Hitler's Last Day

by Emma Craigie

  ‘What’s next?’ Jack asks.

  Nina spits out the chewing gum and points to a can with a picture of a pineapple on its label. Bob opens the can.

  ‘It’s not the whole fruit. It’s just the juice squeezed out of it. Try it!’

  Nina has her first fruit juice.

  She then moves on to peanut butter. With a spoon she devours a whole jar. The three Americans and her brother Slava are watching wide-eyed and with some concern. Bob gives the remaining two jars to Slava.

  ‘Take it. Hide it from her!’

  About 6.00pm/7.00pm UK time

  The officers who have escaped from the Führerbunker, Boldt, Weiss and von Loringhoven, reach the underground shelter at Berlin Zoo Station, having made their way past two lines of Russian soldiers, dodging gunfire and leaping over shell craters and decaying bodies. When they get to the Zeiss-Planetarium they decide to go inside to rest. It has taken the three men four hours to scramble along a distance that would normally be a 30-minute walk. They lie down, exhausted and gaze up at the artificial sky of the domed planetarium roof. Beyond it, visible through a shell hole, they can see the real, darkening sky.

  In Bletchley Park a message to Hitler is intercepted. It is another telegram from Karl Hermann Frank in Prague. Heinrich Himmler is copied in. The message reads:

  ‘My Führer,

  ‘In view of the latest Reich situation, I request immediate reply giving freedom of action in domestic and foreign policy for Bohemia and Moravia in order still to exploit all possible opportunities for the rescue of Germans here from Bolshevism.’

  6.15pm

  In Berlin, Yelena Rzhevskaya of the Russian SMERSH intelligence unit is interviewing a German nurse. The woman has been caught trying to break through the Russian lines to get home to her mother. She has discarded her uniform cap but is otherwise still dressed as a nurse. She admits she has been working in an emergency hospital in the Reich Chancellery cellars. She tells Rzhevskaya that people there said that Hitler was ‘in the basement’.

  Yelena Rzhevskaya and her colleagues waste no time. They follow the route of the Soviet tanks towards the Reich Chancellery, passing through broken barricades and driving over rubble-filled ditches in an American jeep. As they approach the centre of the city the air thickens with acrid fumes, smoke and dust. Rzhevskaya feels the grit on her teeth.

  6.30pm

  In northern Italy under the shadow of the Alps, the 2nd New Zealand Division has ground to a halt on the banks of the River Piave. As the troops get comfortable for the night, engineers are building a bridge so that the advance to Trieste can continue. (They are calculating the width of the river based on the information supplied by Geoffrey Cox’s aerial intelligence team who have always proved themselves to be accurate.)

  A short while ago, Cox saw a milestone saying that Trieste is only 125 kilometres away. Their orders are to get to the city before Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav forces. Tito, who has fought with the Allies, is desperate to seize the port and make it part of a new Yugoslavia.

  7.00pm/2.00pm EWT

  At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in the shadow of a brand-new 45,000-ton aircraft carrier, Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, dressed in black, is addressing the thousands of shipyard workers who built the vessel. The carrier was to be called USS Coral Sea, but with the death of her husband three weeks ago, the navy decided that she should be named the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  ‘My husband would watch this ship with great pride. So today I hope this ship will always do its duty in winning the war. I pray God to bless this ship and its personnel and to keep them safe, and bring them home victorious.’

  Mrs Roosevelt pulls a lever and a bottle of champagne smashes onto the bow. Slowly the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt rumbles down the slipway and into the East River. British and American vessels nearby sound their whistles in tribute.

  By the time the fully fitted-out USS Franklin D. Roosevelt sails from New York in October, the war will be over. During her 30 years’ service, the carrier will acquire a number of nicknames (necessary for a ship with such a long name), including ‘Swanky Franky’ and ‘Rosie’, and in the 1970s towards the end of her career, ‘Rusty Rosie.’

  In the dark waters beyond the Kola Inlet on the Norwegian coast, close to the Russian port of Murmansk, the 14 German U-boats that make up the wolfpack codenamed Faust are waiting for the very last Arctic convoy to set sail. The convoy of 24 merchant ships plus a Royal Navy escort are about to make their final return to Britain, having delivered munitions, tanks, food and raw materials to the Soviets. The Arctic convoys have been travelling from Britain, Iceland and North America to Russia since 1941.

  In Berlin, the Russian SMERSH reconnaissance unit has had to abandon their jeep because the streets of the city centre are blocked by the rubble of ruined buildings. Their street maps are useless as street signs have been destroyed by shelling. Yelena Rzhevskaya asks Berlin citizens for directions to the Reich Chancellery. Most people are helpful; many have white sheets and pillowcases hanging from their windows as signs of surrender, ignoring SS threats of execution for anyone who displays a white flag. Some people are wearing white armbands. Rzhevskaya notices an elderly woman taking two young children across a road. All three are wearing white armbands. The children are neatly dressed, hair combed, but the woman is distressed and, Rzhevskaya notes, hatless. She is crying out to no one in particular, ‘They are orphans! Our house has been bombed! They are orphans!’

  7.15pm

  Just off the Norwegian coast, in the Faust wolfpack, U-boat Captain Willi Dietrich and his crew on board U-286 have been at sea for the last 12 days. Dietrich has commanded U-boats in the German Navy since 1943 but has never successfully torpedoed an enemy vessel.

  U-286’s sonar detects the merchantmen and Royal Navy ships of the Arctic convoy sailing away from the Kola Inlet. Dietrich sees his opportunity.

  Lookouts on the escort frigate HMS Goodall spot the wake of a torpedo on the surface of the water heading straight towards them. Her skipper James Fulton orders evasive action. The torpedo shoots past.

  In northern Germany, the German speakers in Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job’s 30 Assault Unit (the intelligence-gathering team created by Ian Fleming) have spent the afternoon getting information from the Burgomaster of Hesedorf and other civilians about the location of the German naval arsenal hidden in woods nearby. 30 Assault Unit are now poised at the arsenal’s entrance, ready to go in. With them is an M3 Stuart tank (nicknamed a ‘Honey’ after a US tank driver remarked ‘she’s a honey’) that Dalzel-Job asked the Irish Guards to provide as extra backup; his unit consists of just 30 men and they have no idea what they will find. He gets a colleague to take his photo at the entrance to the arsenal.

  7.27pm

  In the Arctic seas off Norway, a second torpedo is racing towards HMS Goodall. This time it is too late for the frigate to take evasive action. Captain Willi Dietrich in U-286 has his first hit. The torpedo explodes against the bow of the Goodall. Captain James Fulton and 94 crew are killed. Almost all are under the age of 25. The rest of the crew abandon ship. There are 44 survivors. HMS Goodall is the 2,779th and last Allied warship lost in the fight against Germany.

  I have suffered terrible anxieties, and experienced terrible things myself. My parents couldn’t protect me.

  Jutta, a German schoolgirl

  About 7.45pm

  In a cellar beneath an apartment block in the town of Thüringen on the outskirts of Berlin, 17-year-old Lieselotte G. (the ‘G’ is for anonymity) is writing her diary. Two weeks ago she returned from boarding school to be with her mother. Lieselotte’s father is a soldier fighting in Riesa, 120 miles to the south. Her brother Bertel is with the Volkssturm – the German territorial army – defending east Berlin. Lieselotte is glad she’s home but frequent air raids mean that they have to constantly run to the cellar, and there are power cuts that last up to four hours. A white flag flies outside their apartment.

  Last Sunday the Russians arrived. T
hüringen had been ready for them for weeks. The woods nearby were cut down and tank traps dug in the streets (although the locals called them ‘laughter traps’ as they believed the Russians would find them so small and funny).

  Lieselotte wrote in her diary that although Nazi propaganda had depicted the Russians as murderers and rapists ‘they all behaved pretty decently and did nothing to us, even though we were shaking with fear’. But shortly after she finished writing that entry, everything changed. Later that night, Lieselotte’s apartment was damaged by a bomb and she and her mother had to move in with their neighbours. Some Russian soldiers then came into their housing block and helped themselves to the food in the empty apartment. Terrified, Lieselotte and her mother hid in the cellar until they’d gone. For the past week, whenever they see a Russian soldier coming, they hide.

  Now, a week after the Russians started breaking in, Lieselotte has her first opportunity to update her diary.

  ‘Hundreds of people killed themselves in our district last Sunday. Our pastor has shot himself, his wife and his daughter, because the Russians broke into their cellar and started doing it with his girl. Our teacher Miss K. hanged herself because she is a Nazi. It’s lucky the gas is off, otherwise even more people would have killed themselves; we might have too… I thought a Russian would take me… I would have had an abortion, I don’t want to bring a Russian child into the world.’

  Lieselotte’s family all survive the war, and Thüringen becomes part of East Germany.

  ‘See Them – Lest You Forget’

  8.00pm/9.00pm UK time

  The German naval arsenal is bigger than Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job ever imagined. It has 200 stores filled with mines and is linked by over 20 kilometres of roads – all hidden by trees. The Allies had no idea that it was here. Some of the mines are of a revolutionary type Dalzel-Job has never seen before.

  30 Assault Unit have based themselves in the arsenal’s large naval officers’ mess. Bizarrely it has a huge white porcelain vomitorium, with chromium handles and, as a joke, a sign in large black letters saying, ‘Für die seekranke’ (For the seasick).

  Suddenly there are mortar explosions outside – the Germans are in the woods around them.

  Michael Hargrave is still in England. Together with two other medical students, he’s huddled round a fire in their hut back at their transit camp near Cirencester. By now they should have been in Germany and on their way to Bergen-Belsen to help the sick and dying.

  At midday the students were told that storms over the continent meant it was too dangerous for their Dakota to fly – two had been lost in the past week, and the RAF weren’t taking any unnecessary risks. Hargrave is flattered by their concern for the students’ safety but depressed they won’t be flying today. They hope to go in the morning.

  In Bergen-Belsen the work of saving lives continues. In the past week, the sick have been moved from the camp to a nearby Panzer training school that’s been turned into a makeshift hospital. Even its parade grounds are full of beds and straw mattresses. Soon it will be the largest hospital in Europe, with 13,000 patients.

  Twenty-five-year-old Private Manny Fisher has been helping transfer the sick. He’s written in his diary: ‘I simply could not look at these human wrecks for more than a few seconds. I found my eyes filling with tears, and had to turn away from my soldier-comrades. Some are beyond human aid and will soon die. But they are happy and look forward to living again even though they might know it is only for a short while.’

  The wards are often in a state of chaos. The patients sometimes fight for what little food there is, and basic equipment is lacking. Bedpans sometimes double up as feeding tins. Five hundred new patients arrive every day, and the British doctors and nurses and the 48 Red Cross volunteers who arrived a few days ago are struggling to cope. Lieutenant Colonel James Johnston, the senior medical officer at Bergen-Belsen, requested medical personnel from England, and was shocked when a few days ago 60 German doctors freed from POW camps arrived.

  A Red Cross nurse wrote home, ‘They strut about the place in a most alarming fashion terrifying all the inhabitants. However the British Tommy is marvellous in taking them down a peg or two.’

  On their second day, the German doctors ignored an order to parade at 7am, so Lieutenant Colonel Johnston threatened to hang their senior officer. After that they were more obedient.

  German nurses drafted in from nearby towns and cities have added to the tension in the camp. When a group from Hamburg arrived on a ward for the first time, they were set upon by patients (some of whom were dying) armed with knives and forks. Troops were called to rescue the nurses who were by then covered in blood, their uniforms torn to shreds. This is the atmosphere that Michael Hargrave and the other volunteers face in the coming weeks.

  Michael will finally arrive in Bergen-Belsen on 3rd May, and be put in charge of Hut 210. Over the next few weeks he treats patients suffering from typhus, diarrhoea and severe malnutrition, and makes careful notes and drawings in his diary about the various conditions he encounters. One day in the camp he comes across a huge pile of boots about 20 yards long and 12 feet high that had belonged to those who’d perished before the British arrived.

  ‘…the shoes at the bottom were squashed as flat as paper so you can imagine how many thousands of pairs of shoes were there, and each pair had once had an owner, and though the Germans may have destroyed all records of the camp, this pile of shoes and boots bore mute and absolutely damning evidence of the number of people who had died…’

  In May and June a strange sort of normality will appear in the makeshift hospital in the Panzer training school. Dances are organised, attended by British soldiers and patients, with music provided by an RAF band.

  One doctor wrote later of the survivors: ‘Some could hardly walk, others looked as if they’d break in two.’

  A library will be established; Yehudi Menuhin and Benjamin Britten come to give performances, and in June, Laurence Olivier’s 65-strong Old Vic Company perform Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man for the soldiers and medical staff.

  Just before Michael Hargrave leaves England, a consignment of lipstick will arrive at Bergen-Belsen (no one knows who’d ordered it) and it has a remarkable effect on the female survivors. Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Gonin wrote, ‘At last someone had done something to make them individuals again; they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.’

  Only yesterday, on 28th April, the British finally buried in mass graves the last of the corpses that they’d discovered when they first entered Bergen-Belsen. Most of the soldiers and medical staff smoke all the time as a way of hiding the atrocious smell.

  Cameramen from British Movietone News and from the British Army Film Unit are filming footage in and around the huts. For stills photographer George Rodger, on an assignment for Life magazine, the scenes at the camp are all too much. After realising he is trying to find the most photographically pleasing composition of bodies, Rodger is so ashamed he stops taking pictures. For the rest of his life he avoids war zones and concentrates instead on the people and wildlife of Africa.

  The Ministry of Information is keen to collect images to prove to the German people that reported atrocities are real. The famous film director Alfred Hitchcock has been recruited to help compile the footage into a documentary for cinema release.

  When he is shown the harrowing footage from Belsen, Hitchcock is so shocked he stays away from Pinewood Studios for a week. One of Hitchcock’s aims will be to show how close the camps are to German towns, and that local people must therefore have known about them. But by the time the film is finished, British politicians are keener to reconstruct Germany than humble its people. The film won’t be shown until 1984.

  However, cinema newsreels in May 1945 will show footage from Belsen. Outside a cinema in Kilburn, north London, a sign is put up: ‘See Them – Lest You Forget.’

  Bletchley Park pick
up a message from Heinrich Himmler replying to Karl Hermann Frank in Prague:

  ‘Ref. yours of 1900 hours.

  ‘What do you mean by freedom of action in domestic and in particular in foreign policy?’

  Having been accused of treason by Hitler, Himmler is not going to be seen to give any encouragement to any independent foreign policy initiatives.

  Bletchley don’t pick up any reply from the Führerbunker, but they intercept a message to Frank from the Plön headquarters of Admiral Dönitz. Frank is curtly reminded that he has already had instructions for the removal of the German population from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

  In London the white stone of BBC Broadcasting House has turned a dark-grey colour during the war years, and it has bomb damage on its west side. The BBC’s civil engineering department has decided that these battle scars should remain as a memento of the war years. In one of the building’s news studios, newsreader Stuart Hibberd is reading the nine o’clock bulletin, and it’s full of details of the death of Mussolini.

  Later that evening Hibberd updates his diary: ‘He had been shot like a dog, together with members of his Cabinet and others, and his body afterwards publicly displayed in Milan, hung up like a turkey in a Christmas market.’

  This was one of the last broadcasts in which he would say, ‘Here is the news – and this is Stuart Hibberd reading it.’ In a few days the BBC will request that their newsreaders return to pre-war anonymity. There had been so many fake radio stations broadcasting propaganda out of Germany that in 1939 the BBC decided their newsreaders should be identified by name. They became some of the most well-loved personalities of the war years, both in Britain and in occupied Europe.