Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II (3 page)

Audisio needed a cigarette when it was all over. The driver had one, too, although he didn’t smoke. No one said anything as they stooped to pick up the spent cartridge cases. Behind the wall, the people at the villa had heard the gun shots but were waiting a while before coming to investigate. They didn’t want to get mixed up in anything that didn’t concern them.

The time was still only a quarter past four. The rain that had been threatening all afternoon was beginning to fall as the partisans finished their cigarettes. Leaving the two young men to guard the bodies in the drizzle, Audisio and the others got back in the car and set off for the town of Dongo, where they carried out a number of further executions, among them several of Mussolini’s ministers and Clara Petacci’s brother. Then they returned to the Villa Belmonte.

The bodies of Clara and Mussolini were taken down to the main road and thrown into a moving van, on top of the others. The van was then driven through the night to Milan. The plan was to put the bodies on display next day in the Piazzale Loreto, where fifteen hostages had been shot by Fascists the previous August. It would be justice, of a sort, now that the war was coming to an end. Audisio’s only serious worry, as the van set off, was that American patrols might intercept them on the way and prevent them from reaching their destination.

2

IN BERLIN

WHILE MUSSOLINI WAS MEETING HIS END,
Adolf Hitler sat shaking in Berlin, so debilitated in mind and body that he could barely understand what was happening anymore as the ceiling reverberated above his head. The bunker at the Chancellery was solidly constructed, concrete piled on concrete to withstand the heaviest bombardment, but Berlin was built on sand, and the walls rattled whenever a Russian shell came close, dislodging lumps of plaster that fell in dusty showers all over the floor. The shelling had begun several days ago and was drawing nearer all the time as the Russian army closed in. It was obvious to everyone in the bunker, even Adolf Hitler, that it would be only another day or two at most before the Russians were knocking on the door.

Hitler had a map on the table in front of him as the shelling continued, an ordinary civilian map showing the approach roads to the city. He was using it to plot the advance of General Walther Wenck, who had been ordered to relieve Berlin with his troops. Hitler had no idea how far Wenck had gotten, or how many soldiers he had left, or even where the Russians were anymore. But the Führer was going through the motions anyway, constantly arranging and rearranging a set of buttons across the map, moving them here and there with quivering fingers as if disposing his forces in a game of chess. Every now and again he shouted orders as well, barking out commands to no one in particular. In his mind, if nowhere else, Hitler was still winning this war against the Bolsheviks.

The Russian army had completed the encirclement of Berlin three days ago. Its troops could already see the Reichstag through their field glasses, the big-domed Parliament building that stood at the very heart of the city. Elsewhere in Germany, the Russians had linked up with the Americans on the Elbe, and the British were pushing toward the Danish border, encountering increasingly feeble resistance as they went. In another few days, no matter what happened in Berlin, the war would be over and Germany would be defeated for the second time in a generation.

The defeat had always been inevitable. Hitler’s generals had always warned him that it would come to this, right from before the war, when they had examined the British, French, and Russian armies in their war games and concluded that however they fought it, Germany was bound to lose in the end. The economists had agreed, pointing out that Germany’s soil was thin, reminding Hitler that the country lacked the mineral resources to fight a sustained campaign. Hitler had accepted their view initially, arguing in
Mein Kampf
that fighting the British was a mistake to be avoided, that a war on two fronts was never a good idea. But he had ignored his own assessment in the summer of 1939, and now the whole country was paying for his folly.

Yet there was still hope—in Hitler’s mind at least. He had long since lost confidence in his other generals, but he still had some faith in General Wenck. If anybody could get to Berlin, Wenck could. Once he was there, pushing the Russians back, a corridor could be opened out of the city, a lifeline to the American army in the west. The Americans were the key now. Hitler had persuaded himself that they would never allow a cultured country like Germany to fall into Bolshevik hands if they could prevent it. The Americans would come to Germany’s aid first, if that was what they had to do to keep the Communists out of Europe.

But Hitler couldn’t do it without Wenck. His troops were said to be near Potsdam somewhere, still struggling toward the capital. Until they arrived, there was nothing for Hitler to do except sit and wait, obsessively pushing buttons around the map while shells rained down and the bunker continued to reverberate. From time to time he dictated increasingly frantic telegrams to his staff—
Where is Wenck? What is happening to the Ninth Army? When will Wenck and the Ninth Army join?
1
—but answers came there none. Nobody in the bunker had any real idea of what was happening in Germany anymore.

*   *   *

UP ABOVE,
on the streets of Berlin, the fighting was fast and furious as the Russians advanced toward the city center. Every available German was struggling to hold them back. The outskirts had already fallen, and most of the suburbs, but the Germans were still clinging to the central area around the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate, stubbornly refusing to capitulate. Hitler had promised them that help was on the way, the tanks and guns of Wenck’s army hurrying to save them from the Red Menace. The Germans in the center were hanging on by their fingertips, desperate not to give in before Wenck arrived.

They were fighting like men possessed, even the ones who no longer believed a word Hitler said. They fought because they had no realistic alternative. They knew only too well what would happen if they surrendered to the Russians. The men would be taken for slave labor, transported to the Soviet Union for the rest of their natural lives. The women would be mass-raped, as they already had been wherever the Russians had found them. There was nothing for the Germans in surrender. Even if they wanted to give up, their own side wouldn’t let them. Fanatics from the SS and the Hitler Youth were hanging men from lampposts or shooting them on the spot if they showed any sign of wavering. The Germans in Berlin were trapped between a rock and a very hard place.

For Helmut Altner, it was the fear of capture that kept him fighting. Still only seventeen, he did not want to spend the rest of his life in a Soviet prison camp. He had been conscripted at the end of March and given only four days’ training before being sent to the front. A girl had offered to hide him as he advanced, but he had been too scared to accept. Instead, he had gone into battle with his comrades, most of whom had long since been killed. Altner was a veteran now, after the hard fighting of the past two weeks.

It seemed an age ago, but was actually only a few days, that he had heard the battalion commander promising his troops victory within twenty-four hours. The man had come forward to address them at a position just behind the line:

Hitler has issued an order: “Hold on another twenty four hours and the great change in the war will come! Reinforcements are rolling forward. Wonder weapons are coming. Guns and tanks are being unloaded in their thousands. Hold on another twenty four hours, comrades! Peace with the British. Peace with the Americans. The guns are silent on the West Front. The Western Army is marching to the support of you brave East Front warriors. Thousands of British and Americans are volunteering to join our ranks to drive out the Bolsheviks. Hundreds of British and American aircraft stand ready to take part in the battle for Europe. Hold on another twenty four hours, my comrades. Churchill is in Berlin negotiating with me.”
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It was wishful thinking. Winston Churchill wasn’t in Berlin, and no one was coming to their rescue. Hitler might not be in Berlin, either, for all Altner knew. The only reality for him was the constant shelling from the Russians in the western suburbs, the rattle of machine guns that had begun before dawn that day as the Russians advanced across the Reichssportfeld toward the barracks at Ruhleben. Altner had woken in the dark to the sound of incoming fire and had gone into action at once, grabbing his rifle and a few belts of ammunition and rushing outside to find out what was happening. It had been impossible to say for sure in the dark. The only certainty was that they were being attacked from several different directions at once and that chaos reigned all around.

The Germans had managed to halt the Russians after a while, although not before they had captured the Reichssportfeld. The fighting had died down toward dawn as both sides consolidated their positions. A Russian tank had appeared shortly after first light, filling Altner with dread as it rumbled to a halt in front of his trench. He had failed to spot the white flag it was carrying and thought his last moment had come. Instead, a head had emerged and a Russian with a loud hailer had exhorted the Germans to surrender: “You will be well treated, and you will be able to go home as soon as hostilities are over. Soldiers, there is no point any more. Do you really want to lose your lives in the last hours of a war already lost?”
3

Several Germans had taken the Russians at their word, quietly making a break for the enemy lines as soon as they thought no one was looking. Ordered to shoot them down from behind, Altner had fired over their heads instead. He had no quarrel with anyone who wanted to desert. He would have deserted, too, if he hadn’t been so terrified of capture.

Fighting had resumed later as hundreds of Hitler Youth arrived from their homes in a desperate attempt to recapture the sports complex and the Olympic stadium. By midafternoon they had succeeded in pushing the Russians back, but only at a dreadful cost in killed and wounded. Altner found himself now with a handful of unfamiliar soldiers, ordered down to the subway station to try to reach the city center along one of the U-Bahn tunnels and then attack the Russians from the rear. With much of the line already in enemy hands, it seemed like a suicide mission to Altner as he followed the rest of his squad into the tunnel:

Our uniforms are grey and so are our forebodings about a future that gives us not a glimmer of hope. I just want to sleep, sleep and suddenly wake up to discover that it was all nothing but a bad dream, that there was no war, that there are no ruins, no dead and ripped apart bodies, but that there is peace and that the sun shines and life pulses without the threat of coming to an end at any moment. But this is only wishful thinking. We are condemned to death and do not know why, nor do we know why we are not allowed to live!
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While Altner disappeared into the gloom, actress Hildegard Knef and her lover were a couple of miles south, on their way to fight the Russians at Schmargendorf. Film producer Ewald von Demandowsky had been called up into the Volkssturm, the German equivalent of Britain’s Home Guard, and sent straight to the front line. Knef had insisted on accompanying him, rather than staying behind on her own. Just nineteen, ravishingly pretty, she had no illusions about what would happen if the Russians got hold of her. She preferred to remain with her boyfriend and take her chances in the fighting.

She had tried to disguise herself as a man for the purpose, but, despite her deep voice, had been rapidly unmasked when they reported for duty. Nevertheless, she had been given a helmet, a machine gun, and a handful of grenades and shown how to use them. She had acquired a jackknife as well and tucked it into her boot, reminding herself to cut upward if she ever had to use it, upward from the wrist rather than across.

Now she was on her way to Schmargendorf’s freight yard with Demandowsky and a few others. There were ten of them in all, a ragbag assortment of Russia veterans, Hitler Youth, SS, and old men spaced at twenty-yard intervals as they made their way across the rubble. They were crawling some of the way, running and jumping the rest, to avoid becoming targets. They managed to reach the freight yard unharmed, but were spotted by Russian snipers when they tried to cross it. Hopping over the rails like a kangaroo, Knef sprinted for an abandoned train and dived underneath a freight car as the snipers opened fire. She made it in time, but one of the Hitler Youth with her wasn’t so lucky. Knef could still hear the sound of him calling for his mother as he died.

The German front line lay across the yard, a row of foxholes hastily dug beside the tennis courts. Knef and Demandowsky found shelter in a garden shed, next to a lieutenant who was surveying the tennis courts through his field glasses. He had camouflaged his helmet and shoulders with foliage, looking to Knef as if he were about to go onstage in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.

There was a dead SS man outside. Knef and Demandowsky were trying to move his body when the Russians launched an attack:

Orrraaaay! It’s coming from behind us, behind the tennis courts. The lieutenant looks up. They screech like monkeys, he says, when they attack they always screech like monkeys. He raises his fist and slams it down in the mud, twenty machine guns start rattling and chattering, we pull ours up and stick an ammunition belt into it. It starts heaving and bucking, wants to go it alone, resents our meddling, starts throwing itself from side to side, gets hot, jams, dies. E von D picks it up, crawls out and runs for the shed. The houses behind us are on fire.
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The Russians were beaten off and did not attack again before dark. Knef was grateful for the respite, if only because it gave her the chance to have a pee at last. She volunteered for the first turn on guard duty that night, occupying a foxhole all to herself while Demandowsky got some rest in the shed. Early evening was the best time to be on guard, because the Russians rarely attacked in the early evening. That was their time for getting drunk and raping women, as Knef soon discovered: