Hitler's Last Day: Minute By Minute Part 17

Claus tells him to load up his truck and to take supplies for Barbara and the girls. The farmer starts helping himself.

'I'll come back tomorrow, and I'll bring a few friends.'

In St Josef's School, the meeting between the Germans and the Allies to settle the terms of the truce to allow planes to drop food supplies to the Dutch has yet to begin. Prince Bernhard, the Dutch representatives, Eisenhower's chief of staff Major-General Walter Bedell Smith, Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand and the other Allied officers are enjoying an excellent lunch. Seyss-Inquart and his delegation are locked in a cla.s.sroom.

'It is time to get the petrol... I don't want to end up in some Moscow waxwork display.'

Twenty-two-year-old Ernst Michel is working on a farm in Saxony, making sure that his jacket sleeve covers the tattooed number he was given at Auschwitz. Around his waist is a leather belt with many holes he has lost so much weight in captivity that he has had to cut more and more notches.

A week ago Michel and his two friends, Felix and Honzo, were part of a group of prisoners being marched from the Berga concentration camp. They escaped as darkness fell by pretending they needed to go to the toilet, and fled into the woods.

After days wandering around the countryside they approached a deserted farm and knocked on the door, pretending to be forced labourers separated from their truck after an air attack. They said they would work for food and lodging. The farmer's wife gave them food, but Honzo warned they had to eat it slowly as their stomachs weren't used to it.

So the three men have spent the past few days working in the fields and slowly feeling their strength coming back. The farmer and his wife don't ask the men any questions; they are just grateful for the help.

Michel survived Auschwitz because of his skill in calligraphy. In the summer of 1943, while in the camp hospital, an administrator came in asking for someone with very good handwriting. He needed someone to write the death certificates of those being shipped to Birkenau and the gas chamber. 'No matter how they had died, I was to write "heart attack" or "weak of body" for the cause of death,' Michel recalled. 'You could not say "gas chamber". I had to say only one of those two things.'

At the end of the war, Michel will work for the Displaced Persons Section of the US-controlled German zone, and then as a reporter for German newspapers at the Nuremberg trials, insisting that his by-line be 'Special Correspondent Ernst Michel. Auschwitz number 104995.'

During the trials Michel will be feet away from n.a.z.is such as Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess and Joachim von Ribbentrop as they are tried by the Allied Military Tribunal.

'The sc.u.m who were responsible for the greatest crimes against humanity sat less than 25 feet away from me...' Michel said later. 'There were times when I wanted nothing more than to jump up and grab them all by the throat. I kept asking myself: How could you do this to me? What did my father, my mother... ever do to you?'

One day Goring's lawyer says that his client wants to meet Michel Goring has read his reports of the trial. Michel is taken to his cell. But when Goring puts his hand out in greeting, Michel looks at it, then his face and freezes. 'What the h.e.l.l am I doing here? How can I possibly be in the same room with this monster and carry on a conversation? Should I blame him for my lost childhood? For the death of my parents?' Michel thinks. He bolts for the door, overwhelmed with emotion.

Michel's sister Lotte had gone missing during the war, but in 1946 she sees one of her brother's reports in a newspaper, and they are reunited shortly after.

12.45pm

Hitler summons his adjutant Otto Gunsche. Like Rochus Misch, Gunsche is seen by others in the bunker as a gentle giant. They find his physical presence rea.s.suring. He is six foot six and broad-shouldered, a quiet, obedient man, with a long serious face.

Hitler tells him, 'It is time to get the petrol. Tell Kempka we need it now, urgently. I don't want to end up in some Moscow waxwork display.'

Hitler's voice is calm but his driver, Erich Kempka, can hear the panic in Gunsche's voice when he calls the underground garages.

In the kitchen in the upper bunker, Constanze Manziarly is supervising the cooking of Hitler's last meal. There's a big pan of water coming to the boil for spaghetti and one of the orderlies is making a vinaigrette dressing for a salad. Like Hitler, Manziarly is an Austrian. She started working for Hitler in Obersalzberg in 1943. She quickly became his favourite cook as she has been trained in the Viennese/Bavarian cuisine that Hitler loves. She is a plump, kind, self-effacing woman who takes great trouble to prepare gentle vegetarian dishes which suit his delicate stomach and to bake the sweet, moist cakes he loves.

Across Berlin people are destroying evidence of any link to the n.a.z.is. Posters or photographs of the Fuhrer are smashed and thrown in with the rubble on the streets. Women are throwing out their photographs of the men they love because they are wearing German army uniform.

'The immediate post-war world will not have a good word to say about me but later histories will treat me justly. You will all experience things that you cannot even imagine.'

1.00pm/8.00am EWT

Intelligence officer Geoffrey c.o.x has decided to head into Venice. The engineers of the 2nd New Zealand Division are in the process of building a bridge over the River Piave, and until it's completed they can't continue their advance to Trieste. A trip to Venice would be useful, as c.o.x knows that the partisans there have telephone contact with groups behind German lines. He is also desperate to see one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The Germans, who seized power in Venice in September 1944 after the overthrow of Mussolini, fled yesterday, and the partisans took control. The Germans had threatened to blow up the city, but were dissuaded from doing so by the Patriarch of Venice.

Venice has had a good war the greatest number of casualties are the 200 who fell into the ca.n.a.ls during the blackout. There is rationing, and the city has had to cope with 200,000 refugees, but otherwise life has continued as normal. The Allies recognised that Venice was a city whose precious architecture and art treasures meant it should be bombed only after securing the highest authorisation. Nevertheless, in 1940 Venetians were instructed to build air raid shelters a task made difficult in such a water-logged city.

America is waking up to sensational headlines, such as 'MUSSOLINI AND PARAMOUR EXECUTED BY ITALIAN PATRIOTS'. 'REDS STABBING BERLIN'S VITALS'. But there are small domestic war stories too many papers cover the tale of a Baltimore woman who lost her wallet a week ago and has had it returned, minus $5 but with an IOU saying, 'I borrowed the $5 I found. My husband is being shipped out so we had gone to Baltimore to see the sights and naturally money comes in handy. Please don't be angry.'

Hitler sits down for lunch with Constanze Manziarly and the two secretaries, Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge. Eva Hitler has no appet.i.te and has stayed in her room with her maid Liesl Ostertag.

Everyone around the table maintains an artificial composure, as they twirl the plain spaghetti around their forks and prod the cabbage and raisin salad. Hitler gives a monologue on the future of Germany and the difficulties that lie ahead.

'The immediate post-war world will not have a good word to say about me but later histories will treat me justly. You will all experience things that you cannot even imagine.'

As he drones on the secretaries feel a mounting tension. They are desperate to get away. After the meal, as soon as they politely can, they slip off to find somewhere 'to smoke a cigarette in peace'.

Hitler's monologues are dreaded by his entourage. The Fuhrer has always had a desperate need to be listened to. In the early years of his political career this need was satisfied by addressing crowds, which he undertook with huge enthusiasm, flying from town to town, speaking to several hundred thousand people in three of four stadiums each day. Since the beginning of the war he has withdrawn from public speaking and his generals turn to drink to cope with the tedium of the all-night tirades about modern art, philosophy, race, technology. In the bunker his favoured topics have narrowed further: dog training, diet and the stupidity of the world.

Eva Hitler has chosen a black dress with white roses around the neck, one of her husband's favourites. Liesl has pressed it and is now coiffing Eva's hair.

About 1.15pm/9.15am Bahamas time

Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand is explaining to the Reich Commissioner in the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the details of the Allied plan to feed the Dutch, and the medical arrangements in place for those suffering from malnutrition.

In Konigsplatz, in central Berlin, the Russian 150th Rifle Division are diving for cover. They have not yet succeeded in crossing the moat in front of the Reichstag. They have come under heavy fire from the rear as the anti-aircraft guns from the Zoo tower, two kilometres away, have been turned upon them. Hundreds of Russian soldiers have been killed. The survivors are forced to wait until nightfall.

However, beyond Konigsplatz, the German defence fighters have been utterly unable to stop the flow of tanks and heavy artillery over Moltke Bridge into the city centre. Supported by these big guns, the Russians are systematically emptying the buildings around the square to isolate the German fighters in the Kroll Opera House and the Reichstag itself.

Antonina Romanova is an 18-year-old Russian forced labourer planting potatoes on a farm near Greifswald in north-east Germany. She and her fellow labourers work in all weathers, but today at least it is warm and sunny. Antonina notices that the three-storey farmhouse has white sheets hanging out of the windows. She is bemused as the beds were aired only two days ago. What can this mean?

Suddenly she sees some hors.e.m.e.n riding across the field. As they get close they shout in Russian, 'Where are the Germans?' Overjoyed, Antonina and the others kiss the soldiers' boots and pull them from their horses and hug them. 'We were drunk with joy,' Antonina wrote later.

In Na.s.sau, in the Bahamas, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor are having breakfast (the Duke is the former King Edward VIII who abdicated in December 1936). Today is the day that his resignation as Governor takes effect. They have already started packing and will leave the island in three days' time for New York, and eventually France. Edward and Wallace have not been happy in what he calls 'a third-cla.s.s British colony'. He has asked Churchill to intercede and persuade his brother, the King, to invite him to tea on his return to Europe. It is a courtesy normally extended to former governors, but George VI absolutely refuses. Churchill a.s.sures the Duke, 'I have not concealed my regret that this should be so.' Following a visit to Obersalzberg in 1937 when the Duke of Windsor publicly gave Hitler a n.a.z.i salute, he has been widely criticised in Britain for having apparent n.a.z.i sympathies. After the war he will insist, 'The Fuhrer struck me as a rather ridiculous figure with his theatrical posturings and bombastic pretensions.'

We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us a world in flames.

Adolf Hitler, November 1939

1.30pm

Twenty-seven-year-old American GI Lieutenant Wolfgang F. Robinow is steering his way through the wrecked streets of Munich in a jeep. There is a machine gun mounted at the back of the vehicle, and sandbags on the floor as protection from mines. With Robinow is his reconnaissance unit of 21 men, whose mission is, as usual, 'To go forward until you meet resistance.'

There are few civilians to be seen in the city, and most of the SS battalions who have defended Munich so fiercely in the past few days have left. (The SS have also faced a three-day insurgence from some citizens of Munich hoping to be spared further destruction.) Allied bombardment from the air and from field artillery has damaged many of Munich's finest buildings, including the 12th-century Peterskirche and the Wittelsbacher Palais, used until recently as a Gestapo jail and satellite camp for Dachau. The capture of Munich for the Allies will be a symbolic prize the n.a.z.is call it 'the Capital of the Movement'; General Eisenhower called it 'the cradle of the n.a.z.i beast'.

Hitler had first come to Munich in 1913 with a plan (never achieved) of enrolling at the Art Academy. 'Almost from the first moment... I came to love that city more than any other place. "A German city!" I said to myself...' Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. Now, in Odeonsplatz, Munich's central square, where Hitler joined the crowds celebrating Germany's declaration of war on Russia and Serbia in August 1914, large white letters are painted across a monument: 'I am ashamed to be German.'

Lieutenant Robinow has, in one sense, come home. Until the age of 14 he lived in Berlin, but then in January 1933 his life changed. Robinow went to his Boy Scout troop and was told it was now called the Hitler Youth, and that he must find evidence of his Aryan ancestry. He wrote the word 'Aryan' down carefully on a piece of paper as he had never heard it before, and went home. There he discovered for the first time that, despite the fact that he had been raised as a Protestant, all his grandparents were Jewish. He left the Hitler Youth the next day.

Soon after, the Robinow family fled to Denmark and then sailed to the United States. Robinow joined the US army in 1941 and arrived in Germany in early 1945 to act as an interrogator of POWs and n.a.z.i officials.

Making his way through the centre of Munich is nerve-wracking work. He recalled later, 'We never knew what was hiding around the next corner. We didn't have any dogs or tanks or anything like that. Just the jeeps. My soldiers had rifles. I had a pistol. That was it.'

About 1.30pm

Russian soldiers are rampaging through 77-year-old Elisabeth Ditzen's house in the town of Carwitz in north-east Germany. They arrived with swords, rifles and horsewhips. Elisabeth offered them two clocks, but they wanted more. They are now in every room in the house going through every drawer, every suitcase. A soldier heads out of the door, and Elisabeth can see that he is holding her late husband's watch. He stares at her, then shakes her hand and leaves.

In the Fuhrerbunker, the switchboard operator Rochus Misch is sick with panic. In order to stretch his legs he has just been over to the new Reich Chancellery where he saw three men in the corridor. Two he recognised as high-ranking SS officers, but it was the sight of the man they were flanking that terrified Misch. The thin, pale man with close-set eyes is Heinrich Muller, aka Gestapo Muller, chief of the Gestapo. Misch can only think of two possible reasons for his arrival either he has come to shoot the eyewitnesses to Hitler's death or he has come to blow up the bunker with a time bomb.

About 2.00pm/9.00am EWT

At Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue, President Truman is saying goodbye to Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, the White House Special Counsel. They have just had a brief meeting to discuss the question of what to do with n.a.z.i war criminals. Stalin is in favour of the execution, without a trial, of high-ranking n.a.z.is indeed, he half-joked at the Tehran Conference about the need for between 50,000 and 100,000 staff officers to be killed. But Truman wants public trials, and has just asked Rosenman if he would act as his official representative in talks with the Allies.

The letter of instruction that Judge Rosenman has with him concludes, 'Those guilty of the atrocities that have shocked the world since 1933 down to date must be brought to speedy justice and swift punishment but their guilt must be found judicially...'

One of the British soldiers hunting for war criminals is Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Gordon-Creed. In 1944, aged only 24, he was given a jeep and a driver and a Movement Order, signed by Eisenhower, to give him freedom to drive around liberated Europe to a.s.sess the threat from 'last ditch n.a.z.i fanatics' the so-called Werewolves. Gordon-Creed did that job so well that, in early 1945, he was given the task of tracking down war criminals. He was handed a list of 4,000 the Allies were especially interested in. Gordon-Creed split them into four categories of arrest priority: Cla.s.s 1: Supernasties

24.

Cla.s.s 2: Nasties about 320 Cla.s.s 3: s.h.i.ts about 1500 Cla.s.s 4: b.a.s.t.a.r.ds the balance

2.00pm

Lieutenant Wolfgang F. Robinow's reconnaissance unit is making its way onto Munich's historic 12th-century square the Marienplatz. They are soon surrounded by a group of old people waving and cheering. Robinow can only feel anger at their pleasure. This was the city that supported Hitler and his National Socialists from the start, and where the Volkischer Beobachter, the n.a.z.i propaganda newspaper, still has its headquarters.

'And now these people are happy to be "liberated"?' Robinow thinks in disgust.

The young lieutenant spots a police station, and heads across the square with his men.