by Ian Kershaw
103. Padfield, Himmler, 565.
104. Padfield, Himmler, 566.
105. Padfield, Himmler, 567; Kersten, 276–83 (though of dubious authenticity; see Irving, HW, xx).
106. Padfield, Himmler, 578.
107. See Padfield, Himmler, 582, 585.
108. Padfield, Himmler, 578.
109. See Kersten, 278, 281; Guderian, 426; Padfield, Himmler, 567, 571, 579–80.
110. Padfield, Himmler, 591. Arrangements were discussed at the meeting for a Red Cross convoy to transport a number of Jewish women from Ravensbrück concentration camp. This had followed a remarkable rendezvous at 2a.m. that morning at the home of his masseur, Felix Kersten, between Himmler and a representative of the World Jewish Congress in New York, Norbert Masur, who had travelled to Germany incognito and under promise of safe conduct. Himmler, accompanied by his adjutant Rudolf Brandt, and Schellenberg, had agreed to release female Jews held in Ravensbrück, providing this was kept secret and they were described as Poles. He also consented that no further Jews would be killed, and to hold to his promise to hand over the concentration camps intact to the Allies (Kersten, 284–90; Padfield, Himmler, 590).
111. Schellenberg, 181–2.
112. Padfield, Himmler, 593; Trevor-Roper, 171.
113. Bernadotte, Das Ende, 79–85; Schellenberg, 182-5; Trevor-Roper, 171–2; Padfield, Himmler, 593–4.
114. Padfield, Himmler, 595; Trevor-Roper, 172, 200–201; Bernadotte, 85.
115. Padfield, Himmler, 595–6.
116. Boldt, 170; see also IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fols.152–3; Galante, 11 (Junge); Trevor-Roper, 202.
117. Trevor-Roper, 203–4, 277–8; Joachimsthaler, 183, 465; Padfield, 596–7; Below, 415 (who conflates events); Erich Kempka, Die letzten Τage mit Adolf Hitler, Preußisch Oldendorf, 1975, 78–83 (with inaccuracies); Boldt, 170; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.153; Galante, 11–12 (Junge); Hans Baur, Hitler at my Side, Houston, 1986, 187–8 (with inaccuracies); Linge, Bis zum Untergang, 278; Koller, 95.
118. Joachimsthaler, 181 (and 174 for the communications interruption).
119. Boldt, 171.
120. Boldt, 170; Trevor-Roper, 205; Reitsch, 303–4 (without mentioning the commission concerning Himmler).
121. Koller, 93. Hanna Reitsch described her and Greim’s departure from the bunker, and her confrontation with Himmler about his betrayal of Hitler in her interview with US interrogators on 8 October 1945, NA, Washington, NND 901065, Folder 2, Fols.10–13.
122. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.4; Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fol.31; Joachimsthaler, 188. Whatever the hints, Junge only fully learned of the marriage to Eva Braun when Hitler dictated his Private Testament to her. (Musmanno interview, 32; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol. 156; Galante, 16.) Gerda Daranowski Christian commented on the surprise caused by the wedding (PRO, WO208/3791, Fol.190 (Interrogation, 25 April 1946, where, however, her chronology of events is wayward); and Library of Congress, Toland Tapes, C-64 (interview with John Toland, 26 July 1971).)
123. Below, 415–16; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.156; Galante, 13, 16 (Junge, with inaccuracies), 17–18 (Günsche); Joachimsthaler, 185–9; Linge, Bis zum Untergang, 281–3; Kempka, 84–6; Boldt, 171–2; Baur, 186 (brief and inaccurate); Trevor-Roper, 207–8; Musmanno, 197ff. In her 1954 testimony (Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.4), Traudl Junge stated that Hitler’s dictation of his testament had begun shortly before midnight, before the wedding. Joachimsthaler, 185, follows her in this in speaking of the wedding ‘towards midnight’. But in her earlier testimony for Musmanno (Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fols.32–6), she had said that, while the dictation of the testament – from which that she learnt from the private will (which he dictated first) that he intended to marry Eva Braun – began about 11.30p.m., it then took two to three hours for her to type up the wills (political and private), and that the wedding took place while she was doing this. In her later testimony (IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fols. 152–4), she wrote of being awakened in the middle of the night while preparations for the wedding were being made. As Trevor-Roper (207 n.1) points out, when Greim and Reitsch spoke to Koller as late as 8 May they knew nothing of the nocturnal marriage (Koller, 95). It was, therefore, after they had left the bunker. Joachimsthaler, 183, accepts that Greim and Reitsch left after midnight. The date of the wedding certificate itself is 29 April, indicating that the ceremony was completed after, not before, midnight (Joachimsthaler, 186–7). The wedding was probably, therefore, not before ia.m. Copy of the wedding certificate in PRO, WO208/3790, Fols.151–2; Joachimsthaler, 186–7 (photostat).
124. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.155 (where the impression is given that the dictation began later in the night); Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.4; Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fol.32; Galante, 13 (Junge); Joachimsthaler, 188–9; Musmanno, 202ff.
125. Joachimsthaler, 192 (text photostat); Domarus, 2240–41. In her early post-war testimony, Traudl Junge made clear that Hitler dictated first the private and then afterwards the political testament. (Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fol. 32; Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.4.) In her later memoirs, she implied that the political testament came first (IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.155; Galante, 13).
126. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.155; Galante, 13.
127. The grammar of this passage is garbled in the original: ‘Ich habe weiter keinen darütber im Unklaren gelassen, dass dieses Mal nicht nur Millionen Kinder von Europäern der arischen Völker verhungern werden, nicht nur Millionen erwachsener Manner den Tod erleiden und nicht nur Hunderttausende an Frauen und Kindern in den Städten verbrannt und zu Tode bombardiert werden dürften, ohne dass der eigentlich Schuldige, wenn auch durch humanere Mittel, seine Schuld zu bussen hat.’ (‘I further left no one in doubt that this time not only millions of children… would die…without the real culprit having to atone…’) (Werner Maser (ed.), Hitlers Briefe und Notizen. Sein Weltbild in handschriftlichen Dokumenten, Düsseldorf, 1973, 360–61; Joachimsthaler, 190; trans. NCA, vi.260.)
128. Maser, Hitlers Briefe und Notizen, 356–66; Joachimsthaler, 190–91; Domarus, 2236–7; trans, (slightly amended), NCA, vi.260–61.
129. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.4; Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fol. 35; Joachimsthaler, 189.
130. Maser, Hitlers Briefe und Notizen, 368–75; Joachimsthaler, 191–2; Domarus, 2238–9; trans, (amended), NCA, vi.262–3, D0C.3569–PS. The copy of the private and political testaments in PRO, WO208/3781, Fols.90–105, was the one which Heinz Lorenz had been given to carry out of the bunker, and was found, when he was captured, sewn into his shoulder pads (PRO, WO208/3789, Fol.69).
131. Traudl Junge claimed in 1954 that she finished work on Hitler’s will, carried out while the wedding celebrations continued, only around 5a.m. (Amtsge
richt Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.4). In 1948, she had stated that the typing of the wills had taken two to three hours, putting the completion time, therefore, no later than 3a.m. (Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fol.35. See also Joachimsthaler, 189. The document itself gives the time of 4a.m. for the signing).
132. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fols.152–3 (‘Wenn der Führer tot ist, ist mein Leben sinnlos’); Galante, 16 (Junge).
133. NA, Washington, NND 901065, Folder 2; printed in Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1945. Die letzten Aufzeichnungen, Hamburg, 1977, 555–6.
134. Below, 416.
135. Linge, Bis zum Untergang, 279–80.
136. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Otto Günsche, 19–21 June 1956, Bl.8; Kempka, 80; Trevor–Roper, 227 (Junge). Joachimsthaler, 250–9, convincingly argues that the poison was not cyanide, as most of the bunker inmates themselves thought, but the more effective prussic acid capsules, produced in thousands by the criminal police, and causing death within a fraction of a second.
137. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Otto Günsche, 19–21 June 1956, Bl.8–9; Joachimsthaler, 194–7; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.153; Galante, 12 (Junge); Kempka, 84.
138. Trevor-Roper, 218–21; Domarus, 2241 and n.214–16.
139. Trevor-Roper, 221; Joachimsthaler, 176–81.
140. Joachimsthaler, 193–4.
141. Boldt, 172–5.
142. Trevor-Roper, 224-5; Domarus, 2242.
143. Domarus, 2242; Trevor-Roper, 226.
144. Trevor-Roper, 223–4.
145. KTB OKW, iv/2, 1466; Joachimsthaler, 199 (photostat).
146. KTB OKW, iv/2, 1467; Joachimsthaler, 201–2 (photostat, where it is clear that the cable, with the time given as ia.m., was in fact dispatched at 2.57a.m.).
147. Joachimsthaler, 202. Keitel, 368, has another version, for which there is no other evidence and is presumably a distortion from memory: ‘No further hope of relief of Berlin and reopening of access from west; suggest break-out via Potsdam to Wenck; alternatively flight of Führer to southern region.’ The effect of the telegram seems to have been to reinvoke accusations of betrayal, now even in Keitel. (See Trevor-Roper, 228–9 (though the original text for Bormann’s cable to Dönitz does not survive and Trevor-Roper gives no source).)
148. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Erwin Jakubeck, 23 November 1954; Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fols.38, 41; Joachimsthaler, 201–4, 217; Trevor-Roper, 227 and 275 (where the leave-taking is misdated to 29 April). One guard later testified that he had witnessed a farewell ceremony for Hitler’s close entourage during the night of 29–30 April. (Joachimsthaler, 201 (Kölz testimony)). He must have been confusing this with the farewell gathering of around twenty to twenty-five mainly servants and guards. Hitler bade farewell to his ‘householdz’ only shortly before his suicide, next afternoon.
149. Joachimsthaler, 206.
150. ‘Der Endkampf in Berlin’, Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau, 12/I (1962), 118, 169–70.
151. Joachimsthaler, 210–15 (with justifiable criticisms of Kempka’s reliability); Kempka, 90–92. In his testimony of 20 June 1945, Kempka stated that Günsche had telephoned about 2.30p.m., telling him to come to the Führer bunker and to bring 200 litres of petrol (David Irving Microfilm Collection (Microform Academic Publishers, East Ardsley, Wakefield), Third Reich Documents, Group 7/13, ‘Erklärung von Herrn Erich Kempka über die letzten Tage Hitlers’).
152. Junge, often inaccurate with detail, recollected (IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.159; Galante, 20) that Eva Braun wore a black dress trimmed with pink roses, one that Hitler especially liked. Linge and Günsche, two of the first to enter the suicide scene, both mentioned independently that she wore a blue dress with white trimmings. (Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Heinz Linge, 8–10 February 1956, Bl.6; testimony of Otto Günsche, 19–21 June 1956, Bl.5; Joachimsthaler, 230, 232.)
153. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Heinz Linge, Bl.4–5; testimony of Otto Günsche, 19–21 June 1956, Bl.3–5; testimony of Gertraud Junge, Bl.5; Joachimsthaler, 217–19, 221–2 (Junge, Christian, Jakubeck, Linge, and, especially, Günsche testimony); PRO, WO208/3791, Fol. 192, Interrogation report on Gerda Christian, 2 April 1946; Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fols.45–8; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fols.158–9; Galante, 20–22 (Junge, Günsche); Linge, Bis zum Untergang, 284–6 (with inaccuracies, and see Joachimsthaler, 222–4 for Linge’s unreliability as a witness); Günsche testimony in James P. O’Donnell and Uwe Bahnsen, Die Katakombe. Das Ende in der Reichskanzlei, Stuttgart, 1975, 210 (also in Galante, 21–2); Library of Congress, Washington, Toland Tapes, C–64, interview with Gerda Daranowski Christian, 26 July 1971. Reuth, 608; Trevor-Roper, 230. Kempka, 90, has Eva Braun present at the lunch. He himself was not present; those who were – Traudl Junge and Gerda Daranowski Christian – independently commented on Eva Braun’s absence. Baur, 191–2, and 1955 testimony in Joachimsthaler, 225–6, is unreliable in detail.
154. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Otto Günsche, Bl.4; Galante, 22 (Günsche). He had been told to wait ten minutes before entering.
155. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Otto Günsche, 19–21 June 1956, Bl.5; testimony of Heinz Linge, 8–10 February 1956, Bl.5; Joachimsthaler, 230, 232 (Linge, Günsche); testimony of Gertraud Junge, 24 February 1954, Bl.5; Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fols.47–8; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.159; Galante, 21 (Junge).
156. Amtsgericht Laufen, Verfahren des Amtsgerichts Berchtesgaden zur Todeserklärung bzw. Feststellung der Todeszeit von Adolf Hitler, testimony of Otto Günsche, 19–21 June 1956, Bl.5–6, 8–9; testimony of Heinz Linge, 8–10 February 1956, Bl.5–8; Joachimsthaler, 230, 232. The meticulous study of the testimony and forensic evidence by Joachimsthaler, 229–73, dispels doubt about the manner of death. The earliest accounts emanating from the bunker were that Hitler had shot himself and Eva Braun had taken poison. Below (who had left before the suicides) heard this as early as 6 May related by one of the guards attached to the bunker (PRO, London, WO2.08/3781, Fol.5, interrogation of Nicolaus von Below, n.d. (but covering letter is of 22 June 1946)). Hugh Trevor-Roper was given the same information by Erich Kempka and Artur Axmann, who saw the bodies in situ, as well as by Martin Bormann’s secretary Else Krüger. (PRO, WO208/3790, Fol.54 (Trevor-Roper’s handwritten note, on a chronology of events during the last days in the bunker).) The key witnesses give no indication that a shot was heard – counter to some of the unreliable stories (e.g. Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Gertraud Junge, 7 February 1948, FF25, Fol.48; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.159; Galante, 21, testimony of Junge). The intentionally misleading account of Hitler’s death by cyanide poisoning put about by Soviet historians – see, especially, Lev Bezymenski, The Dea
th of Adolf Hitler. Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives, London, 1968, can be dismissed. Equally redundant are the findings of Petrova and Watson, The Death of Hitler. The earliest suggestion that Hitler had poisoned, not shot, himself appears to have come from the reported testimony from around an hour after the shooting by Sergeant Fritz Tornow, who had helped poison Hitler’s alsatian, and said he had detected a similar odour in the room after the suicides (though he had not been in the room before the removal of the bodies) (PRO, London, WO208/3790, Fol.128 (where he is named Tornoff), testimony of Willi Otto Müller, 4 February 1946). Hitler’s pilot, Hans Baur, claimed on release from prison in Moscow in 1949 that Hitler had taken poison, then shot himself through the head. But Baur was not present at the time of the deaths, and his evidence is in any case unreliable in several respects. (See Joachimsthaler, 225, 260.) Artur Axmann, who had seen the bodies, also testified on 16 October 1947 that Hitler had first taken poison and then shot himself through the mouth (PRO, WO208/4475, Fol.39). He repeated this in his interview with Musmanno on 7 January 1948 ((Michael A. Musmanno Collection, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, interview with Artur Axmann, 7 January 1948, FFl, Fols.28–32, 44), saying he had the information from Günsche, which the latter explicitly denied (Joachimsthaler, 236–7). Axmann’s claim contradicted, moreover, his earlier testimony from 1946 (see below). Neither of the surviving witnesses to the scene immediately following the deaths – Linge and Günsche – who saw the bodies in situ suggested that Hitler had poisoned himself; and there was no trace of the acrid smell of bitter almonds on his body (in distinction to that of Eva Braun). This negative evidence in itself also rules out the faint possibility that he both took poison and shot himself. The speed at which prussic acid acts would itself render it virtually impossible for Hitler to have crushed the ampoule of poison and then shot; and if the poison could have been swallowed a split-second after the shooting, the spasms incurred would have caused the blood to splatter on the shoulder and immediate surrounds, which did not happen. (On this, see Joachimsthaler, 269–70 and, including a few lines not to be found in the German original, the English version of his book, The Last Days of Hitler. The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth, London, 1996, 179–80.) The forensic evidence also eliminates the story, first put round by Artur Axmann, though based on hearsay evidence without substance, that Hitler shot himself in the mouth. Axmann had in his earliest testimony, in fact, explicitly ruled out a shot through the mouth and claimed (as Günsche had done) that Hitler had shot himself through the right temple (PRO, WO208/3790, Fol.125 (Axmann Interrogation, 14 January 1946)). Notions that Hitler was given a coup de grâce by Linge or Günsche – a further surmise of Bezymenski – are utterly baseless. The ‘theories’ of Hugh Thomas, Doppelgànger: The Truth about the Bodies in the Berlin Bunker, London, 1995 – that Hitler was strangled by Linge, and that the female body burned was not that of Eva Braun, who escaped from the bunker, belong in fairyland.