Hitler

by Ian Kershaw

  When Hitler was awakened at 9.30 next morning, it was to the news that the centre of Berlin was under artillery fire. He was at first incredulous, immediately demanding information from Karl Koller, Luftwaffe chief of staff, on the position of the Soviet artillery battery. An observation post at Berlin’s zoo provided the answer: the battery was no more than eight miles away in the suburb of Marzahn. The dragnet was closing fast. The information scarcely helped to calm Hitler’s increasingly volatile moods. As the day wore on, he seemed increasingly like a man at the end of his tether, nerves ragged, under intense strain, close to breaking point. Irrational reactions when a frenzy of almost hysterically barked-out orders proved impossible to implement, or demands for information impossible to supply, point in this direction.

  Soon he was on the telephone again to Koller, this time demanding figures of German planes in action in the south of city. Communications failures meant Koller was unable to provide them. Hitler rang once more, this time wanting to know why the jets based near Prague had not been operational the previous day. Koller explained that enemy fighters had attacked the airfields so persistently that the jets had been unable to take off. ‘Then we don’t need the jets any more. The Luftwaffe is superfluous,’ Hitler had replied in fury. ‘The entire Luftwaffe leadership should be hanged straight away!’

  II

  The drowning man clutched at yet another straw. The Soviets had extended their lines so far to the north-east of Berlin that it opened up the chance, thought Hitler and Chief of Staff Krebs, for the Panzer Corps led by SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner to launch a counter-attack with good chances of success. A flurry of telephone calls with more than a hint of near-hysteria assigned a motley variety of remaining units, including naval and Luftwaffe forces untrained in ground warfare and without heavy armour, to Steiner’s command. ‘Every commander withholding forces has forfeited his life within five hours,’ Hitler screamed at Koller. ‘The commanders must know that. You yourself guarantee with your head that the last man is deployed.’ Any retreat to the west was strictly forbidden to Steiner’s forces. Officers unwilling to obey were to be shot immediately. ‘On the success of your assignment depends the fate of the German capital,’ Hitler told Steiner – adding that the commander’s life also hinged on the execution of the order. At the same time, Busse’s 9th Army, to the south of Berlin, was ordered to restabilize and reinforce the defensive line from Königswusterhausen to Cottbus. In addition, aided by a northward push of parts of Schörner’s Army Group Centre, still doggedly fighting in the vicinity of Elsterwerda, around sixty miles south of Berlin, it was to attack and cut off Konev’s tank forces that had broken through to their rear. It was an illusory hope. But Hitler’s false optimism was still being pandered to by some of the generals. His mood visibly brightened after hearing upbeat reports from his most recent field-marshal, Schörner (who had been promoted on 5 April), and from General Wenck about the chances of his newly constructed 12th Army attacking American forces on the Elbe.

  Colonel-General Heinrici, Commander of Army Group Vistula, was not one of the eternal optimists who played to Hitler’s constant need for good news. He warned of encirclement if the 9th Army were not pulled back. He threatened resignation if Hitler persisted in his orders. But Hitler did persist; and Heinrici did not resign. The general had implied to Speer days earlier that Berlin would be taken without serious resistance. This thinking was anathema to Hitler. He told Jodl on the day his orders to Steiner and to the 9th Army went out: ‘I will fight as long as I have a single soldier. When the last soldier deserts me, I will shoot myself.’ Late that night, he still exuded confidence in Steiner’s attack. When Koller told him of the inadequacies of the Luftwaffe troops he had been compelled to supply to Steiner’s forces, Hitler replied: ‘You will see. The Russians will suffer the greatest defeat, the bloodiest defeat in their history before the gates of the city of Berlin.’

  It was bravado. Two hours earlier, Dr Morell had found him drained and dejected in his study. The doctor and his medications, however little efficacious in an objective sense, had been for years an important psychological prop for Hitler. Now, Morell wanted to give him a harmless further dose of glucose. Without any forewarning, Hitler reacted in an uncontrollable outburst, accusing Morell of wanting to drug him with morphine. He knew, he said, that the generals wanted to have him drugged so that they could ship him off to Berchtesgaden. ‘Do you take me for a madman?’ Hitler railed. Threatening to have him shot, he furiously dismissed the quivering doctor.

  The storm had been brewing for days. It burst on the afternoon of 22 April, during the briefing that began at 3.30 p.m. Even as the briefing began, Hitler looked haggard, stony-faced, though extremely agitated, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. He twice left the room to go to his private quarters. Then, as dismaying news came through that Soviet troops had broken the inner defence cordon and were within Berlin’s northern suburbs, Hitler was finally told – after a frantic series of telephone calls had elicited contradictory information – that Steiner’s attack, which he had impatiently awaited all morning, had not taken place after all. At this, he seemed to snap. He ordered everyone out of the briefing room, apart from Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, and Burgdorf. Even for those who had long experience of Hitler’s furious outbursts, the tirade which thundered through the bunker for the next half an hour was a shock. One who witnessed it reported that evening: ‘Something broke inside me today that I still can’t grasp.’ Hitler screamed that he had been betrayed by all those he had trusted. He railed at the long-standing treachery of the army. Now, even the SS was lying to him: after Sepp Dietrich’s failure in Hungary, Steiner had not attacked. The troops would not fight, he ranted, the anti-tank defences were down. As Jodl added, he also knew that munitions and fuel would shortly run out.

  Hitler slumped into his chair. The storm subsided. His voice fell to practically a whimper. The war was lost, he sobbed. It was the first time any of his small audience had heard him admit it. They were dumbstruck. He had therefore determined to stay in Berlin, he went on, and to lead the defence of the city. He was physically incapable of fighting himself, and ran the risk of falling wounded into the hands of the enemy. So he would at the last moment shoot himself. All prevailed upon him to change his mind. He should leave Berlin forthwith and move his headquarters to Berchtesgaden. The troops should be withdrawn from the western front and deployed in the east. Hitler replied that everything was falling apart anyway. He could not do that. Göring could do it. Someone objected that no soldier would fight for the Reich Marshal. ‘What does it mean: fight!’ asked Hitler. ‘There’s not much more to fight for, and if it’s a matter of negotiations the Reich Marshal can do that better than I can.’

  At this, Hitler, his face a deathly pallor, left the briefing room and retreated to his own quarters. He sent for his remaining secretaries, Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge, and his dietician, Constanze Manziarly. Eva Braun was also present as he told his staff they should get ready; a plane would take them south in an hour. ‘It’s all lost,’ he said, ‘hopelessly lost.’ Somewhat to their own surprise, his secretaries found themselves rejecting the offer to leave and telling Hitler that they would stay with him in the bunker. Eva Braun had already told Hitler she was not leaving.

  Urgent telephone calls were meanwhile put through from Dönitz and Himmler. Neither could persuade him to change his mind. Ribbentrop arrived. He was not even allowed to see Hitler. Goebbels was also present. Hitler, highly disturbed, had telephoned him around five o’clock, raving about treachery, betrayal, and cowardice. Goebbels hurried as fast as he could to the bunker, and spoke a while alone with Hitler. He was able to calm him down. Goebbels emerged to announce that on the Führer’s orders, he, his wife, and his children would be moving into the bunker and living there from now on. For the Propaganda Minister, Hitler’s decision was the logical consequence of his consistent stance; he saw it in full pathos as a historic deed which determined the heroic end in Berlin of a latter-day Siegf
ried, betrayed by all around him.

  For hard-headed military men like Karl Koller, the perspective was very different: Hitler was abandoning the German people at the time of their greatest need; he had renounced his responsibility to armed forces, state, and people at the most critical moment; it was dereliction of duty worse than many offences for which draconian retribution had been meted out.

  There were indeed serious practical considerations following from Hitler’s hysterical behaviour. He had simply said he was staying in Berlin. The others should leave and go where they wanted. He had no further orders for the Wehrmacht. But he was still supreme commander. Who was now to give orders? Berlin was doomed for certain within a few days. So where were Wehrmacht Headquarters to be? How could forces simply be withdrawn from the western front without any armistice negotiations? After fruitless pleading with Hitler, Keitel decided to travel to the headquarters of General Wenck’s 12th Army. Hitler had finally agreed to sign an order to Wenck to abandon his previous operational plans – defending against the Americans on the Elbe – and march on Berlin, linking up with the remnants of the 9th Army, still fighting to the south of the city. The aim was to cut off enemy forces to the south-west of the capital, drive forward ‘and liberate again the Reich capital where the Führer resides, trusting in his soldiers’. Wenck’s army had been hastily put together at the beginning of April. It was inadequately armed; its panzer support was weak; and many of its troops were poorly trained. They were outnumbered by the Soviet troops facing them, and possessed only a quarter of the weaponry. What Wenck was supposed to do in the unlikely event of breaking through to the centre of Berlin – other than bringing out Hitler, if need be by force (as Keitel later put it) – was left entirely unclear.

  Hitler, his equilibrium now temporarily restored, was solicitous enough to make sure that Keitel was well fed before he set out on his journey. Jodl was meanwhile to take steps to ensure that part of the High Command of the Wehrmacht was immediately transferred to Berchtesgaden, while the remainder would be moved to the barracks at Krampnitz, near Potsdam. Hitler’s overall direction would remain intact, maintained through telephone links to Krampnitz and Berchtesgaden. The regular briefings would continue, though with reduced personnel.

  Meanwhile, Hitler had ordered Schaub to burn all the papers and documents in his private safe in the bunker. He was afterwards instructed to do the same in Munich and at the Berghof. After a perfunctory farewell from the master he had served for twenty years, he left Berlin and flew south. The bunker company had by now shrunk. Those left behind consoled themselves with drink. They referred to the bunker as ‘the mortuary’ and its inmates as ‘a show house of living corpses’. Their main topic of conversation was when and how to commit suicide.

  Remarkably, Hitler had regained his composure by the next morning. He was still venting anger at troops that seemed to have evaporated into thin air. ‘It’s so disgraceful,’ he fumed. ‘When you think about it all, why still live!’ But Keitel’s news about his meeting with Wenck had provided yet another glimmer of hope. Hitler ordered all available troops, however ill-equipped, to be added to Wenck’s army. Dönitz had already been cabled the previous evening to have all available sailors as the most urgent priority, overriding all naval concerns, flown to Berlin to join the ‘German battle of fate’ in the Reich capital. Telegrams were also dispatched to Himmler, and to Luftwaffe high command to send their remaining reserves to aid the reinforcement of Berlin. ‘The enemy knows I’m here,’ Hitler added, referring to Goebbels’s proclamation to the Berlin people that day, telling them that the Führer would remain in the city to lead its defence. They would concentrate all their efforts on taking the capital as soon as possible. But that, thought Hitler, gave him a chance to lure them into the trap of Wenck’s army. Krebs reckoned they still had four days. ‘In four days the business has to be decided,’ agreed Hitler.

  That afternoon, Albert Speer arrived back in the bunker. He had had a tortuous ten-hour journey to cover less than 200 miles from Hamburg. He had quickly given up an attempt to drive along roads choked with refugees desperate to leave Berlin by any route still open, and flew first to the airfield at Rechlin in Mecklenburg, then on to Gatow aerodrome in the west of Berlin. There, he picked up a Fieseler Storch light aircraft, eventually navigating a landing on the East-West Axis approaching the Brandenburg Gate, the wide boulevard on which he had triumphantly paraded six years earlier during Hitler’s fiftieth birthday celebrations, now, its lamp-posts removed, converted into a makeshift landing-strip. For weeks, Speer had been working with industrialists and generals to sabotage Hitler’s ‘scorched earth’ orders. Only two days earlier, in Hamburg, he had recorded an address – never, in the event, broadcast, and probably made with more than one eye on embellishing his own prospects in a world after Hitler – urging an end to the pointless destruction. But despite the growing alienation, Speer could still not break free of Hitler. The emotional bonds remained strong. After his unsung departure on the evening of Hitler’s birthday, the former Armaments Minister felt unhappy at ending their special relationship without an appropriate farewell. That was the reason for his wholly unnecessary, extremely hazardous flight back into the cauldron.

  On his way to Hitler’s room in the bunker, he encountered Bormann. Not anxious to end his own days in the bunker catacombs, the Secretary to the Führer implored Speer to use his influence to persuade Hitler to leave for the south. It was still just possible. In a few more hours it would be too late. Speer gave a non-committal reply. He was then ushered in to see Hitler, who, as Bormann had foreseen, lost no time in asking Speer’s opinion whether he should stay in Berlin or fly to Berchtesgaden. Speer did not hesitate. It would be better to end his life as Führer in the Reich capital than in his ‘weekend house’, he said. Hitler looked tired, apathetic, resigned, burnt out. He had decided to stay in Berlin, he murmured. He had just wanted to hear Speer’s opinion. As the previous day, he said he would not fight. There was the danger that he would be captured alive. He was also anxious to avoid his body falling into the hands of his enemy to be displayed as a trophy. So he had given orders to have his body burnt. Eva Braun would die alongside him. ‘Believe me, Speer,’ he added, ‘it will be easy to end my life. A brief moment, and I am freed from everything, released from this miserable existence.’

  Minutes later, in the briefing – by now a far smaller affair, over much more quickly, and, because of communications difficulties, often lacking precise, up-to-date intelligence – Hitler, immediately after speaking of his imminent death and cremation, was again trying to exude optimism. Only now did Speer realize how much of an act the role of Führer had always been.

  All at once, there was a commotion in the corridor. Bormann hurried in with a telegram for Hitler. It was from Göring. The report of the momentous meeting the previous day, which Koller had personally flown to Berchtesgaden to deliver verbally, had placed the Reich Marshal in a quandary. Koller had helped persuade a hesitant Göring that, through his actions, Hitler had in effect given up the leadership of state and Wehrmacht. As a consequence, the edict of 29 June 1941, nominating Göring as his successor in the event of his incapacity to act, ought to come into force. Göring was still unsure. He could not be certain that Hitler had not changed his mind; and he worried about the influence of his arch-enemy, Bormann. Eventually, Koller suggested sending a telegram. Göring agreed. Koller, advised by Lammers, drafted its careful wording, cautiously stipulating that, had Göring not heard by ten o’clock that evening, he would presume that the terms of the succession law would come into operation, and that he would take over the entire leadership of the Reich. He would take immediate steps, he told Koller, to surrender to the western powers, though not to the Russians.

  His telegram to Hitler (with a copy to Below, the Luftwaffe adjutant still in the bunker) gave no inkling of disloyalty. But, as Göring had feared, Bormann was immediately at work to place the worst possible construction upon it. Hitler seemed at first unconcerne
d, or apathetic. But when Bormann produced another telegram from Göring, summoning Ribbentrop to see him immediately, should he have received no other directive from Hitler or himself by midnight, it was an easy matter to invoke the spectre of treachery once more. Bormann was pushing at an open door. For months, Goebbels (and Bormann himself ) had been the most prominent among those urging Hitler to dismiss Göring, portrayed as an incompetent, corrupt, drug-taking sybarite, single-handedly responsible for the debacle of the Luftwaffe and the air-superiority of the Allies, which they saw as so decisive for Germany’s plight. Given Hitler’s extreme volatility, as the events of the previous day had demonstrated only too plainly, the uncontrolled torrent of rage at Göring’s ruination of the Luftwaffe, his corruption, and his morphine addiction was utterly predictable.

  Savouring his victory, Bormann swiftly drew up a telegram, stripping Göring of his rights of succession, accusing him of treason, but refraining from further measures if the Reich Marshal resigned all his offices forthwith on health grounds. Göring’s agreement was received within half an hour. But that evening, the once most powerful man in the Reich after Hitler was nevertheless put under house-arrest, the Berghof surrounded by SS guards. Hitler’s power was fading fast; but it was not yet finally at an end.

  Late that night, before leaving the bunker, Speer sat in Eva Braun’s room, drinking a bottle of Moët & Chandon and eating cakes and sweets. Eva seemed calm and relaxed. She told Speer that Hitler had wanted to send her back to Munich, but she had refused; she had come to Berlin to end it. At three in the morning, Hitler appeared. Speer felt emotional at saying farewell. He had flown back to the bunker precisely for this purpose. It was, for him, a poignant moment. Hitler proffered a weak handshake. ‘You’re going then. Good. Good-bye.’ That was all.