Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II (33 page)

She was all alone as she set out. Her brother was dead, killed by a grenade on the Eastern Front. Her husband was in the army somewhere, possibly Berlin, since that was where she had last heard from him. As Hitler’s most talented filmmaker, Riefenstahl had once had everyone at her beck and call, senior Nazis falling over themselves to accommodate her wishes and provide her with everything she needed. But they had all melted away as Hitler’s star faded. Even the Nazis in Kitzbühel, subservient lickspittles in the past, were tearing up their party cards and reinventing themselves as resistance fighters. Nobody knew if it would be the Russians or the Americans who reached the town first, but there were already banners across the street welcoming the liberators, whoever they might be. The only certainty was that nobody wanted Riefenstahl.

Adolf Galland, the air ace, had managed to procure twenty liters of petrol for her car. It was just enough to get to Mayrhofen. Riefenstahl was full of gloom as she started out, wondering if she was ever going to see her mother again, or her husband, wondering if she would ever make another film. She was taking all her remaining valuables with her, including her most cherished possession, the original negative of
Olympia
, her prizewinning account of the 1936 Olympic Games. It was one of the most admired films of all time, not least for Riefenstahl’s nude dancing in the prologue and the Olympic torch run into the stadium, an idea she had dreamed up with one of the officials to add drama to the opening ceremony. She was just hoping that she would be able to hang on to it in the days ahead and then continue her film career uninterrupted once the war was finally over.

20

DÖNITZ SPEAKS TO THE NATION

BACK IN BERLIN, MAGDA GÖBBELS WAS
about to kill her children. She had six by Göbbels: a son and five daughters. Kind Dr. Stumpfegger was waiting with sedatives to send them to sleep, after which their mother was going to poison them with cyanide. Rochus Misch, the bunker’s switchboard operator, was one of the last to see them alive:

“All of the children were now wearing white nightgowns. This was their usual time for bed. Five were sitting in chairs. Heidi had scrambled up onto the table. She was still suffering from tonsillitis and had a scarf around her neck. Helga, the tallest, oldest and brightest, was sobbing quietly. I think she dimly suspected the mayhem about to come. She was most definitely Daddy’s girl, with no great fondness for her mother.”
1

Misch squirmed as Magda Göbbels made a great play of combing the children’s hair and kissing each of them affectionately, as she had every evening for the past week. “I watched all of this with apprehension. I was appalled. I still have it on my conscience today that I did nothing but sit there on my backside, because I sensed what was about to happen. At the same time, watching the mother, I just couldn’t believe it. I suppose I didn’t
want
to believe it.”
2

Without a word to anyone, Magda took the children upstairs to their room. Heidi, the youngest, turned back to Misch for a moment before climbing the stairs. “
Misch, Misch, du bist ein Fisch
,” she giggled. Misch watched miserably as she disappeared, then began to say his rosary for them, praying that even at this late stage Magda might still relent and let the children go.

It was an hour before she reappeared. Accounts vary as to how the children died. They may have been injected with morphine or drugged with chocolates laced with Finodin “to prevent air sickness.” From the bruises on her body, twelve-year-old Helga may have woken up and struggled as her mother forced a cyanide capsule between her teeth. Whatever the manner of the children’s death, Magda Göbbels was red-eyed with weeping when she came downstairs again. Misch couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t have the children with her: “At first she just stood there, wringing her hands. Then she pulled herself together and lit a cigarette. She did not speak or even nod to me, though she was only a few feet away as she passed by.”
3

There was a small champagne bottle on the table in the corridor. Misch watched as Magda took it into the little room that Göbbels had been using as a study:

She had left his door open. I got up, walked past, and could see that she had taken out a pack of small cards and had begun to play patience [solitaire]. Instinctively, I knew that her children were no longer of this world. Another ten minutes or so passed. Then she got up and stalked out. Again, we didn’t speak to each other. What was there to say?
4

Magda went to join her husband. Göbbels had completed the last entry in his diary, the seven-page summary of his life’s work for posterity. Entrusting it to Werner Naumann, his ministry secretary, for safekeeping, he sat with Magda and Bormann for a while, drinking champagne and chain-smoking as they reminisced over old times. Various people drifted in and out, coming to say goodbye. The Göbbelses withdrew for some private time together and then reappeared just before eight thirty that evening. General Mohnke and two junior officers, Schwägermann and Olds, were the only ones still present. Mohnke watched as Göbbels gave Schwägermann an autographed picture of the Führer as a farewell gift and then set off to commit suicide:

Going over to the coat-rack in the small room that had served as his study, he donned his hat, his scarf, his long uniform overcoat. Slowly, he drew on his kid gloves, making each finger snug. Then, like a cavalier, he offered his right arm to his wife. They were wordless now. So were we three spectators. Slowly but steadily, leaning a bit on each other, they headed up the stairs to the courtyard.
5

They passed Misch as they went. “I don’t need you any more,” Göbbels told him. “
Les jeux sont faits
.”
6
Continuing upstairs, he and Magda paused for a moment at the exit to the bunker, then stepped out together into the Chancellery garden.

Shots followed. As soon as he heard them, Schwägermann went out with some SS men to burn the bodies. As Göbbels had earlier requested, one of the men fired a bullet into each corpse to make sure they were dead. Then they sprinkled gasoline over them and set the bodies alight. The flames burned for a few minutes and then went out, leaving the charred remains of Göbbels and his wife still perfectly recognizable amid the rubble. But nobody took any notice. They had already forgotten about Göbbels and were thinking only of saving themselves as night deepened and they prepared to make their breakout from the bunker.

*   *   *

TRAUDL JUNGE
was in the first group to escape. She had watched in dismay as a nurse and a man in a white coat emerged from the children’s room in the upper bunker lugging a heavy crate between them. The crate had been followed by another, both of them the right size for a child’s body. Shocked, Junge was glad to leave the bunker soon afterward. Passing Hitler’s door as she went, she saw that his gray overcoat was still hanging on the coat stand, with his cap above it, his pale suede gloves, and a dog leash. The stand looked like a gallows to her.

Hans Baur, one of Hitler’s pilots, had earlier taken the Führer’s portrait of Frederick the Great out of its frame and rolled it up, claiming that Hitler had left it to him as a souvenir. Junge thought of taking one of Hitler’s gloves, but although she reached for it, she couldn’t quite bring herself to. She wasn’t taking Eva Braun’s fur coat, either. All she had as she left the bunker for the last time were her pistol and the cyanide capsule Hitler had given her as a farewell present, apologizing that it wasn’t anything nicer.

Otto Günsche led the way to the New Chancellery. Junge and Konstanze Manziarly followed, keeping close behind him as he pushed through the crowds with his broad shoulders. Some women packed a bag before they made their escape, but Junge had decided to take very little with her when they left: no money, clothes, or food, just a few treasured photographs and a supply of cigarettes. She had already destroyed her identity papers. In boots and steel helmet, she was ready and waiting when the order was given for everyone to assemble in the garage underneath the Chancellery’s Hall of Honour, facing the Wilhelmstrasse and the U-Bahn station beyond.

The vehicles in the garage had been pushed aside to make room for the escape. Ernst-Günther Schenck watched quietly as people began to appear:

From the dark gangways, they kept arriving, in small groups, both the fighting troops being pulled in from the outside, then the officers and men of the Reich Chancellery group. The troops, many very young, were already street fighting veterans. Other soldiers had stubble beards, blackened faces. They wore sweaty, torn, field-grey uniforms, which most had worn and slept in, without change, for almost a fortnight.

The situation was heroic; the mood was not. The official announcement of Hitler’s suicide had not yet reached the lower ranks. But they guessed as much—from the silence of their officers. There was little talk now of “Führer, Folk and Fatherland.” To a man, each German soldier was silently calculating his own chance of survival. For all the discipline, what was now building up was less a military operation in the classic sense than what I imagine happens at sea when the cry goes out to man the lifeboats.
7

General Mohnke was in command. He was carrying copies of Hitler’s testaments for delivery to Dönitz and had a bagful of diamonds in his underwear, the kind used for decorating the Knight’s Cross. The escape was to be made in ten groups, leaving the Chancellery at twenty-minute intervals. The first group was to consist mainly of those who had been in the bunker with Hitler, including the three female secretaries and Konstanze Manziarly, his cook. They waited as troops broke open the bricked-up window looking out on the Wilhelmstrasse. Pistol in hand, Mohnke was first through, checking the street for Russians. Seeing none, he gave the all-clear, and the rest of the first group followed him in rapid succession, scrambling through the window and hurrying frantically along the street toward the U-Bahn station a hundred yards away across the square.

Traudl Junge remembered it thus:

We clamber over half-wrecked staircases, through holes in walls and rubble, always going further up and out. At last the Wilhelmsplatz stretches ahead, shining in the moonlight. The dead horse is still lying there on the paving stones, but only the remains of it now. Hungry people have come out of the U-Bahn tunnels to slice off pieces of meat.

Soundlessly, we cross the square. There’s sporadic shooting, but the gunfire is worse further away. Reaching the U-Bahn tunnel outside the ruins of the Kaiserhof, we go down and make our way forward in the darkness, climbing over the wounded and the homeless, past resting soldiers …
8

It wasn’t quite as simple as that. The stairs down to the U-Bahn had been shot away, forcing Junge and the others to scramble over the wreckage as best they could. They were reluctant to use their flashlights in case the Russians were waiting for them at the bottom. Stumbling toward the station platform, they stood listening for a moment, wondering if they were about to be attacked. There were certainly people on the platform, because they could hear them moving about in the darkness.

The people were German. The platform was packed with civilians and wounded soldiers, some of whom had been there for a week. As one of them explained to Mohnke: “We kept as quiet as mice, putting out all our candles and hushing the babies. We thought you were all Ivans.”

Pushing through, the bunker party jumped down onto the railway track. The next station was Stadtmitte, to the east. From there, they intended to turn north and head along the tunnel under the Russian lines, aiming for Friedrichstrasse, the main-line station on the banks of the Spree. If they reached Friedrichstrasse without mishap, they planned to cross the river and link up with other German units believed to be still fighting in the northern outskirts of the city.

It was a terrifying experience. Worried that they might bump into Russian soldiers at any moment, Mohnke forbade the use of flashlights as they set off. In fact, the Russians were very wary of the subway system, fearing that the Germans intended to flood it, but Mohnke didn’t know this. Nor did he know if the third rail was still electrified. An attempt to short-circuit it by stringing field telephone wires across the other two rails had suggested not, but the power plant was now in Russian hands, and there was nothing to stop them reconnecting the supply at any moment.

Mohnke and Günsche went first. The rest followed, strung out over a hundred yards along the tunnel. Schenck put himself in charge of the women, patting their behinds every so often to keep them moving. They reached Stadtmitte without any trouble and found the platform crowded with refugees, just as the Kaiserhof had been. An abandoned subway car had been turned into a makeshift operating theater, with several surgeons working nonstop by candlelight.

After a brief cigarette break, they continued north toward Freidrichstrasse. Several members of the group had dropped out by the time they arrived. There was an artillery barrage overhead, shaking the tunnel with every salvo, sometimes even making the rails tremble. Fearing that the roof might collapse, Mohnke hurried on, leading Junge and the others past Friedrichstrasse station into the tunnel that led under the river Spree toward the north of the city.

They hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when they came to a giant steel barrier across the track. It was a waterproof bulkhead, closed every night after the last train had left, to seal the tunnel under the river and prevent an accidental flood. No trains had run for the past week, but the nightly ritual continued. Two officials of the Berlin transport company had just closed the barrier and were surrounded by an angry group of civilians urging them to open it again.

Mohnke joined them, telling the officials to open it at once. They refused, citing a regulation that dated from 1923. They had the regulations with them and showed Mohnke the relevant section. Standing orders were quite clear. The barrier was to be kept shut at night.