small numbers. As before, he rejected emphatically a capitulation of the capital.

He sent for Bormann. It was by now around noon. He told him the time had come; he would shoot himself that afternoon. Eva Braun would also commit suicide. Their bodies were to be burnt. He then summoned his personal adjutant, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Gunsche. He did not want to be put on display in some waxworks in Moscow, he said. He commissioned Gunsche with making the arrangements for the cremation, and for ensuring that it was carried out according to his instructions. Hitler was calm and collected. Gunsche, less calm, immediately rushed to telephone Hitler's chauffeur, Erich Kempka, to obtain as much petrol as was available. He impressed upon him the urgency. The Soviets could reach the Chancellery garden at any time.

Hitler took lunch as usual around 1 p.m. with his secretaries, Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, and his dietician Fraulein Manziarly. Eva Braun was not present. Hitler was composed, giving no hint that his death was imminent. Some time after the meal had ended, Gunsche told the secretaries that Hitler wished to say farewell to them. They joined Martin Bormann, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, General Burgdorf and General Krebs, and others from the 'inner circle' of the bunker community. Looking more stooped than ever, Hitler, dressed as usual in his uniform jacket and black trousers, appeared alongside Eva Braun, who was wearing a blue dress with white tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. He held out his hand to each of them, muttered a few words, and, within a few minutes and without further formalities, returned to his study.

Eva Braun went into Magda Goebbels's room with her. Magda, on whom three days earlier Hitler had pinned his own Golden Party Badge a signal token of esteem for one of his most fervent admirers was in a tearful state. She was conscious not only that this was the end for the Fuhrer she revered but that within hours she would be taking, as well as her own life, the lives of her six children, still playing happily in the corridors of the bunker. Highly agitated, Magda immediately reappeared, asking Gunsche if she could speak to Hitler again. Hitler somewhat begrudgingly agreed and went in to see Magda. It was said that she begged him a last time to leave Berlin. The response was predictable and unemotional. Inside a minute, Hitler had retreated behind the doors of his study for the last time. Eva Braun followed him almost immediately. It was shortly before half-past three.

For the next few minutes, Goebbels, Bormann, Axmann (who had arrived too late to say his own farewell to Hitler) and the remaining members of the bunker community waited. Gunsche stood on guard outside Hitler's room. The only noise was the drone of the diesel ventilator. In the upstairs part of the bunker, Traudl Junge chatted with the Goebbels children as they ate their lunch.

After waiting ten minutes or so, still without a sound from Hitler's room, Linge took the initiative. He took Bormann with him and cautiously opened the door. In the cramped study, Hitler and Eva Braun sat alongside each other on the small sofa. Eva Braun was slumped to Hitler's left. A strong whiff of bitter almonds the distinctive smell of prussic acid drifted up from her body. Hitler's head drooped lifelessly. Blood dripped from a bullet-hole in his right temple. His 7.65mm. Walther pistol lay by his foot.

1. Adolf Hitler (top row, centre) in his Leonding school photo, 1899.

2. Klara Hitler, the mother of Adolf.

3. Alois. .h.i.tler, Adolf's father.

4. Karl Lueger, Burgermeister of Vienna, admired by Hitler for his antisemitic agitation.

5. August Kubizek, Hitler's boyhood friend in Linz and Vienna.

6. The crowd in Odeonsplatz, Munich, greeting the proclamation of war, 2 August 1914. Hitler circled.

7. Hitler (right) with fellow dispatch messengers Ernst Schmidt and Anton Bachmann and his dog 'Foxl' at Fournes, April 1915.

8. German soldiers in a trench on the Western Front during a lull in the fighting.

9. Armed members of the KPD from the Neuhausen district of Munich during a 'Red Army' parade in the city, 22 April 1919.

10. Counter-revolutionary Freikorps troops entering Munich, beginning of May 1919.

11. Anton Drexler, founder in 1919 of the DAP (German Workers' Party).

12. Ernst Rohm, the 'machine-gun king', whose access to weapons and contacts in the Bavarian army were important to Hitler in the early 1920s.

13. Hitler's DAP membership card, contradicting his claim to be the seventh member of the party.

14. Hitler speaking on the Marsfeld in Munich at the first Party Rally of the NSDAP, 28 January 1923.

15. 'Hitler speaks!' NSDAP ma.s.s meeting, Zirkus Krone, Munich, 1923.

16. Paramilitary organizations during the church service at the 'German Day' in Nuremberg, 2 September 1923.

17. Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler, and Friedrich Weber (centre, behind Hitler, Christian Weber) during the march-past of the SA and other paramilitary groups to mark the laying of the war memorial foundation stone, Munich, 4 November 1923.

18. The putsch: armed SA men (centre, holding the old Reich flag, Heinrich Himmler, right, with fur collar, Ernst Rohm) manning a barricade outside the War Ministry in Ludwigstrae, Munich, 9 November 1923.