Hitler's Last Day: Minute By Minute Part 12

To which the colleague replies, 'Shut up, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, he has been rehearsing this for six years!'

Monty will then lecture von Friedeburg about the bombing of Coventry and the ma.s.s murder of Jews at Belsen. Later he sends a message to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke in London, 'I was persuaded to drink some champagne at dinner tonight.'

In the Sudetenland, Corporal Bert Ruffle is standing up to his knees in a mud-filled railway truck with three other POWs. They had been promised some light night work by the Stalag IV-C guards all they had to do was empty the trucks of rubble, then claim extra rations when they finished the job. But Ruffle can see that the Germans were lying the truck is filled with mud, bricks and large boulders. The men open the side gate of the truck and the mud pours out in a torrent. They start shifting the bricks and boulders.

'Hanging upside down.'

About 10.00pm/11.00pm UK time.

The Allied POWs of Stalag VII-A have been celebrating their liberation by cooking the produce the GIs brought with them, and a lucky few have been smoking cigars. Now they are being told by the Americans that the news of the liberation of their camp was read out on the BBC an hour ago.

Major Elliott Viney writes in his diary of the joy of a better diet at last, 'A bash [celebration] lunch and a potato-less dinner. So ends four years, eleven months and one day.'

Hitler is sitting at the table in the Fuhrerbunker conference room, reading a transcript of a radio broadcast which announces the death of Mussolini. The announcement of Il Duce's death was accidentally picked up by an orderly who was trying to tune a shortwave radio. Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, is standing behind him. One of Linge's responsibilities is to ensure that the Fuhrer has access to pencils, spectacles, magnifying gla.s.ses, atlases and compa.s.ses at all times. On this occasion Hitler needs neither spectacles nor a magnifying gla.s.s as the transcript has been typed on a special typewriter in extra-large Fuhrer font. He does, however, require a pencil, which he uses to underline three words: 'hanging upside down'.

Hitler's mind turns immediately to the question of the timing of his suicide. He has not completely given up hope that Berlin can be relieved. Oblivious to military realities, he envisages a multiple a.s.sault: General Wenck's 12th Army, with the support of General Busse's 9th Army, attacking in the south, and General Rudolf Holste's Panzer Corps in the north. As the telephone no longer works, he orders Rochus Misch to send a radio message to General Alfred Jodl to try to establish the military position: 'Inform me immediately: 1. Where are Wenck's spearheads?

2. When will they attack?

3. Where is the 9th Army?

4. Where is the 9th Army going to break through?

5. Where are Holste's spearheads?'

Hitler's questions reflect his complete disconnection from the military realities. None of his commanders believe in the possibility of saving Berlin any more. Wenck's 12th Army is desperately trying to create an escape route to enable the remnants of Busse's 9th Army to retreat to the River Elbe; 25,000 soldiers and many civilians who have fled the city are trapped without supplies in the Spree forest to the south-east of Berlin, and are now collapsing with hunger and exhaustion. Meanwhile General Holste in the north is making plans to abandon his troops and escape with his wife and his two best horses.

Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven, the three young officers who are trying to escape to Wenck's 12th Army, have become trapped in a shelter in the south-west corner of the Tiergarten. Berlin's great park resembles no-man's-land from the last war. It is full of muddy craters, and the trees are shredded to ribbons. The shelter is so tightly packed with people that it is difficult to breathe and impossible to sit. The three men have no idea how they are going to find the River Havel in the darkness of this moonless night. A colonel from the Home Guard, very impressed by the fact that these men have come from the Fuhrerbunker, offers them use of an armoured vehicle and a guide.

'You know you must never be frightened of me when I snap.'

In the long gallery at Chequers, Churchill is watching a movie with some of his staff. One of his secretaries leaves the room to take a call. It is a message from the staff of Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander saying that the German Army in Italy has surrendered. Delighted at the news, Churchill dictates a telegram for Stalin: 'It looks therefore as if the entire German forces south of the Alps will almost immediately surrender.'

Churchill is an avid fan of films; screenings are a regular occurrence at Chequers. 'Let it roll!' Churchill shouts when he is ready for the film to start. The night before it had been a 1939 film of Gilbert and Sullivan's, The Mikado; 'Yet again, with the PM accompaniment singing all the songs,' his secretary Marian Holmes noted in her diary. Favourites include the wartime Noel Coward film In Which We Serve, Walt Disney's Bambi and Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's epic Lady Hamilton (which the Chequer's projectionist's notebook records he watched 17 times. Nelson's line about Napoleon 'You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them wipe them out!' must have been especially popular with the Prime Minister). Such was his dedication to his films that on 10th May 1941, when he was told that Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess had been captured in Scotland, he declared, 'Hess or no Hess, I'm going to watch the Marx Brothers.'

Hitler is also a great film lover and before going into the bunker he liked to watch a film a night. Mrs Miniver, the story of a British family struggling heroically at the start of the Second World War, is one of his surprise favourites. He loves The Hound of the Baskervilles and Mutiny on the Bounty and he is a ma.s.sive fan of Mickey Mouse. For Christmas 1938 Joseph Goebbels gave Hitler 12 Mickey Mouse film reels.

Churchill is loved and revered by most of his staff, but he can have a nasty temper. When Marian Holmes first met him in 1943, he shouted at her, 'Dammit, don't go!' as she headed for the door when she thought the dictation was over. When he had finished all his papers, Churchill looked at her over his spectacles and said with a smile, 'You know you must never be frightened of me when I snap. I'm not snapping at you but thinking of the work.'

This apology may have had something to do with a letter that Churchill's wife Clementine had written to him in 1940, in which she told him that his 'rough sarcastic & overbearing manner' meant that he was in danger of being 'generally disliked by [his] colleagues & subordinates'. Clementine went on, 'It is for you to give the Orders & if they are bungled except for the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury & the Speaker you can sack anyone & everyone therefore with this terrific power you must combine urbanity, kindness and if possible Olympic calm... You won't get the best results by irascibility & rudeness...'

The letter would have had particular impact as it is believed to be the only letter Clementine wrote to her husband that year.

10.15pm.

Johannmeier, Lorenz and Zander, the three couriers who are carrying Hitler's testaments, have climbed down underneath Pichelsdorf Bridge. They manage to find two small rowing boats. Johannmeier takes one, Zander and Lorenz the other. They set off, under cover of darkness, south down the River Havel. They plan to row for about ten kilometres to the Wannsee bridgehead where they hope to find Wenck's 12th Army. Behind them the smouldering capital glows red, ahead the darkness of the river on a moonless night.

10.30pm.

Lieutenant Claus Sellier is lying awake in the straw of Barbara's alpine barn, pondering what to do next. Fritz is asleep close by. In Claus's jacket is the second of the two packages that they've been asked to deliver by their camp commander. This one has to go to the army provision headquarters at Traunstein about 20 kilometres to the north.

After arriving at the barn, they spent the rest of the afternoon splitting wood and helping prepare the evening meal. They talked about the war and rea.s.sured the girls that, despite rumours in the village, when black GIs arrive, they won't eat them alive. Claus told them about 23-year-old Jesse Owens, the black American athlete who won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and had become friends with his German compet.i.tors.

Protecting Barbara and the girls seems more important than their army mission right now. He and Fritz could use Barbara's father's clothes and pretend to be farmers until he comes home. Yet he has a duty to finish their task. Undecided, Claus can't get to sleep.

Off the Arctic Coast U-boat captain Willi Dietrich and his crew on the U-286 are still celebrating the success of their attack on HMS Goodall. But the convoy escorts are hunting for them and the frigate HMS Loch Insh has detected a strong signal. As the ship pa.s.ses above U-286, Captain Edward Dempster orders depth charges to be released. All 51 men on board U-286 are killed.

'One gradually a.s.sumes the att.i.tude of a lion-tamer... To show fear is to fare worst of all with them, it provokes them visibly to attack.'

11.00pm.

In a camp run by the Soviet law enforcement agency the NKVD (a forerunner of the KGB) in Rothenstein on the outskirts of the East Prussian city of Konigsberg, 35-year-old Dr Hans Graf von Lehndorff is helping carry the last of 400 patients up to the second floor of his makeshift hospital. Yesterday the number of patients dying increased dramatically as dysentery and typhoid spread through the camp, and the Russians want the diseases contained. The camp is being used to detain and interrogate prisoners (including Jews who had looked forward to being liberated by the Russians). Many are kept in a large cellar that is so crowded the inmates are forced to stand.

Von Lehndorff has been a prisoner here since Konigsberg surrendered in early April. Before that he worked as a surgeon in the city, where he witnessed the apocalyptic scenes as the Russians fought for the town. The Red Army has behaved with particular brutality in East Prussia. Drunk after raiding a brewery, the soldiers stormed through Von Lehndorff's hospital raping nurses and even patients in their beds many wanting to avenge what the German troops had done in their homeland. Even the official Soviet history of the war will conclude 'not all Soviet troops correctly understood how they had to behave in Germany... In the first days of fighting in East Prussia, there were isolated violations of the correct norms of behaviour'.

Von Lehndorff could have fled Konigsberg, but his Christian faith compels him to stay and help the sick. He comes from an aristocratic family (Graf means Count) and he is a member of the Confessing Church the Protestant movement opposed to n.a.z.ism (whose leaders include Pastor Martin Niemoller, who is currently a prisoner with Payne-Best). Von Lehndorff's mother, also a member of the Confessing Church, has been arrested by the Gestapo, and his cousin was executed for being part of the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler.

Von Lehndorff looks with dismay at the second floor of the hospital. A group of Polish prisoners have been forcibly removed to make way for the 400 patients, and have left the rooms in a disgusting state. Von Lehndorff and the other medics lack mops and water to clean the floor, but they do what they can. Some of the sick are in bed, others are lying on the floor or on the wooden boards on which they were carried up. Von Lehndorff had hoped to put them in rooms according to their illness, but there's only been time to separate the men from the women.

The move hasn't helped the patients if anything they are in a worse state than before, as the rooms are draughty with most of the window panes having been broken or stolen. The Russian officers who have been supervising the move have now gone back to their barracks for the night.

Von Lehndorff has learned over the weeks how to deal with the Red Army. He wrote in his diary a few days ago, 'One gradually a.s.sumes the att.i.tude of a lion-tamer... To show fear is to fare worst of all with them, it provokes them visibly to attack. Audacity, on the other hand, can get one a surprisingly long way...'

The driver of the armoured car which has been put at the disposal of the three officers escaping the bunker, Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven, decides he can't go any further through the rubble-strewn streets. The three officers get out at the Olympic Stadium where a Hitler Youth unit is based. This is the vast, circular amphitheatre where, nine years earlier, Hitler hoped to display to the world the supremacy of the Aryan race, but was in fact confronted by the brilliance of the black American athletes who won 14 medals between them. The building is one of the very few in the city which remains almost completely unscathed by the war. It is empty except for a small number of teenage soldiers. The three men find some shelter and try to get some sleep.

In the Arctic seas the skipper of HMS Loch Insh, Edward Dempster, is still on the hunt for the rest of U-boat wolf-pack Faust. Loch Insh's sonar picks up another strong signal. Dempster again orders depth charges. This time U-307 is. .h.i.t. Badly damaged, the submarine surfaces, and the crew of the Loch Insh are able to pick up 14 survivors out of the 51 German submariners.

U-307 is the last U-boat of the war to be destroyed. There are no further attacks from the remaining 12 U-boats that make up Faust. The final Arctic convoy is able to continue its journey and arrives in the Clyde docks in Scotland on VE Day, 8th May.

During the war, 27,491 German submariners were killed. Of the German navy's 863 U-boats, 754 had been sunk or damaged beyond repair. They had sunk 148 Allied warships and 2,800 merchant ships.

In the Fuhrerbunker switchboard room, Rochus Misch falls asleep with his head on the telephone junction box.

11.30pm/12.30am UK time.

At Chequers, although the film is over, Churchill is up late dictating telegrams. One sent to Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander in Italy congratulates him on the German surrender there: 'The British, Americans, New Zealanders, South Africans, British-Indians, Poles, Jews, Brazilians, and strong forces of liberated Italians have all marched together in that high comradeship and unity of men fighting for freedom and for the deliverance of mankind. This great final battle in Italy will stand out in history as one of the most famous episodes in the Second World War.'

Churchill has been staying up very late in the last few months and spending much of the day in bed working. The Prime Minister talked with his aides until nearly 5am last Friday, and then on Sat.u.r.day until 3am watching newsreels. His staff have noticed that his work is suffering. Sir Jock Colville, Churchill's a.s.sistant private secretary noted in his diary, 'The PM's box is in a ghastly state. He does little work and talks far too long...'

Churchill was also feeling exhausted. In his memoirs he wrote: 'At this time I was very tired and physically so feeble that I had to be carried upstairs in a chair by the Marines from the Cabinet meetings under the Annexe.'

Getty Images, Fred Ramage German civilians flee over a demolished bridge across the River Elbe, 1st May 1945.

Monday 30th April 1945.

Midnight/5.30am Burmese time.

Nicolaus von Below, the Luftwaffe adjutant who is making his way home to his wife and children on the Baltic coast, steps out of the Chancellery garages on to Hermann-Goringstra.s.se. The street is an inferno. There are fires on all sides and the night air is thick with smoke. The surface of the street has been devastated. He has to make his way in the darkness over a confusion of cables, torn-down tram wires, building rubble and bomb craters. As he picks his way towards the Brandenburg Gate and the River Havel, on the same route travelled by the two groups of officers yesterday, von Below feels an enormous flood of relief. As he writes many years later, 'With every step it became clearer to me that I had left nothing left to do. It was all the same to me whatever happened now. I was free at last of all the responsibility and depressing burden of the Hitler years.'

Further along the route, the three testament couriers are rowing as silently as they can down the River.

Wing Commander 'Bill' Hudson is in the Commandant's office at Rangoon jail. The Commandant and the j.a.panese guards have gone, leaving letters of explanation on the main gate. Hudson is the highest-ranking officer among the 668 Allied prisoners and so has taken charge. He knows he's free, but doesn't feel much emotion. He is writing his diary by the light of five candles that are slowly spreading wax across the table. A j.a.panese doll sits in the middle of the table; next to her is half a bottle of sake. Birds are singing noisily outside as Hudson writes.

'This day is a frightening one. Anything may be in store for us.' As a precaution he has padlocked the prison gate from the inside. The POWs may be at risk from the Burmese population, many of whom had welcomed the j.a.panese as liberators. Before he shut the gate, Hudson peeped out for a quick look at freedom. Rangoon means 'end of strife' but he can't believe that's quite true yet.

About 00.15am.

In the camp in Rothenstein on the outskirts of Konigsberg, Dr Hans von Lehndorff is eating a meal that consists only of sugar. Holter, the camp's translator, found it von Lehndorff didn't ask where he got it from, but guessed he stole it from the Red Army kitchens. Von Lehndorff is sitting on a bed by the door of their makeshift ward with three other medics. They don't trust the water supply, so there is nothing to wash the sugar down with, but they all enjoy the sensation as it hits their stomachs.

In a neighbouring room are the doctors' a.s.sistants, including 20-year-old Erika Frolich. She came to see von Lehndorff a few weeks ago after she injured a finger. Having been treated, Erika started clearing up the chaos in the medical centre, without being asked. She has only had some basic medical training but von Lehndorff is hugely impressed by how good she is at diagnosing illnesses and instantly winning the trust of the patients. Erika even has a good rapport with the Russian soldiers which has probably saved her life. She's looking after a woman who earlier today gave birth to a stillborn child.

00.30am.

At a railway siding in the Sudetenland, POW Bert Ruffle and his gang of three have finished emptying their truck of mud, bricks and boulders. It's taken them three hours and they are exhausted. Their German guard tells them that, as they know the way back to Stalag IV-C, they can walk there by themselves. The POWs stagger through the dark, covered in mud. Ruffle vows that he will never do hard labour again.

In the switchboard room of the bunker Rochus Misch is woken from his doze by a message from Hitler. The Fuhrer wants to know whether there has been any reply to the questions radioed to General Jodl a few hours ago. Is there any news of the progress of the German combined attack forces which are supposed to be relieving Berlin? There isn't.

1.30am.

A group of about 25 guards and servants are summoned from the Reich Chancellery building to the Fuhrerbunker. Hitler tells them of Himmler's treachery and his intention to take his own life rather than be captured by the Russians.

'I do not want to be put on show like an exhibition in a museum.' He shuffles along the line of people and shakes hands with each of them, thanking them for their service. He tells them they are released from their oath of loyalty. They must try to make their way to an area controlled by the British or Americans rather than fall into Russian hands.

On the second floor of the camp outside Konigsberg, Dr von Lehndorff is wide awake. It's quiet and the only sound is the creaking of floorboards as people make their way to the corridor to use the buckets placed out there to act as a latrine. Von Lehndorff heads for the corridor too. He's glad it's dark so he can't see the others and they can't see him. He finds it a humiliating experience.

'Eyes... filmy like the skin of a soft ripe grape...'