Hitler's Last Day

by Emma Craigie

  Suddenly she sees some horsemen riding across the field. As they get close they shout in Russian, ‘Where are the Germans?’ Overjoyed, Antonina and the others kiss the soldiers’ boots and pull them from their horses and hug them. ‘We were drunk with joy,’ Antonina wrote later.

  In Nassau, in the Bahamas, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are having breakfast (the Duke is the former King Edward VIII who abdicated in December 1936). Today is the day that his resignation as Governor takes effect. They have already started packing and will leave the island in three days’ time for New York, and eventually France. Edward and Wallace have not been happy in what he calls ‘a third-class British colony’. He has asked Churchill to intercede and persuade his brother, the King, to invite him to tea on his return to Europe. It is a courtesy normally extended to former governors, but George VI absolutely refuses. Churchill assures the Duke, ‘I have not concealed my regret that this should be so.’ Following a visit to Obersalzberg in 1937 when the Duke of Windsor publicly gave Hitler a Nazi salute, he has been widely criticised in Britain for having apparent Nazi sympathies. After the war he will insist, ‘The Führer struck me as a rather ridiculous figure with his theatrical posturings and bombastic pretensions.’

  We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us – a world in flames.

  Adolf Hitler, November 1939

  1.30pm

  Twenty-seven-year-old American GI Lieutenant Wolfgang F. Robinow is steering his way through the wrecked streets of Munich in a jeep. There is a machine gun mounted at the back of the vehicle, and sandbags on the floor as protection from mines. With Robinow is his reconnaissance unit of 21 men, whose mission is, as usual, ‘To go forward until you meet resistance.’

  There are few civilians to be seen in the city, and most of the SS battalions who have defended Munich so fiercely in the past few days have left. (The SS have also faced a three-day insurgence from some citizens of Munich hoping to be spared further destruction.)

  Allied bombardment from the air and from field artillery has damaged many of Munich’s finest buildings, including the 12th-century Peterskirche and the Wittelsbacher Palais, used until recently as a Gestapo jail and satellite camp for Dachau. The capture of Munich for the Allies will be a symbolic prize – the Nazis call it ‘the Capital of the Movement’; General Eisenhower called it ‘the cradle of the Nazi beast’.

  Hitler had first come to Munich in 1913 with a plan (never achieved) of enrolling at the Art Academy. ‘Almost from the first moment… I came to love that city more than any other place. “A German city!” I said to myself...’ Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. Now, in Odeonsplatz, Munich’s central square, where Hitler joined the crowds celebrating Germany’s declaration of war on Russia and Serbia in August 1914, large white letters are painted across a monument: ‘I am ashamed to be German.’

  Lieutenant Robinow has, in one sense, come home. Until the age of 14 he lived in Berlin, but then in January 1933 his life changed. Robinow went to his Boy Scout troop and was told it was now called the Hitler Youth, and that he must find evidence of his Aryan ancestry. He wrote the word ‘Aryan’ down carefully on a piece of paper as he had never heard it before, and went home. There he discovered for the first time that, despite the fact that he had been raised as a Protestant, all his grandparents were Jewish. He left the Hitler Youth the next day.

  Soon after, the Robinow family fled to Denmark and then sailed to the United States. Robinow joined the US army in 1941 and arrived in Germany in early 1945 to act as an interrogator of POWs and Nazi officials.

  Making his way through the centre of Munich is nerve-wracking work. He recalled later, ‘We never knew what was hiding around the next corner. We didn’t have any dogs or tanks or anything like that. Just the jeeps. My soldiers had rifles. I had a pistol. That was it.’

  About 1.30pm

  Russian soldiers are rampaging through 77-year-old Elisabeth Ditzen’s house in the town of Carwitz in north-east Germany. They arrived with swords, rifles and horsewhips. Elisabeth offered them two clocks, but they wanted more. They are now in every room in the house going through every drawer, every suitcase. A soldier heads out of the door, and Elisabeth can see that he is holding her late husband’s watch. He stares at her, then shakes her hand and leaves.

  In the Führerbunker, the switchboard operator Rochus Misch is sick with panic. In order to stretch his legs he has just been over to the new Reich Chancellery where he saw three men in the corridor. Two he recognised as high-ranking SS officers, but it was the sight of the man they were flanking that terrified Misch. The thin, pale man with close-set eyes is Heinrich Müller, aka Gestapo Müller, chief of the Gestapo. Misch can only think of two possible reasons for his arrival – either he has come to shoot the eyewitnesses to Hitler’s death or he has come to blow up the bunker with a time bomb.

  About 2.00pm/9.00am EWT

  At Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue, President Truman is saying goodbye to Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, the White House Special Counsel. They have just had a brief meeting to discuss the question of what to do with Nazi war criminals. Stalin is in favour of the execution, without a trial, of high-ranking Nazis – indeed, he half-joked at the Tehran Conference about the need for between 50,000 and 100,000 staff officers to be killed. But Truman wants public trials, and has just asked Rosenman if he would act as his official representative in talks with the Allies.

  The letter of instruction that Judge Rosenman has with him concludes, ‘Those guilty of the atrocities that have shocked the world since 1933 down to date must be brought to speedy justice and swift punishment – but their guilt must be found judicially…’

  One of the British soldiers hunting for war criminals is Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Gordon-Creed. In 1944, aged only 24, he was given a jeep and a driver and a Movement Order, signed by Eisenhower, to give him freedom to drive around liberated Europe to assess the threat from ‘last ditch Nazi fanatics’ – the so-called Werewolves. Gordon-Creed did that job so well that, in early 1945, he was given the task of tracking down war criminals. He was handed a list of 4,000 the Allies were especially interested in. Gordon-Creed split them into four categories of arrest priority:

  Class 1: Supernasties

  24

  Class 2: Nasties

  about 320

  Class 3: Shits

  about 1500

  Class 4: Bastards

  the balance

  2.00pm

  Lieutenant Wolfgang F. Robinow’s reconnaissance unit is making its way onto Munich’s historic 12th-century square the Marienplatz. They are soon surrounded by a group of old people waving and cheering. Robinow can only feel anger at their pleasure. This was the city that supported Hitler and his National Socialists from the start, and where the Volkischer Beobachter, the Nazi propaganda newspaper, still has its headquarters.

  ‘And now these people are happy to be “liberated”?’ Robinow thinks in disgust.

  The young lieutenant spots a police station, and heads across the square with his men.

  About 2.15pm

  In Dachau, medical officer Lieutenant Marcus J. Smith is being shown the full horror of the camp by the former inmates. He is at the rear of the four furnaces of the crematorium. On a wall is a sign showing a man riding a monstrous pig. The caption reads, ‘Wash your hands. It is your duty to remain clean.’

  2.30pm

  In the main police station in central Munich, Lieutenant Robinow is looking at row upon row of pistols – all boxed and with two tags attached, one showing the number of the pistol and the other the number of the officer who had been issued the pistol. Robinow can only smile at the German efficiency he knows so well. He had expected trouble at the police station and had marched boldly in with his men, but was greeted only by salutes from unarmed officers.

  A policeman with Robinow says that, if the Americans are taking the weapons away, he wants a receipt for them. Robinow writes, ‘Received this day the 30th of April, 1945, 102 pistols. Signed
John Doe. First Lieutenant Infantry US Army.’

  Admiral Dönitz has arrived at another police station 500 miles to the north, where Heinrich Himmler has set up his headquarters. Hanna Reitsch has made it clear that Hitler wants Himmler arrested, but Dönitz does not have the forces to overpower Himmler’s SS guard. Himmler has kept Dönitz waiting, and finally appears with what Dönitz reckons must be every available SS officer. The room in Lübeck police station is packed. Himmler assures the Admiral that he has had no contact with Bernadotte, and has made no overtures to the Allies. He emphasises that in these difficult times it is vital to avoid internal disputes. It suits Dönitz to take these assurances at face value.

  ‘You have lost the war and you know it.’

  In the classroom at St Josef’s in the north of Holland, the German and Allied delegations have divided up into different groups to examine in detail the issues to be solved before a humanitarian truce can be agreed. Operation Manna is underway but with no formal agreement saying that the Allied planes won’t be shot down as they carry out their food drops.

  ‘Watching this scene,’ Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand recalled later, ‘I found it hard to believe I wasn’t dreaming, for all intents and purposes it reminded me of a staff college exercise with the best syndicates arguing amongst themselves as to the best way of solving a particular problem.’

  While the groups are talking, General Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff Major-General Walter Bedell Smith takes the opportunity to talk to Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart about the capitulation of the remaining 200,000 German soldiers in Holland. Around a table with sandwiches on it, Bedell Smith pours Seyss-Inquart a large glass of gin and explains to him that he would be held responsible if any disaster befell the Dutch people, and that he expects the war will be over in a matter of weeks.

  ‘I agree,’ Seyss-Inquart replies.

  Surprised by the answer, Bedell Smith pushes further. He says as the German army is cut off in Holland they should surrender to avoid further bloodshed. Seyss-Inquart replies that he has no orders or authority to carry out such a surrender. Bedell Smith says, ‘But surely it is the politician who dictates the policy to the soldier, and in any case our information points to the fact that no real supreme headquarters exists any longer in Germany today.’

  ‘But what would future generations of Germans say about me if I complied with your suggestion? What would history say about my conduct?’ Seyss-Inquart replies.

  ‘Now look here,’ Bedell Smith says impatiently, ‘General Eisenhower has instructed me to say that he will hold you directly responsible for any further useless bloodshed. You have lost the war and you know it. And if, through pigheadedness, you cause more loss of life to Allied troops or Dutch civilians, you will have to pay the penalty. In any case you are going to be shot.’

  Seyss-Inquart looks at Bedell Smith and says quietly and slowly, ‘That leaves me cold.’

  ‘It will,’ Bedell Smith replies.

  In Heemstede, a suburb of Haarlem in the Netherlands, Audrey Hepburn’s cousin, eight-year-old John Schwartz, is at his grandparents’ farm watching the planes of Operation Manna dropping food bags in the large open fields. It is a sight he will never forget. ‘It really looked as if there was no end to the planes coming in from the sea, dropping all these bags (instead of bombs).’

  A few days later, John Schwartz will personally harvest a can from the Allied food drop. He had just got off the tram from his school in Haarlem and was walking along a small path when he saw a huge pile of discarded cans. He rummaged through and discovered one which hadn’t been opened… ‘I took it home. My mother opened it and it was full of sausages! A huge feast for the family.’

  For a while his journey to school became almost impossible as the roads filled with soldiers retreating and arriving. He remembers standing on the edge of ‘Heemsteedse Dreef’, the highway leading from Heemstede to Haarlem: ‘We could not cross the Dreef because of the endless slow stream of horses and wagons (no petrol for trucks) carrying broken German soldiers in shabby uniforms, pale faces, just looking defeated and humiliated, leaving their camps on their way back to Germany.

  ‘Around the same time. They were American trucks… on the highways in Heemstede. You could not see the drivers behind the trucks’ windows if they had black drivers. Very unfamiliar to us. One truck drove into a biker pulling a flat loaded with potatoes. The truck fell over trying to avoid him, the biker lay dead on the side of the street and the potatoes flew all over, and people were reaping them from the street.’

  In Amsterdam, Jacqueline van Maarsen is at school. Like everyone in the city she is longing desperately for the end of the war. Throughout the city, people are dying of starvation. At home Jacqueline’s family have no gas or electricity or food. She is constantly hungry, and missing her many friends who have gone abroad, including her best friend, Anne Frank, whose family (Jacqueline thinks) have moved to Switzerland. As her class sit at their desks they suddenly hear the sound of planes. They look out of the window and see the sky is full of Allied aircraft heading towards them. Everybody in the school rushes up the stairs and onto the roof. The children wave everything that can be waved: scarves, books, handkerchiefs. From the rooftop they can see the planes flying over fields on the edge of the city, and drifting black dots falling from the sky. They have no idea that these are bags full of food.

  One day in June 1945 Jacqueline van Maarsen will learn that the Frank family had not escaped to Switzerland. Otto Frank, Anne’s father, appears on the van Maarsen doorstep; ‘sad eyes, thin face, threadbare suit,’ as Jacqueline later recorded. He explains how they had been in hiding with the van Pels family for two years. After they were betrayed to the Germans, the men and women were separated. He knows that his wife has died but he doesn’t know what has happened to his daughters Margot and Anne. Miep Gies, the woman whose house they hid in, has just given him the diary that Anne left behind. It contains two letters for Jacqueline. The second letter is a reply to an imagined response to the first letter, which she had never been allowed to send. Months later Otto Frank will learn that both girls died of typhus in March in Bergen-Belsen.

  ‘Do your best to get out… and give Bavaria my love.’

  About 2.45pm

  The Goebbels children are playing quietly in their bedroom in the upper bunker. In the corridor outside, Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge is sitting in an armchair smoking a cigarette. Otto Günsche comes up the stairs from the Führerbunker to call her. ‘Come on, the Führer wants to say goodbye.’ She quickly stubs out her cigarette and tries to waft away the smell. Hitler disapproves of smoking, and hates the smell of cigarettes. He is always warning his staff that smoking causes cancer, a view many of them regard as eccentric.

  Junge follows Günsche down to the Führerbunker corridor where Constanze Manziarly, Gerda Christian and other staff members have gathered together with Martin Bormann and Magda and Joseph Goebbels. They wait for a few moments and then Adolf and Eva Hitler emerge from his study.

  Hitler walks very slowly. Junge thinks he is stooping more than ever. He shuffles from person to person, proffering a quivering hand. When it comes to Junge’s turn, she feels the warmth of his right hand, but she realises that he is looking through her. He mutters something, but she can’t take it in. She is numb, frozen. It’s the moment that they have all been waiting for but now it has come she feels completely detached.

  Eva Hitler approaches Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, and says, ‘Thank you so much for everything you have done for the Führer.’ She leans in and lowers her voice, ‘Should you meet my sister Gretl, please do not tell her how her husband met his death.’ She doesn’t want her to know that Hermann Fegelein was executed on Hitler’s orders.

  Then Eva goes over to Traudl Junge and jolts her out of her daze by hugging her. ‘Do your best to get out,’ Eva says. ‘It may still be possible. And give Bavaria my love.’ She is smiling, but her voice catches.

  Joseph Goebbels stands before Adolf Hitl
er. He is suddenly desperate. He has sworn his loyalty unto death to the Führer. He has demonstrated it by bringing his wife and children into the bunker to die alongside their leader, but the prospect now seems unbearable. ‘Mein Führer, it is still possible to escape. You can oversee the war from Obersalzberg. Artur Axmann can arrange for the Hitler Youth to escort you safely from Berlin. Mein Führer, I beg you to consider…’

  ‘Doctor, you know my decision. I am not going to change it. You and your family can of course leave Berlin.’

  Joseph Goebbels raises his head and looks the Führer in the eyes.

  ‘We will stand by you and follow your example, Mien Führer.’

  The two men shake hands. Then Hitler leans on Heinz Linge, and retreats slowly to his study.

  At the study doorway Hitler stops and turns to look at Linge. In the last six years, he has been at his master’s side at all times. He has had a total of about three weeks’ leave. He has always travelled in the same vehicle as Hitler. He has always worn clothes which match Hitler’s – a uniform if Hitler was in uniform, civilian clothes if Hitler was in civilian clothes. Linge fixes his eyes on ‘the hank of hair, as always, across the pale forehead’.

  ‘I’m going to go now.’ The Führer’s voice is quiet and calm. ‘You know what you have to do. Ensure my body is burned and my remaining possessions destroyed.’

  ‘Jawohl, Mein Führer.’