Höss had few qualms about what he had done, but he knew the Allies would see it differently if they found him. He had been at Ravensbruck with his family as the Russians approached. They had escaped with several other families, leaving by night in a convoy of unlit vehicles, bumper to bumper along a road crowded with refugees. Under regular attack from the air, they had traveled for days from one clump of trees to the next, desperate to keep together as Spitfires and Typhoons roared overhead. They had glimpsed Field Marshal Keitel at Wismar, arresting deserters from a front that Keitel himself had never visited. From there, they had turned west toward Lübeck and then Flensburg to the north.
The Höss children’s old governess from Auschwitz lived at St. Michaelisdonn, near the mouth of the Elbe. With nowhere else to go, Höss left his wife and four of his children there while he continued toward Flensburg with only his eldest son for company. The boy wanted to stay with his father, both of them hoping that there might yet be a part for them to play in the final hours of the Reich. Höss still had his poison with him, but with the children to think about, he was very reluctant to use it. He preferred to believe that Himmler would know what to do next, when he reported to Flensburg. Himmler surely wouldn’t have summoned the commandants to Flensburg if he didn’t know what they should all do next.
* * *
JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP was going the other way. He saw no point in following Dönitz to Flensburg, if he was no longer in the government. Annoyed to learn that Schwerin von Krosigk had been given his job, he had decided to go to Hamburg instead to make contact with the British. He still had a duty to Hitler to pass on his message urging the Western Allies to join forces with Germany against Bolshevism.
Ribbentrop knew Hamburg well. He had business connections there from before the war. There was a wine merchant from his champagne-selling days who would give him shelter for a while, enabling him to remain out of sight until tempers had cooled and it was safe to show his face again. While in hiding, he could compose a letter explaining Hitler’s reasons for wanting an alliance against the Bolsheviks and then present it to the British at a time and place of his own choosing. As the bearer of the Führer’s last message to the British, he would surely be treated with all the respect and consideration he deserved. Ribbentrop certainly hoped so, because Hitler’s last message to the British was the only card he had left to play.
* * *
IN THE FOREST above Schliersee, south of Munich, Hans Frank and his adjutant were watching the Americans advance on the little village of Neuhaus. The village was not defended, but the Americans didn’t know that as they probed cautiously forward. None of them wanted to be killed this close to the end of the war. Their Sherman tanks were advancing with the hatches closed, ready for immediate action as they pushed aside a tank trap composed of tree trunks and approached Neuhaus from the south end of the lake. Frank watched with contempt from the mountain path above.
“Just look at those scared rabbits,” he told his adjutant. “They’re frightened they’ve finally got a whiff of our impregnable Alpine fortress.”3
Frank was ready for the Americans. As the governor-general of Poland, he was expecting to be arrested when they reached the village. He had destroyed all his files after fleeing Krakow in January and had since attempted to rewrite his later speeches and diaries to present his time there in a better light. But he knew the Americans would want to talk to him about his time in Poland. They would demand to know about Auschwitz, the starvation, the slave labor, the hangings in the streets, the summary executions of intellectuals, the humiliation and murder of Jews in synagogues, the wholesale looting of art and property, much of it to Frank’s own benefit. He had been a most efficient governor, by Nazi standards. The Americans would certainly want to talk to him about that when they took control of the village.
Frank had been lord of all he surveyed when he ruled the Poles from Krakow’s glorious castle. His empire since then had shrunk to a few secretaries and personal followers who stuck with him because they didn’t know what else to do. There had been a bad moment recently when his valet of many years had told him to “kiss my ass” before walking out, leaving Frank to press his own uniforms from then on. What remained of the governor’s Poland secretariat had all been accommodated in Neuhaus at the Café Bergfrieden, at 12 Josefstalerstrasse, with plenty of room to spare. Frank had been living at the Haus Bergfrieden since April 3, waiting for the Americans to put in an appearance.
He had assembled his staff there as soon as he learned of Hitler’s death. While the women of the village prepared white flags for surrender, Frank had privately ordered his staff to swear allegiance to Dönitz, their new Führer. They had all done so, like good Germans, but for what purpose, none could tell. There seemed little point in swearing allegiance to Dönitz when their only remaining option now was to sit in the Haus Bergfrieden and wait for the Americans to come. Hans Frank joined them there after he had finished watching the American tanks from the path above the village.
* * *
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the mountains, Adolf Eichmann was on his way to the Austrian lake resort of Altaussee. A number of top Nazis had moved to Altaussee in recent weeks because the approaches were easy to defend and the steep sides of the mountain valley made attack difficult from the air.
As head of the SS’s Jewish Office, Eichmann had been the operations manager for the Final Solution, responsible by his own estimate, for the efficient elimination of five million Jews, although the figures that came to him may have been exaggerated to meet their quotas. He had been particularly efficient in Hungary, rooting out the bulk of the Jewish population at breakneck speed after the Wehrmacht moved in, then sending them on to Auschwitz for further processing.
Eichmann had left Berlin in mid-April after spending several days destroying all his department’s files before the Russians could find them. From there he had gone to Prague and other places, on a fool’s errand for Himmler to arrange for a few hundred prominent Jewish prisoners to be transported to the Alps and held hostage. The task had proved impossible in the chaos, so Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Himmler’s deputy in the SS, had ordered Eichmann to Altaussee instead to await further instructions.
Eichmann reported in as soon as he arrived. He found Kaltenbrunner playing patience at his mistress’s villa on the outskirts of the town. Like everyone else in Altaussee, Kaltenbrunner was not pleased to see him. No one in the town wanted to be associated with a Jew killer, now that retribution was at hand. Kaltenbrunner intended to get rid of him without delay.
Sending for cognac, he told him first that Hitler was dead.
Eichmann was shocked. It was terrible news. He had known the situation was bad in Berlin, but not that bad.
Kaltenbrunner didn’t discuss it any further. He hadn’t yet decided what to do with Eichmann. He was toying with the idea of giving him some of the valuables looted from the Jews and sending him into the mountains with a few other potential war criminals to make sure that they were nowhere near Altaussee when the Allies arrived. He himself was going to hide in the mountains when the time came. There was a cabin on the Wildensee where he could hole up for a few days until he knew which way the wind was blowing.
“It’s all a lot of crap,” Kaltenbrunner muttered, as he sent Eichmann away to await further instructions. “The game is up.”4
Kaltenbrunner had abandoned his hopes of negotiating a separate peace for Austria with the Allies. Like many Nazis, however, he remained convinced that the Allies would still appreciate his services in the continuing struggle against the Soviets. Failing that, he had had a set of false papers prepared, in case he needed to disappear in a hurry. It was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Reich Security Main Office, who would set off for the mountains when the Allies arrived, but it was Josef Unterwogen, a doctor in the Wehrmacht, who would reappear in due course, ready to pick up the threads of his life and resume his place in a postwar world.
* * *
AT MAUTERNDORF, Hermann Göring
was in talks with the SS, urging them to let him go now that Hitler was dead. The SS were agreeable, but still wouldn’t do so without proper authority.
At Mayrhofen, Leni Riefenstahl had spent the day looking for Hans and Gisela Schneeberger, her hosts for the next two weeks. She was supposed to be staying with them at Hans’s cousin’s boarding house higher up the mountain, but there had been no sign of Gisela when she woke that morning; no message, either. Gisela had left without saying a word.
Riefenstahl was in a dilemma. She couldn’t stay where she was, because her room had already been taken and every other hotel in Mayrhofen was full. She couldn’t drive back to Kitzbühel, either, because she had no gas for the car. She decided to go up the mountain instead, to find the Schneebergers and ask them what had gone wrong.
It was late afternoon by the time she managed to hitch a ride on a hay wagon. Darkness was falling as she reached the Hotel Lamm and rang the bell. The door was opened by an old man who eyed her without enthusiasm.
“I’m Frau Riefenstahl,” she told him. “Herr Schneeberger asked me to come here.”
The man looked her up and down. “You’re not entering my house,” he said.
“Aren’t you Hans’s cousin? I’m supposed to stay here for a couple of weeks.”
“Sorry. You’re not entering my house. Hans apparently didn’t realize I don’t take Nazis.”
Pushing him aside, Riefenstahl stormed into the house, looking for Hans. She found him in the kitchen with his wife.
“You here?” Gisela was shocked. “Are you mad? Did you really think you could stay here with us?”
Hans said nothing. As well as being a colleague of Riefenstahl’s, he had lived with her as her lover for four happy years.
“Help me!” she cried.
Hans stayed silent. Gisela stood protectively in front of him, yelling at Riefenstahl. “You thought we’d help you? Nazi slut!”5
Riefenstahl was out in the cold. She still had her luggage with her, but the wagon had disappeared, and there was far too much to carry. Dumping it where it was, she turned away uncertainly and set off down the mountain in the dark, hoping to find a barn somewhere to shelter for the night.
* * *
PAULA HITLER was in her room at the Dietrich Eckart Hütte, a boardinghouse in Berchtesgaden. She was spending most of the time in her room, eating her meals there rather than in the dining room with the other guests. They knew her only as Frau Wolff and had no idea that she was the Führer’s slow-witted younger sister.
Paula had been in Berchtesgaden since mid-April. She had been at home in Austria, at her house on the Linz-Vienna road, when a car appeared outside with orders to take her to Berchtesgaden. She had been given two hours to pack, although she hadn’t actually left until the following day.
Paula had been most reluctant to leave at all. She was looking after the vegetable garden at home and knew it would be neglected without her. But the men who came for her had insisted that she go with them to Berchtesgaden. It was only when they were halfway there that one of them had told her that they hadn’t expected her to agree.
Paula knew nobody in Berchtesgaden. She was the Führer’s younger sister by seven years, and they had never been close. Even as a youth, her big brother had had strong views about what to do with the feeble-minded. As Führer, he had arranged for her to have a small allowance on condition that she call herself Paula Wolff and never told anyone they were related. But he had taken no interest in her. Like Alois Hitler, their scapegrace half-brother, like everyone in the family, she had never been invited to the Berghof, never set foot in her brother’s house on the mountain.
She had last seen Adolf in March 1941, when they had had a brief meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna. There had been no contact since then, although Hitler had just remembered her in his will. Her nearest living relation, now that Adolf was dead, was probably her nephew, William Patrick Hitler, a seaman in the U.S. Navy. British by birth, he had tried to join the Royal Navy first, only to be told that the British wouldn’t have any Hitlers in their fleet.
Paula was devastated to learn of Adolf’s death. Whatever others might think, he was still her big brother, the only full sibling she had. He had been too big to spend much time with her as a child, but he had enjoyed playing cops and robbers with other little boys. Their mother had spoiled him rotten, perhaps because their father had beaten him so often.
Adolf should never have been Führer, in Paula’s view. He should have been an architect instead. He had always liked architecture. If he had been an architect, none of this would have happened and he would still be alive today.
But he wasn’t alive anymore. He was dead, and nothing could bring him back. Like any sister whose brother had been killed in the war, Paula Hitler was inconsolable, still crying about it months later. No matter how difficult Adolf had been, no matter how neglectful as a brother, she was going to miss him now that he was gone. A light had gone out of her life for ever.
* * *
FAR AWAY in his Welsh asylum, Rudolf Hess had been as shocked as Paula to learn that Hitler was dead. The Times that morning had devoted a whole page to his obituary. Hess had been careful to show no emotion when he read the newspapers, but his minders could see that he was deeply upset. He sought comfort from a favorite passage of his in Natural Life, a book by Konrad Günther:
The work of great men does not attain its full effect until its creator has passed on – the present day cannot comprehend it … Can there exist any being more heroic than the one who follows an undeviating path in pursuit of a preordained mission, however entangled that path might become, even if it becomes a path to martyrdom? 6
Hess’s behavior had become increasingly erratic in the past few days, as the news from Germany turned from bad to worse. Getting dressed on April 29, he had smashed his underpants against the wardrobe for a full minute before putting them on. He had laughed like a maniac at Himmler’s peace offer, and sniggered uncontrollably at photographs in the paper of Germany’s new leaders. He had developed a new habit, first observed by his minders at about the time of Hitler’s death, of repeatedly dropping a small key onto his writing paper, a ritual that seemed important to him, although it served no discernible purpose.
He had a request to make of his captors. According to the newspapers, films had been made of the concentration camps captured by the Allies, dreadful films of German atrocities. Hess had already seen some of the pictures in the papers. He wanted to see the films as well, if they were worse. He told his guards that he would greatly appreciate it if they could arrange for him to have a viewing.
His request was refused. There were no special favors for Maindiff Court’s most notorious inmate.
23
SURRENDER IN ITALY
IN ITALY, THE GERMAN HIGH COMMAND was still divided over whether to accept the surrender terms agreed to at Caserta. Some generals had already passed the word to their troops, ordering them to cease fire at two o’clock that afternoon. Others were refusing to comply, arguing that there could be no surrender while the war continued against the Russians. Hitler’s death had released them from their binding oaths, but they still wouldn’t budge without a direct order from Field Marshal Kesselring, who was nominally in command of the Wehrmacht forces in Italy. But Kesselring was in the field somewhere and couldn’t be contacted by phone.
The situation was so tense that the generals at Bolzano had begun to arrest each other as they disagreed vehemently about what to do. General Karl Wolff of the SS had been in secret negotiations with the Allies for weeks and was determined to honor the agreement signed at Caserta. Sitting in Wehrmacht headquarters at about half past one that morning, he feared the worst as orders came for surrender-minded officers to be arrested at once. Sneaking out of the tunnel complex with a couple of other generals, Wolff hurried back to SS headquarters in the Duke of Pistoia’s palace. There he learned that the Wehrmacht was about to surround the building with a tank unit.
Wolff
had tanks of his own, which he quickly deployed around his command post. SS troops took up defensive positions while Wolff sent an urgent message to Field Marshal Alexander, pleading for help from Allied paratroopers. The SS were crouching over their weapons, waiting for the Wehrmacht to attack, when the telephone rang. It was Field Marshal Kesselring for Wolff.
Kesselring had just learned that the proposed surrender was going ahead without his authorization. He rang at 2:00 a.m. and, over a bad line, blasted Wolff for the next two hours, calling him every name under the sun as he lambasted him for his treachery in talking secretly to the Allies. Other officers joined in, discussing the situation over the phone and swearing at one another as they argued about what to do next. Wolff stood his ground, pointing out that surrender was not only inevitable but the best option still open to them, since there was nothing to be gained from fighting on. Unusually for an SS officer, he saw no point in fighting to the last man. He told Kesselring so quite bluntly:
It is not only a military capitulation in order to avoid further destruction and shedding of blood. A ceasefire now will give the Anglo-Americans the potential to stop the Russian advance into the west, to counter the threat of Tito’s forces to the port of Trieste and of a Communist uprising that will try to establish a Soviet republic in northern Italy … Since the Führer’s death has released you from your oath of loyalty, I beg you as the most senior commander of the entire Alpine region devoutly and with the greatest sense of obedience to give your retroactive sanction to our independent action which our consciences impelled us to take.1
Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II Page 28