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 (26 page)
The streets are deserted. There are no more streets. Just torn-up ditches filled with rubble between rows of ruins. What kind of people used to live here? The war had blown them away
.
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, diary entry, 30th April 1945
In Traunstein, Claus and Fritz are digging a grave for the town’s military commander in his housekeeper’s back garden. She is in tears, as she feels responsible for his death. She’d told him she’d heard that American tanks had arrived. As a proud officer who’d never recovered from defeat in the First World War, he could not bear the shame of losing another war.
A white ox is walking through the rubble of the streets of Berlin. Through the bars of her basement window, 34-year-old Ruth Andreas-Friedrich watches it, transfixed by its large gentle eyes and heavy horns. Also watching the ox are other members of the small anti-Nazi resistance group she helped found. For the past few days they have had little water and hardly any food.
They slip out of the basement as quickly as they can, grab the ox by its horns and pull it into a courtyard. They have brought knives with them.
Going to war was the only unselfish thing I have ever done for humanity
.
David Niven
Infantry platoon leader John Eisenhower is walking through a forest by the Mulde River near Leipzig. He is part of the 3323rd SIAM (Signals Information and Monitoring) company; a unit of officers who have been trained as observers, operating between headquarters and the frontline. For the past few weeks he has spent time with Patton’s Third Army, moving at speed throughout Germany, in what a journalist has described as ‘the greatest armoured joy ride in history’.
John has with him a camera that his father the Allied Forces
Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower sent him a few months ago. In it are pictures he took at Buchenwald concentration camp on 14th April. John had tried to conceal the camera for fear of being intrusive, but the inmates repeatedly urged him to take pictures of the emaciated prisoners and hundreds of corpses.
John Eisenhower’s unit is collecting weapons and equipment from German soldiers who have surrendered. As he walks through the forest a German officer suddenly appears. Eisenhower points his pistol at the man’s chest. The officer clicks his heels and gives a Nazi salute, saying, ‘I surrender.’
John Eisenhower is unimpressed. What he’s seen at Buchenwald has made him angry at the way the German army expects to be treated in a civilised manner. Eisenhower thinks that the arrogant Nazi salute is not worthy of a soldier who is, in effect, now a prisoner of war.
‘
Sie saluten comme ça
, do you get it?’ Eisenhower says.
The German bows slightly and follows Eisenhower meekly to his jeep.
John Eisenhower’s mother Mamie has been concerned for her son’s safety ever since he arrived in Europe in November 1944, and hopes that her husband can get John a safer posting
.
The General wrote to Mamie, ‘Don’t forget that I take a beating every day… I constantly receive letters from bereaved mothers, sisters, wives, and from others that are begging me to send their men home, or at least outside the battle zone, to a place of comparative safety… As far as John is concerned, we can do nothing but pray. If I interfered even slightly or indirectly he would be so resentful for the remainder of his life…’
In fact, Eisenhower’s staff have ensured that John is kept away from the battlefield. In the autumn of 1944, General ‘Sandy’ Patch’s son had been killed in action, and Patch was so shattered by the
loss that he was unfit for duty for some time, plus they don’t want John Eisenhower captured by the Germans
.
Encounters like John Eisenhower’s were common in the final days of the war. Many soldiers had to make snap decisions about the German soldiers they encountered. Lieutenant Colonel David Niven of the Rifle Brigade (and Hollywood) was driving his jeep through the countryside near Brunswick when he passed a farm wagon with two men sitting behind the horse with sacks on their backs as protection from the rain. Niven slammed on his brakes. One of them was wearing army boots. Niven pulled out his revolver, walked up to the cart and told the men to put their hands up and get their papers out. The man with the boots didn’t have any papers
.
‘Who are you?’ Niven asked
.
The man gave a name and said he was a general. Instinctively, Niven saluted and told them they could put their hands down
.
‘Where are you coming from, sir?’
‘Berlin,’ the General replied wearily
.
‘Where are you going, sir?’
‘Home, it’s not far now... only one more kilometre.’
After a long pause Niven said, ‘Go ahead, sir, but please cover up your bloody boots.’
The General closed his eyes, sobbed, and the wagon moved on. Years later, David Niven told friends that he wondered if it had been Martin Bormann
.
In the makeshift hospital in Königsberg camp, medical orderly Erika Frölich has won the friendship of the Polish lady who distributes the food in the hospital. As a result people are receiving generous portions. Dr Hans Graf von Lehndorff reckons Erika probably diagnosed the woman’s medical condition – she’s certainly managed to find some pills for her
from somewhere – and has earned her gratitude.
Von Lehndorff watches as Erika hands out soup in metal army bowls to her patients and the medical staff. More sick people are arriving all the time – including some Russian soldiers.
Von Lehndorff tries to remain calm, despite the constant demands and the impatience of the Russians who are never happy with anything. In a small room nearby is a woman Erika has been looking after, who is about to give birth to twins.
On the lawn in front of the camp’s main building, about 50 prisoners are marking out two large Soviet stars in the grass for the May Day celebrations tomorrow. One star is being made out of red pansies planted in the soil, the other made with brick dust.
Two hundred miles to the south in the town of Garmisch, the world-famous composer Richard Strauss is arguing with an American major named Kramers. The US army arrived in the Bavarian town this morning and immediately started looking for places where their troops could be billeted. Strauss’s large house would be perfect for their officers. Kramers’ men have already started moving furniture out and even Strauss’s ill wife has had to move from her room.
Strauss is 81 and his grandson, also called Richard, begs him not to get himself worked up, but he is persisting.
‘I am Richard Strauss, the composer of
Rosenkavalier
and
Salome
,’ he says to Kramers. This has the desired effect – the Major stops what he’s doing and shakes the composer’s hand. He assures Strauss that he and his family will be left alone.
The war has been a difficult time for Richard Strauss. In 1924 his son Franz married Alice von Grab, who is Jewish. Franz and Alice
had two sons, Richard and Christian. Strauss tried unsuccessfully to rescue Alice’s mother from Theresienstadt concentration camp, and then in 1944 Franz and Alice were arrested by the Gestapo. Strauss intervened to save them, agreeing to keep them at his home under house arrest. In his diary at the end of the war he wrote, ‘The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the 12-year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals...’
We have already given away whatever we had in our pockets that was edible or smokable. We can do nothing for these half-dead people except find out what is going on, let them know we care, and then look for help.’
Lieutenant Marcus J. Smith
In Berlin, the ox is lying in a pool of blood. It’s surrounded by men, women and children shouting and screaming as they fight for the meat. Some have brought buckets to take away their spoils. No sooner had the beast been slaughtered than people began to emerge out of the rubble. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich wonders if they could smell the blood. She stands back, watching.
‘The liver belongs to me!’ someone growls.
‘The tongue is mine! The tongue is mine!’ someone else shouts as five people try to pull it out of the ox’s throat.
Ruth walks away feeling utterly miserable. She writes later today in her diary, ‘So that is what the hour of liberation amounts to. Is this the moment we have awaited for 12 years? That we might fight over an ox’s liver?’
In the prison hospital at Dachau, medical officer Lieutenant
Marcus J. Smith has met some of the inmates who volunteered as doctors, and are doing what they can with primitive and inadequate supplies. They are weak and confused. One is a Spanish doctor who has been in Dachau since the Spanish Civil War. Another, a French doctor who served in the trenches in the First World War, showed Smith how to recognise typhus fever – something he has never seen before.
Smith is thinking about lines from John Milton’s
Paradise Lost
:
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast
View’d first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest… shades of death…
Where all life dies, death lives…
Abominable, inutterable, and worse…
With the support of the tank fire and the heavy artillery that has arrived over Moltke Bridge into the heart of the capital, the 150th Rifle Division have reached the moat surrounding the Reichstag.
About 11.30am/12.30pm UK time
At Chequers, Churchill is still in bed working, surrounded by papers and smoking a cigar. He’s dictating to Marian Holmes – one of his secretaries. Marian suddenly smells burning – and it’s not the cigar. John Peck, another of the duty secretaries, comes in and starts pointing frantically at the Prime Minister. Cigar ash has set light to the lapel of his bedjacket, and Churchill is so absorbed in his work he hasn’t noticed.
John Peck says, ‘You’re on fire, sir. May I put you out?’
‘Yes, do,’ Churchill replies unconcerned.
Churchill’s habit of working in bed could be off-putting for his staff. Lieutenant Commander Baird-Murray, who worked in Churchill’s Map Room, recalled, ‘It was sometimes disconcerting when reporting to him at 8am as he lay in bed, as Nelson, his big black cat, was usually jumping about on the bed playing with his toes moving about under the blanket, but nevertheless no detail however small escaped him.’
Composer Richard Strauss is at the piano of his house in Garmisch playing a waltz from
Rosenkavalier
. His audience consists of American soldiers, who shortly before were clearing out the house to make it into an army billet, but are now holding signed photographs of Strauss and enjoying the delightful music.
In the Führerbunker Eva Hitler is dressed, made up, ready, at a loose end. She asks Traudl Junge to come into her room. ‘I can’t bear to be alone with my thoughts.’
It’s hard to know what to talk about. They try to remember happier times. The spring in their home town of Munich. Eva Hitler suddenly leaps up and opens her wardrobe. She pulls out a silver fox fur which has been one of her favourite coats. She holds it towards Traudl Junge. ‘Frau Junge, I’d like to give you this coat as a goodbye present.’ She fondles the soft fur. ‘I always love seeing well-dressed women. I like the thought of you wearing it – I want you to have it now and enjoy it.’ She holds the coat open and Junge slips her arms into the sleeves and pulls it around her. ‘Thank you,’ she says. She feels very moved, though she can’t imagine where and when she might wear it.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch armed forces, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, is being driven through the streets of a small town named Achterveld, just a few miles inside Allied lines. The Prince is married to Juliana, the heir to the Dutch throne; many of the streets have Dutch flags flying as today is her birthday. Some people are leaning out of their windows shouting greetings to him.
‘How’s the Princess?’
‘It’s good to see you again!’
The Prince is heading for St Josef’s School, where a meeting will take place that will decide the fate of the Dutch people.
Two days ago a meeting at St Josef’s between the Allied delegation led by Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand, and the German delegation led by Ernst Schwebel, reached an agreement that the Germans would not fire on Allied planes dropping food to the starving Dutch. Since yesterday morning, Operation Manna has been progressing well, with about a thousand tons of food dropped on four designated zones marked by white crosses and red lights.
Also making his way to St Josef’s is the man who today will lead the German delegation to hammer out the terms of the truce: the hated Reich Commissioner in the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. In 1939 Hitler appointed him Deputy Governor of Poland, where he enthusiastically persecuted the country’s Jewish population. In Holland he oversaw the deportation of thousands of Dutch Jews to concentration camps, and 400,000 people to Germany as labourers. In the past few weeks the killing has continued, with the SS carrying out mass public executions, while Seyss-Inquart has been trying to save his own skin by negotiating a separate peace with the Allies.
Earlier in April, to Seyss-Inquart’s fury, the Dutch resistance stole his car, with its distinctive number plate
RK1
(
Reichskommissar 1
). What he doesn’t yet know is that Prince Bernhard, who spotted it last night in a nearby town, is currently being driven in it.
Tomorrow is 1st May, and I shall sign off this letter to you, and meanwhile the guns are thundering here, they’re making things good and hot for the Fritzes... there’s no time to sleep, we’re hammering and hammering away at them, luckily we have no shortage of shells
.
Pyotor Zevelyov, a Russian soldier