Hitler's Last Day: Minute By Minute Part 8

The guards who left have been replaced by raw recruits, with new shoes and uniforms, and they don't mind if the POWs forget to bow to them.

Hudson, an Australian from New South Wales, was captured by the j.a.panese through what he knows was his own stupidity. On 19th December 1944, he flew his Mosquito from his base in a.s.sam into Burma he had no specific mission; Hudson just wanted to test out his guns on what's known as a low-level 'rhubarb' seeking targets of opportunity. Hudson and his navigator Jack Shortis were flying just above the treetops when the Mosquito hit a branch, which badly damaged the port engine. They dropped out of the sky 'like a falling leaf', Hudson wrote later, and were soon captured and taken to Rangoon jail. Rangoon, like the rest of Burma, had been overrun by the j.a.panese in early 1942; it took the invaders only 127 days to push the British out of the country. The fall of Burma, following the loss of Hong Kong and Malaya, had been a humiliating defeat.

The j.a.panese are brutal conquerors. When Hong Kong was taken, hospital patients were bayoneted in their beds, and nurses and nuns raped. Prisoners of war are treated with contempt for having surrendered. The Allied prisoners in Rangoon jail have witnessed many examples of s.a.d.i.s.tic cruelty. The badly burned crew of a USAAF Flying Fortress were left to die a slow death in solitary confinement; those who are too sick to work in the jail's candle factory are given two bottles every morning, and expected to fill them with dead flies. When the able-bodied return in the evening, they help collect flies and put them in the bottles, so the sick can evade punishment.

1.10pm.

Operation Merlin is underway. Minutes ago, B Squadron of the 12th Lancers had radioed to say that they had successfully driven over the causeway into Venice. Now Geoffrey c.o.x and the rest of the 2nd New Zealand Division are heading east out of Padua, and people are on the streets and hanging out of windows cheering them. Italian flags are being thrown at the vehicles as they pa.s.s, and the Kiwis are obligingly wrapping them around their canvas canopies and gun barrels. As the Kiwis pa.s.s partisans on the road they shout 'Ciao!' in their best Italian.

Claus Sellier and Fritz are eating a large lunch in a hotel dining room in the German town of Reichenhall. They've walked across the border from Austria this morning. The hotel had been turned into a makes.h.i.+ft army hospital a few months ago, but now all the patients have gone. As they helped themselves to food a doctor came in and told them, 'Eat as much as you want! The kitchen doesn't know how many patients we have in the hotel - n.o.body told them that there aren't any.'

'Let's get those n.a.z.i dogs! Take no prisoners! Don't take any SS alive!'

1.15pm.

In a railway siding outside the town of Dachau, men from Felix Sparks' 45th Infantry Division have found a long line of railway wagons. Lying in and around them waist-deep are hundreds of decomposing corpses some naked, others in shredded blue and white uniforms. Some have crawled out of the wagons and have then been butchered by the tracks. Many of the dead in the wagons have their eyes open, as if staring at the Americans.

One GI feels it's as if they are saying, 'What took you so long?'

Sparks arrives on foot, looks at the scene and vomits on the ground. Around him, his men are angry; he can hear them shouting.

'Let's get those n.a.z.i dogs!'

'Take no prisoners!'

'Don't take any SS alive!'

They have counted 39 wagons all of them full of bodies. Sparks orders one group of men to follow him into the camp, and another group to follow I Company Commander Lieutenant Bill Walsh. Walsh realises now that a concentration camp is nothing like a New York POW camp.

The railway wagons had come from Buchenwald concentration camp as part of the n.a.z.i policy to keep the prisoners away from the invading armies. At the start of the journey three weeks ago there were 4,800 prisoners; by the time the train arrived at Dachau, only 800 had survived. They were left to die in the wagons.

On the other side of the camp's perimeter wall, Sparks finds himself in a rose garden at the back of a large house. The contrast with what he's just seen makes his head reel. Together with two men, Sparks explores the house, keeping an eye out for b.o.o.by traps. In one room they find children's wooden toys scattered on the floor, and other signs of a hasty departure. Sparks reckons it must have been the home of an SS officer who has long since fled with his family.

By the railway tracks, Bill Walsh and his men have discovered four SS men with their hands on their heads. Walsh pushes them into a wagon and shoots them with his pistol.

1.30pm.

At Stalag VII-A at Moosburg, Major Elliott Viney is roaring with laughter as their former SS guards are humiliated. As the guards are led out of the camp, the newly liberated POWs shout to the GIs whether the German was 'good' or not. Those hated by the prisoners are given a heavy kick up the backside by a GI only too happy to oblige.

In Milan, Second Lieutenant Alan Whicker is waiting in the office of the governor of Milan's city jail with one of his British army cameramen. A short time after his appeal for information regarding the whereabouts of the suspected traitor John Amery, he was sent a message giving his location. Amery walks in looking very pale and says straightaway, 'Thank G.o.d you're here. I thought they were going to shoot me!'

With Amery is his third wife Mich.e.l.le, described later by Whicker as 'an appealing brunette in a dark trouser suit'.

Amery is keen to win Whicker's sympathy.

'I've never been anti-British. You can read the scripts of my broadcasts through the years and you'll never find anything against Britain. I've just been very anti-communist, and if at the moment I'm proved wrong, well one of these days you'll find out that I was right...'

Amery is relieved as Whicker leads him and Mich.e.l.le from the jail and away from the threat of the partisans. Whicker hands them over to Sergeant John Martin of the Intelligence Corps. John Amery strikes Whicker as 'pleasant and reasonable' but Amery's troubles are far from over.

Boldt, von Loringhoven and Weiss are setting off on their mission to meet up with General Wenck. They leave the Fuhrerbunker through the underground garage carrying maps, sub-machine guns, camouflage jackets, steel helmets and sandwiches from the dining-room trolley. Von Loringhoven cuts the red staff officer bands off his trousers. If they are caught by the Russians he won't want his captors to know that he is officer rank. The three men emerge from the exit on Hermann-Goringstra.s.se and are immediately forced to shelter from a mortar attack. Moments later a round of machine gun fire whistles over their heads; the bullets embed in the wall behind them. As they cross Hermann-Goringstra.s.se heading for the Tiergarten, they pa.s.s the first dead bodies, soldiers and civilians lying where they fell. The smell of decomposition is overwhelming.

Back in the upper bunker, Nicolaus von Below, the Luftwaffe adjutant who also hopes to leave, is suggesting to General Burgdorf that he would also be more useful if he were sent on a mission. Burgdorf tells him that that is a decision for Hitler. Von Below goes down to the Fuhrerbunker and waits in the corridor to speak to the Fuhrer.

Lieutenant Colonel Felix L. Sparks has walked further into the residential part of the Dachau complex. Suddenly he sees Lieutenant Bill Walsh chasing a German soldier. Walsh is shouting, 'You sons of b.i.t.c.hes! You sons of b.i.t.c.hes!'

Walsh catches the German and starts beating him over the head with the barrel of his rifle, yelling, 'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' Sparks shouts at him to stop, but Walsh keeps. .h.i.tting and hitting. Sparks draws his .45 and cracks Walsh over the head with its b.u.t.t. Walsh falls to the ground and lies there weeping.

'I'm taking command of the company!' Sparks shouts to the men around him.

It takes seven men to take Walsh away and calm him down.

We stood aside and watched while these guards were beaten to death... we watched with less feeling than if a dog were being beaten.

Dachau inmate Rabbi David Eichorn's.

letter home, 29th April 1945.

About 1.40pm.

Those Dachau inmates who haven't been held in the prison area of the complex are slowly starting to emerge from their huts and are running as fast as they can towards their liberators. They surround the GIs and kiss and shake their hands. A weak old man holds out a stained cigarette to a GI, who hesitates.

'Take it,' another inmate says, 'That's the only thing the guy owns in the world.'

Albert Guerisse is a Belgian doctor who worked for the British Secret Operations Executive (SOE) under the pseudonym of Pat O'Leary. He has been a prisoner of the Germans for two years, after the escape line for Allied airmen he was running was infiltrated and betrayed. In Dachau he has been tortured and is under sentence of death. Liberation has come just in time.

Guerisse watches as an immaculately turned-out SS officer, Lieutenant Heinrich Skodzensky, approaches an American officer as if he's on a parade ground.

'Heil Hitler! I hereby turn over to you the concentration camp of Dachau, 30,000 residents, 2,340 sick, 27,000 on the outside, 560 garrison troops.'

The American officer hesitates for a moment, then shouts at Skodzensky, 'Du Schweinhund! Sit down here!' and points to the back of a jeep. The officer then turns to Guerisse and gives him an automatic rifle saying, 'Come with me', offering Guerisse a chance to take his revenge on the SS officer. But Guerisse is too weak to move.

'No, I'll stay here...' he says.

The American drives out of the camp with Skodzensky. Then Guerisse hears gunshots.

A group of about 50 SS prisoners are being lined up in front of an eight foot wall in Dachau's coal yard. The yard is now empty except for a layer of black coal dust on the ground. Felix Sparks has ordered that a light machine gun be trained on them. A private from I Company comes up to him.

'Colonel, you'd better see what we found...'

Sparks sets off and has walked about 50 feet when the machine gun suddenly goes off behind him. Another GI then opens fire. Sparks turns and runs back into the coal yard. He pulls out his .45 and, firing shots into the air, orders his men to stop. Sparks then runs towards the machine gunner who is still firing, kicks him in the back, grabs him by the collar and drags him away from the gun.

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing?!' Sparks shouts.

'Colonel, they were trying to get away!'

Sparks knows that's a lie. Looking towards the Germans, he can see about 17 have been killed; many others have dived to the ground. Sparks orders that the wounded be taken into the hospital in the camp grounds.

Two of the battalion medics refuse to help the wounded SS men.

The shooting in the coal yard will haunt Felix Sparks for many years to come. Arland Musser, a stills photographer, and Henry Gerzen, a film cameraman, recorded what happened. Their pictures were sent to the head of the Seventh Army, General Arthur A. White, who decided that the shootings needed to be investigated. On 1st May Sparks was told he was being sent back to the United States.

The investigation took place a couple of days later 23 men gave their testimony. The investigation discovered that I Company Commander Lieutenant Bill Walsh, after becoming 'hysterical in Dachau shortly before the shootings in the coal yard, had given the order to the machine gunner to "let them have it."' The report concluded that the 17 deaths were in effect executions ordered by Walsh.

On his way home, Sparks got as far as Le Havre and was then told he had to return to Seventh Army headquarters, which by now had been successfully set up in Munich. General Patton himself wanted to see him. When the two men met, Sparks was in for a surprise.

'Didn't you serve under me in Africa and Sicily?' Patton asked.

'Yes, sir, I did. I would like to explain what happened in Dachau...'

'There is no point in an explanation. I have already had these charges investigated, and they are a bunch of c.r.a.p. I'm going to tear up these G.o.dd.a.m.n papers on you and your men.'

And he did so there and then.

Patton said to Sparks, 'You have been a d.a.m.n fine soldier. Now go home.'

Despite the investigation, rumours persisted that it was Felix Sparks who had ordered the killing of the SS men. Then, in the early 1990s, four photographs were published for the first time, taken by a GI named Robert Goebel who had witnessed the shootings. They showed Sparks firing his pistol in the air, and with his left hand outstretched, desperately motioning to his men to stop. In the background bodies lie in a heap against the wall.

Remain Firm, Fair, Aloof and Aware.

GI Pocket Guide to Germany.

About 2.00pm.

Today is Nina Markovna's 17th birthday. Chalked on the wall by her bunk bed are the names of her three American boyfriends. Bob and Mike are both soldiers, and Jack is a pilot. Jack is on his way to see her in a jeep that's piled high with coats, dresses, hats and shoes.

In May 1942 Nina, her mother and her brother Slava were taken from their home in Russia by the Germans to be Ostarbeiter Eastern workers in Germany. Nina's father is away serving with the Red Army.

After a two-week journey by train in a cattle wagon, the Markovna family were taken to a market square in a Bavarian town with hundreds of others and handed over to factory owners eager for cheap labour. They were all given a cloth badge to wear on their chest with OST written on it. It reminded Nina of the slave markets she'd read about in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

For the next three years they worked in a number of factories; in one they built explosives for V1 flying bombs; in another they turned second-hand clothes into garments such as ap.r.o.ns. Some of the clothes were very expensive dresses, suits and coats; a Polish worker said that they'd come from Oswiecim, a place the Germans called Auschwitz. The name meant nothing to Nina. Sometimes she would find American dollars sewn into seams. The money came in useful to bribe guards for extra food.

At the end of 1944, the Markovna family were moved to what would be their final camp, based in an abandoned theatre on the outskirts of the German town of Triptis. Twelve people are squeezed into the theatre's old dressing room; Nina and her brother have a bunk bed by the window. Lying there on 13th February, she watched the night sky turn orange as the RAF bombed Dresden 90 miles away.

Then on 15th April, their SS guards ran into the woods, shedding their uniforms and changing into civilian clothes.

Soon after, the Americans arrived. Nina was fascinated by how they walked not rigid like German soldiers or undisciplined like Russians, but in an easy, free, yet self-controlled way. Their tight uniforms were particularly appealing. The Americans were unfriendly at first but when they realised Nina was Russian their mood changed.

'Hey, Russky! Hey, there! War kaput!'

'Don't cry. You're free!'

In the days since then, the Americans have been regular visitors to the abandoned theatre, bringing food and cigarettes for all the ex-prisoners. Nina has been treated to rides on motorbikes and in jeeps. Soon she has her three boyfriends Bob, Mike and Jack.

Lying on her bunk, Nina hears Jack's jeep pull up outside. He shouts, 'Ninochka! Come out! Hurry! Happy birthday, young lady!'

He shows her the jeep, piled high with clothes and shoes.

'Select what you like! Whatever fits you. The rest pa.s.s on to others.'

Nina asks where he got them all.

'I plundered a few deserted n.a.z.i houses.'

Seeing Nina's concern a few days ago she would have been shot for looting Jack says, 'Don't worry, kid, no one will come for these clothes. The n.a.z.is all ran.'

Nina chooses three dresses, a navy-blue coat, a kimono and five hats. Jack tries to persuade her not to take the shoes with heels, as he's not very tall. Nina says she'll wear them only when she's sitting.

Soon Nina's mother and the other women in the camp are modelling hats and dresses for each other, and laughing in a way they haven't done for a long time.

Bob, Mike and Jack will have been warned repeatedly about fraternising with the enemy.

'The Germans must be ostracised,' General Eisenhower said earlier in the year, and ordered that press photographs of his soldiers fraternising with the German population should be stopped by the censors. He issued GIs with a guide to Germany telling them, 'You are in enemy country! These people are not our allies or friends.' There was a $65 fine if they were caught fraternising. The fact that Nina is Russian means that spending time with her and her family is possible.

The British soldiers too were warned about fraternisation. A War Office guidebook said, 'You are about to meet a strange people in a strange, enemy country. Many of them will have suffered from overwork, underfeeding and the effects of the air raids and you may be tempted to feel sorry for them. [But their] hard luck stories will be hypocritical attempts to win sympathy. Germans must be regarded as dangerous enemies.'