Hitler's Last Witness (16 page)

It appears that Paulus had tried to convince Hitler to allow him to extract his forces to unite with the army of Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist, which was reforming in the Caucasus. At first, Hitler was against it, but then seemed to be in favour, because Bussmann came out and whispered: ‘Paulus is drawing back to the Caucasus!'

Because the talk was drawn out, the midday situation conference that day began towards half past twelve. Beside Keitel, Jodl and Paulus, also present were: Göring; Admiral Raeder; commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine; and also, I think, Karl Dönitz, commander-in-chief of the U-boat arm;
**
Walter Warlimont, a Jodl representative; and Zeitzler.

I remained on duty in front of the conference barrack hut until two that afternoon, went off for two hours, and when I returned at 1600 hrs the conference was still going on. Now and again, one of the participants would request a glass of water or a snack. I soon discovered what was being discussed. It was all about Paulus's withdrawal to join Kleist's forces, and there were two opposing camps – Göring being of the opinion that the Volga must not be abandoned under any circumstances. The river had to be blocked to cut off the Russian supply lines. If the Volga was closed down, not a drop of oil would get from the Caspian Sea to the north, and that would cut Stalin's artery. Paulus, on the other hand, wanted permission to abandon the positions held by Sixth Army at Stalingrad, in order to make a tactical withdrawal as soon as possible. He considered his position to be exposed and had major problems of supply. Göring's argument about cutting off Stalin's oil reserves from the Caspian Sea and pressing forward with the war held the day, however. Accepting Göring's opinion, Hitler ruled: ‘Paulus, you stay in Stalingrad.' This judgement ended hours of debate and sealed the fate of the Sixth Army.

Paulus took his defeat calmly. He made a serious but by no means downcast impression when passing me to climb into his car immediately after the conference, to drive back to the Wehrmacht-HQ Mauerwald. It was the last time I saw him.

On 7 November 1942, we travelled aboard the Führer's special train to Munich, so that Hitler could deliver on the following day his annual speech at the Löwenbräukeller, commemorating the 1923 attempted putsch. Afterwards, we spent a few days at the Berghof. We were there when news arrived of the encirclement of the Sixth Army.
[6]
Hitler planned to supply it from the air. He forbade any attempt to break out; the city had to be held at all costs. This bad news about the situation at Stalingrad forced Hitler to return to FHQ Wolfsschanze.

I know that many people perceived Hitler to be changed after Stalingrad. I did not find that to be so. I saw nothing about him outwardly that struck me as a different person. He seemed to me to be still absolutely convinced that what he was doing and what he intended was right; he was self-confident and decisive. Also, I did not notice any sudden physical decay. The trembling left hand, the ageing of his features – those I associate with the last few weeks in the Berlin bunker. But even then I could not identify an exact point when these changes were perceptible from one day to another. If one is in contact daily with a person, developments like that did not make much of an impression. Certainly, after Stalingrad there were increasingly periods of loneliness, in which Hitler would withdraw to his study, to be alone and introspective, but for me he continued to give the impression that he was the same man he had always been. Only the trips to Berlin became rarer, and he did away with the evening film shows.

My Honeymoon

I spent Christmas 1942 in Berlin. On New Year's Eve, I married Gerda. At that time she was an employee in the foreign trade department of the Reich Economy Ministry, and learning English and Spanish. Later, she became secretary to a professor of medicine at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Gerda was ambitious and successful, and always had excellent assessments and references. We had not been able to spend much time together before our marriage, and we only saw each other regularly when I was in Berlin.

For our marriage, we received from the Reich Chancellery two cases of wine, twenty bottles each of red and white. Herr Fechner, the cellarman at the Chancellery, was sixty-six years of age by then, and he had serviced the wine cellars of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He went in person to the wine warehouses at Potsdam, to make the selection. According to their labels, some of the wines were 1921 vintage – a very special year, as Fechner told me. There was also a special payment of 1,500 Reichsmark and a greetings card on which Hitler had written: ‘My warmest best wishes – Adolf Hitler.' Fechner let me into the secret that Albert Bormann had informed ‘the boss' of my impending marriage. My witnesses were my colleagues Karl Tenazek and Helmuth Beermann. Helmuth had proven himself once more as the ‘supplier', and through Mitropa had obtained the wedding rings and the bride's veil, both from Paris. The wedding feast, of saddle of venison, was prepared for us by a female cook at the Reich Chancellery.

At the small celebration in the garden of my parents-in-law we drank only two bottles of the wine; the rest we buried later. When we changed out of our wedding apparel, we repeated the proceedings and then buried the wine in the new garden so as to make Hitler's present bombproof in the truest sense of the word. Whether it remained intact to the end, I do not know. We never dug up the chest, which also contained my decorations and the certificate from the rifle competition of 1936. Today, the spot lies under concrete with garages built over it.

After our marriage we were entited to larger quarters, so we moved into a new place at Karlshorst. The rent of around eighty-seven Reichsmarks was paid by the Reich Chancellery. We really wanted to move to Lankwitz near the house of my Aunt Sofia, but shortly before there had been heavy air raids there, and no brick had been left standing on another.

Near the Reich Chancellery there was a police sector, and I knew quite well one of the officials who used to patrol past our dwelling. One day after the air raids I asked this man, who was called Herr Friedrich, where one could still find a nice place to live in Berlin. His own home was in Karlshorst, and he mentioned some addresses in the area. Thus, we selected a home in that district of Berlin where in May 1945 Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel would sign the instrument of surrender.

My wedding had freed me of the gloomy mood at the year's end at FHQ Wolfsschanze, for which I was very glad. While the catastrophe at Stalingrad dominated everything there, Gerda and I went on honeymoon in a Reichsbahn couchette. We went to the Black Forest, to the hotel Zur Sonne at Bad Herrenalb. The sister of my colleague Bussmann was a cook there. Shortly after my marriage, I was promoted to Oberscharführer (sergeant) and my wife then received an identity card from the Reich Chancellery.

1
Today Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic).

2
Ian Kershaw reported two loud altercations: one on 24 August 1942, between Hitler and General Franz Halder, who was relieved of his post that day; and another on 5 September 1942, between Hitler and General Jodl, head of the Wehrmacht command staff at OKW. See Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–1945
, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 698ff.

3
Joseph Schmidt (1904–1942) died, after fleeing the Nazis, in the Swiss internment camp at Girenbad, where he was awaiting a decision on his application for political asylum.

4
This stenographer was Heinrich Berger.

5
Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus (1890–1957).

6
As a result of a Soviet offensive begun on 19 November 1942, the Sixth Army was encircled on 22 November 1942.

*
Although often written ‘Werwolf' (werewolf) as Misch does throughout the book, the correct spelling is Wehrwolf (play on the word ‘Wehr' military). It was Hitler himself who gave this FHQ its name and spelling. See Franz Seidler & Dieter Zeigert,
Die Führerhauptquartiere
, Herbig 2001 p. 222; see also Otto Wien,
Ein Leben und Viermal Deutschland
, Düsseldorf 1978, p. 283. (TN)

**
Misch gets this wrong, Dönitz did not replace Raeder as commander-in-chief of the German Kriegsmarine until the beginning of 1943. (TN)

Chapter Nine

The Eastern Front Begins to Turn West: 1943

IN MID-JANUARY 1943, I
had to return to FHQ Wolfsschanze. At the end of January, Paulus, held in the siege at Stalingrad, surrendered. As the war situation began to look more serious, a mood of disquiet began to affect my colleagues in the bodyguard. It drew some to the front. They simply could not stand by and do nothing while others faced the foe. They wanted to fight.

Hitler was not at all happy about it. He complained to the commander of the
SS-Leibstandarte
, Sepp Dietrich: ‘They are taking my best men!' One evening, when he was sitting with his female secretaries, Hitler asked everyone: ‘What's the reason for it? What am I doing wrong? All my staff are running away from me!' Dara, as we called secretary Gerda Daranowski, said: ‘You are not doing anything wrong,
mein Führer
.
[1]
They come to you as a reward. Only the young ones are soldiers! They do not want to run around in patent leather shoes. They want to be soldiers. Take people out of the bodyguard as adjutants.' She then went on – quite openly – to recommend Otto Günsche, after he had returned from fighting at the front in January 1943. He was actually appointed as Hitler's personal SS adjutant.
[2]
Günsche and Dara were very close, but she went on to marry Luftwaffe Major Eckhard Christian.

Apart from a few short breaks in Berlin, on the Berghof, or in the Ukraine, Hitler was at FHQ Wolfsschanze. In February 1943, we left there to visit the Eastern Front in the sector of Army Group South. This was commanded by General Erich von Manstein, his headquarters being at Zaporozhye in the Donets Basin.
[3]
Five aircraft escorted us. As soon as we arrived, I felt the violent drop in temperature. It was bitterly cold, and I began to understand what it must have been like at Stalingrad.

Hitler had come to meet Manstein on account of the violent fighting for Kharkov, in which first one and then the other side gained the upper hand.
[4]
Originally, Hitler had scheduled five days for the visit. On the third day, however, the Soviet artillery surprised us by advancing threateningly close to reach the airfield at Zaporozhye. Hitler had to be rushed to an airstrip about forty kilometres away in order to be flown to the secure FHQ Wehrwolf. My colleague Paul Holtz and I had to hold out one day more. We had been left behind to ensure that, in the haste of his departure, nothing had been forgotten. Fortunately, the Soviet tanks had pulled back to their positions without ever having suspected whom they had got within visual range of capturing.

Paul Holtz and I discovered nothing to bring back with us. Next day, we were not sure what was worse: to remain in close contact with Soviet tanks or fly out. There was a fearsome blizzard blowing. I was already queasy when, alone, I boarded the aircraft that was to fly to FHQ Wehrwolf. The men of Manstein's squad had given us more than enough to drink the previous evening. The flight was a horror. Turbulence gave us a roller-coaster of a ride. Only with a giant portion of luck did we come out of it alive.

In March, we returned to East Prussia and FHQ Wolfsschanze.

Hitler's Treasure Chamber

I was pleased when, soon afterwards, my service schedule gave me the opportunity for a few days' stay in Berlin. In my private flat at Karlshorst I had two paintings that belonged to Hitler. They were on loan from the Treasure Chamber. When Gerda and I had moved in after our marriage, I had remarked to Albert Bormann that our new flat was very pleasant but the white walls were very bare. ‘Well, why not look for something nice,' he replied, and led me straight away to the so-called Treasure Chamber of the Old Reich Chancellery. This was where all manner of valuables were kept, particularly gifts made to Hitler. Among the many valuables – some glorious, some appalling – was a handwritten letter from Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia, son of the late German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had died in 1940. In the most beautiful Sütterlin script, he notified the Reich chancellor of his father's death and made it known that he was now the head of the House of Hohenzollern. The Reich chancellor could rest assured that the House of Hohenzollern under his leadership would continue to support the government. It struck me that the letter was addressed expressly to ‘Herr Reich chancellor', and that ‘the Führer' was never mentioned, nor had the writer ended the letter with ‘Heil Hitler!' Probably for these reasons the document had been consigned to the Treasure Chamber, instead of being exhibited somewhere for information.

Now, Albert Bormann really encouraged me to pick out two paintings on loan, with which I could decorate my home. I selected one large and one smaller picture. The larger one was of a rough sea with pounding waves; the other had three prancing horses and was a very valuable work of art by an artist whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, some professor or other in any case. Albert Bormann cautioned me that I must return the paintings at once, should they be required. He observed from other things that he could trust me. Thus, one day he showed me some proceedings he was working on right then in Hitler's private Chancellery, about maintenance for three children of a soldier who had got three women – mother, daughter and aunt – pregnant during a single stay at private quarters in Westphalia. The question of who was responsible for the support of a child of incest in the family of a cabinet member (whose name Bormann allowed me to see) was a tricky one. Hitler had to decide that kind of thing. Albert Bormann knew he could rely on my discretion. My commanding officer and Hitler's chief adjutant Schaub also valued my reliability. Thus, once I was sent as a courier alone all the way across Berlin to the postal cheque office with a travelling bag. Schaub laughed at my shocked expression when he told me what it had contained: 100,000 Reichsmarks – an enormous sum at that time.