Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II (6 page)

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HERMANN GÖRING
had just arrived in Austria, a prisoner at his family castle in Mauterndorf. He was being watched over by the SS, who had orders to shoot him as soon as Berlin fell to the Russians.

Unlike the other Nazi leaders, Göring had gone south after leaving Berlin, heading initially for Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. He had expected Hitler to join him there, only to discover later that the Führer intended to die in Berlin instead. Disconcerted, Göring wondered if this meant that he was supposed to succeed Hitler as Führer in accordance with the decree of 1941 that required him to take over if Hitler’s freedom of action were restricted or if he were in any other way incapacitated.

Unsure of his ground, Göring had telegraphed Hitler on April 23 to find out:

My Führer! Following your decision to remain in the Berlin fortress, do you agree that I should take command of the Reich, as stipulated in the decree of 29 June 1941, with full powers, both internal and external?

If I receive no reply before 2200 hours, I shall assume that you no longer enjoy freedom of action and I shall act on my own initiative.
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Unfortunately for Göring, his telegram had been intercepted in the bunker by Martin Bormann, perhaps his bitterest enemy among the other Nazis. Bormann had wasted no time in persuading Hitler that Göring was plotting to overthrow him and seize power. He had urged Hitler to have Göring shot at once. But Hitler had demurred, responding instead with a telegram to Göring insisting that he, Hitler, remained in full control:

Decree of 29 June 1941 is rescinded by my special instruction. My freedom of action remains total. I forbid any move by you of the kind you have indicated.
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Hitler’s telegram had been followed by another, drafted by Bormann, who had ambitions to become Führer himself if anything happened to Hitler:

Hermann Göring. Your action represents high treason against the Führer and National Socialism. The penalty for treason is death. But in view of your earlier services to the party, the Führer will not inflict this supreme penalty if you resign all your offices. Answer yes or no.
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Göring had not had time to reply before the SS arrived to arrest him. More than a hundred soldiers had surrounded his house at Berchtesgaden, confining Göring to his room at gunpoint and refusing to let him see his wife and daughter. The men almost certainly had orders from Bormann to shoot Göring out of hand, but were reluctant to comply. Instead, they had contented themselves with keeping him under close arrest, as his wife bitterly recalled:

Armed SS men invaded the house and I had to go to my room. I sat down, almost paralysed, unable to collect my thoughts. For the second time that day I had the impression of dreaming and of having left reality behind me. Some twenty minutes went by. Unable to bear it any longer, I tried to rejoin my husband but a guard was standing in front of the door of his study and prevented me from entering. After about an hour, Hermann came out to dine with us, under the watchful eyes of the SS. It hardly needs to be said that none of us were able to swallow a mouthful. But at least we were still together. From my seat at the table I could see the photograph of Adolf Hitler hanging on the wall. I had a sudden desire to tear it down and throw it out!
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A day later, Berchtesgaden had been bombed by the Allies. Escorted by U.S. Mustangs, Lancasters of the Royal Air Force had appeared shortly after first light, targeting Hitler’s house at the Berghof. They had flown so low that Flight Sergeant Cutting, a rear gunner on one of the Lancasters, had seen the flash of the bombs as they hit the Berghof, and Flying Officer Coster had watched the neighboring SS barracks going up in smoke. Göring’s house had been damaged, too, the roof collapsing and the stairs giving way as he and his family huddled together in the cellar. Emmy Göring had prayed without success for a direct hit to kill them all and put them out of their misery.

The damage had been so extensive that it had proved impossible to remain in Berchtesgaden after the raid. Göring had persuaded the SS to move them to Mauterndorf instead, fifty miles away in Austria. He owned the castle there, which he had inherited from his Jewish stepfather. Formerly the summer palace of the archbishops of Salzburg, it stood on a promontory high above the town, heavily restored in medieval style by his stepfather.

The move had been traumatic. One of the SS had discreetly advised Emmy Göring to insist on traveling in the same car as her husband for the journey, to prevent him from being executed on the way. A chauffeur had taken charge of her jewel case, only to abscond with it en route. Other people had deserted too, quietly abandoning the Görings to their fate. The castle itself had been cold and forbidding when they arrived, a cheerless place that Emmy Göring had never liked. It was said to have a secret passage that led underground to the market square in Mauterndorf, but that was little comfort to the Görings with an SS guard gazing unblinkingly at them from every corner.

The Görings were waiting on events now, in common with everyone else. The SS had orders to shoot Göring in due course, but their orders might easily be overridden by developments in Berlin. The SS were in several different minds about what to do. The Luftwaffe was a factor as well, outraged at the idea of its erstwhile commander being murdered by a gang of thugs. The Luftwaffe had little time for Göring, but even less for the SS. There was talk, some of it encouraged by sympathizers in the SS, of the Luftwaffe making an attack on the castle to rescue Göring and protect him from his captors if the worse should come to the worst. But that was a bridge they would only cross when they came to it.

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FOR RUDOLF HESS,
far away in South Wales, there were no bridges to cross anymore. Following his dramatic flight to Scotland in 1941, he had been a prisoner at Maindiff Court, an outpost of Abergavenny’s mental hospital, since June 1942. Hess had spent the day in his room, as usual, hard at work on his memoirs. He had been writing all afternoon, covering sheet after sheet of foolscap with his ramblings, pausing only at half past six to call for a hot water bottle to ease the stomach pains, perhaps imaginary, that were causing him so much distress.

It was a race against time for Hess. He knew the war was almost over. He had known it ever since the American army crossed the Rhine at Remagen, using specially trained Jews to hypnotize the Germans and prevent them from defending the bridge. Hess was determined to get his memoirs down on paper before the end came. It was most important that he did:

I had been imprisoned for four years now with lunatics; I had been at the mercy of their torture without being able to inform anybody of this, and without being able to convince the Swiss Minister that this was so; nor of course was I able to enlighten the lunatics about their own condition …

Outside my garden lunatics walked up and down with loaded rifles! Lunatics surrounded me in the house! When I went for a walk, lunatics walked in front of and behind me—all in the uniform of the British army.
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Hess kept scribbling until it was time for dinner. He ate a hearty meal and then began writing again immediately afterward. He continued writing far into the night. It was the only agreeable occupation that remained to him, now that the lunatics had taken over the asylum.

PART TWO

SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 1945

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CHAOS IN ITALY

BLOOD WAS OOZING FROM THE BACK
of the moving van as Audisio’s partisans drove the bodies of Mussolini and the others to Milan in the dark. They were stopped several times on the way by American troops, who flagged them down at road blocks and examined Audisio’s credentials by flashlight. Trusting to luck that the Americans wouldn’t notice the blood, Audisio produced a pass from partisan headquarters signed by a U.S. intelligence officer and told them he was traveling on the orders of the Committee of National Liberation.

They reached Milan just before 11:00 p.m. on April 28. Audisio stopped to make a telephone call at the Pirelli works on the Via Fabio Filzi and was surprised to find himself arrested by another band of partisans as he returned to the van. He and his men were accused of being Fascists and lined up against the factory wall with their faces to the brickwork. Audisio could hardly credit what was happening as he tried to protest, only to be told that he would be shot out of hand if he opened his mouth again. The corpses in the van and the list of Fascists in his possession had convinced his captors that he, too, was a Fascist, removing Mussolini’s body to a place of safety. It wasn’t until after 2:00 a.m. on April 29 that a partisan officer arrived from headquarters to identify Audisio and his men and order their immediate release.

The van continued on its way, heading for the Piazzale Loreto in the center of Milan. It drove along the Viale Padova, waking a man named Giuseppe Marchi, who rushed to the window to see what was happening. Bypassed by the American army en route to the north, Milan had been seized by the partisans four days earlier. An orgy of killing had followed as Fascists were arrested en masse and old scores settled. Hundreds of people had died and the fight was still continuing as rival groups struggled for control. A heavy motor vehicle driving through the deserted streets in the middle of the night was an obvious cause for concern at a very nervous time. Marchi watched discreetly through the gap in the shutters and did not return to bed until he saw the van disappear safely in the direction of the Piazzale Loreto.

It arrived sometime after 3:00 a.m. The Piazzale was a vast open space at the junction of five main roads. The partisans had just renamed it the Square of the Fifteen Martyrs, in memory of the hostages shot at the filling station there in August 1944. The van drew up at the same spot, and the bodies of Mussolini and the others were thrown out, dumped in a heap beside the now-derelict garage, to show that the martyrs had been avenged and that justice, after a fashion, had been done.

The bodies remained where they had fallen until daybreak. They were guarded by eight of Audisio’s men, too exhausted after forty-eight hours without sleep to do anything except slump wearily against the girders of the building as dawn came up over the city. The news of Mussolini’s execution had already leaked out and was spreading rapidly as passersby came to see for themselves. By 8:00 a.m., a large crowd had gathered and was growing larger by the minute, as more and more people came hurrying in from all over Milan. Some wore partisan armbands and carried rifles and shotguns with them. Others were in their Sunday best, on their way to Mass until their attention had been caught by all the commotion.

Somebody hauled the bodies apart and tried to lay them out in order. Clara Petacci was placed against the legs of her brother Marcello, with Mussolini’s head on her breast. Two young men emerged from the crowd and began to mutilate Mussolini’s body, stamping repeatedly on his head and kicking his jaw until his face was completely disfigured. Somebody else shoved a stick into his hand and closed his fingers around it while the crowd cheered. Then a woman appeared with a gun and emptied five shots into his chest, one for each of the sons she had lost in the war.

The crowd quickly became hysterical at that, determined to have its revenge on Mussolini. Audisio’s men lost control as the mob surged forward. Warning shots were fired, but no one took any notice. The mob fell on the bodies, spitting and snarling, lashing out with their boots and fists, yelling obscenities at the corpses. Audisio’s men sprayed them with a hose, to little effect. The people were determined to have their pound of flesh, venting their frustration on the bodies of Mussolini and his cronies for all the miseries they had suffered in the long years of war.

“Who do you want to see?” yelled a man in shirtsleeves, his bare arms covered in blood as he held up a corpse.
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The crowd roared out one name, then another. The man held them up in turn, one after the other, all the Fascist leaders who had been Mussolini’s accomplices in the war. He held up Mussolini, too, his eyes wide open as his head lolled forward, and Clara Petacci, her face bruised and her thighs caked with blood as she flopped in the man’s arms. The crowd was delighted. They bayed for more.

“Higher!” people yelled. “Higher! We can’t see.”

Somebody produced a rope. One end was thrown over a girder. Mussolini’s body was hauled up by the ankles until everyone could catch a glimpse of him, dangling upside down above the crowd. Clara followed,her nakedness in full view as her skirt fell over her face. A woman was jeered as she stood on a stepladder to tie the skirt back between Clara’s legs. Clara’s features were relatively serene, despite the battering she had taken. She remained a beautiful woman, even in death. But Mussolini looked ghastly, his face a swollen mess, his lips drawn back from his teeth like a baboon’s.

The crowd exulted at the sight. Thousands hooted in derision as the man they had so recently applauded in life hung limp and forlorn beside his mistress, part of his skull missing from a bullet wound in the head. Their bodies were swiftly joined by two others, strung up alongside them like a row of carcasses in a butcher’s shop. Jim Roper, one of the first war correspondents to reach Milan with the advancing Americans, arrived just in time to see the bodies twisting in the wind:

Mussolini’s face was ashen gray. His dark jowls hung loosely. He wore a nondescript military jacket and gray riding breeches of the Italian militia, which had a tiny red stripe down the sides. But the air of splendor which once surrounded the blacksmith’s son who rose to become the world’s first dictator was gone. His body, which had been manhandled many times, was covered with grime. He wore high black boots, but there was no luster left in their polish.
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The bodies had been hanging for some time when a truck arrived, bringing another of Mussolini’s henchmen for execution. Achille Starace had been a Fascist since 1920, a fanatical supporter of Il Duce’s from the first. As party secretary, he had persecuted Jews and identified himself very closely with Mussolini’s cult of personality. Now he was forced to pay the price as the partisans took their revenge.
The
New Yorker
’s Philip Hamburger joined Roper in time to see it: