Hitler's Last Witness (29 page)

Shortly after, there was shooting. A completely crazy scene now played out before our eyes. A Red Army soldier guarding us perched on a heap of rubble suddenly opened fire on a group of his own comrades some distance away. He fired a salvo at the lower ledge of a window front on which some Russians were leaning. Some returned fire. They were actually picking each other off. Utter madness. They must have been drunk out of their minds. This was too much for Linge. He stared at the ground. ‘I am going to shoot myself now,' he said in a choked voice and with trembling hand raised the pistol which he had kept hidden from the Russians until now. I knocked it out of his hand. ‘Don't be stupid. When you can, do the same as with the watch,' I hissed at him. Linge's Walther PP now followed his watch through the air. About an hour later, we decided between ourselves that it would be better if we did not remain together so as to reduce the risk of being recognised. All the time I had known him I had not built up a real relationship with Linge, and was cautious with him. He squeezed himself through to some of our fellow sufferers at the collection place about fifty metres away from me.

Towards evening, we were led off towards Berlin-Buch, where we spent the night in a meadow under the open sky. I did not see Linge again. We got into the train at Wartenberg. When we reached Landsberg an der Warthe there were thousands of soldiers in the reception camp set up there by the Russians for POWs picked up in and around Berlin. I looked around, hoping to find someone whom I knew. Here I actually did come across some of my colleagues.

I talked about the burning of Hitler's body with Hans Hofbeck, the RSD secretary who had kept me informed about the business with Fegelein. He told me that, at the moment when the bodies of Hitler and Eva were burning, two civilians had appeared on the Foreign Ministry wall. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and had to pay for it with their lives. Apart from those whom Hitler had selected for the purpose, there were to be no witnesses to the immolation.
[4]
Hofbeck had established from their papers that they were Poles. What they were doing there and where they came from could not be determined.

Later, the Russians persisted in showing a photograph of a body found in the Reich Chancellery garden, which they took initially for Hitler. From the photo produced for me it was obvious that the assumption was incorrect, the man was wearing darned socks. Probably he was one of those unfortunate civilians, and had a moustache just like Hitler's.

Behind a barbed wire fence I suddenly noticed Helmut Frick, whom we had lost in the U-bahn tunnel. He stood among soldiers who belonged to the NKFD.
[5]
Now it was clear to me – he must have been working for the other side for some time.

From Landsberg we went to a transit camp at Posen. One day on the march there I recognised Hans Baur, Hitler's pilot, sitting in an open field. I knew him well from the many flights I took with him while accompanying Hitler as courier.

‘So how are you?' Nothing any more ridiculous to say did not strike me.

‘You can see, Misch,' he replied, pointing to what remained of his right leg. ‘Amputated. Without anaesthetic. With a pocket knife.' The leg had had a wound about ten centimetres below the knee and had been sawn off.

‘Is there anything I can do for you?' I asked. He mentioned fresh dressings and a bowl of water. While I was washing it and renewing the bandages he told me he did not have it so bad. He frequently got clean dressings and two adequate meals daily. Crutches as well. I stayed with him, tended his wounds regularly and massaged the leg. At Posen he was interrogated on a number of occasions.

In October 1945, he asked me one day: ‘Herr Misch, I am probably going to be transferred to a military hospital in Moscow. I assume that the conditions there are going to be better than in a POW camp. Wouldn't you like to accompany me? I can choose an attendant.' It did not take me long to make up my mind. In my total naïvety I thought it would be a good idea to join up with Baur, that it would be better for me at his side than in a Russian POW camp in some inhospitable place in this gigantic country.

‘Yes, thank you, I would like to – I shall accompany you.' Baur nodded. The Russians still did not know who I was.

A few days later, we were brought to Moscow, or at least to Mozhaisk at first, a good hundred kilometres west of the Soviet capital. We would soon be proceeding to the military hospital, they said, and some time later a transport was made available for Baur and myself. However, instead of the military hospital we were brought to the notorious Butyrka prison and to interrogation in the NKVD secret police prison at Lubyanka.
[6]
Hitler had once referred to this place as ‘the rat trap'.

1
There are major differences in the witness statements regarding the suicide of Goebbels. The majority believe that the Goebbels couple committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery gardens some time between 2030 hrs and 2200 hrs on 1 May 1945. See Ralf Georg Reuth,
Goebbels
, Munich 2005 (first edn 1991), p. 614; see also Joachim Fest,
Der Untergang
, Berlin 2002, p. 171. If the death of Goebbels occurred as early as this, it would mean that Misch and Hentschel remained behind in the bunker, both having been told they could go, until the early hours of 2 May and Misch missed leaving with the break-out groups, which he had intended to join. He and Hentschel might both have fallen asleep for hours, but Misch denies this. See Uwe Bahnsen and James P. O'Donnell,
Die Katakombe – Das Ende in der Reichskanzlei
, Stuttgart 1975, p. 482.

2
Today Mohren-Strasse.

3
According to Heinz Linge, it was a watch engraved with his name, which had been a gift from Hitler. See Heinz Linge,
With Hitler to the End
, London 2009, p. 211.

4
Misch was told by Hofbeck who ordered these civilians to be shot and who the shooter was, but preferred not to disclose it.

5
Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland. The NKFD was an association of German POWs and German Communist exiles in the Soviet Union who fought against Nazi Germany.

6
The Butyrka was a holding prison in Moscow for convicted political detainees in transit into the Gulag system.

Chapter Seventeen

My Nine Years in Soviet Captivity

FLIGHT-CAPTAIN BAUR AND I
shared a cell that was bitterly cold and unheated. Baur received no more dressings. The wound could not heal properly under these conditions. We persisted in our requests for medical treatment, but these were turned down.

In December, there began endless inquisitions by the Stalinist interrogation officers. Baur was beaten and mistreated. Then he made the portentous statement: ‘For that you should ask my attendant. He knows more about it than I do.'

Then it was my turn.

Baur and I were separated – now we were both tortured. I quickly saw what the point of it all was: the Russians could not believe that Hitler was dead.

‘Where is Adolf Hitler?'

‘Dead.'

‘Where is Adolf Hitler?'

‘Dead'.

‘You lie. The dead man is his double.'

The questions had no end: ‘How did Hitler leave Berlin? Where is he now?'

Thus it went on and on. Our interrogation commissar was initially Colonel Savalyev. The Soviet Interior Ministry had long known that what I said was correct.
[1]
They had the information on Hitler's suicide. I noticed particularly how they made a big gesture by tearing the transcripts of my statements down the middle, but in the end they kept them. Later, the Russians held up to my face what I had said. They did so in the pretence that they thought it was all lies and had to interrogate me from the beginning all over again. As they apparently kept everything I said and compared the documents, they knew all along that I was telling the truth. Yet my tormentors – colonels Stern, Savalyev, Schweizer, Gagaze and Seltenvahr – would not let up.
[2]
Stern and Seltenvahr were Jews. They never let a word drop about death camps – nobody ever mentioned them. All they were interested in was Hitler's death. If they had wanted to learn anything from me at this time about concentration camps they would have been disappointed, for I knew nothing then about what went on in them.

During the interrogation I was beaten repeatedly about the face, and my feet were trodden on. Once I was given an injection, and next day I had a high fever. The interrogators fetched me out all the same, made me show them the site of the injection, which now was painfully inflamed, and then they tortured me there.

On other days, the interrogating colonel would take a book or hole punch from his table and throw it at me. Often I had to stand near the wall and then they would hit my head against the wall from behind. If I turned round they would hit me in the face. Always when I thought they had enjoyed themselves enough they would start all over again. Finally, I was told that members of my family were present in the jail, and they were not having it any better than I. I could go back to my wife, however, as soon as I told the truth. There was always somebody waving a pistol in my face.

In February 1946, I was put into a cell so cold that a layer of ice had formed on the walls. The iron bedstead was equipped with a very thin mattress and a blanket 150 x 50 centimetres. One had to choose whether to rest one's head or feet on the frosty iron. My clothing was taken away, and I was given ripped dungarees and shoes fit only for the rubbish dump. I had no socks or rags to wrap around my feet.

I shared this cell with another inmate, Robert Koch. This prisoner got a bed, a greatcoat, double blankets and officers' food. He was not allowed to give me anything from the latter. I found out later that he was probably a stool pigeon – his privileges were an extension of the torture. I hardly ever spoke to him.

I was deprived of sleep over a period of forty days. Only on Saturday and Sunday nights could I use my bed. On the other days I would be hauled out of my cell at 2200 hrs for questioning, which however never began before midnight. The two-hour wait I had to spend in a cell sixty by sixty centimetres, in which it was possible only to stand. Often the interrogation would be cancelled, and I would then spend the whole night standing up. I can still hear today the rattle of keys and the crash of the cell door when I was fetched.

The interrogation methods, or rather the torture, were increased. Now I was stripped naked, laid out on a table and whipped. A cat o' nine tails was used to flay my testicles, my head and the soles of my feet. If I slipped off the table, the whipping would be continued on the floor. Now and again, lying in my excrement, I would lose consciousness. Then they would wake me up to give me an ice-cold shower while somebody kept hitting my head against the wall tiles. Often I would only come to in my cell, or find myself redressed and lying on a stretcher in some room or other. Two guards would then tow me back to my cell or, supporting me under the armpits, drag me back like a wet sack. They liked a good laugh: ‘You know what you look like? Really gorgeous – like a bird of paradise.' They had looked up this term specially in the German dictionary. A female doctor painted my wounds with some kind of green paste.

My ordeal lasted a week, ten days, twelve days. I no longer felt human, and I longed for death. On the twelfth day, I asked for a piece of paper. Before I went insane, I wanted to leave them something to remind them I was a human. I was given the paper and I wrote to the responsible Minister of the Interior, Beria:

My statements are true and correspond to the facts. The interrogators do not believe me. I continue to be mistreated in an inhuman manner during the interrogations, but I hold to the truth. Apparently the idea is to beat me to death; as a soldier I request you order that I be shot dead.

I gave the paper to a guard. I was immediately led into the interrogation room. ‘So he wants to be shot dead, does he?' The officer aimed two pistols at me, then let them drop and shook his head with a grin: ‘You can die, but we will beat you to death, no, half beat you to death slowly.' Then I was given more of the cat o' nine tails, but this time without being undressed.

Back in my cell, I was not aware that this would be the last night of the heaviest torture. My written request had actually been forwarded to the addressee and is now to be found in the Moscow archives, where the BBC discovered it. Next day, I was given a wonderful meal. I never touched it. I just wanted to die.

Seven Weeks in Berlin

From the end of March until April 1946 I was well fed and given reasonable clothing. At the end of April I was taken to Berlin by train. Baur, Linge, Günsche and I were to be held in readiness as witnesses at the Nuremberg Trials.
[3]
The train journey lasted at least a week. The daily rations consisted of 400 grams of bread and nothing else. When I arrived at the Lichtenberg women's prison in Berlin I had not had anything to drink for two days, over the whole stretch since Brest Litovsk.

I was locked in a bare cell, my belongings were removed, including my cutlery. I had only been there half an hour when a Russian guard came in and punched me in the face, causing an injury from which I bled. Another Russian appeared and said to him: ‘Leave him, he is not a bandit.' I requested some water.
Nyet
. I got some watery soup on the second day. It arrived in a twelve-litre jug. There was no spoon. From now on, this jug served all my needs – eating, drinking, urinating, defecating.