Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany (23 page)

At Stalag IV-C, the German guards come into Bert Ruffle’s hut to get the men up and out to start work. Ruffle worked last night clearing out railway trucks, so he can stay in bed all day.

Dr Schenck is desperate for a pee. He gets up from the table of drinkers and realises that his need is too urgent for him to go
all the way back to the Reich Chancellery. He hurries down the staircase to the lower bunker. It is normally guarded by two armed guards but they seem to have disappeared. The Führerbunker is ghostly quiet except for the drone of the diesel generator and the more distant sounds of a boisterous party, somewhere in the Reich Chancellery. He creeps along the corridor, looking for the latrines. Through an open doorway he sees the Führer standing by a table, leaning his weight on one hand, in deep conversation with Dr Haase.

Hitler is anxious that he and Eva die at exactly the same moment. He wants to use a foolproof method of cyanide and shooting. They agree that he will have two pistols, in case one jams, and two cyanide capsules, in case one is a dud. Eva Braun will also have two capsules. Hitler will put one capsule in his mouth and hold the pistol at eyebrow level at a right angle, the muzzle on his temple. He will fire and bite simultaneously.

Haase then goes through to Eva Braun. She is worried that she will lose her resolve if Hitler dies first. Haase tells her to bite the moment she hears a shot. She has a pistol in reserve, but she doesn’t want to use it.

In the Ministry of the Interior, about 600 yards from the Reich Chancellery, a Soviet kitchen has been set up in the basement. A vat of porridge is being hurriedly cooked as an early breakfast for the troops who are about to take part in a dawn assault on the Reichstag. Stalin has identified this government building as the one that symbolises control of Berlin. He has ordered that the red flag should be flying from the Reichstag rooftop in time for Russia’s national May Day holiday tomorrow.

On the top floors of the ministry, the battle for Berlin is still being fought. As Russian soldiers make their way up the stairs,
German defenders are attacking them with grenades and sub-machine guns.

On the first floor, a centre of military operations has been set up. Captain Neustroev, the battalion commander who is about to lead the assault on the Reichstag, is studying a map with his regimental commander. Neustroev is struggling to get his bearings.

‘How are we going to get past this grey building?’

‘Neustroev!’ the senior commander exclaims, ‘that grey building is the Reichstag!’

Neustroev is stunned. He had not realised how close they were to their ultimate target.

General Shatilov, who is in overall command of the 150th Rifle Division, is bursting with excitement. He can’t resist informing the Front headquarters that the Reichstag is as good as won. He knows Stalin wants the news in time for tomorrow’s May Day parade.

As the first light of dawn begins to brighten the smoky Berlin sky, the escaping officers Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven can just make out three Russian tanks – their guns pointing in the direction of Pichelsdorf Bridge. The Hitler Youth have lost control of it, but remain in position on the far side. As the three officers approach there is no reaction from the Russian tanks, the Russian soldiers are sleeping. The officers are able to crawl unnoticed across the bridge, and slip down to the far bank. It is the start of a cold, wet day.

In the Führerbunker Hitler retires to bed. The party of drinkers in the upper bunker disperses and Eva Hitler goes down to her room. Schenck and the nurses make their way back to the Reich
Chancellery. Upstairs, in the new Reich Chancellery building, a raucous party is still in full swing, despite the risk of shelling. Behind the door of the Chancellery dental surgery a woman is being strapped into the dentist’s chair. By day this room is used for tooth extractions, by night it is the most popular place to have sex.

In the Ministry of the Interior breakfast is dished up; the Russian soldiers who are going to lead the attack on the Reichstag queue for dollops of undercooked porridge.

German snipers are in position in the Reichstag itself and in the nearby Kroll Opera House. There are about 5,000 German troops defending the Reichstag; they are made up of SS, regular army, Home Guard, Hitler Youth and 250 sailors who have been airlifted into Berlin in the past week. The Germans have dug a network of defensive channels around the Reichstag. The centrepiece is a moat, which was created when shelling smashed an underground tunnel, allowing water to seep through from the River Spree.

Sisi Wilczek finally arrives at her family home of Moosham Castle, near Salzberg. It has been snowing during the night and Sisi and her friend Missie Vassiltchikov, both wearing their restrictive nurses uniforms, had to dig the car out of a drift about an hour ago. Missie has worked with Sisi in Vienna but has never visited Moosham Castle before. She is amazed at the size of it – a medieval battlement surrounding an entire village. The Wilczeks are one of the richest families in the Hapsburg Empire. Sisi hands her parents the fortune contained in the shoebox that she has managed to smuggle out of Vienna, and she and Missie collapse with exhaustion into a four-poster bed.

In Berlin heavy shelling shakes the Reich Chancellery bunkers.

In the basement of the Ministry of the interior, the company of Russian soldiers of the 150th Rifle Division, who are going to lead the attack on the Reichstag, have finished their breakfast and are checking their weapons.

On the second floor of the makeshift hospital in the camp outside Königsberg, Dr von Lehndorff has discovered that a number of his patients died in the night. Some have died in their beds; others have died in the corridor on their way to the latrine buckets. One died while squatting on a bucket. Von Lehndorff starts to help carry the dead bodies into a bathroom.

Soon there are 36 bodies stacked several metres high; most are almost naked as other patients have taken their clothes to keep warm. Von Lehndorff notices that they are all men; women seem to be able to survive better. Although some of the dead have their papers, von Lehndorff knows that the Russians won’t bother to record their deaths; there will be no official account of where or how they died. Those that have survived have lost the will to live.

General Mohnke, commander of the Zitadelle, the government district in central Berlin which includes the Reich Chancelleries, is summoned to Hitler’s rooms in the Führerbunker. Hitler is sitting in a chair beside his bed wearing a black satin dressing gown on top of his nightshirt and soft leather slippers. He wants to know the latest on the Russian position.

‘They have reached the Tiergarten, somewhere between 170
and 250 feet from the Reich Chancellery. On all sides they are within a few hundred yards of the Reich Chancellery, but for now their progress has been halted.’

‘How long can we hold out?’

‘Twenty or 24 hours at most,
Mein Führer
.’

‘In the end these decadent Western democracies will fail.’

‘
Jawohl, Mein Führer
.’

Hitler stands up and shakes Mohnke’s hand. ‘Good luck and thank you. It wasn’t only for Germany!’

The first company of Russian soldiers from the 150th Rifle Division battalions charge out of the Ministry of the Interior, heading for the Reichstag across Königsplatz. The wide leafy square at the heart of Berlin’s government district is now a cratered wasteland. The soldiers run for about 50 metres before they are thrown to the ground by a hurricane of German fire from the Reichstag building on one side and from the Kroll Opera House on the other. Meanwhile, a premature message of triumph is radioed to Moscow from General Shatilov, commander of the 150th Rifles. Stalin is informed that the Reichstag has been taken.

The presses of the
Chicago Herald-American
are printing their first editions. They carry the latest dispatch from their young correspondent, John F. Kennedy, at the international conference in San Francisco that’s deciding the shape of the United Nations.

‘There is a heritage of 25 years of distrust between Russia and the rest of the world that cannot be overcome completely for a good many years… This week in San Francisco will be a decisive one in Russian–American affairs. It will be a real test of whether the Russians and Americans can get along.’

This will be a major theme of Kennedy’s presidency. In fact,
he will recruit for his administration many veterans of the San Francisco conference.

For the second day in a row Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, finds that the Führer is already dressed and is lying on his bed, fully clothed in his uniform jacket and black trousers. Hitler gets up and comes to the door. He puts his finger to his lips and shuffles quietly down the corridor. The three drinkers, Bormann and generals Krebs and Burgdorf, are asleep on the benches outside his room. Beside them are bottles of schnapps and loaded pistols, safety catches off. Both secretaries, Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, can be seen through the open doorway of the conference room where they are sleeping on camp beds.

Linge accompanies the Führer down the corridor to the switchboard room. Hitler radios a message to General Weidling,
the new Commandant of Berlin, asking for an update on the military situation. The reply comes quickly: the Russians are in immediate proximity to the government district.

The Russian company leading the attack on the Reichstag remains on the ground, trapped by the crossfire in Königsplatz.

Another division of Russian soldiers is sent to empty the embankment buildings behind the Kroll Opera House in order to surprise the German snipers from behind.

This morning’s
Times
newspaper has a story on page two about the students heading to Belsen, ‘Medical Students for Belsen Camp. Treating the Starved.’

There is also a story that the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s are preparing a report on the cost of repairing the damage to the cathedral. It was hit three times in the Blitz, resulting in considerable damage to the high altar and the organ. A sum not less than £100,000 is suggested.

‘When the report is made public it is likely that there will be not only a nation-wide but an Empire-wide response, for St Paul’s has stood as a symbol of all that free men have fought for during nearly six years of war.’

The Times
also has a half-page looking back on Mussolini’s life.

‘The man who first organized modern dictatorship in Europe and furnished a pattern by which German Nazism was quick
to profit; who had successfully defied the League of Nations and seemed to rank in the tripartite agreement with Germany and Japan, among the directing forces of the world, lies dead by the hands of his own countrymen among the ruins of the country he has brought low.’ The piece ends disapprovingly, ‘His private life was notorious for its irregularities.’

Eva Hitler hurries up the concrete steps from the Führerbunker to the Reich Chancellery garden. She has a sudden urge ‘to see the sun once more’. The garden has been wrecked by shelling and the sky is darkened by smoke from the battle of the Reichstag. She hesitates briefly before returning to her bedroom. She has barely slept.

On the island of Okinawa, where it’s the 30th day of the American campaign to capture the island in the face of fierce Japanese opposition, the commander of the US forces on the island, General Simon Bolivar Buckner, is attending an unusual wedding. On the lawn outside his headquarters, a captured Japanese captain is about to marry an Okinawan woman. The ceremony was delayed because the bride needed to fix the sash on her kimono. Everything is being captured by an army press photographer.

‘Bring ’um in!’ a sergeant shouts.

For the past few months, the Japanese have been telling the native Okinawans that if they are captured by the Americans they will be tortured and executed, and that they should kill their women before the GIs get them. On 5th April General Buckner wrote in his diary that two Okinawan men ‘who killed their wives because the Japs told them they would be raped to death, became very hostile to the Japs when they surrendered themselves [to the Americans] and found this not to be true. One attacked a Jap prisoner’.

The wedding is therefore a useful propaganda exercise to show that the Americans treat their POWs fairly and that Okinawans have nothing to fear.