Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany (21 page)

The Allied POWs of Stalag VII-A have been celebrating their
liberation by cooking the produce the GIs brought with them, and a lucky few have been smoking cigars. Now they are being told by the Americans that the news of the liberation of their camp was read out on the BBC an hour ago.

Major Elliott Viney writes in his diary of the joy of a better diet at last, ‘A bash [celebration] lunch and a potato-less dinner. So ends four years, eleven months and one day.’

Hitler is sitting at the table in the Führerbunker conference room, reading a transcript of a radio broadcast which announces the death of Mussolini. The announcement of Il Duce’s death was accidentally picked up by an orderly who was trying to tune a shortwave radio. Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, is standing behind him. One of Linge’s responsibilities is to ensure that the Führer has access to pencils, spectacles, magnifying glasses, atlases and compasses at all times. On this occasion Hitler needs neither spectacles nor a magnifying glass as the transcript has been typed on a special typewriter in extra-large Führer font. He does, however, require a pencil, which he uses to underline three words: ‘hanging upside down’.

Hitler’s mind turns immediately to the question of the timing of his suicide. He has not completely given up hope that Berlin can be relieved. Oblivious to military realities, he envisages a multiple assault: General Wenck’s 12th Army, with the support of General Busse’s 9th Army, attacking in the south, and General Rudolf Holste’s Panzer Corps in the north. As the telephone no longer works, he orders Rochus Misch to send a radio message to General Alfred Jodl to try to establish the military position:

‘Inform me immediately:

1. Where are Wenck’s spearheads?

2. When will they attack?

3. Where is the 9th Army?

4.
Where is the 9th Army going to break through?

5. Where are Holste’s spearheads?’

Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven, the three young officers who are trying to escape to Wenck’s 12th Army, have become trapped in a shelter in the south-west corner of the Tiergarten. Berlin’s great park resembles no-man’s-land from the last war. It is full of muddy craters, and the trees are shredded to ribbons. The shelter is so tightly packed with people that it is difficult to breathe and impossible to sit. The three men have no idea how they are going to find the River Havel in the darkness of this moonless night. A colonel from the Home Guard, very impressed by the fact that these men have come from the Führerbunker, offers them use of an armoured vehicle and a guide.

In the long gallery at Chequers, Churchill is watching a movie with some of his staff. One of his secretaries leaves the room
to take a call. It is a message from the staff of Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander saying that the German Army in Italy has surrendered. Delighted at the news, Churchill dictates a telegram for Stalin: ‘It looks therefore as if the entire German forces south of the Alps will almost immediately surrender.’

Johannmeier, Lorenz and Zander, the three couriers who are carrying Hitler’s testaments, have climbed down underneath Pichelsdorf Bridge. They manage to find two small rowing boats. Johannmeier takes one, Zander and Lorenz the other. They set off, under cover of darkness, south down the River Havel. They plan to row for about ten kilometres to the Wannsee bridgehead where they hope to find Wenck’s 12th Army. Behind them the smouldering capital glows red, ahead the darkness of the river on a moonless night.

Lieutenant Claus Sellier is lying awake in the straw of Barbara’s alpine barn, pondering what to do next. Fritz is asleep close by. In Claus’s jacket is the second of the two packages that they’ve been asked to deliver by their camp commander. This one has
to go to the army provision headquarters at Traunstein about 20 kilometres to the north.

After arriving at the barn, they spent the rest of the afternoon splitting wood and helping prepare the evening meal. They talked about the war and reassured the girls that, despite rumours in the village, when black GIs arrive, they won’t eat them alive. Claus told them about 23-year-old Jesse Owens, the black American athlete who won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and had become friends with his German competitors.

Protecting Barbara and the girls seems more important than their army mission right now. He and Fritz could use Barbara’s father’s clothes and pretend to be farmers until he comes home. Yet he has a duty to finish their task. Undecided, Claus can’t get to sleep.

Off the Arctic Coast U-boat captain Willi Dietrich and his crew on the
U-286
are still celebrating the success of their attack on HMS
Goodall
. But the convoy escorts are hunting for them – and the frigate HMS
Loch Insh
has detected a strong signal. As the ship passes above
U-286
, Captain Edward Dempster orders depth charges to be released. All 51 men on board
U-286
are killed.

In a camp run by the Soviet law enforcement agency the NKVD (a forerunner of the KGB) in Rothenstein on the outskirts of
the East Prussian city of Königsberg, 35-year-old Dr Hans Graf von Lehndorff is helping carry the last of 400 patients up to the second floor of his makeshift hospital. Yesterday the number of patients dying increased dramatically as dysentery and typhoid spread through the camp, and the Russians want the diseases contained. The camp is being used to detain and interrogate prisoners (including Jews who had looked forward to being liberated by the Russians). Many are kept in a large cellar that is so crowded the inmates are forced to stand.

Von Lehndorff looks with dismay at the second floor of the hospital. A group of Polish prisoners have been forcibly removed to make way for the 400 patients, and have left the rooms in
a disgusting state. Von Lehndorff and the other medics lack mops and water to clean the floor, but they do what they can. Some of the sick are in bed, others are lying on the floor or on the wooden boards on which they were carried up. Von Lehndorff had hoped to put them in rooms according to their illness, but there’s only been time to separate the men from the women.

The move hasn’t helped the patients – if anything they are in a worse state than before, as the rooms are draughty with most of the window panes having been broken or stolen. The Russian officers who have been supervising the move have now gone back to their barracks for the night.

Von Lehndorff has learned over the weeks how to deal with the Red Army. He wrote in his diary a few days ago, ‘One gradually assumes the attitude of a lion-tamer… To show fear is to fare worst of all with them, it provokes them visibly to attack. Audacity, on the other hand, can get one a surprisingly long way...’

The driver of the armoured car which has been put at the disposal of the three officers escaping the bunker, Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven, decides he can’t go any further through the rubble-strewn streets. The three officers get out at the Olympic Stadium where a Hitler Youth unit is based. This is the vast, circular amphitheatre where, nine years earlier, Hitler hoped to display to the world the supremacy of the Aryan race, but was in fact confronted by the brilliance of the black American athletes who won 14 medals between them. The building is one of the very few in the city which remains almost completely unscathed by the war. It is empty except for a small number of teenage soldiers. The three men find some shelter and try to get some sleep.

In the Arctic seas the skipper of HMS
Loch Insh
, Edward Dempster, is still on the hunt for the rest of U-boat wolf-pack
Faust
.
Loch Insh
’s sonar picks up another strong signal. Dempster again orders depth charges. This time
U-307
is hit. Badly damaged, the submarine surfaces, and the crew of the
Loch Insh
are able to pick up 14 survivors out of the 51 German submariners.

U-307
is the last U-boat of the war to be destroyed. There are no further attacks from the remaining 12 U-boats that make up
Faust
. The final Arctic convoy is able to continue its journey and arrives in the Clyde docks in Scotland on VE Day, 8th May.

In the Führerbunker switchboard room, Rochus Misch falls asleep with his head on the telephone junction box.

At Chequers, although the film is over, Churchill is up late dictating telegrams. One sent to Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander in Italy congratulates him on the German surrender there: ‘The British, Americans, New Zealanders, South Africans, British-Indians, Poles, Jews, Brazilians, and strong forces of liberated Italians have all marched together in that high comradeship and unity of men fighting for freedom and for the deliverance of mankind. This great final battle in Italy will stand out in history as one of the most famous episodes in the Second World War.’