Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II (37 page)

Eichmann had left Berlin in mid-April after spending several days destroying all his department’s files before the Russians could find them. From there he had gone to Prague and other places, on a fool’s errand for Himmler to arrange for a few hundred prominent Jewish prisoners to be transported to the Alps and held hostage. The task had proved impossible in the chaos, so Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Himmler’s deputy in the SS, had ordered Eichmann to Altaussee instead to await further instructions.

Eichmann reported in as soon as he arrived. He found Kaltenbrunner playing patience at his mistress’s villa on the outskirts of the town. Like everyone else in Altaussee, Kaltenbrunner was not pleased to see him. No one in the town wanted to be associated with a Jew killer, now that retribution was at hand. Kaltenbrunner intended to get rid of him without delay.

Sending for cognac, he told him first that Hitler was dead.

Eichmann was shocked. It was terrible news. He had known the situation was bad in Berlin, but not that bad.

Kaltenbrunner didn’t discuss it any further. He hadn’t yet decided what to do with Eichmann. He was toying with the idea of giving him some of the valuables looted from the Jews and sending him into the mountains with a few other potential war criminals to make sure that they were nowhere near Altaussee when the Allies arrived. He himself was going to hide in the mountains when the time came. There was a cabin on the Wildensee where he could hole up for a few days until he knew which way the wind was blowing.

“It’s all a lot of crap,” Kaltenbrunner muttered, as he sent Eichmann away to await further instructions. “The game is up.”
4

Kaltenbrunner had abandoned his hopes of negotiating a separate peace for Austria with the Allies. Like many Nazis, however, he remained convinced that the Allies would still appreciate his services in the continuing struggle against the Soviets. Failing that, he had had a set of false papers prepared, in case he needed to disappear in a hurry. It was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Reich Security Main Office, who would set off for the mountains when the Allies arrived, but it was Josef Unterwogen, a doctor in the Wehrmacht, who would reappear in due course, ready to pick up the threads of his life and resume his place in a postwar world.

*   *   *

AT MAUTERNDORF,
Hermann Göring was in talks with the SS, urging them to let him go now that Hitler was dead. The SS were agreeable, but still wouldn’t do so without proper authority.

At Mayrhofen, Leni Riefenstahl had spent the day looking for Hans and Gisela Schneeberger, her hosts for the next two weeks. She was supposed to be staying with them at Hans’s cousin’s boarding house higher up the mountain, but there had been no sign of Gisela when she woke that morning; no message, either. Gisela had left without saying a word.

Riefenstahl was in a dilemma. She couldn’t stay where she was, because her room had already been taken and every other hotel in Mayrhofen was full. She couldn’t drive back to Kitzbühel, either, because she had no gas for the car. She decided to go up the mountain instead, to find the Schneebergers and ask them what had gone wrong.

It was late afternoon by the time she managed to hitch a ride on a hay wagon. Darkness was falling as she reached the Hotel Lamm and rang the bell. The door was opened by an old man who eyed her without enthusiasm.

“I’m Frau Riefenstahl,” she told him. “Herr Schneeberger asked me to come here.”

The man looked her up and down. “You’re not entering my house,” he said.

“Aren’t you Hans’s cousin? I’m supposed to stay here for a couple of weeks.”

“Sorry. You’re not entering my house. Hans apparently didn’t realize I don’t take Nazis.”

Pushing him aside, Riefenstahl stormed into the house, looking for Hans. She found him in the kitchen with his wife.

“You here?” Gisela was shocked. “Are you mad? Did you really think you could stay here with us?”

Hans said nothing. As well as being a colleague of Riefenstahl’s, he had lived with her as her lover for four happy years.

“Help me!” she cried.

Hans stayed silent. Gisela stood protectively in front of him, yelling at Riefenstahl. “You thought we’d help you? Nazi slut!”
5

Riefenstahl was out in the cold. She still had her luggage with her, but the wagon had disappeared, and there was far too much to carry. Dumping it where it was, she turned away uncertainly and set off down the mountain in the dark, hoping to find a barn somewhere to shelter for the night.

*   *   *

PAULA HITLER
was in her room at the Dietrich Eckart Hütte, a boardinghouse in Berchtesgaden. She was spending most of the time in her room, eating her meals there rather than in the dining room with the other guests. They knew her only as Frau Wolff and had no idea that she was the Führer’s slow-witted younger sister.

Paula had been in Berchtesgaden since mid-April. She had been at home in Austria, at her house on the Linz-Vienna road, when a car appeared outside with orders to take her to Berchtesgaden. She had been given two hours to pack, although she hadn’t actually left until the following day.

Paula had been most reluctant to leave at all. She was looking after the vegetable garden at home and knew it would be neglected without her. But the men who came for her had insisted that she go with them to Berchtesgaden. It was only when they were halfway there that one of them had told her that they hadn’t expected her to agree.

Paula knew nobody in Berchtesgaden. She was the Führer’s younger sister by seven years, and they had never been close. Even as a youth, her big brother had had strong views about what to do with the feeble-minded. As Führer, he had arranged for her to have a small allowance on condition that she call herself Paula Wolff and never told anyone they were related. But he had taken no interest in her. Like Alois Hitler, their scapegrace half-brother, like everyone in the family, she had never been invited to the Berghof, never set foot in her brother’s house on the mountain.

She had last seen Adolf in March 1941, when they had had a brief meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna. There had been no contact since then, although Hitler had just remembered her in his will. Her nearest living relation, now that Adolf was dead, was probably her nephew, William Patrick Hitler, a seaman in the U.S. Navy. British by birth, he had tried to join the Royal Navy first, only to be told that the British wouldn’t have any Hitlers in their fleet.

Paula was devastated to learn of Adolf’s death. Whatever others might think, he was still her big brother, the only full sibling she had. He had been too big to spend much time with her as a child, but he had enjoyed playing cops and robbers with other little boys. Their mother had spoiled him rotten, perhaps because their father had beaten him so often.

Adolf should never have been Führer, in Paula’s view. He should have been an architect instead. He had always liked architecture. If he had been an architect, none of this would have happened and he would still be alive today.

But he wasn’t alive anymore. He was dead, and nothing could bring him back. Like any sister whose brother had been killed in the war, Paula Hitler was inconsolable, still crying about it months later. No matter how difficult Adolf had been, no matter how neglectful as a brother, she was going to miss him now that he was gone. A light had gone out of her life for ever.

*   *   *

FAR AWAY
in his Welsh asylum, Rudolf Hess had been as shocked as Paula to learn that Hitler was dead.
The Times
that morning had devoted a whole page to his obituary. Hess had been careful to show no emotion when he read the newspapers, but his minders could see that he was deeply upset. He sought comfort from a favorite passage of his in
Natural Life
, a book by Konrad Günther:

The work of great men does not attain its full effect until its creator has passed on – the present day cannot comprehend it … Can there exist any being more heroic than the one who follows an undeviating path in pursuit of a preordained mission, however entangled that path might become, even if it becomes a path to martyrdom?
6

Hess’s behavior had become increasingly erratic in the past few days, as the news from Germany turned from bad to worse. Getting dressed on April 29, he had smashed his underpants against the wardrobe for a full minute before putting them on. He had laughed like a maniac at Himmler’s peace offer, and sniggered uncontrollably at photographs in the paper of Germany’s new leaders. He had developed a new habit, first observed by his minders at about the time of Hitler’s death, of repeatedly dropping a small key onto his writing paper, a ritual that seemed important to him, although it served no discernible purpose.

He had a request to make of his captors. According to the newspapers, films had been made of the concentration camps captured by the Allies, dreadful films of German atrocities. Hess had already seen some of the pictures in the papers. He wanted to see the films as well, if they were worse. He told his guards that he would greatly appreciate it if they could arrange for him to have a viewing.

His request was refused. There were no special favors for Maindiff Court’s most notorious inmate.

23

SURRENDER IN ITALY

IN ITALY, THE GERMAN HIGH COMMAND
was still divided over whether to accept the surrender terms agreed to at Caserta. Some generals had already passed the word to their troops, ordering them to cease fire at two o’clock that afternoon. Others were refusing to comply, arguing that there could be no surrender while the war continued against the Russians. Hitler’s death had released them from their binding oaths, but they still wouldn’t budge without a direct order from Field Marshal Kesselring, who was nominally in command of the Wehrmacht forces in Italy. But Kesselring was in the field somewhere and couldn’t be contacted by phone.

The situation was so tense that the generals at Bolzano had begun to arrest each other as they disagreed vehemently about what to do. General Karl Wolff of the SS had been in secret negotiations with the Allies for weeks and was determined to honor the agreement signed at Caserta. Sitting in Wehrmacht headquarters at about half past one that morning, he feared the worst as orders came for surrender-minded officers to be arrested at once. Sneaking out of the tunnel complex with a couple of other generals, Wolff hurried back to SS headquarters in the Duke of Pistoia’s palace. There he learned that the Wehrmacht was about to surround the building with a tank unit.

Wolff had tanks of his own, which he quickly deployed around his command post. SS troops took up defensive positions while Wolff sent an urgent message to Field Marshal Alexander, pleading for help from Allied paratroopers. The SS were crouching over their weapons, waiting for the Wehrmacht to attack, when the telephone rang. It was Field Marshal Kesselring for Wolff.

Kesselring had just learned that the proposed surrender was going ahead without his authorization. He rang at 2:00 a.m. and, over a bad line, blasted Wolff for the next two hours, calling him every name under the sun as he lambasted him for his treachery in talking secretly to the Allies. Other officers joined in, discussing the situation over the phone and swearing at one another as they argued about what to do next. Wolff stood his ground, pointing out that surrender was not only inevitable but the best option still open to them, since there was nothing to be gained from fighting on. Unusually for an SS officer, he saw no point in fighting to the last man. He told Kesselring so quite bluntly:

It is not only a military capitulation in order to avoid further destruction and shedding of blood. A ceasefire now will give the Anglo-Americans the potential to stop the Russian advance into the west, to counter the threat of Tito’s forces to the port of Trieste and of a Communist uprising that will try to establish a Soviet republic in northern Italy … Since the Führer’s death has released you from your oath of loyalty, I beg you as the most senior commander of the entire Alpine region devoutly and with the greatest sense of obedience to give your retroactive sanction to our independent action which our consciences impelled us to take.
1

Kesselring wasn’t convinced, but could see Wolff’s point. Ringing off at 4:00 a.m., he promised to think it over and get back to him. Half an hour later another officer rang to say that Kesselring had reluctantly agreed to the surrender and was withdrawing the directive for various officers to be arrested.

Headquarters at Bolzano wasted no more time. The order to surrender went immediately to all the remaining units that hadn’t already received it. The radio messages were sent en clair, since the Germans no longer had any need to disguise their intentions from the Allies. At two o’clock that afternoon, as agreed, German forces in Italy ceased all hostilities against the Allies. In the Italian theater at least, the war was over.

*   *   *

WOLFF WAS QUITE RIGHT
about Trieste. The Allies were already on their way, aiming to take control of the port from the German garrison before Tito’s Communists could seize it for Yugoslavia.

The charge was led by the New Zealanders. They left Monfalcone at eight thirty that morning, intending to complete the remaining seventeen miles to Trieste without delay. But the cease-fire did not come into effect until two that afternoon and, anyway, did not apply east of the Isonzo River, where the Germans retained the right to defend themselves against partisans. There were still isolated pockets of resistance along the road as individual German units continued to put up a fight.

It wasn’t until two thirty in the afternoon that the Kiwis reached Miramare, a peninsula with a white castle, across the bay from Trieste. The Germans, defending it with 88mm guns and machine-gun nests in pillboxes, were quickly brushed aside. The New Zealanders’ Sherman tanks pressed on to Trieste and were in the middle of the city by 3:00 p.m., exchanging greetings with Tito’s men, who had arrived earlier from the other direction.