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 (5 page)
As Payne-Best tries to read the piece of paper Fritz is waving around, Fritz assures him that all the SS will fight to the last and will never be taken prisoner. What Payne-Best can just make out is a long list of names and an order that they should be executed if there is a risk of them falling into Allied hands. The other guard mutters drunkenly, half fumbling for his pistol, ‘Shoot them all – bump them all off is best.’
The names on the list are the most famous of Payne-Best’s fellow prisoners – 120 of them – currently asleep upstairs in the Bachmann and other hotels and houses around Villabassa. They are all considered by the Germans to be
Prominente
– prisoners who are politically or socially well connected and could be used as bargaining tools in negotiations with the Allies. The 120 range in age from three to 73. For the past few weeks they have been moved by the Germans away from the advancing Russians. Last Wednesday, they left Dachau concentration camp where they’d been for eight days.
The prisoners on Fritz’s list include Léon Blum, former Prime Minister of France and his wife; Pastor Martin Niemoller, an outspoken critic of Hitler and a founder of the Confessing Church – a Protestant movement founded to oppose Nazism, and a fellow prisoner with Payne-Best in Dachau a few weeks ago – and Kurt von Schuschnigg, the former Chancellor of Austria, his wife and three-year-old daughter. Part of von Schuschnigg’s punishment for trying to assert Austria’s independence before Hitler annexed the country was to clean the toilets of his SS guards with his own toothbrush and towel. They would then force him to clean his teeth.
‘Now Fritz,’ Payne-Best says, ‘surely you don’t intend to take part in my killing?’
‘
Ja,
Herr Best – but what can I do? You are all going up to a hotel in the mountains tomorrow which, after you have all been shot, will be set on fire.’
Then Fritz has an idea.
‘I will tell you what I will do. I will give you a sign before they start shooting and you can come and stand near me so I can give you a shot in the back of the head… You won’t know anything about it.’
He pulls out his pistol.
‘Turn around and I will show you.’
‘Don’t be silly! How can I see what you’re doing behind my back – why, you might have an accident and shoot me now!’
Fritz turns to his drunk colleague.
‘You turn your head so I can show Herr Best how to give the
Nackenschuss
.’
But the SS man just mutters about ‘bumping them all off’, knocks everything from the table and collapses onto it.
Fritz then starts to tell Payne-Best how his wife and children back home have no idea of all the atrocities he’s committed, that he’s killed ‘hundreds, no thousands of people’, and that the war is a terrible thing but that it’s the fault of the Jews and plutocrats in England and America. Hitler is a good man and only wants peace.
Payne-Best has heard enough. He makes his excuses and heads to his room.
On 22nd April 1945, Hitler, realising the hopelessness of Germany’s situation, screamed at his generals that the
Prominente
should all be shot. They no longer had any value as negotiating pawns and he wanted to hurt the Allies in whatever way was left to him. The value of hostage exchanges diminished in Hitler’s eyes after Stalin’s son
Yakov Dzhugashvili was captured. Hitler offered to exchange him for German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus who’d been captured at Stalingrad. Stalin declined the offer: ‘I will not trade a marshal for a lieutenant,’ he replied. Yakov Dzhugashvili died in a concentration camp
.
Stalin’s real name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Stalin is a pseudonym. It comes from the Russian word for ‘steel’
.
The
Prominente
also included British prisoners, some of whom were held in Colditz Castle, like Churchill’s nephew Giles Romilly, John Elphinstone, a nephew of the Queen, and Michael Alexander who, when he was captured in North Africa, pretended he was related to British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander
.
In the Führerbunker the conference room is being set up for the wedding ceremony. Five chairs are positioned at the large map table. Traudl Junge has had to take her typewriter and work into the common room outside Joseph Goebbels’ room.
The civil magistrate and Home Guard volunteer Walther Wagner arrives in the bunker clutching a two-page typed document. He came to the bunker earlier in the evening, having been summoned by Joseph Goebbels. When he discovered that he was required to conduct a civil wedding service he insisted on returning to his office to prepare the proper paperwork. Wagner is dressed in his Nazi uniform with his Home Guard armband. Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, reckons that Wagner is as excited as the bride.
The new Commander of the Luftwaffe, Robert Ritter von Greim, is struggling on his crutches as he climbs the concrete steps out of the bunker. Von Greim has just spent two days with the Führer, having been summoned so that Hitler could personally appoint him to replace the disgraced Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Göring.
Göring’s downfall was triggered by a telegram which he sent to Hitler on 23rd April. At the military briefing on the previous afternoon, Hitler had learned that the Russians had broken the inner defence cordon and were in the suburbs of north Berlin. There was no news of a German counter-attack. Hitler started to yell. He ranted, without pausing, for half an hour. He screamed about failure, lies, corruption and betrayal until he finally collapsed, sobbing, into an armchair. He declared that the war was lost. It was the first time he had actually said it. Everyone was free to go, he murmured, but he would stay in Berlin until the end. His only remaining duty was to die
.
‘There’s not much more to fight for,’ he concluded, ‘and if it’s a matter of negotiations, the Reich Marshal can do better than I.’
The Reich Marshal was Hermann Göring, who had been named as Hitler’s successor in 1941. The comment was meant to be dismissive, but Göring’s representative in the bunker, Karl Koller, took it seriously and immediately set off to Bavaria to inform his boss
.
When Göring heard the news he was astonished and excited. He attempted to compose a telegram to the Führer in order to clarify and confirm the situation. He was, however, too verbose to draft anything brief enough for a telegram, so his message was rewritten by Koller:
‘FÜHRER! – In view of your decision to remain at your post in the fortress of Berlin, do you agree that I take over, at once, the total leadership of the Reich, with full freedom of action at home and abroad, as your deputy, in accordance with your decree of 29th June 1941? If no reply is received by ten o’clock tonight, I shall take it for granted that you have lost your freedom of action, and shall consider the conditions of your decree as fulfilled, and shall
act in the best interests of our country and our people. You know what I feel for you in this gravest hour of my life. Words fail me to express myself. May God protect you, and speed you quickly here in spite of all. Your loyal – HERMANN GÖRING.’
When the telegram reached the bunker on the evening of 23rd April, it triggered another Führer rage about corruption and betrayal. Hitler’s private secretary, Martin Bormann, a personal enemy of Göring, drafted the response, which stripped him of his position as successor, and demanded immediate resignation on health grounds in order to avoid further measures. Göring resigned within half an hour. Hitler then ordered Bormann to summon Robert Ritter von Greim, one of Germany’s most decorated pilots
.
Robert Ritter von Greim made an almost impossible flight into Berlin, arriving on 26th April. By now the Russians had control of the sky above the German capital and the bottom of von Greim’s plane was torn apart by anti-aircraft guns. He suffered a serious leg injury and his companion, the tiny aviatrix Hanna Reitsch, had to lean over his shoulders to land the plane safely on the temporary runway by the Brandenburg Gate, a 400-metre stretch of uncratered road running through Berlin’s central park, the Tiergarten
.
As Reitsch now tries to help von Greim up the bunker steps she is protesting miserably – she wants to stay in the bunker and ‘die at our Führer’s side’. Von Greim, however, looks positively jolly – whether cheered by his appointment, or by the fact that he is getting out of the bunker. Telephonist Misch feels sick as he watches them leave. He had hoped that von Greim would be asked to fly the Führer out of Berlin, and then they would all have been able to make their escape.
Misch is one of a number of gentle giants in Hitler’s entourage. He is six foot tall but by his own account has been chosen to work for the Führer as ‘someone who gave no trouble’. Having been badly
injured during the invasion of Poland in 1939, he had been determined to do nothing that would jeopardise his work for the Führer. ‘Heavy field boots sinking into mud and filth instead of extra-light dazzling made-to-measure boots on thick carpet – no thank you.’ Here in the bunker, though, he feels claustrophobic. He thinks constantly of his wife Gerda and their baby daughter. It has been six days since he managed to contact Gerda by telephone. He sips cognac constantly and keeps his pistol to hand
.
Hitler is sending von Greim, as head of the Luftwaffe, on two missions. Firstly, he is to mobilise the Luftwaffe to break through the Russian encirclement: ‘Every available plane must be called up by daylight!’ Secondly, he is to arrest and arrange the execution of Fegelein’s boss, SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
When he learned the news of Himmler’s overtures to the Allies the previous day, Hitler had shouted at von Greim, ‘A traitor must never succeed me as Führer! You must get out to ensure that he will not.’
As she leaves the bunker the aviatrix Hanna Reitsch is carrying a number of personal and official letters. Eva Braun has given her a final letter to her sister Gretl who is staying with their parents in Hitler’s mountain home in Obersalzberg. The letter makes no mention of Fegelein’s death. The Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, have given Reitsch letters for Magda’s oldest son Harald, who is being held as a British prisoner of war in Britain.
Magda Goebbels is dressing in her bedroom in the upper bunker. This older bunker is starker than the Führerbunker and her small room is typical with its concrete walls and minimal furnishings: a single bed, a chest of drawers and only a bare bulb for light. Magda proudly pins the golden party badge that Hitler gave her two days ago onto the front of her dress. It is his personal badge, marked with the number 1; the badge of the premier figure in the Nazi Party. She feels it is the greatest honour of her life. Hitler has worn the badge on his uniform for 12 years. During his chancellorship Magda has often stood in as an unofficial first lady, accompanying the Führer on formal occasions, sitting in pride of place at official dinners while Eva Braun is hidden away, confined to her room. The badge confirms her status in the hierarchy.
Magda Goebbels was born in Berlin to an unmarried chambermaid. Her mother went on to have a long-term relationship with a Jewish hotel manager, Richard Friedlander. They lived as a family in the Jewish quarter of Berlin; Magda went to a Jewish school and celebrated Jewish festivals. As a teenager she chose to take her stepfather’s surname. Her first love was a young man called Victor Arlosoroff who was a charismatic leader of the Berlin Zionist movement. Magda became a keen supporter, attending Zionist meetings. When she was 19 and he was 20, Magda and Victor became engaged, but the relationship ended suddenly on Victor’s 21st birthday and within months Magda was engaged to a man she had met on a train the day after their break-up
.
The man on the train was Günther Quandt, a hugely wealthy industrialist. He was 38, twice Magda’s age, when they married in 1921. As a condition of their marriage Magda reverted to her original surname, Richter, as Günther didn’t want to appear to be marrying a Jew. Magda’s mother separated from Richard Friedlander at the same time. He was not invited to the wedding. That year
Günther and Magda had a son, Harald, who would be 18 in 1939 and immediately join the Luftwaffe. They divorced amicably after seven years and Magda was given a generous settlement
.
Shortly after her divorce Magda was taken by a friend to a Nazi rally where she heard Joseph Goebbels speak. She was electrified by his high-octane oratory and approached him afterwards, offering to work for him as a volunteer. They started a relationship, and in 1931 the girl who grew up in the Jewish quarter of Berlin married the man who spearheaded the exclusion of all Jews from the city and instituted the regulation yellow star whereby all Jews were identified. Adolf Hitler was their best man
.
Magda never saw her stepfather Richard Friedlander again. His name is on the list of those who died in Buchenwald
.
The six Goebbels children, Helga, Hilde, Helmut, Holde, Hedda and Heide, who are aged between four and 12, are sleeping in three bunk beds in the room next door to their mother. Joseph Goebbels’ bedroom is separate from theirs, down the main staircase and at the far end of the Führerbunker, next door to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun’s suite. When the children arrived a week ago they were told that Germany was on the verge of winning the war and that they had come to the bunker to be ready to join in the victory celebrations with the Führer. In fact Joseph and Magda decided to join their leader when they realised that defeat was imminent. They want to face death at his side. They have come to end their lives, and the lives of the children.
Magda has spent much of the week lying in bed. She suffers from angina. She can bear to see the children only for brief periods. Most of the work of looking after the children has fallen to the secretaries and kitchen orderlies. Magda has confided to the other women in the bunker that she is terrified that when the time comes she will be too weak to bring herself to kill them.