Hitler's Last Day: Minute By Minute Part 6

Lieutenant Claus Sellier and his friend Fritz are walking out of the Austrian town of Lofer and heading for the German border and the army provision headquarters in Traunstein to deliver their final package what Sellier suspects is a request for urgent supplies for their beleaguered training camp. Claus feels free and strangely elated, since the generals have all disappeared. They come across three German soldiers one has a bandaged foot and is being helped by the others.

'Where are you going?' Claus asks the wounded soldier.

'Home to Berlin...'

'But that's 1,000 kilometres! And you're limping how will you get there?'

'What else can we do? We were told to leave the hospital and so we're going home. I don't care how far it is. Anyway do we have a choice?'

'But there's a big battle round Berlin... Aren't you scared?'

The soldier shows Claus a letter from a doctor. It says, 'Released from the hospital. Do the best you can! We need the beds for the next bunch of wounded soldiers that comes in.'

'I'm going home. I have a bed there I hope.'

The soldiers go their separate ways.

10.30am.

In his bedroom office in the upper bunker, the monocled General Krebs is on the telephone to army headquarters in Berlin. He is told that the German defence is collapsing on all fronts. Then the line suddenly goes dead. The air balloon which supports the radio-telephone communications has been shot down. All telephone communication between Berlin and the outside world has ended.

Almost immediately a Hitler Youth runner arrives with news of a report that General Wenck's 12th Army is still holding out south-west of Berlin. Officers Boldt and von Loringhoven exchange glances. This could be the escape opportunity that they have been waiting for. They need to convince General Krebs that they can do most good by breaking out and fighting with Wenck. They know that if there is any suspicion that they are trying to flee, they will be executed.

Sixteen-year-old Armin Lehmann is one to the Hitler Youth runners. Once the telephone line goes down he finds himself making several trips a day across Berlin's central street, Wilhelmstra.s.se, taking messages between army headquarters and the Fuhrerbunker. He recalled these last days in a memoir published in 2003: 'It was a nightmare.

'It was a game of Russian Roulette and those who stepped out from cover were taking their life in their hands. At best they would get a mouthful of the constant cloud of phosphorus smoke and poisonous petrol from the incendiaries; at worst they would be sliced down by a Russian rocket. By then Wilhelmstra.s.se stank with the smell of scorched bodies... It was a particularly nauseating, sickly sweet smell... If a katyusha strike hit anywhere near where one was, it often produced sudden blindness and a terrible disorientation. That was the most dangerous moment. One had to find one's feet straightaway otherwise the next strike could be for you... The crossing had become an open air burial pit.'

In the last four or five days of the Battle of Berlin, 20 of Lehmann's fellow Hitler Youth runners were killed in Wilhelmstra.s.se. Young boys who refused orders were strung up as an example to others. Only a couple of days ago Lehmann was briefly arrested for staring at the body of a young boy, 'he cannot have been more than 13', who had been hanged from a post with a length of clothes line. He was missing an ear and wearing a Home Guard uniform which was much too big for him. Lehmann had heard rumours that children were being hanged for cowardice, but this was the first evidence he had seen of it.

11.00am/3.00am PWT (Pacific War Time).

John F. Kennedy is fast asleep in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The 26-year-old future President of the United States is working as a journalist for the Chicago Herald-American, reporting on the international conference to decide the shape of the United Nations that convened four days before. Kennedy's newspaper byline says he gives 'the point of view of the ordinary GI.' Kennedy served as a commander of a motor torpedo boat that in August 1943 was rammed by a j.a.panese destroyer. His dramatic rescue of his crew has turned him into a war hero.

Last night, Kennedy filed the first of his dispatches for the Chicago Herald-American (for which he is paid $250). It began: 'There is an impression that this is the conference to end wars and introduce peace on earth and good-will towards nations excluding of course Germany and j.a.pan. Well, it's not going to do that.'

Kennedy is sceptical because he knows what is going on behind the scenes. He is incredibly well connected thanks to his father Joe, who was US Amba.s.sador to London between 1938 and 1940. No ordinary journalist, JFK has dined with Averell Harriman the US Amba.s.sador to Moscow, Chip Bohlen, a special a.s.sistant to the Secretary of State, and Anthony Eden, the leader of the British delegation and future Prime Minister. Already a womaniser, at one event JFK stole Eden's attractive dance partner.

John F. Kennedy is not a well man he is thin and drawn. He suffers from Addison's disease and almost continual back pain. Betty Spalding, a friend staying in the same hotel, recalled that 'he wasn't his usual joyful self he spent a lot of time in bed'. In JFK's hotel room is a back brace that he uses to keep his spine straight. He will use the brace for the rest of his life. It will be one of the reasons why he dies in Dallas in November 1963. Instead of falling after being hit by Lee Harvey Oswald's second bullet, the brace keeps him upright and an easy target for the third.

Kennedy is one of 600 accredited journalists at the UN Conference whose number bizarrely includes actors Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner. San Francisco is the place to be.

Charles Ritchie is part of the Canadian delegation, and is finding the conference and San Francisco fascinating. Before he went to bed he wrote in his diary, 'The sun s.h.i.+nes perpetually, the streets are thronged, there are American sailors everywhere with their girls and this somehow adds to the musical comedy atmosphere. You expect them at any moment to break into song and dance... This seems a technicolor world glossy with self-a.s.surance.'

Across town, in a restaurant called Fosters, journalists Alistair Cooke and Tony Wigan are eating a meal of two eggs over easy, sausages, pancakes and syrup. They arrived in San Francisco the same day as Kennedy; Wigan is a correspondent for the BBC, 37-year-old Cooke a reporter for the Manchester Guardian, although he also is one of three regular contributors to the BBC radio programme American Commentary. In his American Commentary on 25th April, Cooke summed up what was going on in the UN talks for his listeners in Britain: 'What this conference is about is to see if we can become good citizens of one world, before we become its victims.'

The men have already got into an exhausting routine. To keep tabs on the meetings of the 46 nations represented at the talks, as well the discussions about the role of the Security Council and the General a.s.sembly, they find themselves having to cross town all day. Having spoken to the key chairmen in each committee around 6pm, Cooke then writes his daily piece for the Manchester Guardian. Then the two men broadcast live on the BBC, and because of the time difference, don't finish until 2am. They'll be in bed in a couple of hours' time.

Another key part of Cooke's day is telephoning and writing to the woman for whom he has recently left his wife a war widow named Jane Hawks. Exactly a year later they will be in San Francisco on their honeymoon.

Cooke has filed his piece for Monday's Manchester Guardian. It includes the remarkable moment at about 2pm the previous afternoon when, in the middle of a very dull speech at the conference, a delegate from Honduras held up a newspaper with a large headline printed in red saying 'n.a.z.is Quit'. The delegate was then surrounded by photographers glad of something interesting to shoot. Cooke wrote, 'Mr Vyacheslav Molotov [the Russian Foreign Minister] rose and smiled and bowed in what seemed like an acknowledgement of the longed-for news. He motioned the delegates to sit, and the translation that n.o.body now listened to droned on.' President Truman issued a statement an hour later denying the 'n.a.z.is quit' rumour.

For seven weeks Cooke and Wigan reported from the conference. The Manchester Guardian paid Cooke five cents a word he made $2,025 by the time the conference disbanded. Cooke filed his last American Commentary in August 1945, and soon after he started a weekly American Letter, that in 1950 became Letter from America. It ran for almost 60 years.

'Molotov' is an alias derived from the Russian word for hammer. The Minister is tough and uncompromising, and in Churchill's words 'a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness'. Molotov carries out Stalin's wishes to the letter, especially as he knows that the Russian leader is suspicious of his Jewish wife Polina who has a brother living in the United States. Stalin has arrested the wives of colleagues in the past.

The dour-looking Molotov has a softer side. While in San Francisco he is writing to Polina almost every day. One letter began: 'Polinka, darling, my love! I'm overcome with impatience and desire for your closeness and caresses...'

About halfway between the concentration camps in Buchenwald and Theresienstadt, an Allied air raid drops bombs close to a long line of Jewish prisoners who are on a forced march away from the advancing Russians. Many of the prisoners use the distraction this causes to try to escape. About 1,000 are caught and shot, about 1,700 continue, but many are too weak and sick to even attempt to run in the first place. When they arrive at Theresienstadt on 7th May there are only 500 survivors.

'No one can imagine what he demands of me...'

Hitler's valet Heinz Linge knocks on Hitler's bedroom door. For the last six years it has been Linge's job to time the Fuhrer getting dressed. Linge holds a stopwatch and when Hitler shouts 'Los!' he sets it going and the dressing race begins. In the early days the faster he got dressed, the better the Fuhrer's mood, but as he has become more disabled the game has become more of a rarity. This morning Hitler has completed the race before it has even begun. He is lying on his bed fully clothed. Except for his tie. There is a special ritual for the tie. Hitler stands in front of the mirror with his eyes closed.

'Los.'

As Linge does up the tie, Hitler counts the seconds. 'Fertig!' Hitler opens his eyes and checks the tie in the mirror.

Hitler's barber, August Wollenhaupt, knocks and comes in to the bedroom. The Fuhrer has already shaved himself, but Wollenhaupt attends to the hair and moustache which require fortnightly tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. The moustache is designed to cover his unusually large nostrils. The style has come from America, where it is known as the toothbrush moustache. Both Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney sport them. In Bavaria it is known as a Rotzbremse, 'snot break'. Putzi Hanfstaengl, who knew Hitler from the beer halls of Munich in the 1920s, told him he should grow it right across the top of his mouth, 'Look at the portraits of Holbein and Van Dyck; the old masters would never have dreamed of such an ugly fas.h.i.+on.' Hitler replied, 'Don't worry about my moustache. If it's not the fas.h.i.+on now, if will be later, because I wear it.' By April 1945 its brief period of popularity is very much over.

In the past the barber's work has also been timed, in a good-humoured way. Wollenhaupt likes the Fuhrer, finds him 'genial', softly spoken and appreciates the fact that he always asks after his family, and is interested to hear the word on the street.

Hitler's bedroom is small and simply furnished. The only ornaments are two framed photographs beside the bed. One is of Hitler's mother Klara who died when he was 17. The other is of his first and long-term driver, Emil Maurice.

Maurice was an early member of the n.a.z.i Party. He was imprisoned with Hitler in 1923 in Landsberg Prison where Hitler dictated part of the first draft of Mein Kampf to him. The two men remained close, working and holidaying together until a dramatic falling-out in 1931.

For the six years up to 1931 Hitler had been living with his half-sister and her daughter, Geli Raubal, in Munich. Geli Raubal, now 23, was his constant companion. They went to shows, concerts, restaurants, picnics in the countryside and even clothes shopping together. Rumours about the nature of their relations.h.i.+p were widespread. However, Raubal and Maurice were secretly having an affair and when Hitler discovered this he flew into one of his infamous rages. Maurice feared for his life as. .h.i.tler threatened him with a gun and chased him around the house, cracking his hippopotamus hide riding whip. Maurice lost his job and later sued Hitler for unpaid wages, with partial success.

Hitler then introduced strict rules forbidding Geli Raubal from going out of the house without him, unless she had a chaperone. 'My uncle is a monster. No one can imagine what he demands of me...' she protested, a complaint which her friends interpreted in different ways.

On 18th September 1931 Hitler and Raubal had a violent argument shortly before he left for Nuremberg. The following morning she was found dead of a gunshot wound in Hitler's apartment. The gun that fired the fatal shot was. .h.i.tler's. The official verdict was suicide but Hitler was forced to issue a statement denying any involvement.

Having left Hitler's service as his personal driver, Maurice joined the SS. There were rumours that Maurice worked for Hitler as an a.s.sa.s.sin. In 1935, following the introduction of the racial purity laws, Himmler wanted to expel Maurice from the SS because of his Jewish great-grandparents. However, Hitler intervened and Maurice was given the official status of 'Honorary Aryan'. He seems to have paid Maurice a sinecure for the rest of his life, and chose his picture as one of the few personal items he took into the bunker.

Linge administers cocaine drops to Hitler's right eye, which has been causing intense pain for the last few days, and has been problematic in bright light for many years. He also gives. .h.i.tler a packet of pastilles to suck throughout the day. These are Dr Koester's Anti-Gas Pills, which Hitler takes for his stomach cramps and flatulence. They contain a mix of two deadly poisons: strychnine and atropine (belladonna). Linge always carries spare pastilles, and spare reading gla.s.ses. Although Hitler never wears gla.s.ses in public, at meetings, Linge later recalled, 'he would toy with them in his hands which often resulted in them getting broken when he got tense'.

A week ago Hitler had furiously dismissed Theodor Morell, his personal doctor, accusing him of trying to sedate him with morphine in order to whisk him out of the capital. Morell had, at the earliest opportunity, flown out of the bunker himself and was now in Obersalzberg with Eva's family. He left behind a cabinet of medicines and medical equipment including glucose and amphetamine injections, which he had used daily to boost the Fuhrer's energy. At one point Hitler was taking 28 different pills and injections every day. Morell had been treating Hitler for nine years and, until his unexpected dismissal, Hitler would hear no criticism of him. He recommended Morell to all the senior n.a.z.is, most of whom suffered from symptoms of stress, but Himmler, Goring and Speer all privately regarded the nervous, overweight doctor as a quack. Hitler himself was a hypochondriac but, as well as numerous stress-related conditions, was now suffering from a heart problem and Parkinson's disease.

Hitler sends Linge to bring Wulf, his favourite of the puppies born to his Alsatian Blondi in the bunker. As was evident in the First World War when his only friend was a terrier he called Foxl, Hitler is a great dog lover. He is particularly attached to Blondi, whom he believes to be exceptionally clever and sophisticated. In an interview given by Traudl Junge towards the end of her life, Hitler's secretary remembered that Blondi could provide Hitler with a whole evening's entertainment. She barks on command, and when he gives the order to 'sing' she produces a howl. Hitler is most proud of the fact that if he then instructs her to 'sing like Zarah Leander' the Swedish singer of a popular song called 'Wunderbar', famed for her deep voice Blondi gives a special deep howl. Hitler boasts about Blondi endlessly, telling everyone that she obeys his every word.

11.05am.

General Krebs asks von Loringhoven and Boldt, the two officers who are planning their exit from the bunker, to update him on the morning's runner reports in preparation for the midday situation conference with the Fuhrer. They are ready with their maps and papers. Boldt points out the streets where the German forces are making strenuous efforts to hold back the Russians. The other news of the morning has been confusing and contradictory except for the report that Wenck's 12th Army is southwest of the capital.

Von Loringhoven takes his chance.

'General, would it be useful if Boldt and I were to make speedy contact with General Wenck? We could give him the true picture of the situation in Berlin and in the Reich Chancellery. We could urge him to break through to the city as soon as possible and could indeed guide him on the best route for his attack.'

Boldt nods. 'There is very little left for us to do here in the bunker now that the telecommunications are down.'

Krebs hesitates. He is not sure what the Fuhrer will make of the plan. General Burgdorf suddenly appears. He's come to see if Krebs wants a drink. Burgdorf is much more enthusiastic about the officers' proposal than Krebs. He wants his adjutant Rudolf Weiss to go with them. Martin Bormann then comes in; he's also wondering about a drink.

Generals Krebs and Burgdorf form what von Loringhoven calls a triumvirate of drinkers with Martin Bormann. The three men are spending most of their time sitting in the bunker corridors drinking schnapps. From time to time they cruise over to the Reich Chancellery where a kind of ma.s.s hysteria, fuelled by the endless supply of alcohol in the cellars, has led to a relaxing of s.e.xual inhibitions. The young women in the Reich Chancellery are seen as fair game.

Bormann's philandering has the support of his wife Gerda, the mother of his ten children. Just over a year ago he wrote to her with the proud news that he had succeeded in seducing the actress Manja Behrens. Gerda wrote straight back with her congratulations and offering to welcome Manja into their household. She goes on to suggest that, given the terrible decline in the production of Aryan children as a result of the war, they should arrange a system of motherhood by s.h.i.+fts 'so that you always have a wife who is usable'.

Burgdorf explains to Martin Bormann the idea of sending the three officers to General Wenck and, to the astonishment of Boldt and von Loringhoven, Bormann also likes the plan. Krebs is finally persuaded. Now the Fuhrer must be convinced.

General Walther Wenck is attempting to break through the Russian encirclement of Berlin from the south and has obeyed Hitler's recent orders to disengage from fighting the Americans in the west in order to fight the Soviet troops. However, his motives are secretly at odds with the Fuhrer's. Wenck no longer believes that it is possible to defend the capital. His aim is to try and create a corridor through which civilians and soldiers can make their escape. A week ago he addressed his young soldiers and explained their mission: 'It's not about Berlin any more, it's not about the Reich any more'. Their aim is to save lives.

About 11.15am.

'Identification please!'

A young SS officer has stopped his truck behind Claus Sellier and his friend Fritz and shouts at them from the cab. The two men are instantly irritated by the officer's att.i.tude. Fritz shows his papers and says, 'I'm glad you showed up, you can take us to Traunstein.'

'Sorry, I can't take you, I've no room.' The SS officer points to the men in the back of the truck. 'My orders are to take these soldiers to a position where they can defend the road.'

Fritz angrily pulls out a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket, saying, 'What is your name? State your rank and your unit number! Did you never read military regulations? It says you are supposed to help an officer who has an important mission, under any circ.u.mstances. Do I understand correctly that you're refusing to take us?'

Stunned, the SS officer gets quickly out of the cab and salutes them.

'Heil Hitler!'

Claus and Fritz return the salute but with little enthusiasm, and follow the officer up into the cab. As they set off, Fritz takes his time writing the SS officer's name in his book. Seeing this, the officer tries to impress his new pa.s.sengers and make amends.

'We're setting roadblocks to check on soldiers who are wandering around. Some of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds seem to think the war is over already. We take them prisoners. Then they will be investigated for treason and court-martialled.'

Claus is hoping that the SS officer has missed the three soldiers they pa.s.sed an hour earlier. He has had enough of the officer's att.i.tude and just wants to get away. Claus asks if they can be dropped off in the next village. They jump out of the cab, and before the truck pulls off, Claus shakes hands with all the soldiers in the back, wis.h.i.+ng he could tell them that the war is lost and they shouldn't believe what the SS officer is telling them.

Meanwhile Fritz makes a show of ripping up the page with the SS officer's details, saying, 'I won't report you this time.'

Two days later, from the safety of a forest, Fritz will watch as the same SS officer, together with other SS men, stops wounded German soldiers at a checkpoint. The officer takes the men's papers and, without reading them, rips them up. The soldiers are then tied with their hands behind their backs, and signs are put around their necks that read: 'I'm a coward. I don't want to fight.' One by one they are hanged from a tree as the SS men shout 'Cowards!' at them. Some of the soldiers carrying out the executions are as young as 15. Witnessing this, Fritz will look at the Hitler Youth badge he's had since school, and for the first time feel ashamed of it. He sits in the forest and weeps.

'Tonight you will hear an Englishman who is speaking to you at his own request and of his own free will...'

Second Lieutenant Alan Whicker of the British Army Film and Photo Unit is in a radio station in Milan, and through a translator, is asking for an appeal to be sent out for the whereabouts of John Amery a notorious traitor who has been broadcasting Fascist propaganda since 1942. John Amery is no ordinary traitor he is the son of the British Cabinet Minister Leo Amery. Whicker knows that the partisans have captured him; he just doesn't know where he's being kept.

Thirty-three-year-old John Amery is in fact only a short distance from Whicker, in the Milan city jail. He is unshaven and wearing a Fascist black s.h.i.+rt.

Amery is a complicated man and possibly mentally ill. He had a privileged childhood, brought up in the family home on Eaton Square in London and educated at Harrow. His housemaster described Amery as 'without doubt the most difficult boy I have ever tried to manage... he seemed unable in those days to distinguish right from wrong. He seemed to think he could be a law unto himself.'

In his early twenties Amery travelled and worked around Europe with his wife Una, a former prost.i.tute. By the time Churchill brought his old friend Leo Amery into his wartime Cabinet in May 1940 and gave him responsibility for India, John was a virulent anti-communist and anti-Semite (which was strange considering he is part Jewish).

In March 1942, now living in the French Alps, John Amery wrote a letter to a French newspaper criticising an RAF bombing raid on the Renault factory in Paris, in which 623 civilians were killed. He said that a number of his countrymen agreed with his views. MI5 swiftly picked up on the letter, and an official noted in Amery's file that the letter's contents should deter Amery from returning to England. 'Or if he does, he should be a.s.sured of a reception at the hands of a firing squad.' At the same time the German Foreign Office in Berlin also got to hear of this outspoken British Cabinet Minister's son.

In November 1942, the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (Reich Broadcasting Company) introduced a new voice to its Germany Calling programme: 'Tonight you will hear an Englishman who is speaking to you at his own request and of his own free will...'

Amery spoke about how Britain's alliance with Russia would lead to communism in Britain; how all the newspapers in London are Jewish-controlled, and in a pa.s.sage that was probably written by the Propaganda Ministry, he claimed Germany didn't want to rob Britain of her Empire: 'There is more than enough room in the world for Germany and Britain.'

On 20th April 1943 he visited a POW camp in an attempt to recruit British soldiers to join a British Legion of St George to fight the Russians. He had even designed some posters showing a Tommy marching with the German army, with the caption: 'Our Flag Is Going Forward Too.' Amery was hissed and booed.

Amery was becoming an embarra.s.sment to the German Propaganda Ministry. He was frequently drunk and his broadcasts had little impact. Then Amery's second wife Jeanine (whom he had bigamously married, and was also a prost.i.tute) died after an apparent overdose.

In September 1943 he moved to Italy and met with Mussolini, who had been installed by the Germans as the leader of the Italian Social Republic in the north of the country, which they controlled. Amery began broadcasting on the state-controlled network. On 25th April 1945 he was arrested by the partisans in Milan and placed in the city's jail.

With Amery in jail is his third wife Mich.e.l.le, whom he met on a train only days after his second wife's funeral. Like his two other wives, she is also a prost.i.tute. They nervously await their fate. After the death of Mussolini and his mistress, they know the partisans are capable of anything.