Hitler's Last Witness (18 page)

1
Gerda Christian, née Daranowski (1913–1997), was from 1937 one of Hitler's secretaries.

2
Otto Günsche (1917–2003) did not become Hitler's personal adjutant until February 1944; from January 1943 he acted in a deputy capacity but between September 1943 and January 1944 he commanded a company of the
SS-Leibstandarte
Panzer Division at the front.

3
From 17 to 19 February 1943, Hitler stayed at the headquarters of Army Group South (previously Army Group Don). Nicolaus von Below,
At Hitler's Side
, London, 2004, p. 165. Hitler had changed his plans at short notice after having intended to fly to Poltava; in this way, he avoided his assassination planned by General Hubert Lanz and Brigadier Hans Speidel. Peter Hoffmann,
Die Sicherheit des Diktators
, Munich/Zürich 1975, p. 161.

4
The city of Kharkov was captured on 24 October 1941 by units of the Sixth Army and evacuated on 16 February 1943 by SS-General Paul Hausser to avoid his troops being encircled. This evacuation, which was contrary to his orders, lay behind Hitler's meeting with Manstein. Under Manstein's command, the city was regained in March 1943, but finally abandoned to the Soviets in August 1943.

5
Paul Volkmann was arrested frequently during the Nazi period as a Social Democrat and trade unionist. In December 1945, after making a speech at Königs Wusterhausen, he was arrested by the Soviets and tried for ‘anti-state activities'. Sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment, he died at Waldheim Prison in 1951.

6
Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff (1900–1984) was head of Reichsführer-SS Himmler's personal staff, Himmler's right-hand man.

7
Himmler's edict of 27 September 1939 had merged the Security Police (SiPo) and Security Service (SD). The new
Reichssicherheitshauptamt
RSHA (Reich security head Office) unified the state and Party organisations. The most important section of the RSHA was Abt.IV (combating opponents of regime) headed by Heinrich ‘Gestapo' Müller. See Frank Gutermuth and Arno Netzband,
Die Gestapo
, Berlin 2005, p. 117.

8
On 30 September 1964, Wolff was sentenced by a court in Munich to fifteen years' imprisonment for complicity in the murders of at least 300,000 people (deportations to the extermination camp at Treblinka).

9
Operation Zitadelle was the code name for an attack on the bend in the Soviet front near the town of Kursk (‘the Kursk Elbow'). This operation between 5 and 13 July 1943 was the last major German offensive in the east.

10
This was the UFA production
Sommernächte
(Summer Nights).

11
Between 24 and 30 July 1943 there were a series of air raids over Hamburg, which claimed the lives of more than 30,000 inhabitants (Operation Gomorrah).

12
It was made known on 8 September that, on 3 September, Italy had signed an armistice with the Western Allies.

13
‘Partly from spite, partly because he might know too much and prove dangerous, Hitler had Prince Philip of Hesse, the King of Italy's son-in-law, who had been at FHQ for some weeks, promptly arrested and deposited in Gestapo Headquarters in Königsberg.' See Ian Kershaw,
Hitler 1936–1945
, London 2000, p. 60.

14
Mussolini was freed from an alpine hotel on the Gran Sasso in the Abruzzen by paratroopers and an SS squad led by Austrian
SS-Hauptsturmführer
(captain) Otto Skorzeny, using troop gliders.

15
Republica Sociale Italiana
(RSI) was a Fascist state in northern Italy under German protection from September 1943 to April 1945. Mussolini was its head of state.

16
Air Marshal Harris ordered the ‘Air Battle of Berlin'. The RAF attacks began on the night of 18 November 1943; in the next four months, sixteen major air raids were flown. www.raf.uk/bombercommand/nov43.html

17
In the first film of the series
Quax der Bruchpilot
(1941), Heinz Rühmann played the role of the trainee pilot Otto Groschenbügel, named Quax.

18
Heinz Rühmann stated in his memoirs that the film was shown not to Hitler, but to Göring among others. ‘At midday came the report, Göring had reported to Hitler at the early conference and told him that the film had been forbidden for release. Why he had no idea but in any case yesterday everybody had been laughing their heads off.' Hitler had then decided that the film should be released, but he had not been able to receive him, Rühmann, personally because of the bad situation on the Eastern Front. See Heinz Rühmann,
Das war's
, Frankfurt/Main, Berlin 1987 (first edn 1982) p. 154.

19
On 26 November 1943 at the Insterburg airfield, Göring organised exhibition flights by aircraft including the Ju 390 and Me 262. According to the memoirs of Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below, neither Jodl nor Heinkel were present, but among others Göring, Speer and aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt were. See Nicolaus von Below,
At Hitler's Side
, London 2004, pp. 186–7.

20
Ernst Heinkel (1888–1958) was a German engineer and aircraft manufacturer.

21
Two prototypes (models V1 and V2) of the Ju 390 were built. It does not appear that their range was ever quoted at ‘more than 10,000 kilometres'.

22
Misch is describing here a Messerschmitt 163 Komet. This rocket-driven, short-range interceptor fighter was the fastest aircraft of the Second World War, and an Me 163A-0 broke the world speed record at 1003 km/h in a flight on 2 October 1941. According to the Air and Space Travel section of the Deutscher Museum, this aircraft would have been a prototype in autumn 1943.

Chapter Ten

The Philanderer: 1944

THE MOOD OF CHRISTMAS
cheer was soon gone. Incessant bad reports followed. The situation on the Eastern Front was more worrying every day. Hitler's order of ‘Hold out at all costs' could not be complied with; in the south, the Soviets had broken through to the Bug. And now troops were being withdrawn from there, in order to stop the Allied invasion in Italy. Hitler wanted to use all available forces to prevent the advance of the Allies from their landing point at Anzio.

In mid-February, we moved to the Berghof. FHQ Wolfsschanze was meanwhile being expanded and made safer against possible air raids. This work was again done by Organisation Todt. New bunkers were built and the roof thickness of the Führerbunker was increased to seven metres.

Before we reached the Berghof, Hitler stopped off in Munich to meet Gerdy Troost. We went to the Führerbau, where Frau Troost led Hitler through an exhibition.
[1]
She handled questions on the inner architecture of many government buildings. Hitler had once lived at a house in Prinzregent-Strasse 16, where a Frau Winter still kept two of the six bedrooms, which he had rented long ago, available for him. The rooms were on the second floor. We of the bodyguard were two staircases higher up.

Apart from her exhibition of panzers, aircraft and automobiles, I had little interest in Frau Troost's field of activity, and I made no attempt to follow her and Hitler into the exhibition room, but remained in the reception hall. I passed the time in conversation with the female cloakroom attendant. She mentioned that she would like to meet me after duty for a glass of wine, but I had to decline regretfully, because I would still be on duty and have to accompany the Führer when he left that evening.

Finally, Hitler reappeared and, just as he was passing her, to my horror she said: ‘I would like to go out with him this evening.' Here, she pointed at me: ‘But he says he will be on duty.' Hitler looked around for our commander: ‘Gesche, Gesche – Misch has the evening free.' After ‘the boss' had therefore forced me, I did take the girl out for dinner and then returned to my colleagues. I was naturally surprised by Hitler's reaction – even more by the fact that he remembered my name. Since entering his service in 1940, he had perhaps called me ‘Misch' only twice, but he had never forgotten my name, for his famously good memory served him well.

Philanderer Bormann

The following day we arrived at the Berghof. To protect against Allied air raids, something special had been dreamed up. If there was an air raid over Bavaria, the entire Berchtesgaden Valley was to be concealed in artificial smoke. Smoke barrels had been set up, which would envelope the whole area in a thick soup within minutes.

Over the next few weeks, the usual clique assembled at the Berghof. Among them were SS-General Sepp Dietrich, Professor Morell, diplomat Hewel, the Speers and, of course, Martin Bormann. Of all these people, I only really liked Hewel. He was always in a good mood and had excellent social manners.

Hitler was ‘zabel-ing' again. We invented the verb for the local Zabel Sanatorium, named after Professor Werner Zabel, which prepared Hitler's diet. He stuck to his regimen with an iron will. Nothing and nobody could deflect him from his oatmeal gruel and the repellent rest, which he himself decreed for his stomach problems. I myself – no stranger to such problems – did not have this discipline. I just needed a proper diet.

Apart from the special Zabel cures, Hitler's dietary plan was not very varied. He employed his own diet-cook. In 1944, there was a lot of interest in Marlene von Exner, a rather austere-looking but attractive young woman of my age. Hitler had got her from Antonescu after he told Hitler on a visit that only this Viennese woman had been able control his own stomach problems. Frau von Exner then replaced Hitler's former female cook, Scharfitzel, whom house administrator Kannenberg had dismissed one day on suspicion of misappropriating food supplies. Because food had long been on ration, Scharfitzel's target had been the butter. Well yes, even I helped myself now and again from the large tub with iced water in which many small lumps of butter floated, but it equalled itself out, because I supplied Hitler with apples. One day I had received a basket of apples from my Aunt Sofia, but had to go back to the Reich Chancellery. Aunt Sofia was working at that time in a tree-improvement business. When I left the apples briefly in the kitchen, the cook Herr Lange came running up delighted: ‘Just leave them here.' From then until late in the war, I was therefore Hitler's apple supplier. At the end of the war there was no fresh fruit to be had anywhere.

Shortly after the dismissal of Frau Scharfitzel, Hitler ordered that at every meal only two pats of butter were to be distributed at each place. Herr Lange later ran his own restaurant – the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. When I visited him long after the war with my wife, he remembered immediately: ‘Liver with onions!' Yes, that was my favourite dish, and Lange prepared it for me that evening in celebration of our reunion.

The diet-cook Frau von Exner was, as mentioned, a very beautiful woman. That had not escaped Martin Bormann. The nickname ‘The Buck Bormann' had not come about by chance. Anyway, Bormann went all out for Frau von Exner, but failed utterly. When she left in 1944, we of the bodyguard thought it must have had something to do with these attempts to woo her. It was said that Frau von Exner had requested permission to leave and that could only have been caused by the pressure. She did not have proof of Aryan ancestry, but her departure had nothing to do with that.
[2]
In any case, after the termination of her employment as cook, she lived for several months at the Reich Chancellery. I often reflected later on whether I had ever noticed that Hitler hated Jews. Then I remembered Frau von Exner – and did not know the right answer.

1
The Führerbau in Arcis-Strasse was built between 1933 and 1937 by Paul Ludwig Troost and served as Adolf Hitler's reception building. Among other things, the 1938 Munich Agreement was signed there. Today, it is a music school.

2
According to Traudl Junge, the racial origin of Frau von Exner's grandmother could not be established because she had been a foundling. Hitler knew this when he employed her. Finally, it had come to light that she had Jewish ancestry. Traudl Junge remembered that Hitler had then had a talk with Marlene von Exner in which he expressed his regret at having to release her, and in which he promised to Aryanise her whole family. Junge went onto say that Martin Bormann received instructions to deal with it and he accepted this only reluctantly ‘for he had had no luck in his attempts to win the charming Viennese girl and could never forgive her for it.' See Traudl Junge,
Bis zur letzten Stunde – Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr Leben
, Munich 2002, p. 132. Misch interpreted the resignation of Frau von Exner in May 1944 as being a reaction to the stalking by Bormann. Misch is certain that Frau von Exner lived for some time at the Reich Chancellery without being in Hitler's employment.

Chapter Eleven

Weddings and Treason: 1944

ON 3 JUNE 1944,
Eva Braun's sister Gretl married Major General Hermann Fegelein. The festivities were held on the Obersalzberg. Fegelein had been the Waffen-SS liaison officer to Hitler since the beginning of the year and had, as one heard, distinguished himself in the field.
[1]
Above all, however, Fegelein was a dare-devil, braggart, pretentious boorish ape, for whom women fell one after another. Eva, herself not without tangible feelings for the heart-breaker, coupled him up to her younger sister Gretl.