Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II

by Nicholas Best

  Back at No. 10, he had held a series of afternoon meetings before hosting a late-night dinner party for senior Conservative colleagues. They were discussing tactics for the postwar general election when Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, burst in with the radio transcript from Hamburg. Learning that Hitler had died fighting Bolshevism, Churchill took the announcement literally.

  “Well,” he told his guests, “I must say I think he was perfectly right to die like that.”2

  Lord Beaverbrook was more cynical, replying that Hitler “obviously did not.” It was welcome news, all the same. The dinner party continued until 3:00 a.m., after which Churchill worked on his telegrams until 4:00. Then he went to bed, leaving Colville to sit up a little longer with a red box full of important-looking papers that nobody had yet had time to read.

  * * *

  HAROLD NICOLSON took his son to dinner at his London club after listening to Churchill at the Commons. He was disappointed that the war still hadn’t ended, yet glad to know at least that Mussolini had been caught and killed. The first pictures of Il Duce’s body had just been released in London:

  We had really dreadful photographs of his corpse and that of his mistress hanging upside down and side by side. They looked like turkeys hanging outside a poulterer’s: the slim legs of the mistress and the huge stomach of Mussolini could both be detected. It was a most unpleasant sight and caused a grave reaction in his favour …

  I dined at Pratt’s. Lionel Berry was there (the son of Lord Kemsley) who told us that the German wireless had been putting out Achtungs about an ernste wichtige Meldung, and playing dirges in between. So we tried and failed to get the German wireless stations with the horrible little set which is all that Pratt’s can produce. Having failed to do this, we asked Lionel to go upstairs to telephone to one of his numerous newspapers, and he came running down again (it was 10:40) to say that Hitler was dead and Dönitz had been appointed his successor. Then Ben and I returned to King’s Bench Walk and listened to the German midnight news. It was all too true. “Unser Führer, Adolf Hitler, ist…”—and then a long digression about heroism and the ruins of Berlin—“… gefallen.” So that was Mussolini and Hitler within two days. Not a bad bag as bags go.3

  * * *

  BBC RADIO was quick to pick up the story. Music on the Home Service was interrupted at 10:30 with an urgent announcement by the news reader Stuart Hibberd. “This is London calling. Here is a newsflash. The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead. I repeat, the German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.”

  That was all. The BBC knew no more. Normal service resumed with Evening Prayers on the wireless, while those who had been up for the newsflash wondered if it was true as they prepared for bed. With her husband serving in Germany, Elsie Brown was one of many who hoped it was as she made herself a cup of tea in London’s East End:

  I was still warming the pot when I heard the news that Hitler was dead. At first I didn’t believe it, then I thought, well, it’s on the BBC so it must be true. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell someone, but both the kids were asleep and I didn’t want to wake them, so I decided to run next door. My neighbour, Vi, worked the late shift on the buses and was always up till after midnight so I went round and banged on her door and when she opened it I shouted something like “He’s dead, the old bugger’s dead!” And she said, “What old bugger? Alfie?” Alfie was an old bloke who lived at the end of our road and really was a miserable old bugger, always shouting at the kids. So I said, “No, not Alfie, Adolf!”4

  * * *

  ON FLEET STREET, the newspapers hastily remade their pages with Hitler’s death on the front page and a long-prepared obituary inside. In Germany, the few remaining papers did the same, struggling to produce an issue edged in black in time for distribution next morning. Elsewhere, though, there was little immediate reaction to the announcement of Hitler’s death. Staff at Field Marshal Montgomery’s new headquarters at Lüneberg Heath had already gone to bed when the word came over the radio at ten thirty. They were in bed, too, at Reims, where General Eisenhower had his headquarters. The announcement had come too late at night for most people in Europe, particularly in Germany, where millions were on the move or no longer had access to electricity. It wasn’t until well into the following day that most of them realized that Hitler was dead at last and Admiral Dönitz was Germany’s new Führer.

  Captain Charles Wheeler of the Royal Marines was among those who didn’t hear the news until Wednesday morning. He had just reached a camp full of German prisoners outside Hamburg when Hitler’s death was announced on the radio:

  I could speak pretty good German and I asked the army officer in charge of the camp if anyone had told the prisoners. He said no and so I asked if I could. There must have been about a thousand German prisoners standing there behind barbed wire in the rain. It was what they called a cage—basically just a gathering place enclosed by a couple of strands of barbed wire where prisoners could be held until they were properly sorted out.

  I got up on the roof of a truck, shouted for silence and then I told them, in German, that the Führer was dead. I’ll never forget their reaction. First there was a long silence, probably about four seconds, then someone in the crowd started to clap slowly and rather uncertainly. Then someone else joined him, then more, and then the whole lot started clapping together and cheering wildly.

  Wheeler was surprised at the Germans’ reaction. After thinking about it, he concluded that the prisoners were probably applauding the end of the war and a chance to go home at last, rather than taking any pleasure in their Führer’s death.

  * * *

  A FEW MILES AWAY, Lieutenant Robert Runcie of the Scots Guards was in Lüneberg when he heard the news. As a troop commander in charge of three Churchill tanks, he was sitting in a traffic jam that morning, stuck in a hopeless snarl-up of military vehicles heading north through the streets of the ancient town. Runcie’s battalion was part of a force ordered forward to the Baltic to capture Lübeck before the Russians and prevent them sweeping on to Denmark. The Scots Guards had crossed their start line promptly at 2:00 a.m., only to find themselves stuck in Lüneberg at eight. With nothing to do until the military police got the traffic flowing again, they were sitting in their tanks with their engines idling, listening to the wireless while they waited for the road to clear.

  It had been a manic few months for Runcie. As a young subaltern before the invasion, he had thought he was living dangerously when he visited London’s Bag O’ Nails club in the company of officers more worldly than himself, who didn’t share his fear of the clap and thought nothing of picking up a prostitute for the night. The invasion had taught him the real meaning of living dangerously. Runcie had come of age as his battalion pushed through Normandy and Belgium into Germany. He had seen twelve British tanks destroyed in his first action, watching helplessly as friends of his were blown to bits or burned to death before anyone could help them. He had killed Germans in his turn, often very young ones, dispatching them without a moment’s hesitation as his troop advanced. It was only afterward, when he had a chance to contemplate his handiwork close up, that Runcie had come to think about what he had done:

  A German standing up bravely with a bazooka, and you training your gun on him, and just blowing him to smithereens as you went through. That was the first kind of “this is for real” feeling … When I’d been very successful in knocking out a German tank, I went up to it and saw four young men dead. I felt a bit sick. Well, I was sick, actually.5

  Runcie had found himself behind German lines more than once, surrounded by Wehrmacht troops as startled to see him as he was to see them. He had always proved equal to the challenge. His men knew him affectionately as “Killer.” He had been recommended for the Military Cross in March, after an action in Holland in which his tanks had knocked out several German guns. Runcie was still waiting to hear if it had been awarded.

  But the news that morning was about Hitler.
As they sat in their traffic jam, the Scots Guards learned of his death from the wireless in their turrets. They lost no time sharing the information with Lüneberg’s inhabitants. Hatches opened and heads popped up all along the line as the Scots cheerfully shouted to every German in sight that their leader was no more. Unlike Charles Wheeler’s prisoners, the Germans in Lüneberg didn’t seem pleased to hear it. In fact, they seemed “very glum.” Their gloom was the only bright spot in a very tedious day as the Scots Guards inched forward through the town and spent the rest of the day in one traffic jam after another on their way to the river Elbe first and then the Baltic beyond.

  * * *

  TO THE WEST, Lord Carrington’s battalion of the Grenadier Guards had come to a stop at Mulsum, a few miles short of Hamburg. After liberating a minor concentration camp at Sandbostel, the battalion had just been sent to Mulsum to regroup and await further orders before continuing the advance.

  It had been a long haul from Normandy. The Grenadiers had matched the Scots Guards’ progress all the way from the Channel coast, keeping tidily abreast of their sister regiment as they pushed through Belgium into Holland. Carrington’s squadron had done particularly well during the battle for Arnhem, when its tanks rolled across the river Waal at Nijmegen before the Germans had time to blow the bridge. They had later taken pot shots at a motorized column that had included Heinrich Himmler, as they afterward discovered.

  Now they were at Mulsum, just short of the river Elbe. The way ahead led to Hamburg, still in German hands and heavily defended. But with Hitler’s death on the radio and no orders forthcoming, it was beginning to look as if their war might be over. Carrington, for one, would be“extremely relieved” if it was.6 He had fought as well as anyone during the past few months, but he shared the general lack of enthusiasm for any more fighting, now that survival was beginning to look possible. All the Grenadiers wanted to do was sleep for the next few days before saddling up and moving forward again.

  * * *

  IN HAMBURG ITSELF, the Germans were in two minds about what to do as the news of Hitler’s death spread. Some wanted to lay down their weapons at once and surrender to the British. Others wanted to fight on, defending the city street by street. Gauleiter Kaufmann had declared Hamburg an open city on May 1, but he had acted on his own initiative, without consulting Admiral Dönitz or the Wehrmacht. Hitler’s death only added to the confusion as ordinary citizens hunkered down in the rubble and braced themselves for whatever was going to happen next.

  Among them was Sybil Falkenberg, an Englishwoman recently divorced from her German husband. While everyone else viewed the British arrival with gloom, she was longing for her countrymen to appear, counting the hours until Hamburg fell. After the last five years of hell, the British couldn’t come too soon for her.

  As Sybil Bannister, she had married a German gynecologist before the war, taking his nationality and bearing him a German son. They had been in Danzig when the war came, wondering if the bombs falling on them were German or Polish. Her husband had been drafted, and Sybil had found herself alone, trying to look after a child with no friends or family to call on in a very unfriendly environment. Most Germans had been polite, but a fair number had been thoroughly unpleasant, spying on the Engländerin behind her back and reporting her every move to the police.

  Her marriage had collapsed under the strain. Sybil had retained custody of her son, only to see him taken away by order of the Gestapo. She had been bombed out of her flat as the air raids intensified, suffering third-degree burns from phosphorus dropped by her own side. Making her way to Hamburg, she had found a room to let and was living like a troglodyte as the British halted outside the city. With nothing to barter for food, she had been reduced to setting snares for the rabbits that wandered freely among the ruins. She was so malnourished that she had stopped menstruating.

  Sybil had been delighted when Kaufmann announced that Hamburg would not be defended. “Oh, thank God! We shall live to see the end of the fighting after all. No more suspense! No more air raids! Every night will be undisturbed! The Russians will not come. Occupation by the English won’t be so bad. This awful war will soon be over!”7 The news that morning of Hitler’s death only added to her delight, coming so soon after Kaufmann’s announcement.

  But her excitement was premature. The Wehrmacht wasn’t happy with Kaufmann’s decision. Neither was Dönitz, when he learned of it that lunchtime. The decision to surrender Germany’s largest port and second-largest city was his to make. Dönitz was furious that Kaufmann had acted without authority and taken matters into his own hands.

  Albert Speer knew Kaufmann. At Dönitz’s request, he drove to Hamburg that afternoon to talk to the Gauleiter personally. He found him at his headquarters, surrounded by a bodyguard of students. Kaufmann was just as angry as Dönitz, pointing out that he had had an ultimatum from the British, who threatened to bomb Hamburg into oblivion if he didn’t surrender without a fight. “Am I supposed to follow the example of Bremen’s Gauleiter?” he demanded bitterly. “He issued a proclamation calling on everyone to defend themselves to the last man, then escaped himself while Bremen was blown to bits in a terrible raid.”8

  Speer took the point. He rang Dönitz, explaining the situation. He told him that Hamburg’s Gauleiter was prepared to mobilize the city’s population against the defending troops, if necessary, rather than fight on and see the city destroyed. There would be mutiny in Hamburg if the troops were ordered to fight on.

  Dönitz asked for time to think it over. An hour later, he rang back giving permission for Hamburg to be surrendered without further ado. He did so because the situation had changed dramatically since lunchtime. The British had just broken through on their way to the Baltic and were unstoppable as they advanced on Lübeck. The Canadians were equally unstoppable as they advanced on Wismar, a few hours ahead of the Russians. With the escape route for the Germans in the east cut off, there was no reason for the Germans in the west to fight on anymore.

  Instead, Dönitz gave orders for Hamburg’s commandant to contact the British under flag of truce the next morning, agreeing to give the city up without a fight. He was also to warn the British that a delegation would shortly be on its way from Dönitz to begin the negotiations for a general surrender.

  22

  THE NAZIS CONSIDER THEIR POSITIONS

  KAUFMANN BEGAN THE PREPARATIONS AT ONCE. Surrendering to the British was the only sensible option. Taking Speer aside, he proposed that Speer surrender as well, the two of them giving themselves up together.

  But Speer wasn’t ready to surrender yet. Nor was he ready to escape, as his pilot friend Werner Baumbach had suggested. Baumbach had a seaplane standing by, a four-engine machine used for flying supplies from Norway to the German weather station in Greenland. It had already been loaded with books, medicine, writing materials, extra fuel tanks, and enough paper for Speer to begin work on his memoirs. With rifles, skis, tents, a folding boat, and hand grenades for fishing, they could live quietly in one of Greenland’s many bays for a few months, until the fuss had died down and it was safe to fly to England to give themselves up.

  Speer was tempted, but said no. As a minister in the new government, his duty lay with Dönitz. Leaving Hamburg, he headed back to Plön. He arrived late that night to find that the admiral had moved headquarters in his absence to escape the British advance. He had gone north to the naval cadet school at Mürwik, near Flensburg, on the Danish border. Keitel and Jodl were preparing to join him. They just had time for a quick word with Speer before they, too, headed north. After a brief visit to his trailer at Lake Eutin, Albert Speer went that way as well.

  * * *

  HIMMLER WAS GOING, too. Wherever Dönitz’s government went, he was sure to follow. Wearing a crash helmet, he was driving his own Mercedes at the head of a motorized column carrying his personal retinue, which still amounted to a hundred and fifty people. They were approaching Kiel in the last hours of daylight when the RAF found them.

&nb
sp; “Discipline, gentlemen, discipline!” Himmler yelled, as panic set in.1 The column came to an abrupt halt as staff of both sexes dived for cover from the British attack. The mud was so thick that it sucked the women’s shoes off their feet. Picking themselves up after the aircraft had gone, Himmler’s people regrouped in some disarray and withdrew to find a less dangerous route to Flensburg.

  The roads were so disrupted that it was early next morning before they arrived. Himmler immediately arranged for the women on his staff to be taken across the border to Denmark, where they could wash in safety and have something to eat before returning to his headquarters. As for himself, he had no idea what to do next. Count Schwerin von Krosigk, the new foreign minister, thought Himmler should shave off his moustache, disguise himself in a wig and dark glasses, and vanish before the Allies caught up with him. Either that, or shoot himself. Himmler didn’t want to do either.

  * * *

  RUDOLF HÖSS, too, was on his way to Flensburg, trying to avoid the RAF as he headed north for a final meeting with Himmler. As the former commandant of Auschwitz, he was one of several camp commanders who had been summoned to Flensburg for a conference the next morning to receive their last orders from the Reichsführer SS.

  It was not an easy journey. Höss had his wife and children with him as he went. They had been sheltering in a farmhouse along the road when they learned of Hitler’s death. Höss’s immediate reaction had been the same as his wife’s: to kill himself immediately, now that his world had collapsed. “Was there any point in going on living? We would be pursued and persecuted wherever we went. We wanted to take poison. I had obtained some for my wife, lest she and the children fell alive into the hands of the Russians.”2

  Höss had good reason to be nervous. As commandant of Auschwitz for three and a half years, he had presided over the establishment of the gas chambers and the slaughter of innocent people on an industrial scale. He had left Auschwitz in December 1943, only to return the following May when the Jews from Hungary began to arrive. It had been all hands to the pump with so many new bodies to process. They had got the murder rate up to almost ten thousand a day at one point, a figure viewed by Höss with considerable satisfaction. A Jewish mother had berated him for driving her children to the slaughter but she had evidently failed to realize that the children had to be killed, too, in case they came looking for revenge when they grew up.