by Emma Craigie
‘Moment, moment...’
7.30pm
Gretz returns from the Russian command and plugs in the cable. Misch tests it, but says the line is dead. Gretz double-checks. It is dead. He goes back to the Russians in Zimmerstrasse.
In the upper bunker Magda Goebbels is putting her children to bed. The littlest, Heide, has a sore throat. Her mother finds her a red scarf.
This is their last night’s sleep. This time tomorrow they will each be given an injection of morphine. Their mother will tell them that this is a vaccination that all the soldiers are getting to protect them against disease.
Once they are dozing, Ludwig Stumpfegger, one of the Reich Chancellery doctors, the only one whom Magda has been able to persuade to carry out this task, will crush a cyanide capsule between each child’s teeth.
The three testament couriers are reunited at the Wannsee bridgehead. While waiting for his colleagues, Johanmeier has found a small German army unit and used their radio to make contact with Admiral Dönitz. Dönitz has instructed them to go to Pfaueninsel, a small wooded island further south along the River Havel, and wait for a seaplane which he is sending to rescue them.
8.00pm
Gretz the technician reappears in the Führerbunker switchboard office. ‘The cable wasn’t earthed. Try it again.’ Misch plugs it in and hears a Russian voice. ‘Moment, moment,’ he says and passes the connection to General Krebs, who has been secretly brushing up the Russian he learned when he was the military attaché in Moscow before the war. Krebs arranges to meet the Russian General Zhukov later that evening.
Constanze Manziarly is mashing potato and frying eggs, creating a dinner that she knows the Führer won’t eat. Those in Hitler’s immediate circle are keeping his death secret from the staff in the Reich Chancellery, and the kitchen orderlies who assist her have no idea that this meal is a charade.
8.15pm
Back in the map room, Goebbels and Bormann are drafting a letter for Krebs to take to General Zhukov. Goebbels is adamant that they will not offer an unconditional surrender.
In the Reichstag fierce fighting continues. Two Russian soldiers, bearing a red flag and heading for the roof, are mown down as they reach the second floor.
About 8.30pm
The three officers who are supposed to be delivering Hitler’s testaments have reached Pfaueninsel in the middle of the River Havel. The island’s white castle looms through the darkness. This will be the landmark to guide the seaplane which Admiral Dönitz is sending. The men clamber ashore. They manage to find some civilian clothes in the castle and they dispose of their army uniforms. They begin the long wait for the seaplane to arrive. At dawn they will be joined by the three officers who have broken out of the bunker – von Loringhoven, Boldt and Weiss.
About 8.30pm/9.30pm UK time
General Eisenhower’s staff are sending a telegram to the Russian General Antonov, requesting that he advance no further into Austria than ‘the general area of the Linz’ and the River Enns.
A guard at Stalag IV-C has found Corporal Bert Ruffle hiding in the latrine and he’s marching him to the Commandant’s office.
Noël Coward is in a suite at the Savoy Hotel in London (his London home having been bombed in 1941). Pencil in hand, he is updating a diary which also doubles up as his appointments book. He has an impressive set of friends – lunch dates with Fred Astaire, Laurence Olivier or Greta Garbo are not uncommon. But today has been a quiet Monday, the papers full of speculation about the war.
He’s writing, ‘These supremely melodramatic days are somehow anticlimactic and confusing. The Sunday Express announced Germany’s unconditional surrender to all three Allies. This headline is mischievous and misleading as it is not true, although it probably will be in the next day or two. Rumours of the death of Hitler and Goering. Mussolini shot yesterday and hung upside down and spat at. The Italians are a loveable race.’
Coward has written two of the most successful songs of the war – ‘London Pride’ and ‘Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans’ (a favourite of Churchill’s after Coward played it for him at Chequers), and is the screenwriter of the most popular wartime film, the navy drama In Which We Serve. Today filming resumed on Coward’s latest screenplay after the weekend break. It’s called Brief Encounter and is being made at Denham Studios, with Celia Johnson and newcomer Trevor Howard.
‘When, oh when, is this bleeding bloody sodding WAR going to finish??’
8.45pm
Bert Ruffle is saluting the Commandant of Stalag IV-C, who then stands and returns the salute. The Commandant asks him why he was evading work.
‘Sir, I was ready for work when, a quarter of an hour before I was to go on parade, my stomach was filled with pain. I was very sick and I felt as though the world had come to an end. It took me all my time to come to this office, as you can see, sir.’ Ruffle holds out his grubby hands.
‘I am shaking like a leaf in the wind. I shall be OK for work tomorrow, Sir.’
The Commandant tells him that he should have reported sick earlier, and lets Ruffle go without punishment. Ruffle walks back to his hut feeling extremely lucky, given that his old friend ‘Lofty’ Whitney is serving seven days in the jail for leaving Stalag IV-C without permission.
They give us rooms and huge beds… and we sleep in the same house with them, never thinking of knives in the dark. These people want us to like them.
Matthew Halton, Canadian Broadcasting Company
In Braunau-am-Inn, where Hitler was born 56 years ago, BBC correspondent Robert Reid is spending the night with an Austrian farmer and his wife. When the correspondents are far from an army base, they often knock on the door of a German house asking for a bed for the night. Almost without fail they are invited in, and almost without fail, as they enjoy German hospitality, they will notice the space on the wall where a picture of Hitler once hung.
Reid is enjoying a large candlelit meal and plenty of beer. The farmer and his wife have brought out photographs of their relatives living in Seattle and Chicago and they are telling him about how they hated Hitler and the Nazis. But Reid is unconvinced by their claim – too many of the civilians he’s met in Germany have said the same. Two weeks ago he was reporting from Buchenwald concentration camp, an experience he will never forget. There, Reid interviewed a British officer named Captain C.A.G. Burney who’d been in the camp for 15 months.
Reid: How would you like to sum up your whole experience here?
Burney: Well, I couldn’t politely say it over the microphone.
Reid: But has it been shocking?
Burney: It’s been shocking, but on the other hand it’s so stunning it’s almost unreal, and I think probably when one has been back among civilised people for a while one just forgets it.
Reid: You really feel like you’ve been out of civilisation, do you?
Burney: Oh yes, absolutely out of the world.
About 9.30pm
Back in his hut in Stalag IV-C, Bert Ruffle is updating his diary. He has been a prisoner since he was captured at Dunkirk on 26th May 1940. He’s tired and he’s hungry.
‘Why?? Why?? am I writing this diary? Will anyone read it? What I have written is the true account of what I and my comrades have suffered in the past few months. When, oh when, is this bleeding bloody sodding WAR going to finish??’
Bert’s war will end on 8th May as Britain celebrates VE Day. He and about 100 other men are in the prison camp’s theatre that evening watching a concert, when a POW runs on the stage interrupting the squaddie singer, shouting, ‘It’s over, lads. The war is finished! We are free!’
Either side of the stage is a picture of Hitler and Göring. They are instantly torn down and someone produces pictures of King George VI and Churchill. Then two POWs unfurl a Union Flag on stage.
Ruffle wrote in his diary that night, ‘Suddenly, and without a word of command, we all stood to attention, stiff as ramrods. Never, in all my life have I heard the national anthem sung as we sang it then. It
was sung from the heart, with tears running down our faces. We sung that anthem – proud, unbeaten, unashamed. Life, freedom, hope and home lay before us. Then we sang “Rule Britannia” and boy, did we let it go! It was a great and wonderful feeling. We were rejuvenated, reborn.’ When he left the theatre, Ruffle saw that all the guards had fled.
The next morning, he left the camp with his friends, Frank, Lofty, Harry and Bunny, to try and find the advancing Americans. Later that day, Ruffle stared at the first GI they saw.
‘I was fascinated by the huge roll of fat that was hanging from the back of his neck and over his collar. Talk about being well fed! He must have had a good lifestyle.’
Ruffle arrived home on 15th May 1945. He’d been a POW for four years and 51 weeks. Years later he wrote about his return to his wife Edna at their home at Weoley Castle in the suburbs of Birmingham, ‘I stood on the corner of Ludstone Road and looked at number 5. It was so silent and peaceful. I crossed the road, sat on the fence and lit a fag. I just sat there thinking “I am here!” I just couldn’t take it in. I left my kitbag by the front door and was about to kick it down to let them know I was here. I decided to climb over the back wall but, in the process, I knocked the dustbin flying. I threw some bits of grit up at Edna’s window. Then a voice I had not heard in five years came from the other bedroom “I’m coming.” I heard a shout “He’s here!”
‘I was home... at last!
‘I thank God for a wonderful home-coming.’
Not all returns were as joyous and as straightforward as Bert Ruffle’s. The Daily Express journalist Alan Moorehead met two British POWs who had recently been liberated from a camp outside Hanover. Moorehead’s car had broken down and as they helped fix it, he chatted to them.
‘You’ll be home soon. Are you married?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ they both said, but hesitantly.
One added, ‘My wife got killed in an air raid and his’ (he pointed to his friend) ‘has gone off with an American. She wrote to him about it.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Moorehead said.
‘Well, we’ve thought about it and we’re not sorry. How could we have gone back again after five years? It wouldn’t work. No. It’s better the way it is.’
10.00pm
General Krebs sets off from the Führerbunker for the Russian command post. He is accompanied by two officers and is bearing a letter from Goebbels and Bormann, which announces the death of the Führer and requests a ceasefire in order that peace negotiations may commence. They ask for safe passage for everyone in the Reich Chancellery complex.
Traudl Junge is sitting with her fellow secretary Gerda Christian in the Führerbunker corridor with the other bunker staff, drinking coffee and schnapps and making ‘pointless conversation’. Constanze Manziarly is sitting in a corner. Her eyes are red from weeping. Günsche and Mohnke are talking about leading a group of fighting men to break out of the bunker. Junge’s ears prick up and in one voice she and Gerda Christian say, ‘Take us too!’ The two men nod. Junge doesn’t think it likely that any of them could survive a breakout, but it seems better to do something active rather than ‘wait for the Russians to come and find my corpse in the mousetrap’.
About 10.45pm
Dr Hans Graf von Lehndorff is in the attic of the Königsberg camp hospital. It’s cold and drafty, and looking up he can see holes in the roof where rain is coming in. Yet this is where, over the course of the day, over 100 sick men have been placed. Von Lehndorff has come to see how they are. The men were laid side by side on the floor, but some are now lying on top of each other. He can see a few are already dead and so he takes their coats and jackets and covers the living.
For days now von Lehndorff has been trying not to think too much about the hopeless situation he’s found himself in, hoping that he doesn’t have to treat someone he knows, as he may break down when he sees them.
Without thinking, von Lehndorff makes the sign of the cross as he leaves the attic, blessing those who will die before morning.
10.50pm
Russian reports will claim that this is the moment the red flag was hoisted above the Reichstag. Stalin will get his victory in time for May Day. On 2nd May Russian photographers will take the famous photograph that demonstrates their control of the building and the capital. For now the bitter fighting continues. The Battle of Berlin has cost Russia hundreds of thousands of lives. Ivan Kovchenko, a Russian soldier, summed up their experience: ‘The battles for Berlin were characterised by particular toughness and resistance on the part of the Germans. Everything was on fire. We spared nothing, including ammunition, just to advance another few metres. It was even worse than Stalingrad.’
I increased speed from five to sixteen knots… and in a little while we had shaken off our pursuers. We heard them searching for us for quite a while after; the reason we had escaped them must have been beyond them.
Captain Adelbert Schnee
About 11.00pm
A revolutionary new submarine is leaving Bergen in Norway and heading out to sea. She is U-2511, a Type XXI U-boat under the command of 31-year-old Captain Adelbert Schnee. (The same type that British naval intelligence officer Patrick Dalzel-Job discovered in the Bremen shipyards earlier in the week.) Schnee knows these waters well, having taken part in the invasion of Norway in 1940. For over six months Schnee has been waiting for his U-boat to be ready, and now he is excited to try out her new technology, as are his crew of 56 submariners.
In 1942, following the loss of scores of U-boats, Admiral Dönitz had ordered German naval architects to come up with a radical new design of submarine. U-2511 has powerful batteries that give her a very long range and a submerged speed of 18 knots. The fact that she is an Elektroboote – an electric boat – means that she can run silent at slow speeds and is therefore hard to detect; she can also crash-dive very fast. U-2511 even has a freezer to store food.
Schnee had sailed 12 combat patrols when he was brought onto Admiral Dönitz’s staff to help oversee the project. It has been a frustrating two years – 118 of the new class of U-boat have been made, but only two are ready for active service because they have been plagued by technical problems (mostly because the eight pre-fabricated sections of the submarine were made by companies with little experience of shipbuilding).
U-2511 is passing the small island of Store Marstein, with its bomb-damaged lighthouse. Schnee gives the order to dive.
U-2511 will soon prove herself. The next day she manages to evade a flotilla of Allied warships, and on 4th May gets within 600 metres of the cruiser HMS Norfolk without being detected. Schnee invites his engineering officer and the officer of the watch to look through the periscope at the remarkable sight. But Schnee can’t take advantage of his spectacular position; a few hours earlier he had received a radio message (while submerged – another innovation) telling him to return to base and to surrender to the Allies. Schnee had sunk 21 merchant vessels in his career, so to let a prize like the Norfolk go was hard indeed.
On 5th May Captain Schnee will be interrogated by a Royal Navy admiral who doesn’t believe his story about the Norfolk – no submarine could get so close to one of his vessels without being detected. But once the Allies examine the captured Type XXI U-boats, they quickly appreciate its revolutionary technology.
The Soviets will get four Type XXI class U-boats, the US two, the British and the French one each. The French U-boat will remain in commission until 1967.
Adelbert Schnee’s U-2511 will leave Bergen for the final time on 14th June towed by a Royal Navy vessel. She is scuttled off the coast of Northern Ireland in January 1946 and still lies there in 226 feet of water.
11.30pm/3.30pm PWT
At the UN Conference in San Francisco, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov is giving the delegates a barnstorming performance at the podium. Without notes, he is taking apart the Argentine regime of General Edelmiro Farrell and his deputy Colonel Juan Perón, concentrating on their many years of support for the Nazis (countries could
attend the conference if they’d declared war on at least one of the Axis powers by 1st March. Argentina had declared war on Germany on 27th March once German defeat looked inevitable). Molotov is insisting that if Poland, a country that fought the Nazis, is excluded, then so should Argentina be, having helped them. James Reston of the New York Times wrote afterwards, ‘there was considerable admiration for the skill and persistence with which Molotov put his case’. Molotov impresses the US press, but not the delegates. He loses the vote and Argentina is allowed to join the United Nations.
Molotov has a secret. During his time in the United States he has constantly been asked by the press and his allies about 16 Polish underground activists who had gone missing in March on their way to Warsaw for a meeting with Red Army generals about the future of their country. Molotov denied any knowledge of their whereabouts. Then on 4th May, at a reception at the Soviet consulate in San Francisco, as Molotov is shaking hands with the US Secretary of State, he will say casually, ‘By the way, Mr Stettinius, about those 16 Poles, they have all been arrested by the Red Army.’ Edward Stettinius is left standing with a fixed smile on his face. UN talks about Poland are called off.
About Midnight/5.30am Burmese time
On the roof of Rangoon jail in Burma, Allied POWs are painting ‘JAPS GONE’ in large white letters. The Union Flag, used for three years for burials of POWs, is now flying above their heads. On Sunday night, Wing Commander Bill Hudson, who is the leader of the Allied POWs, discovered that their Japanese captors had fled, leaving two farewell notes on the gate. For the past 24 hours the men have been eating well, now that they have access to the guards’ stores and livestock. They have been eating pancakes, chutney and plenty of pork. But the men still face dangers – from the Burmese population outside the gates, many of whom have supported the Japanese, and from their own bomber crews, who might attack Rangoon not realising there are prisoners in the city. Hudson yesterday ordered all Burmese and Indian collaborators within the jail to be disarmed, and he had the gates shut and fortified.