Read Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany Online
Authors: Emma Craigie,Jonathan Mayo
Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany (13 page)
The men have already got into an exhausting routine. To keep tabs on the meetings of the 46 nations represented at the talks, as well the discussions about the role of the Security Council and the General Assembly, they find themselves having to
cross town all day. Having spoken to the key chairmen in each committee around 6pm, Cooke then writes his daily piece for the
Manchester Guardian
. Then the two men broadcast live on the BBC, and because of the time difference, don’t finish until 2am. They’ll be in bed in a couple of hours’ time.
Another key part of Cooke’s day is telephoning and writing to the woman for whom he has recently left his wife – a war widow named Jane Hawks. Exactly a year later they will be in San Francisco on their honeymoon.
Cooke has filed his piece for Monday’s
Manchester Guardian
. It includes the remarkable moment at about 2pm the previous afternoon when, in the middle of a very dull speech at the conference, a delegate from Honduras held up a newspaper with a large headline printed in red saying ‘Nazis Quit’. The delegate was then surrounded by photographers glad of something interesting to shoot. Cooke wrote, ‘Mr Vyacheslav Molotov [the Russian Foreign Minister] rose and smiled and bowed in what seemed like an acknowledgement of the longed-for news. He motioned the delegates to sit, and the translation that nobody now listened to droned on.’ President Truman issued a statement an hour later denying the ‘Nazis quit’ rumour.
For seven weeks Cooke and Wigan reported from the conference. The
Manchester Guardian
paid Cooke five cents a word – he made $2,025 by the time the conference disbanded. Cooke filed his last
American Commentary
in August 1945, and soon after he started a weekly
American Letter,
that in 1950 became
Letter from America.
It ran for almost 60 years
.
‘Molotov’ is an alias derived from the Russian word for hammer. The Minister is tough and uncompromising, and in Churchill’s words ‘a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness’. Molotov carries out Stalin’s wishes to the letter, especially
as he knows that the Russian leader is suspicious of his Jewish wife Polina who has a brother living in the United States. Stalin has arrested the wives of colleagues in the past.
The dour-looking Molotov has a softer side. While in San Francisco he is writing to Polina almost every day. One letter began: ‘Polinka, darling, my love! I’m overcome with impatience and desire for your closeness and caresses...’
About halfway between the concentration camps in Buchenwald and Theresienstadt, an Allied air raid drops bombs close to a long line of Jewish prisoners who are on a forced march away from the advancing Russians. Many of the prisoners use the distraction this causes to try to escape. About 1,000 are caught and shot, about 1,700 continue, but many are too weak and sick to even attempt to run in the first place. When they arrive at Theresienstadt on 7th May there are only 500 survivors.
Hitler’s valet Heinz Linge knocks on Hitler’s bedroom door. For the last six years it has been Linge’s job to time the Führer getting dressed. Linge holds a stopwatch and when Hitler shouts ‘
Los!
’ he sets it going and the dressing race begins. In the early days the faster he got dressed, the better the Führer’s mood, but as he has become more disabled the game has become more of a rarity. This morning Hitler has completed the race before it has even begun. He is lying on his bed fully clothed. Except for his tie. There is a special ritual for the tie. Hitler stands in front of the mirror with his eyes closed.
‘
Los
.’
As Linge does up the tie, Hitler counts the seconds. ‘
Fertig!
’ Hitler opens his eyes and checks the tie in the mirror.
Hitler’s barber, August Wollenhaupt, knocks and comes in to the bedroom. The Führer has already shaved himself, but Wollenhaupt attends to the hair and moustache which require fortnightly trimming. The moustache is designed to cover his unusually large nostrils. The style has come from America, where it is known as the toothbrush moustache. Both Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney sport them. In Bavaria it is known as a
Rotzbremse
, ‘snot break’. Putzi Hanfstaengl, who knew Hitler from the beer halls of Munich in the 1920s, told him he should grow it right across the top of his mouth, ‘Look at the portraits of Holbein and Van Dyck; the old masters would never have dreamed of such an ugly fashion.’ Hitler replied, ‘Don’t worry about my moustache. If it’s not the fashion now, if will be later, because I wear it.’ By April 1945 its brief period of popularity is very much over.
In the past the barber’s work has also been timed, in a good-humoured way. Wollenhaupt likes the Führer, finds him ‘genial’, softly spoken and appreciates the fact that he always asks after his family, and is interested to hear the word on the street.
Hitler’s bedroom is small and simply furnished. The only ornaments are two framed photographs beside the bed. One is of Hitler’s mother Klara who died when he was 17. The other is of his first and long-term driver, Emil Maurice.
Maurice was an early member of the Nazi Party. He was imprisoned with Hitler in 1923 in Landsberg Prison where Hitler dictated part of the first draft of
Mein Kampf
to him. The two men remained close, working and holidaying together until a dramatic falling-out in 1931
.
For the six years up to 1931 Hitler had been living with his half-sister and her daughter, Geli Raubal, in Munich. Geli Raubal, now
23, was his constant companion. They went to shows, concerts, restaurants, picnics in the countryside and even clothes shopping together. Rumours about the nature of their relationship were widespread. However, Raubal and Maurice were secretly having an affair and when Hitler discovered this he flew into one of his infamous rages. Maurice feared for his life as Hitler threatened him with a gun and chased him around the house, cracking his hippopotamus hide riding whip. Maurice lost his job and later sued Hitler for unpaid wages, with partial success
.
Hitler then introduced strict rules forbidding Geli Raubal from going out of the house without him, unless she had a chaperone. ‘My uncle is a monster. No one can imagine what he demands of me…’ she protested, a complaint which her friends interpreted in different ways
.
On 18th September 1931 Hitler and Raubal had a violent argument shortly before he left for Nuremberg. The following morning she was found dead of a gunshot wound in Hitler’s apartment. The gun that fired the fatal shot was Hitler’s. The official verdict was suicide but Hitler was forced to issue a statement denying any involvement
.
Having left Hitler’s service as his personal driver, Maurice joined the SS. There were rumours that Maurice worked for Hitler as an assassin. In 1935, following the introduction of the racial purity laws, Himmler wanted to expel Maurice from the SS because of his Jewish great-grandparents. However, Hitler intervened and Maurice was given the official status of ‘Honorary Aryan’. He seems to have paid Maurice a sinecure for the rest of his life, and chose his picture as one of the few personal items he took into the bunker
.
Linge administers cocaine drops to Hitler’s right eye, which has been causing intense pain for the last few days, and has been problematic in bright light for many years. He also gives Hitler a packet of pastilles to suck throughout the day. These are Dr
Koester’s Anti-Gas Pills, which Hitler takes for his stomach cramps and flatulence. They contain a mix of two deadly poisons: strychnine and atropine (belladonna). Linge always carries spare pastilles, and spare reading glasses. Although Hitler never wears glasses in public, at meetings, Linge later recalled, ‘he would toy with them in his hands which often resulted in them getting broken when he got tense’.
A week ago Hitler had furiously dismissed Theodor Morell, his personal doctor, accusing him of trying to sedate him with morphine in order to whisk him out of the capital. Morell had, at the earliest opportunity, flown out of the bunker himself and was now in Obersalzberg with Eva’s family. He left behind a cabinet of medicines and medical equipment including glucose and amphetamine injections, which he had used daily to boost the Führer’s energy. At one point Hitler was taking 28 different pills and injections every day. Morell had been treating Hitler for nine years and, until his unexpected dismissal, Hitler would hear no criticism of him. He recommended Morell to all the senior Nazis, most of whom suffered from symptoms of stress, but Himmler, Göring and Speer all privately regarded the nervous, overweight doctor as a quack. Hitler himself was a hypochondriac but, as well as numerous stress-related conditions, was now suffering from a heart problem and Parkinson’s disease
.
Hitler sends Linge to bring Wulf, his favourite of the puppies born to his Alsatian Blondi in the bunker. As was evident in the First World War when his only friend was a terrier he called Foxl, Hitler is a great dog lover. He is particularly attached to Blondi, whom he believes to be exceptionally clever and sophisticated. In an interview given by Traudl Junge towards the end of her life, Hitler’s secretary remembered that Blondi could provide Hitler with a whole evening’s entertainment. She
barks on command, and when he gives the order to ‘sing’ she produces a howl. Hitler is most proud of the fact that if he then instructs her to ‘sing like Zarah Leander’ – the Swedish singer of a popular song called ‘
Wunderbar
’, famed for her deep voice – Blondi gives a special deep howl. Hitler boasts about Blondi endlessly, telling everyone that she obeys his every word.
General Krebs asks von Loringhoven and Boldt, the two officers who are planning their exit from the bunker, to update him on the morning’s runner reports in preparation for the midday situation conference with the Führer. They are ready with their maps and papers. Boldt points out the streets where the German forces are making strenuous efforts to hold back the Russians. The other news of the morning has been confusing and contradictory except for the report that Wenck’s 12th Army is southwest of the capital.
Von Loringhoven takes his chance.
‘General, would it be useful if Boldt and I were to make speedy contact with General Wenck? We could give him the true picture of the situation in Berlin and in the Reich Chancellery. We could urge him to break through to the city as soon as possible and could indeed guide him on the best route for his attack.’
Boldt nods. ‘There is very little left for us to do here in the bunker now that the telecommunications are down.’
Krebs hesitates. He is not sure what the Führer will make of the plan. General Burgdorf suddenly appears. He’s come to see if Krebs wants a drink. Burgdorf is much more enthusiastic about the officers’ proposal than Krebs. He wants his adjutant Rudolf Weiss to go with them. Martin Bormann then comes in; he’s also wondering about a drink.
Generals Krebs and Burgdorf form what von Loringhoven calls a triumvirate of drinkers with Martin Bormann. The three men are spending most of their time sitting in the bunker corridors drinking schnapps. From time to time they cruise over to the Reich Chancellery where a kind of mass hysteria, fuelled by the endless supply of alcohol in the cellars, has led to a relaxing of sexual inhibitions. The young women in the Reich Chancellery are seen as fair game
.
Bormann’s philandering has the support of his wife Gerda, the mother of his ten children. Just over a year ago he wrote to her with the proud news that he had succeeded in seducing the actress Manja Behrens. Gerda wrote straight back with her congratulations and offering to welcome Manja into their household. She goes on to suggest that, given the terrible decline in the production of Aryan children as a result of the war, they should arrange a system of motherhood by shifts ‘so that you always have a wife who is usable’
.
Burgdorf explains to Martin Bormann the idea of sending the three officers to General Wenck and, to the astonishment of Boldt and von Loringhoven, Bormann also likes the plan. Krebs is finally persuaded. Now the Führer must be convinced.
General Walther Wenck is attempting to break through the Russian encirclement of Berlin from the south and has obeyed Hitler’s recent orders to disengage from fighting the Americans in the west in order to fight the Soviet troops. However, his motives are secretly at odds with the Führer’s. Wenck no longer believes that it is possible to defend the capital. His aim is to try and create a corridor through which civilians and soldiers can make their escape. A week ago he addressed his young soldiers and explained their mission: ‘It’s not about Berlin any more, it’s not about the Reich any more’. Their aim is to save lives
.
‘Identification please!’
A young SS officer has stopped his truck behind Claus Sellier and his friend Fritz and shouts at them from the cab. The two men are instantly irritated by the officer’s attitude. Fritz shows his papers and says, ‘I’m glad you showed up, you can take us to Traunstein.’
‘Sorry, I can’t take you, I’ve no room.’ The SS officer points to the men in the back of the truck. ‘My orders are to take these soldiers to a position where they can defend the road.’
Fritz angrily pulls out a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket, saying, ‘What is your name? State your rank and your unit number! Did you never read military regulations? It says you are supposed to help an officer who has an important mission, under any circumstances. Do I understand correctly that you’re refusing to take us?’
Stunned, the SS officer gets quickly out of the cab and salutes them.
‘
Heil Hitler
!’
Claus and Fritz return the salute but with little enthusiasm, and follow the officer up into the cab. As they set off, Fritz takes his time writing the SS officer’s name in his book. Seeing this, the officer tries to impress his new passengers and make amends.