Hitler's Last Witness (21 page)

7
Goebbels resided south of the Brandenburg Gate, on Hermann-Göring-Strasse (since 1999 Friedrich Ebert Platz) in a palace adjoining the ministerial gardens and the Reich Chancellery park: today, parts of the bunker of the former service villa lie below the monument to the murdered Jews of Europe.

8
Albert Speer, who was present with Hitler during the telephone conversations with Remer and Goebbels, wrote of it: ‘Goebbels had himself connected to Führer-HQ over a special line in the telephone switchboard of his Ministry . . . a single intact telephone line finally frustrated the coup attempt.' See Albert Speer,
Erinnerungen
, Frankfurt/Main, Berlin 1996 reprint, p. 395. Misch was not able to describe the manner in which the line was restored so that the technical procedure could be replicated. According to his statement, the connection between Goebbels's service villa and FHQ Wolfsschanze came about as a result of the efforts at the switchboard of the Führer-suite, Old Reich Chancellery. ‘It went through us,' he said.

9
As a result of wounds received with the Afrika Korps in Tunisia, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg had lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of the left hand.

10
The victims were: General Günther Korten, chief of the Luftwaffe general staff; Colonel Heinz Brandt, 1a Army general staff officer; Major General Rudolf Schmundt, Wehrmacht chief adjutant to Hitler; and the stenographer Heinrich Berger.

11
In the summer of 2007, during the filming of the Hollywood film about the Stauffenberg plot (
Valkyrie
), Misch was interviewed in Berlin by the director Bryan Singer as an eyewitness to the events.

12
On 19 September 1944, Finland signed a treaty of armistice with the Soviet Union.

13
This exchange occurred during the the preparatory stage of Operation Valkyrie, the plot to overthrow the Hitler government. The German Resistance of 20 July used the same name as the Wehrmacht plan to confront an insurrection. Speidel, who supported the coup plan, had the job of winning Rommel over.

14
Ferdinand Schörner (1892–1972) was awarded the Diamonds to his Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords in January 1945. He was also known as ‘The greatest knacker of comrades of all times'.

*
Major General Alfred Gause was replaced as Rommel's chief of general staff on 15 April 1944. Rommel was implicated in talks to assassinate Hitler around then. In the conversation with Karl Strölin in the spring of 1944 at Herrlingen there had been talk of the possibility and justification for the assassination. See Manfred Rommel,
1944
-
Das Jahr der Entscheidung
, Hohenheim Verlag 2010, p. 203. (TN)

Chapter Twelve

Preparing the Berlin Bunker: February–April 1945

IN MID-FEBRUARY 1945, WE
finally returned from the Western Front to Berlin. The drive from Silesian Station, nowadays Berlin Ostbahnhof, to the Reich Chancellery was quiet. The capital had not expected us, and evidently people had other things to do. To the right and left of the streets, many of which were totally impassable, stood row upon row of houses reduced to skeletons – mere walls lacking a façade and roof timbering. During the journey, nobody said a word.

Now all were gathered in the capital: we of the SS bodyguard, the female secretaries, doctors, adjutants, servants and, naturally, house administrator Kannenberg with all his staff. The intimate circle around Hitler had taken up its position: Reich press chief Otto Dietrich, the Bormann brothers, diplomat Hewel. Keitel and Jodl went to their villas at Zehlendorf, while Göring had withdrawn to his country seat Carinhall, near Berlin.

An experience, which had nothing to do with the war, upset me greatly. It happened shortly after we arrived in Berlin. I had noticed previously at Ziegenberg that Karl Tenazek was acting strangely. We had a close friendship, and I had made several attempts to find out what was bothering him. ‘Something not right with you?' I asked him bluntly. ‘Debts? Something else eating you up?'

‘No, no, everything's OK,' he replied unconvincingly. I did not press the matter.

Now, in Berlin, he asked me to to take over his shift one afternoon. He wanted to leave early – tomorrow his leave began. I had no objection to double shifts. They were no problem for me, and I had a much longer off-duty period afterwards. Accordingly, I released Karl from duty as he wanted and asked, as usual, if there had been anything special to report. ‘Nothing new,' he assured me, and handed me the register into which all telephone calls had to be entered. I wished him a good journey home, a nice holiday and enquired after his wife, whom I knew to be pregnant.

‘Would you prefer a boy or a girl?' I asked him.

‘No idea.' He shrugged his shoulders sadly. ‘It makes no difference.'

It made no sense to me. Why didn't he confide in me?

Karl disappeared into his service room, where our cleaner, Frau Herrmann, was at work. She told me later it had surprised her to see Karl putting on his best new uniform. He said ‘No' to her question asking if he were going out. Scarcely had she left the room when she heard a round fired. She ran back inside immediately. Karl had sat down on the bed and shot himself dead.

The initial suspicion was that he might have got himself involved in some cloak-and-dagger activity. Obviously, we were all exposed to being recruited by foreign secret services. After some enquiries, the real reason soon came to light. The child that his wife was expecting was not Karl's. It could not be his. My friend had consulted Hitler's personal physician Professor Morell, and an urologist at Berchtesgaden. Both came to the same conclusion – Karl was sterile. He had not been able to handle the situation. The incident was rough on all of us in the bodyguard. His loss came as a great shock.

After being apprised of the details, Hitler decided to treat the matter as an accident. When Hitler decided that a thing was an accident, then it must have been one. Every member of the SS bodyguard had 100,000 Reichmarks life insurance, and this was what Karl's wife received.

Bunker Telephonist

At that time I became what the post-war world knows me as – Hitler's bunker telephonist. Our commanding officer Franz Schädle – he had relieved Bruno Gesche in January – let me know that he had selected me for the switchboard in the now technically fully equipped deep bunker: ‘Make yourself familiar with the installation and make sure everything works.' I must have looked at him in surprise a little, for he added: ‘You have always done a good job, Misch.' However, I was not really surprised. I was not really thinking anything at that moment. If I had asked why I had been selected for this undoubtedly responsible position, then he would have told me. I had been there already for years, had always taken an interest in my work and taught it to a large number of people. Recently, I was the only one to attend a two-week advanced telex training and scrambler course.

That the new job was a special distinction for me, that I would be closer to Hitler in those days than any other person, that I had got myself a cosy number in the best protected place in Berlin – I had no time for such ideas. I was to man the bunker telephone switchboard, that was an order like any other. Therefore, I had to familiarise myself with it as quickly as possible. After Schädle had made me bunker telephonist, I rang Hermann Gretz at once, the Reichspost technician. He was ready to show me everything straight away. With him, I descended into the catacomb for the first time.

Not far from my room on the ground floor of the adjutants' wing, we descended some red-carpeted steps into the cellars of the Old Reich Chancellery. Gretz hurried past the staff kitchen, the festival hall cloakroom and the toilets, and indicated the door to a narrow corridor leading into the New Reich Chancellery. This narrow tunnel was about 80 metres long, and we called it Kannenberg-Allee after the house administrator. Its actual purpose was for bringing food from the supply rooms in the New Reich Chancellery to the dining hall in the Old Reich Chancellery. We did not go along it on this occasion, although often enough in the future I would use it to reach the cellars of the New Reich Chancellery. Gretz took me back a little, and after leaving a gas-proof steel door behind us we entered a sluice room equipped with two similar doors. Both were open. The door straight ahead led into the ministerial gardens. The Reichspost technician went through the other one, however, and stepped up the pace, which told me we still had far to go. Then we found ourselves in the ante-bunker before the deep bunker.

This ante-bunker lay below the festival hall of the Old Reich Chancellery. Because of the explosive force of British and American bombs, the sounding boards of the festival hall had been reinforced with concrete between 1943 and 1944, during building work on the deep bunker. The garden of the neighbouring Foreign Ministry could be reached through an emergency exit. The large cellar below the festival hall and the winter garden, only separated from the bunker walls by about three metres, led to the area in the west where the ante-bunker adjoined the deep bunker around a concrete block. The ante-bunker had its own 40kW generator, which provided lighting and heating and also operated the water pumps and fresh air supply. Several WCs and washrooms were available there, as well as a kitchen with a pantry and storage room. There were also two more storage rooms, in one of which bedframes and mattresses were stacked; shortly afterwards, the other storage room was filled to just under the ceiling with provisions. There were also restrooms. Later, one side of the corridor was the lived-in side; the other, the unoccupied side. In all, not counting the central corridor and technical rooms, there were sixteen small rooms in the ante-bunker, none larger than four by four metres.

The first time I went down there with Gretz I didn't take in all the detail. Hurriedly, we cut through the ante-bunker by the narrow central corridor with its long wooden tables, and never met a living soul. Everything swam before my eyes. It was a true labyrinth.

The Führerbunker

At the end of the ante-bunker corridor were more heavy steel doors, which served as gas-proof sluices. In front of them, one of the SS bodyguard would do sentry duty, while sitting at a small table – the last guardian before the bridge into the subterranean abode and refuge of the Führer. Gretz led the way forward. Down a couple of steps and finally we were in the deep bunker, Hitler's bunker suite. Construction work on the Führerbunker had begun far too late, and it was not ready – having not yet dried out. Because of the remaining damp in the ground and walls, it smelt stale. The main contractors, ARGE Hochtief AG, had to improvise.

‘No time remained to air it properly,' Gretz explained. Because the bunker was below the water table in a kind of concrete trough, ground water had to be continuously pumped out. I looked around and screwed up my eyes, getting accustomed only slowly to the harsh lighting of the naked lamp bulbs, reflected off the naked white walls. How minute everything was – how sad, unready, unworthy. Standing in the corridor, the Reichspost technician explained to me the division of the rooms. They were no more than cells, as in the ante-bunker. The corridor was only about fifteen metres long and divided into two halves by a concrete bulkhead with a door. On the left wall in the rear section were lockers with firefighting equipment, while on the opposite wall was a longish, narrow table with chairs. Right at the end was another bulkhead, behind which was the emergency exit into the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Additionally, a room had been allocated for the RSD, which had a rear area for the dogs at the back – Blondi the Alastian dog had had some pups.

In the first room right of the corridor, chief technician Johannes Hentschel worked at his machinery and installations; these were all supplied with the necessary electricity. I had known Hentschel for many years. He had been employed at the Reich Chancellery since 1933 and had a four-room flat there. He had had an important role in the building of the Führerbunker and was now responsible for the technical installations in the machinery room. Hannes, as I called him, knew the whole technology inside out. In the machinery room near the door was an emergency diesel generator with various pumps, which among other things kept the dressing station below the Reich Chancellery supplied with fresh water from a deep spring bored for the purpose.

Ten to twelve barrels of diesel oil were stacked near the air-conditioning plant. This could run for about a thousand hours and might also absorb battlefield gases sucked in. Once there was great alarm during a situation conference, when a kind of acrid burning smell was noticed, and the installation had to be shut down immediately. It turned out that Göring's car had been parked below an air intake, and the car, which used wood for fuel, had produced gases and vapours sucked in by the intake. During the last days in the bunker, the exhaust gases of the machinery created a kind of gymnasium fug, so that it fairly stank below.

Opposite the machinery room, on the left side, was the so-called wet room (a bathroom with toilets), and immediately adjoining Hentschel's machinery room was ‘my' room, in which the telephone switchboard was installed. Instead of the fine telephone switchboard above, I now had this cell. I had not previously operated this kind of switchboard, which was now occupying the deep bunker. I saw at once that it had plug connections. I sighed. Gone was the time with the modern Siemens unit and its many colourful buttons. Now it was plug and drop-flap again. The junction box on the wall was the size of a shoe-box. No suspicion whose bright idea this pitiful fitment was. It might have been all right for a small boarding house, but not for the Führerbunker at the Reich Chancellery. Obviously, nobody had thought that the underground telephone switchboard here might become the most important switching centre for reports. Calls rerouted from the main switchboard in the New Reich Chancellery to the Führerbunker telephone switchboard reached only five extensions. One telephone was in Hitler's private rooms, another in Professor Morell's room abutting the switchboard, and other extensions were with the valet Linge in his restroom and the guard. The fifth telephone was in the corridor.