Hitler's Last Witness (15 page)

I was often in the Balcony Room, so-called because from there one could enter a loggia, which Hitler had had built looking out onto the Wilhelm-Strasse. There was a billiards table in the Balcony Room, and on quiet days I would play against myself.

I also used to visit the Models Hall in the New Reich Chancellery a lot. I could easily find out if there was anything new exhibited there if told to bring a relief for one of the female secretaries. Hitler liked to dictate in the Models Hall. The secretary would type his oration directly into a stenographic machine. This could last for hours. Every half hour, the secretary would be relieved by another. I would wander around happily between the wood and plaster models, technical prototypes and structures in miniature. I reflected for a long time on a model of Tempelhof airport. According to the plans, the airport boundaries would extend much further out to Neukölln than people realised. Hitler said that the airport was ‘not being thought of for eternity'. He considered that air passenger traffic would increase so much that a city airport would no longer have the capacity for it. Sooner or later, Tempelhof would be turned into a great sports arena: racetracks, tennis courts, a swimming bath, one could make it into a health resort, he said, or an amusement park.

Much more than for many of Speer's architectural fantasies, I was interested in anything to do with technology. I was very taken by the design for a tidal power station. Like Hitler, the idea of using the tide's ebb and flow for energy production fascinated me. I was present in the Models Hall when two engineers delivered a long and complicated discourse on the use of tidal forces. ‘One can only regulate a thing like that on the European level,' Hitler pointed out.

Hitler would come to regret the accessibility of the Models Hall. One day, he wanted to look at the model prototypes of the new Tiger tank again, but they could not be found.
[9]
Suspicion fell on two members of the RSD, whose own colleagues searched their houses. This brought to light – apart from the missing panzer models, which now served as toys for their sons – other items missing from the Reich Chancellery: porcelain, hand towels and cutlery. The two men, Wiebezick and Sander, had performed their duties irreproachably. I never saw either again.
[10]

I was totally unable to understand this conduct. I would never have risked my position for a few trinkets from the Reich Chancellery. I was very happy in my rank, and I never attained a higher rank than Oberscharführer (sergeant). At some time or another, there was an agreement between Reichsleiter Martin Bormann and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler that there were to be no more promotions for the SS bodyguard. This decision meant that the ranks currently held were sufficient for the work done.

As I understood it, the bodyguard was paid for by the Reich Interior Ministry, for which Hans Lammers was the relevant administrator. Repeatedly, men would volunteer for the front in order to obtain promotions. Otto Günsche did this because he needed a higher rank for a career in the Foreign Ministry after the war. Of five colleagues who took this course of action, three fell at the front. Wild horses would not have dragged me back there. No, I was not desperate for a higher rank. What for? I was already ‘with the Führer'.

1
The attack on the Soviet Union was planned under the cover name Barbarossa.

2
Today Kętrzyn (Poland).

3
Organisation Todt (OT), named after its founder and leader, was created in 1938 as a building firm for military works. After the death of Fritz Todt in 1942, Speer headed the OT. A large number of its workers were forced labourers, POWs and concentration camp inmates.

4
Friedrich Darges (b.1913) had the final rank of lieutenant colonel.

5
See also Christa Schroeder,
He Was My Chief
, London 2009, pp. 94–5. According to her, Krümel was the former Mitropa cook Otto Günther.

6
Mussolini arrived at FHQ Wolfsschanze on 25 August 1941.

7
In May 1945, Dr Blaschke's assistant, Käthe Heusermann, provided the Russians with fragments of a denture which she identified as fitting the profile of Hitler's dentition to the best of her memory.

8
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem visited Hitler on 28 November 1941. He supported the National Socialists, and from 1943 recruited a Muslim SS-division named
Handschar
– 13th Waffengebirgs division of SS-
Handschar
.

9
The heavy
Panzerkampfwagen VI
, Tiger, was developed by the Henschel Works at Kassel. Hitler had the prototypes in service at the front during the construction phase.

10
Files of the Party chancellery reveal that, at the end of November 1940, Hitler declined to release the two from Dachau concentration camp. He added that, in future, theft and disloyalty, including stealing from SS comrades, would be dealt with (the death penalty was threatened). Payments to the wives of the inmates were to be stopped. See Institut für Zeitgeschichte,
Akten der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP
, Munich 1992, p. 596.

Chapter Eight

FHQ Wolfsschanze, FHQ Wehrwolf,
*
Stalingrad, My Honeymoon: 1942

AT FIRST, THE DAILY
routine at FHQ Wolfsschanze did not change much in the new year from the last months of the old. On the Eastern Front, the situation seemed to have stabilised, but no longer were the reports from the fronts all about successes. That we understood. I heard nothing of the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 in Berlin, which was to organise in detail the extermination of the Jews which had already begun. As already mentioned, the subject of Jews and concentration camps never came up among us. Neither did anything ever filter through to us which might have led to a discussion, nor did we have any motive to talk about these things. We knew of the existence of concentration camps as work camps, but we knew nothing of what had been decided and brought into effect for the inmates of the concentration camps in the eastern territories. If Hitler had ever gone to one of those places, then we would have known, because the bodyguard was at his side around the clock. Wherever he went, we went too: from where he came, we came from there too. Our colleagues might have told me had I not been there myself. How could crimes of such enormity have remained such a well-kept secret?

In February and March 1942, Hitler made frequent short trips to Berlin, and we were there for a few days at the end of April before going via Munich to the Berghof, after Hitler had met Mussolini at Schloss Klessheim. Morale was exceptionally good. Hitler was openly delighted to see Mussolini again. He was quite in his element, talkative and in high spirits. After the banquets, we went back to the Berghof, where the Duce visited us the next day. At the beginning of May 1942, we were back at FHQ Wolfsschanze.

At that time, I was not in the best of health. I had stomach trouble, intermittent attacks, which caused me painful spasms. Apparently, people were aware of this, and to my great surprise even Hitler had noticed. One morning he spoke to me. He had gone past me into his barrack hut, but then returned into the open and, after giving me a critical look, said: ‘Misch – you do not look well.' Rather hesitantly, I explained my medical problem, and he nodded with a sigh when I finished speaking: ‘I have the same thing. Go and see Morell, he will give you something for it.' So Professor Morell, Hitler's personal physician, had the job of getting me fit again. That was not actually said. If Hitler was of the opinion that I did not look good, then Morell had to do something and I had to follow his decision. The doctor sent me at once to recover in the world-famous spa resort at Karlsbad.
[1]

In the train on my way there I got to know a young lady, with whom I had an animated conversation. When a totally bald elderly gentleman got into the fully occupied compartment, I stood up to offer him my seat. He waved it aside: ‘I would not want to disturb your pleasant conversation.' Still in elated mood from the train journey, not so boring as I thought it was going to be, I reported to the Karlsbad Sanatorium. I had been ordered to take a paid-for cure – and, far from the gloomy mood at FHQ Wolfsschanze, I gradually began to enjoy my stay at the spa. My happy mood soon dampened when I discovered what awaited me, however.

At a small welcoming ceremony for new arrivals we were informed with great emphasis about what the cure involved. Dietary preparations were the most important part of the treatment. The ban on salt was intended to be taken very seriously. Whoever was seen with a salt pot would be sent packing immediately, irrespective of person, rank or decorations. Then, almost ceremoniously, the senior physician was introduced, and as he entered the room, everybody rose. In surprise, I recognised him as the bald-headed man from the train. The new arrivals lined up to greet him. When he saw me he showed by a brief friendly nod that he remembered me and that, therefore, I need not step forward to take part in the official greeting ceremony. It was in any case an advantage to be in the good books of the leading physician. I knew how to use that. I spent many delightful hours with a female fellow sufferer, a harmless admirer. Charlie Rivel made a guest appearance nearby, with his show
Akrobat schön
, and we had an unforgettable evening.

FHQ Wehrwolf

After my return to Berlin at the end of 1942 I was flown directly to FHQ Wehrwolf by one of the daily courier services. FHQ Wehrwolf was the largest of three installations in the conquered areas of the Soviet Union to be built as temporary headquarters. It was located in the Ukraine, in birch woodland along the road between Zhitomir and the town of Vinniza on the Bug river. Nearby was a village called Kalinovka. FHQ Wehrwolf consisted of two bunkers and a large number of blockhouses and barrack huts.

My duties at FHQ Wehrwolf were mainly to be near Hitler, awaiting his orders. There was no telephone duty for me here either. Most of the day I was the man to ask about anti-mosquito measures. Unbelievable as it may be, this place had even more mosquitoes than FHQ Wolfsschanze.

On duty, therefore, I had not much to do, and off duty – well, it was pure country life. I found it no problem, I came from the land. My colleagues and I often hired a car and drove into the village near the headquarters to engage in trade. The locals produced a wonderful vegetable oil, which I sent to Gerda. I paid for it with women's clothing, sewing needles and stockings organised from Mitropa, but also with salt. Gerda would fetch the packet at the Reich Chancellery after receiving my telegram ‘Today at R.Ch. – packet.' After we were married, she was given an identity card, which gave her unfettered entry, even into Hitler's suite.

While serving at FHQ Wehrwolf, I obtained for the first time a deeper insight into the up-to-date war situation. In September, a violent exchange flared up among the participants of the daily Führer's situation conference. General Franz Halder, chief of staff at OKH, dared to tell Hitler that his field objectives asked too much of the soldiers at the front. Hitler bellowed at Halder, asking how he knew what a soldier was capable of. He himself could look back on four years' experience at the front in the First World War. Halder was immediately replaced by Kurt Zeitzler, recently promoted to General der Infanterie.
[2]

After the altercation between Hitler and the Wehrmacht command staff, none of which I overheard, I noticed loud music coming from Hitler's study: ‘
Dein ist mein ganzes Herz, wo du nicht bist, kann ich nicht sein . . .
' – Joseph Schmidt was a very well-known Jewish chamber music singer of the time.
[3]
As I heard this beautiful song, from outside I looked in disbelief through the open window into Hitler's room. He was slumped in his chair, immersed in thought, the loneliest man in the world. Here I saw Hitler at his saddest.

The increasing disputes with the Wehrmacht command staff led to Hitler's order that, from now on, all situation conferences had to be recorded by shorthand writers. He himself had a wonderful memory. If ever there was an argument about what had been said, ordered or uttered in opinion – ultimately, if evidence existed – he would be proved right. It might be years later, but he remembered everything. If there were any disputes, he would have old papers brought from the archives and presented in triumph to his flabbergasted opposite number.

Hitler had a photographic memory – he would master reading material in a flash. If there were no files, Hitler could not prove that he had remembered accurately. By having stenographers take down everything verbatim, he would put a stop to people twisting his words and put an end once and for all to the tiresome and endless discussions about who had said what and when and in what connection. We were ordered: ‘If Grenadier Arse arrives from the front, whatever he says must be recorded!' Indirectly, Hitler's decision to employ stenographers was to cost one his life at FHQ Wolfsschanze on 20 July 1944.
[4]

Stalingrad

Towards the end of October 1942, the headquarters was pulled back to FHQ Wolfsschanze. All discussions revolved around the fighting at Stalingrad.

One morning after beginning duty I passed Hitler's rooms. He was at the breakfast table alone. Bussmann, his servant, approached me. He said I was to fetch General Friedrich Paulus.
[5]
‘He must come to Hitler at once.' I thought he would be with Keitel, but found there only one of his junior adjutants. ‘He will probably be in the officers' mess,' the latter said. Paulus was indeed there, and I spoke first to one of his senior adjutants, who led me to him: ‘Herr Generaloberst, will you please follow me, the Führer is waiting for you.' Outside it had been below zero for some time, and Paulus therefore put on his very long greatcoat. Then I brought him to Hitler's study. During the conversation Bussmann had things to do in the room, and there was no stenographer present. Hitler's servant and I had a good relationship. He came out from time to time to keep me informed.