Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  As our last remaining allies were overrun or deserted us, and as the remaining neutrals, coming under Allied pressure, refused to trade with us, our imports dried up. In particular, we were left without the nonferrous metals we needed in order to manufacture the special kinds of steel of which armor and weapons are made. Still, we fought on. We called up our last reserves: old Volksturm men and Hitler Jugend teenagers. We issued them what weapons we had, mainly anti-tank rockets, and told them to do what they could. But I never gave up my opposition to Japanese-style kamikaze attacks. They simply did not fit the Nordic spirit.

  Mentally, I remained in complete command of my faculties; anyone who says the opposite is lying. But I looked and felt like a wreck. My hair was going gray. My back was stooped both forward and sideways. I was unable to control my left arm, which kept trembling. I suffered from flatulence and bad breath. Having moved to the Führerbunker, a dank, unpleasant labyrinth of corridors and rooms dug under the garden of the Reichskanzlei, I all but forgot what sunlight looked like. I used to drag myself along, holding on to the walls so as to keep my balance. And the bad news still kept coming day by day, and hour by hour.

  In February, the first unmistakable signs of dissolution appeared. Civilians blamed soldiers for prolonging the war and refused to cooperate with them. Some even welcomed the enemy troops, the rich American ones in particular. Neither propaganda nor terror helped. On 19 March I issued my so-called Nero Order. Contrary to what some historians have written, it was not meant to “punish” the German nation by making it impossible for them to live. In fact it only referred to “military transport and communication facilities, industrial establishments, and supply depots, as well as anything else of value within Reich territory, which could in any way be used by the enemy immediately or within the foreseeable future for the prosecution of the war.” Moreover, it was done at a moment of despair. I never really meant it or expected it to be carried out. That’s why I didn’t have Speer executed when he told me, at our last meeting, that he had disobeyed my orders. As anyone can see from my political testament, I expected the nation to survive and, though it might take centuries, even to prosper. Why else would I analyze the past, record my experiences, and look forward to the day when a “truly united nation” would rise from the ruins?

  On 12 April we received the news that Roosevelt had died—but this time there was no “Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.” Eight days later, my 56th birthday was celebrated, providing some of my senior associates with an opportunity to swear their loyalty. But no sooner had they left than they started betraying me like rats deserting the sinking ship. Göring betrayed me, first by finding some excuse to leave Berlin and then by trying to take over leadership of the Reich. In response, I removed him from all his posts in the party and state and placed him under SS guard. Had the Americans not “liberated” him, he would not have survived. Himmler betrayed me. Going behind my back, for some two years he had been trying to negotiate with the Allies. As his intermediary he used Count Bernadotte, a member of the Royal Swedish family with whom, during the war, we had quite a few dealings. Now he became more insistent. He even tried to prove his “good will” by allowing several trainloads of Jews to reach Switzerland. Coming from der Treue Heini, “Faithful Hank,” as he was widely known, such treason was particularly galling. However, there was nothing I could do about it.

  I could do even less about two of his principal subordinates, SS Generals Felix Steiner and Karl Wolff. Steiner was charged with defending northern Berlin against the Russians but turned around and surrendered to the Western Allies instead. In return, he was spared an indictment as a “war criminal;” later, he wrote several books and led an organization that did its best to rehabilitate former members of the Waffen-SS. Wolff surrendered the German troops still holding out in northern Italy. He, too, escaped prosecution at Nuremberg. Later, he was repeatedly tried and convicted; in the end, though, he died at his home at the age of 84.

  Coming from men who had the words “Unsere Ehre heisst Treue” (Our Honor is Loyalty) inscribed on their belts, this was treason indeed. But at any rate I was able to catch up with another senior SS officer, Hermann Fegelein. Fegelein had started life as a stable boy before embarking on his career under Himmler, who ultimately made him his adjutant and sent him to the Berghof to act as a liaison officer between us. He was very attractive to women—as my driver, Erich Kempka, used to say, his brains were in his nuts. In June 1944 he married Eva’s sister Gretl, with me acting as a witness. Now I had the satisfaction of having him shot for deserting his post. The squad I sent after him found him in bed with another woman and preparing to flee to Switzerland, for which purpose he had put aside gold ingots as well as loads of foreign currency. The swine.

  Inside the bunker conditions were crowded. People were strewn about, so to speak, sleeping wherever they could; camp beds, armchairs, mattresses on the floor… Among those present were Bormann, the Goebbels family, and a some officers. There were also the usual servants, orderlies, telephone operators, and secretaries, all of whom continued to function calmly and efficiently. I only wish my generals had been as steadfast as they were! Best of all was Eva. Ribbentrop had begged her to make me change my decision and leave Berlin; she was, he said, the only person who might do so. But she refused. Young and eager for life though she was, she told him that it was for me alone to decide and that she would do as I did. So deeply did her loyalty touch me that, for the first time ever, I kissed her full on the mouth in the presence of others. During the next few days she went on fussing about me as she had always done.

  At some time during the night of 28-9 April I married her. At the wedding I wore my field-gray tunic with the Golden Party Badge, my Class I Iron Cross, and my World War I Wounded Medal. She had put on a dark-blue dress. Hand in hand, me shuffling a little, we left my private apartment and entered the conference room, which had been rearranged for the purpose. The official in charge was one Walter Wagner, who had been summoned for the purpose; the witnesses, my old comrades in arms Goebbels and Bormann. Signing the form, Eva at first wrote “Eva Braun.” Next, collecting herself, she struck out the “Braun” and put in “Hitler” instead. Though she was tired and pale looking after a sleepless night, our wedding made her as happy as, given the circumstances, happy could be. There was a wedding party of sorts during which, contrary to my usual custom, I drank a glass of wine.

  Later, I dictated my personal testament to Frau Traudl Junge, my beautiful and highly intelligent secretary. It went through several versions. Once it had been completed to my satisfaction, I ordered three copies to be made. As the 29th went by, we helplessly listened to the Russian artillery rounds exploding outside. I also received some last-minute reports of the situation in and around Berlin. The city was surrounded. However, some fighting was still going on in Potsdam, where General Walter Wenck, proceeding along the Havel, was trying to mount a last-minute counteroffensive. His efforts were in vain, as it turned out.

  To my inexpressible regret, I had one of my doctors poison Blondi. I myself refused to witness the scene, though I did look at the body after she had expired. I spent most of the night of 29-30 April having tea and talking with Eva as well as my three remaining secretaries. The next morning Eva and I got up late. Someone suggested that we form a party, break out, and try to reach the Luftwaffe base at Gatow a few kilometers to the west. From there an aircraft would take us to Bavaria. I curtly refused. Such was my physical condition that I could hardly even hold a pistol; hence I would be a burden on the rest. Besides, running away has never been my style. How could I leave my troops, who were still desperately fighting street by street, house by house? I said goodbye to Goebbels, who, along with Magda, had resolved to take his life together with me. Next, I took my leave of my remaining staff. I shook their hands one by one and gave them poison capsules—the only thing I had left—to use in case they were about to fall into Russian captivity.

  It must have been around 1530 when Eva and I wen
t into my room and locked the door behind us. Wearing my favorite dress, a black one with roses at the neckline, and with her hair carefully done, she sat down on the right side of the narrow white and blue sofa with me on the left. She, eager to look beautiful even in death, took a poison capsule and died almost instantaneously. Whereas I, having bit a similar capsule, put a gun to my temple and pulled the trigger.

  Looking Backward

  Once I had settled down here in Hell, my first concern was to learn what had happened to my closest associates. A few committed suicide. The most important one was Joseph Goebbels. Poor Josephchen, as his mother used to call him, was devoted to me like a dog to his master. Unlike people like Göring (in his early years) and Himmler, he did not have what it takes to build an independent power base of his own. Well aware of that fact, he stayed at my side to the end. What else could he have done? First, he had his wife, the incomparable Magda, kill their six children, a horrible but truly courageous act on her part. Next, he shot her and then himself. Bormann, who had also been in the Führerbunker, disappeared without a trace. Much later, it turned out that he had tried to escape and was killed in the process.

  Himmler’s attempts to negotiate with the Allies failed as they were bound to. His illusions shattered, he shaved off his mustache and put on the uniform of a private soldier in the hope of getting lost in the crowd. He was detected and ended his life by taking poison. Good! A score of my closest collaborators, both civilians and military men, were tried at Nuremberg. Twelve were sentenced to death, of whom eleven were executed by hanging. The twelfth, Göring, committed suicide before the hangman could get him. The rest got various prison sentences or were acquitted. Given the way they behaved during the last few months of my life in particular, I cannot say that I miss any of them. For years on end they had basked in my glory. Had we won the war, each and every one of them would have come to me clamoring for his reward. But, physically at any rate, we did not; once I was gone, all they thought of doing was to put the blame on me in the faint hope of saving their own skins.

  Among my senior commanders, Field-Marshal Model and General Burgdorf committed suicide. The first did so when his remaining forces were encircled in the Ruhr, and the second near my bunker a day or two later. So did Generals Hans Krebs and Robert von Greim, my last chiefs of staff of the Army and Luftwaffe, respectively. Another one who killed himself was Walter Hewel. Hewel was a veteran party member who had been with me since my time in Landsberg prison. Throughout the war he had formed part of my entourage, accompanying me in all my travels and often joining my circle around the fire at the Berghof. At one point he was involved in an aircraft accident which left him badly burned. Now, apparently suffering from psychological problems, he used the cyanide capsule and the pistol I had given him for the purpose.

  The Chief of my Party Chancellery, Philip Bouhler, and his wife Helene also killed themselves—she by jumping out a window and he by cyanide. Other leaders scattered in all directions. Many were assisted by the Catholic Church. At the time, the reigning Pope was Pius XII. Earlier, serving as the Vatican’s “foreign secretary,” he had negotiated the Concordat with us. Contrary to his reputation, he was personally no anti-Semite. I am told that, when he was elected in 1939, the Hebrew-language press in Palestine gave him an enthusiastic welcome. However, he and the Church had always hated and feared the Communists much more than they did us National Socialists. He had very good reason for feeling that way. After all, I had never been an atheist. Repeatedly, I prevented Bormann from taking more extreme measures against the Church. Nor did I support Rosenberg’s clumsy efforts to create a “National Reich Church,” one that would have the swastika (or the sword; sources differ) as its symbol and a copy of Mein Kampf on the altar! When Gauleiter Wagner of Munich foolishly ordered to have the crucifixes removed from the classrooms, I threatened him with a concentration camp. Finally, I always considered the belief in the Almighty a fundamental quality of man. Take it away, as the Communists tried to do, and see what happens.

  Attempting to escape “justice” and to build new lives, some of my less important subordinates were assisted by various Western intelligence services, which valued their knowledge of Eastern Europe and experience in counterinsurgency and were quite happy to take them in. Once inside, the men could be kept in line by blackmail. Others went to South America, especially Argentina (where President Peron himself was involved), Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay. As to money, that was something our dear Swiss friends took care of—for a fee, of course: pecunia non olet. Arriving in their new homelands, the men smoothed the way by paying bribes or else by assisting the local dictator in dealing with his opponents. Quite a few flourished. Klaus Barbie, the SS commander at Lyon, whom the French hunted for decades on end for alleged war crimes, could tell a pretty tale about that. Several of the men went to the Middle East in the hope of helping those good-for-nothing Arabs fight Israel. They met with no success, unfortunately. Others still decided to lay low. Some were tried and executed, especially in Eastern Europe. In the West, however, few of those who were sentenced to prison were made to complete their terms.

  The most surprising—or, for those as familiar with human nature as I am, anything but surprising—thing was that, as the clock struck one minute after twelve, there were hardly any National Socialists left in Germany. Countless people who had benefited from my rule, cheered me half to death, served me for years, and flattered me until they were brown in the face suddenly wanted to have nothing to do with me. Almost to a man they had never seen anything, heard anything, or known anything, let alone done anything except that which they considered good, honorable, and just. From Halder and Speer down, many later “corrected” their diaries or used their memoirs in order to present me in a false light.

  The few, most of them small fry, who admitted to something invariably claimed to have acted under duress. They sometimes had a legitimate reason, as was the case of von dem Bach-Zelewsky, whom we had in our hand because all of his three sisters had married Jews. And there was Franz Stangl, who had a police record just as Höss did. But there was often no reason. Here, I must hand it to women. Whether because they had less to lose—after all, not one of them had occupied a key position—or for other reasons, many of them remained faithful after my death. Winnifred Wagner apart, that included Leni Riefenstahl, Gertrud Scholz-Klink, Himmler’s daughter Gudrun—who always insisted her father was “not a monster”—and Lina Heydrich. Née von Osten, at the time Frau Heydrich met her future husband she was a much stronger anti-Semite than he. Later, she and her parents brought him to the Party, and the rest followed. At the time of her death, forty years after the end of the war, she was still swearing by me. The cleverest lot of all were my original countrymen. In 1938 they went out of their way to give me the most wonderful welcome I ever got. Later, though, they somehow succeeded in convincing everyone that Beethoven had been an Austrian and I, a German.

  There were also a few exceptions. One was General Jodl, easily recognized in photographs because of his bald pate and prominent ears. Jodl had an excellent strategic mind and, even more importantly, the strongest nerves among all my top-level commanders. Speaking in a soft voice, neither impertinent nor by any means servile, starting at the time of the Norwegian campaign he was closer to me than any other senior officer. Whatever others might do, he later said, he could not bring himself to condemn me. Facing death at Nuremberg, he was also one of the few who kept his dignity from beginning to end, without hope or fear. On the morning of the day on which he was executed he made his own bed as, according to a centuries-old tradition, a Prussian officer is bound to do.

  The other was Göring. I have already explained what he did, what he did not do, and how my opinion of him changed during the war, causing me to allow figures such as Milch and Speer to take away much of his power. Fighting for his life at Nuremberg, though, he surprised everyone by pulling himself together and becoming a man again. First, he lost weight and got rid of his morphine habit. Ne
xt, he proudly defended himself, the Reich, and me. So much so that Gustave Gilbert, the American-born prison psychiatrist (he was the son of Austrian-Jewish émigrés), had him isolated from the other accused lest he become a “bad influence” on them. How typical of those self-righteous Americans! It was as if the old Göring, the one I had known until 1940 or so, had made a comeback. As they say, better late than never.

  As I wrote in my political testament, our troops had fought very well indeed. That was true both when they were on the offense and when they defended themselves, both when things were going well and, even more so, during crises. This has caused their performance to become legendary, so much so that some have attributed it to the use of drugs! They also turned the Wehrmacht into a model for others to follow. Throughout the Cold War our 1940 campaign against France, in the planning of which I played a decisive part, continues to be studied at all Western military academies, staff colleges, war colleges, or whatever. Even the Israeli Staff College used to organize regular tours to the battlefields in question! As I have shown throughout this book, though, our senior officers, especially those of the ground forces, were not as good. The later the date, the more numerous the doubters, the blunderers and, I am sorry to say, the outright traitors. That was why, from the last months of 1942 on, almost nothing we tried succeeded. The enemy’s overwhelming numerical and material superiority did the rest.