Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II (5 page)

By other accounts, Hitler clutched the transcript to his chest and yelled that he had been betrayed again—and by
der treue Heinrich
this time, the only Nazi he could trust, the one leader whose loyalty had never been in question. Heinrich Himmler was the nearest Hitler had in the party to a friend. If Himmler had betrayed him, then nobody could be trusted anymore, nobody. Rudolph Hess was mad, and Hermann Göring had always been corrupt, but Himmler? Hitler couldn’t believe it.

He calmed down after a while, turning deathly white in the process, so pale that he looked like a corpse. What remained of his mind was working overtime, swiftly assessing the implications of Himmler’s treachery. Was Himmler planning to assassinate him? Deliver him alive to the enemy? Was there anybody left in the bunker whom he could trust? Or were they all just waiting for a chance to offer him as a hostage in return for their own miserable lives? It was impossible to know.

But at least there was a scapegoat at hand, someone on whom Hitler could take revenge for Himmler’s disloyalty. SS Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein was Himmler’s liaison officer in the bunker, a widely disliked opportunist whose wartime career had been devoted solely to his own advancement. Himmler might be beyond Hitler’s reach, but Himmler’s creature was still in the bunker. Fegelein was in close arrest after being caught trying to desert.

Fegelein was an unpleasant man, a corrupt womanizer who bullied people below him and flattered those above if he thought they might be useful to him. He had been Hitler’s unofficial brother-in-law since June 1944, when he had married Eva Braun’s sister Margarete. Since then, he had never been afraid to throw his weight around or butt in on senior generals’ conversations if it suited him. He had made full use of connections that went right to the top.

But Fegelein’s loyalty had always been to himself rather than anyone else. Seeing no future in the bunker, he had slipped away on April 26, quietly returning to his apartment off the Kurfürstendamm, where he had a suitcase packed with money and jewelry, ready for a quick getaway. Blind drunk, he had rung Eva Braun from his flat, urging her to abandon Hitler and come away with him while she still could. Braun had refused, so Fegelein had planned to escape with a redhead instead. His own wife was already out of Berlin, heavily pregnant with a child that probably wasn’t his.

Hitler had noticed Fegelein’s absence on April 27. His staff had telephoned the apartment, ordering Fegelein to return to the Chancellery at once. When Fegelein failed to comply, he had been arrested, still drunk, and brought back under guard. He was being interrogated, prior to an impromptu court-martial, when the news of Himmler’s treachery arrived.

Enraged, Hitler decided to have Fegelein shot at once, without waiting for a trial. Eva Braun tried to intercede on her brother-in-law’s behalf. Red-eyed with weeping, she went to Hitler and begged him on her knees, telling him that her sister was about to give birth, telling him that the child couldn’t possibly grow up without a father. But Hitler wouldn’t listen. A search of Fegelein’s office had revealed documents indicating that he knew about Himmler’s contacts with Count Bernadotte. If Hitler couldn’t call Himmler to account for his treachery, then he could at least have Fegelein shot instead. Brushing Eva aside, he gave the order without hesitation.

By most accounts, the execution was carried out immediately in the Chancellery garden. Hitler was so angry that he called for the execution report after only a few minutes and exulted like a schoolboy when it came. So perish all traitors! Fegelein had got what he deserved, as even Eva Braun was forced to concede, through her tears: “Poor, poor Adolf. They have all deserted you. They have all betrayed you!”

But there was no more time to think about betrayal. Hitler had a busy night ahead. Test pilot Hanna Reitsch was about to leave the bunker, flying the newly promoted field marshal Robert von Greim out of Berlin after his appointment as the commander of a now-nonexistent Luftwaffe. They were planning to take off in a light aircraft from the road leading to the Brandenburg Gate. Hitler had given them both a cyanide capsule as a farewell present, in case the attempt failed and they were captured by the Russians.

Once Greim had gone, Hitler intended to dictate his last will and testament to Traudl Junge, his secretary. After that, if there were no more surprises, he was going to get married. With so little time left, he had decided to wed Eva Braun at last, his mistress of many years. The Führer was going to make an honest woman of his most loyal companion, just hours after ordering the execution of her sister’s husband.

4

NAZIS ON THE RUN

HITLER INTENDED TO TAKE HIS OWN LIFE
when the time came, rather than suffer the humiliation of capture by the Russians. Propaganda minister Josef Göbbels intended to do the same with his wife and children. The only other Nazi leader in the bunker was Martin Bormann, who had no intention of dying and was planning to make his escape at the earliest opportunity. The rest of the leadership was scattered far and wide across the country. Like Himmler, most were still desperately hoping that they could somehow find a way out of the disaster they had brought down on their own heads.

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz had spent much of the day on the road, returning from the same Wehrmacht conference as Himmler to his own headquarters at Plön, near Kiel. Setting off soon after dawn, he had driven a hundred and fifty miles westward along roads crowded with refugees and strafed continually by Allied aircraft. Dönitz had watched in despair as the farmers in the fields abandoned their ploughs and ran for cover every time an aircraft appeared. It was obvious to him that the war was lost and could not last more than a few days longer at most.

That being so, his primary concern now was to help as many Germans as possible to escape from the east and flee westward before the Russians arrived. The German navy was doing its best to help, but Dönitz was bitterly aware that its few remaining vessels were desperately short of fuel and very vulnerable to attack. His job, as he saw it, was to keep the fight going and hold a corridor open until all the refugees had escaped to the west, either by land or sea, where they could safely surrender to the Anglo-Americans rather than the Russians. But he knew that it was a formidable task, with the countryside in chaos and the Wehrmacht visibly disintegrating with every hour that passed.

Dönitz had worked himself into a state of despair by the time he got back to Plön. He called immediately for his son-in-law, Günther Hessler, a U-boat ace who had once sunk fourteen Allied ships on a single patrol. Taking Hessler aside, Dönitz told him in strictest confidence that he had come to a momentous decision. With the war lost and no hope of a negotiated peace, he intended to surrender the German navy as soon as further resistance became impossible and then seek his own death in battle. He wanted Hessler to know in advance, because he would have to take care of Dönitz’s wife and daughter after he was gone.

Hessler was shocked. Seeking death in battle was a very German idea, but a very foolish one, too, in his opinion. He tried to talk Dönitz out of it, arguing that the country was going to need him in the difficult times that lay ahead, pointing out that a leader of Dönitz’s stature would be far more use to his country alive than dead.

But Dönitz refused to listen. Mulling it over on the way back from the Wehrmacht conference, he had decided that he much preferred death to dishonor. In his view, it was far better to fall in battle than to live with the shame of surrendering his beloved navy to the enemy. If nothing else, Dönitz knew that he would be following his own sons, both of whom had already fallen for the Fatherland at sea.

*   *   *

DÖNITZ’S HEADQUARTERS
were at Plön because it was one of the few remaining places in the north of Germany not immediately threatened by British or Russian troops. It was also very close to the Baltic coast, just a short ferry ride to the safety of neutral Sweden. As such, the town was full of high-ranking Nazis who were converging on it in ever-increasing numbers as their enemies advanced, much as men on a sinking ship converge on the highest point because they have nowhere else to go.

Albert Speer, the minister of armaments and war production, had been in Plön since April 25. He was camping in the woods overlooking Lake Eutin, living in a pair of construction trailers that had been set up for him among the trees. He was protected by troops from a tank regiment, who stood guard around the clock while Speer kept a low profile and waited for events to unfold elsewhere.

Speer had been one of the last Nazi leaders to leave Berlin before the Russians completed their encirclement of the city. He had had a long meeting with Hitler on the evening of April 23, an awkward farewell in the bunker with an abstracted Führer who had treated his once-favorite architect with an indifference bordering on contempt. Afterward, Speer had been summoned to Eva Braun’s room to say goodbye to her, too. They had sat up until the small hours, two old friends speaking with the candor of people who knew they would never see each other again:

We were able to talk honestly, for Hitler had withdrawn. She was the only prominent candidate for death in this bunker who displayed an admirable and superior composure. While all the others were abnormal—exaltedly heroic like Göbbels, bent on saving his skin like Bormann, exhausted like Hitler, or in total collapse like Frau Göbbels—Eva Braun radiated an almost gay serenity. “How about a bottle of champagne for our farewell? And some sweets? I’m sure you haven’t eaten in a long time.”
1

Speer had been touched by Eva Braun’s concern. In his view, she was the only person in the bunker capable of any humanity, complaining to him about all the killing, asking why so many more people had to die unnecessarily. He had been sorry to leave her when the time had come for him to go.

He had spent a few minutes in the Chancellery before he left, admiring the remnants of the building that he himself had designed. The electricity had gone, so it had been impossible to see much in the dark. Speer had stood in the Court of Honor for a while, trying to picture the splendid architecture above his head. He knew that it lay in ruins, like so much else in Germany. He was worried that there would be very little of the country left, if Hitler in his madness ordered the destruction of the remaining infrastructure before the war’s end in order to deny it to the enemy.

Unknown to Hitler, Speer had secretly made a radio recording in Hamburg a few days earlier. The recording urged the German people to ignore any order from Hitler requiring them to destroy everything before surrendering. Speer considered that enough damage had been done to Germany already. Any more would simply increase the German people’s misery without achieving anything useful. He had decided that Hitler would have to be overruled if he ordered further destruction as a last act of defiance before killing himself:

I wanted to issue a call for resistance, to bluntly forbid any damage to factories, bridges, waterways, railways and communications, and to instruct the soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the home guard to prevent demolitions “with all possible means, using firearms if necessary.” My speech also called for the surrender of political prisoners, including the Jews, unharmed to the occupying troops, and stipulated that prisoners of war and foreign workers should not be prevented from making their way home. It prohibited Werewolf activity and called on villages and cities to surrender without a fight.
2

The speech had been recorded at Hamburg radio station in conditions of utmost secrecy. Two radio engineers had made a gramophone record of it, worrying Speer with their noncommittal expressions as they listened to the treasonable content. The speech had not yet been broadcast and was not going to be until the last possible moment. The dilemma for Speer was to decide when that moment should be.

Hamburg’s Gauleiter, the local Nazi leader and a personal friend of Speer’s, had offered to have the speech broadcast at once. After seeing Hitler for the last time, however, Speer could not bring himself to give his assent. Still mentally in thrall to the Führer, he had come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done for Germany and the drama across the country would just have to run its course. Rather than make speeches to the nation, Speer had taken himself off to Plön instead, where he sat now, waiting in his trailer for the announcement of Hitler’s death that must surely come in the next day or two.

*   *   *

JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP’S MOVEMENTS WERE UNCERTAIN,
but he, too, was somewhere on the way to Plön, traveling by road from Berlin. Like Speer, he had left the city on April 24, just before the Russians arrived. Unlike Speer, though, Ribbentrop had left reluctantly; he would have much preferred to stay behind and share the Führer’s fate in the bunker. But Hitler had refused to allow it. He had no further use for his foreign minister, a man whose advice over the years had rarely been less than disastrous.

The other Nazis had no use for Ribbentrop, either. All the important party members had forsaken him long ago. Dim and pompous, insufferably overbearing, he had made few friends as German foreign minister and had no one to turn to as he headed for Plön. He was so desperate not to be cast out that he had tried to return to Berlin at one point, urgently seeking an aircraft to fly him back to the capital. But his request had been refused, and he had been abandoned to his own devices, no longer the central figure he had once been in the affairs of state.

He had little idea of what to do next as he traveled north. Hitler had told him to make contact with the British and propose an alliance against the Bolsheviks, but his chances of success were almost nonexistent. Hitler had probably only suggested the idea to get rid of him.

Ribbentrop’s immediate plan was to join Dönitz at Plön and wait there until he could contact the British. If all else failed, he was thinking of going to ground in Hamburg after the fighting had stopped, living anonymously in a rented flat for a few months until the dust had settled and he could show his face again. The British were talking of hanging Nazi leaders after the war, but Ribbentrop couldn’t believe they were serious. Hanging was not for people like him. It was for criminals and murderers, not the leaders of a nation. Ribbentrop had never done anything wrong, by his own reckoning. All he had ever done was carry out his orders, and his orders had been given to him by Adolf Hitler.