Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany (34 page)

In Moscow, Stalin’s response was blunter, ‘So – that’s the end of the bastard.’

Although Hitler was dead there was still no ceasefire. Some German units made up their own minds about whether to fight on in light of the news. Eighteen-year-old Herbert Mittelstädt was part of an anti-aircraft unit in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg. On 1st May his commanding officer declared, ‘I no longer believe that there is any way possible for us to win this war. I am going to discharge you, and whoever wants to, can continue fighting with me as a Werewolf (lone fighter).’ Only one man put his hand up. Dispirited, the officer concluded, ‘The whole thing isn’t worth it. I’m going to discharge myself as well!’

In the Sudetenland, Michael Etkind was part of a group of Jews being forced by the SS to march away from a labour camp and the advancing Russians. Resting in a barn for the night, they heard their guards saying, ‘Hitler is dead.’ The news spread quickly around the exhausted prisoners. One man, who Etkind had nicknamed ‘the Joker’ because he kept them all going with his sense of humour, leapt up and started to sing a spontaneous song:

‘I have outlived the fiend

My life-long wish fulfilled…’

The others watched in horror as he sang and danced his way to the open barn door. One of the guards took aim. Etkind recalled, ‘We saw the “Joker” lift his arms again… turn around surprised (didn’t they understand, hadn’t they heard that the Monster was dead?) and like a puppet when its strings are cut, collapse into a heap.’

The killing only stopped in Europe, when on 7th May,
General Alfred Jodl, who had been Hitler’s senior military advisor, signed a simultaneous and unconditional surrender on all fronts.

John Amery was tried for high treason at the Old Bailey in November 1945. His family tried to prove that, during his pre-war European travels, he’d become a Spanish citizen, and therefore treason against the British Crown was impossible. But when in the dock on 28th November, Amery was asked whether he would plead guilty or not guilty, he shocked the court by replying, ‘I plead guilty on all counts.’ On 18th December 1945 John Amery was hanged at Wandsworth Prison.

Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant was given some civilian clothes by a farmer who lived on the edge of the River Havel. He registered as a civilian under a false name on 4th May and was given an identity pass and a ration book. He then worked his way, doing odd jobs, towards his in-laws’ home near Magdeburg, 100 miles south-east of Berlin, where he arrived on 20th June. He remained there with his pregnant wife and their three children, but he was recognised in the clinic where his wife gave birth to their fourth child, and was forced to flee. He hid with friends in Bonn until 7th January 1946, when he was denounced to the British. He was imprisoned and used as a ‘material witness’ at the Nuremburg trials. He was finally discharged on 14th May 1948. He spent the rest of his working life as a pilot for Lufthansa. He died in 1983.

The three adjutants who escaped from the bunker joined a small German army unit which had become trapped between the Great and Little lakes of Wannsee, just south of Berlin. On the night of 1st May they attempted a breakout with the aim of reaching Wenck’s 12th Army. Most of the men who took part in the breakout were gunned down by Russians. Weiss was captured. Boldt and von Loringhoven managed to hide in a pine thicket.

On 3rd May Boldt and von Loringhoven succeeded in obtaining civilian clothes. They learned of Hitler’s death the same day. Disguised as civilians, they made their way to American-controlled territory, which they finally reached on 11th May. They then separated.

Boldt
headed to Lübeck to join his wife and child. He reached them at the end of May. He was arrested by the Allies in the spring of 1946, and wrote his memoir,
Hitler’s Last Days, An Eye-witness Account
, while in an internment camp. He died in 1981.

Von Loringhoven
headed for Leipzig but he was arrested by the Americans before he could reach his wife and son. He was taken to a British interrogation camp near Hannover. There he was interrogated by a man calling himself Major Oughton, who was, in fact, the British spy and historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Von Loringhoven was very unhappy with his treatment. He had no news of his family, was often hungry and treated aggressively by guards. There was one occasion when he appealed to ‘Major Oughton’ for help after three days of being sprayed with water and kicked, kept cold and naked and forced to sleep on a wet floor. After he spoke to Oughton,
his treatment improved. Von Loringhoven was finally freed in January 1948 and reunited with his family. In the following years he was involved in the recreation of the German army, and represented Germany at the NATO Standing Group in Washington. He died in 2007.

Weiss
spent five years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland. He died in 1958.

Bormann had worked for Hitler for ten years before entering the Führerbunker with him in January 1945. He had originally been appointed to oversee building renovations of Hitler’s property in Obersalzberg. Whenever Hitler was at his mountain retreat, Bormann would be in attendance. He began dealing with all Hitler’s correspondence in Obersalzberg, and gradually took control of his personal finances. After the flight of Rudolf Hess in 1941, Bormann became head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, which gave him power over legislation and civil service salaries and appointments. He became inseparable from Hitler and he earned the nickname ‘Brown Eminence’ long before he was given the official title of Personal Secretary to the Führer in 1943. All communication with Hitler went through him. Throughout his career he was virtually unknown by the German public and became famous only after his death.

On the night of 1st May 1945, Bormann was in the third group to leave the bunker. The group of 15 men included a pilot, a surgeon and a small troop of soldiers. They gathered in the Reich Chancellery cellar at 11pm and watched the first two groups leave – in small subgroups of five or six, through a shell-hole. When the third group’s turn came at 11.40pm they decided to run for it together through the main Chancellery
doorway. They raced to the nearest underground station where they found it was pitch dark. They had to feel their way along the tracks as very few in the group had brought torches. It was a bad mistake. The group missed a crucial turning and became separated. Bormann was at a particular disadvantage as he had very little knowledge of Berlin.

At about 3.30am on 2nd May Artur Axmann, the head of the Hitler Youth who had also been in the third group, came upon the bodies of Ludwig Stumpfegger and Martin Bormann, lying side by side, close to a bridge over a railway line. He noted that they were both uninjured and assumed that they had taken cyanide. In 1973 the bodies were found and in 1998 DNA tests proved that they were the bodies of Stumpfegger and Bormann, quashing decades of rumours that the Brown Eminence had escaped to South America.

Martin Bormann and his wife Gerda had ten children. Bormann also had a series of mistresses. Gerda died of cancer in April 1946 and the children were dispersed to foster homes. Bormann’s oldest son, Martin Bormann junior, became a Catholic priest before leaving the church to marry. He spent the second half of his life working as a theologian and peace campaigner.

Burgdorf, the man who killed Rommel, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head on 2nd May 1945.

Dara, as she was known – a shortening of her maiden name, Daranowski – escaped from the bunker, together with Hitler’s other secretary Traudl Junge, in the breakout on 1st May 1945.
She succeeded in making her way to American-held territory. She died in 1997.

In the general election of July 1945, a war-weary Britain voted for Clement Attlee’s Labour Party rather than Churchill’s caretaker Conservative government. On the afternoon of the result, Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, told him he thought the British people were ungrateful. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t call it that,’ Churchill replied. ‘They have had a very hard time.’ In 1951, Churchill bounced back, winning office once more. He served as an MP until 1964, dying, aged 90, a year later.

After the war Geoffrey Cox returned to journalism and joined the
News Chronicle
as a political correspondent, and by the mid-1950s was deputy editor. Keen to work in television, he joined ITN and was its editor-in-chief from 1956 to 1968. In 1967 he started
News at Ten
, ITN’s flagship half-hour evening news bulletin. Sir Robin Day described Cox as ‘the best television journalist we have ever known in Britain’. Geoffrey Cox was knighted in 1966, and died in 1993, aged 97.

On 3rd May 1945, Patrick Dalzel-Job wrote in his diary after a skirmish with German troops, ‘I realised with some feeling of regret that this was likely to be one of the last times we should face enemy fire; the German resistance was everywhere collapsing.’ He had lost not a single man in his 30 Assault Unit and had enjoyed the thrill of his wartime experience.

Immediately after the war, Dalzel-Job travelled to Norway to find a girl called Bjørg Bangsund, who he had sailed with in the summer of 1939. Three weeks after he tracked her down, they married in Oslo. Their son Iain has a senior officer’s report on his father that says he is ‘an unusual officer who possesses no fear of danger’.

Dalzel-Job agreed he may have inspired Ian Fleming’s famous spy but said, ‘I have never read a Bond book or seen a Bond movie. They are not my style. And I only ever loved one woman, and I’m not a drinking man.’ Patrick Dalzel-Job died in 2003, aged 90.

Having been named as Hitler’s successor, Karl Dönitz was head of the German government until it was dissolved by the Allies on 23rd May. He was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and of crimes against the laws of war. He was imprisoned in Spandau Prison for ten years and released in October 1956. He later wrote his memoirs. He died in 1980.

Eva Braun’s sister gave birth to a daughter, Eva, on 5th May in Obersalzberg, where she, her mother and her other sister were staying.

They had been expecting Hermann Fegelein, Hitler and Braun to join them, but that hope ended when Hitler’s aide, Julius Schaub, arrived on 25th April bringing documents from the bunker, which Hitler wanted preserved. He also brought Eva Braun’s last letter to her sister, which she had written on 23rd April, setting out her wishes for her jewellery in the case of
her death. ‘The Führer himself has lost all faith in a successful outcome. All of us here, including myself, will carry on hoping as long as we live. Hold your heads up high and do not despair! There is still hope. But it goes without saying that we will not allow ourselves to be captured alive.’

Gretl Fegelein later remarried. She died in 1987. Her daughter Eva committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 27 following the death of her boyfriend in a car crash.

Flegel, who had become hysterical when saying goodbye to Hitler, remained with the patients in the emergency hospital in the Reich Chancellery cellars until the Russians arrived on 2nd May 1945. She was handed over to the Americans and briefly interrogated. She died in 2006.

On the night of 1st May, after Dr Stumpfegger had administered cyanide to the six children, Joseph and Magda Goebbels went up to the Reich Chancellery garden and committed suicide. They probably took cyanide. They may also have shot themselves. Goebbels had given instructions for his adjutant Günther Schwägermann to burn their bodies, but Schwägermann wasn’t able to source much petrol, so when the Russians arrived the following day they were easily able to identify the bodies.

The former head of the German Luftwaffe ended the war in
his Bavarian castle. On 5th May he set off to the American zone in order to avoid capture by the Russians. He was taken into custody on 6th May. In the months before the Nuremberg Trials he came off morphine and lost a lot of weight. He was found guilty on four counts: conspiracy; waging a war of aggression; war crimes, including the theft of works of art; crimes against humanity, including the disappearance of opponents, and the murder and enslavement of civilians, including 5,700,000 Jews. He was sentenced to death by hanging but committed suicide on 15th October 1946 by taking cyanide the night before he was due to be executed. It has never been finally established how he obtained the cyanide but two American soldiers claimed to have played a part.

The newly appointed head of the Luftwaffe, von Greim was captured by the Americans with Hanna Reitsch on 9th May 1945. He was by now quite seriously ill from his infected leg wound. He was interrogated by the Americans and committed suicide by taking cyanide on 24th May, having learned that he was to be handed over to the Russians as part of a prisoner exchange programme.

Hitler’s personal adjutant was one of the people who broke out of the bunker on 1st May 1945. He was in the first party to leave, led by General Mohnke, and he was with Mohnke when he surrendered to a Russian army unit in a Berlin brewery cellar. He was imprisoned in Moscow and later in East Germany until May 1956.

Like others who had been in the Führerbunker at the end,
Günsche was repeatedly tortured by the Russians, who were trying to establish a detailed picture of Hitler’s life and death. He returned to live in a small town near Cologne. He died in 2003.