The Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin

by Cornelius Ryan

  Krebs first asked for a private meeting with the “chief Soviet negotiator.” Chuikov, taking a long Russian cigarette from the box in front of him and lighting it, airily waved at the men sitting around him and said, “This is my staff—this is my war council.”

  Krebs continued to object, but he finally gave in. “It is my mission,” he said, “to deliver a message which is extraordinarily important and of a confidential nature. I want you to know that you are the first foreigner to learn that on April 30 Hitler committed suicide.”

  That was indeed news to Chuikov, but without batting an eye, he said, “We know that.”

  Krebs was astounded. “How could you know?” he asked. “Hitler only committed suicide a few hours ago.” Hitler had married Eva Braun on the twenty-ninth; she too had committed suicide and their bodies had been burned and buried. It had happened, he explained, in the Führerbunker. Once again, Chuikov hid his surprise. Neither he nor anyone else in the Soviet command had had any knowledge of such a place, nor had they ever heard of Eva Braun.

  They then got down to hard negotiating. Krebs told Chuikov that Hitler had left a will behind in which he named his successors, and he passed a copy of the will across to the Russian. The problem, he said, was that there could not be a complete surrender because Doenitz, the new President, was not in Berlin. The first step, Krebs suggested, would be a cease-fire or a partial surrender—after which perhaps the Doenitz government might negotiate directly with the Russians. This attempt to split the Allies was flatly rejected by Chuikov after a hasty phone call to Zhukov. (The decision was later confirmed by Moscow.)

  The negotiations went on all night. By dawn all that Krebs had gained from the Russians was a single demand: an immediate unconditional surrender of the city, plus the personal surrender of all the occupants of the bunker.

  While Krebs remained to argue with Chuikov, Von Dufving made a hazardous journey back through the lines, during which he was shot at by SS troops and pulled to safety by a Russian lieutenant colonel. He finally reached the Führerbunker and there he told Goebbels that the Russians were insisting on an unconditional capitulation. Goebbels became agitated. “To that I shall never, never agree,” he cried.

  With both sides adamant, the talks were broken off. In the bunker there was panic. It seemed now that every Soviet gun in the district had zeroed in on the Reichskanzlei; Von Dufving later speculated that this was the direct result of Krebs’s disclosure of the bunker’s location. For those in the besieged Führerbunker there were now only two alternatives: suicide or a breakout. Immediately everyone began to make plans. They would leave in small groups through the complex of tunnels and bunkers that lay beneath the Reichskanzlei building and grounds. From there they would follow the subway system to the Friedrichstrasse Station, where they hoped to join up with a battle group that would lead them to the north. “Once we broke through the Russian cordon on the north side of the Spree,” Werner Naumann, Goebbels’ assistant, later recalled, “we were sure we could turn safely in any direction.”

  Some chose the other alternative.

  For the Goebbels family the choice was suicide. Werner Naumann had tried for weeks to dissuade Magda Goebbels, but she remained firm. Now the time had come. At about eight-thirty on May 1, Naumann was talking with Goebbels and his wife when suddenly Magda “got up and went into the children’s rooms. After a short while she returned, white and shaken.” Almost immediately, Goebbels began making his good-byes. “He said a few personal words to me—nothing political or about the future, just good-bye,” Naumann later said. As Goebbels left the bunker he asked his adjutant, Guenther Schwägermann, to burn his and his family’s bodies after death. Then, as Naumann watched, Joseph and Magda Goebbels went slowly up the stairs and into the garden. Goebbels was wearing his cap and gloves. Magda was “shaking so badly she could hardly walk up the stairs.” No one ever saw them alive again.

  The children were dead, too, and at the hand of a most improbable killer. “Only one person,” said Naumann, “went into the children’s rooms in the last moments before Joseph and Magda took their own lives—and that was Magda herself.”

  Some of those who broke out did not fare much better. A number were killed. Others fell into the hands of the Russians within hours; Hitler’s bodyguard Otto Günsche was to spend twelve years as a Soviet prisoner. Some quickly became casualties—like pilot Hans Baur who, carrying a small painting of Frederick the Great given to him by Hitler, lost a leg from a shell burst and woke up in a Russian hospital without the painting. Others such as Martin Bormann mysteriously disappeared. A few actually got away—or, what was almost as good, fell into the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

  Three stayed in the bunker and committed suicide: Hitler’s adjutant, General Burgdorf; the OKH’s Chief of Staff, General Hans Krebs, and SS Captain Franz Schedle of the bunker guards.

  And now, with all other authority gone, the full responsibility for the safety of the city, its defenders and its people fell on one man—General Karl Weidling. By now Berlin was a flaming holocaust. Its troops had been pushed back into the very heart of the city. There were tanks along the Unter den Linden and the Wilhelmstrasse. There was fighting all through the Tiergarten area and in the zoo. Russian artillery was bombarding the city from the East-West Axis. Troops were in the subway stations at Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstrasse, and a fierce battle was taking place within the Reichstag. Weidling could see nothing to do but surrender. Still, he felt that he should put it up to his men. He called a meeting of his commanders and explained the situation. “I informed them,” Weidling said, “of the events of the last twenty-four hours and my plans. At the end I left it to every one of them to choose another way out, but they had no other solution. However, those who wanted to try breaking out could do so if they desired.”

  A little before one o’clock on the morning of May 2 the Red Army’s 79th Guards Rifle Division picked up a radio message. “Hello, hello,” said the voice. “This is the 56th Panzer Corps. We ask for a cease-fire. At twelve-fifty hours Berlin time we are sending truce negotiators to the Potsdam Bridge. Recognition sign—a white flag. Awaiting reply.”

  The Russians replied: “Understand you. Understand you. Am transmitting your request to Chief of Staff.”

  On receipt of the message, General Chuikov immediately ordered a cease-fire. At twelve-fifty on May 2, Colonel von Dufving, Weidling’s Chief of Staff, and two other officers arrived at the Potsdam Bridge under the white flag. They were taken to Chuikov’s headquarters. Soon afterward Weidling followed. Later that day powerful loudspeakers all over the city announced the end of hostilities. “Each hour of the conflict,” General Weidling’s order read, “increases the frightful sufferings of the civilian population of Berlin and of our wounded…. I command the immediate cessation of fighting.” Although sporadic firing would continue for days, the battle for Berlin was officially over. People who ventured into the Platz der Republik that afternoon saw the red flag fluttering over the Reichstag. It had been raised even as the fighting was going on at exactly 1:45 P.M. on the thirtieth of April.

  Although the Russians knew that the Führerbunker lay beneath the Reichskanzlei, it took them several hours to find it. People were grabbed off the streets and asked to direct the searchers to the place. Gerhard Menzel, a photographer, was one who was asked. He had never heard of the bunker. Still, he went with one group of soldiers to the wrecked Reichskanzlei. In the labyrinth of cellars and passageways Russian engineers led the way with mine detectors. As soon as a room or corridor was cleared, other soldiers collected papers, files and maps. Menzel was suddenly given a pair of binoculars the Russians had found and told to leave. They had arrived at the Führerbunker itself.

  The first bodies they found were those of Generals Burgdorf and Krebs. The two officers were in the corridor lounge, sitting before a long table littered with glasses and bottles. Both men had shot themselves, but they were identified by papers found in their uniforms.

  Major Bori
s Polevoi, in one of the first search teams to enter, made a quick inspection of the entire bunker. In a small room with Pullman-type beds fastened to the walls, he found the Goebbels family. The bodies of Joseph and Magda were lying on the floor. “Both bodies had been burned,” Polevoi said, “and only Joseph Goebbels’ face was recognizable.” The Russians later had trouble figuring out how the parents’ bodies came to be there. Presumably someone had brought them back into the bunker after their partial cremation, but the Russians never learned who. The children were also there. “To see the children was horrid,” Major Polevoi said. “The only one who seemed disturbed was the eldest, Helga. She was bruised. All were dead, but the rest were lying there peacefully.”

  Soviet doctors immediately examined the youngsters. There were burn marks around their mouths, leading the doctors to believe that the children had been given a sleeping potion and had then been poisoned while they slept by cyanide tablets which had been crushed between their teeth. From Helga’s bruises, the doctors speculated that she had awakened during the poisoning, had struggled, and had had to be held down. As the bodies were carried up to the Reichskanzlei Court of Honor to be photographed and tagged for identification purposes, Polevoi took a last look around the death room. Lying on the floor were the children’s toothbrushes and a squashed tube of toothpaste.

  A special team of experts found Hitler’s body almost immediately, buried under a thin layer of earth. A Russian historian, General B. S. Telpuchovskii, felt sure that it was the Führer. “The body was badly charred,” he said, “but the head was intact, though the back was shattered by a bullet. The teeth had been dislodged and were lying alongside the head.”

  Then some doubts began to arise. Other bodies were found in the same area and some of them, too, had been burned. “We found the body of a man in uniform whose features resembled Hitler’s,” said Telpuchovskii, “but his socks were darned. We decided that this could not be Hitler because we hardly thought that the Führer of the Reich would wear darned socks. There was also the body of a man who was freshly killed but not burned.”

  The matter of the two doubles was further confused when the first body was placed alongside the second, and guards and other German personnel were asked to identify them. They either could not or would not. A few days later Colonel General Vasili Sokolovskii ordered a dental check to be made of each body. Fritz Echtmann and Käthe Heusermann, the dental technicians who had worked in the offices of Hitler’s dentist, Blaschke, were turned up. Echtmann was taken to Finow, near Eberswalde, about twenty-five miles northeast of Berlin. He was asked to draw a sketch of Hitler’s teeth. When he had finished, his interrogators disappeared into another room with the sketch. A short while later they were back. “It fits,” Echtmann was told. Then the Russians showed the technician Hitler’s entire lower jaw and dental bridges.

  Käthe Heusermann was picked up on May 7; she immediately identified the jaw and bridges. The work she and Blaschke had performed some months ago was easily recognizable. Käthe was given a bag of food and driven back to Berlin. Two days later she was picked up again and this time taken to the town of Erkner. In a clearing was a row of open graves, the bodies visible in them. “Identify them,” the Russian with her said. Käthe immediately recognized the bodies of Joseph Goebbels and his children. “The girls were all still wearing flannel nightgowns of a printed material with a design of small red roses and blue flowers intertwined,” she said. There was no sign of Magda Goebbels.

  Apparently as a consequence of her identification of Hitler’s teeth, Käthe Heusermann spent the next eleven years in a Soviet prison, most of the time in solitary confinement.

  What happened to the remains of Hitler’s body? The Russians claim to have cremated it just outside Berlin, but they will not say where. They say that they never found Eva Braun’s body, that it must have been consumed completely by fire, and that any normally identifiable portions must have been destroyed or scattered in the furious bombardment of the government buildings.*

  These two sketches, drawn especially for the author in 1963, were made and signed by Käthe Heusermann (right) and Fritz Echtmann, showing how they identified Hitler’s teeth for the Russians. Note the position of the hanging bridge in the upper jaw, marked with a dotted rectangle in Echtmann’s sketch.

  On the morning of April 30, as Gotthard Heinrici walked down the corridor of his headquarters before departing for good, a young captain had stepped up to him. “General,” he said, “you don’t know me. I have been working in the Operations Department. Like everyone else, I know that you have been relieved and ordered to report to Plön.”

  Heinrici said nothing.

  “I beg of you,” said the young captain, “do not hurry getting there.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Heinrici.

  “Years ago,” said the captain, “I used to walk behind the regimental band in Schwäbisch Gmünd on Sundays during church parade. You were a major then, sir. I later became well acquainted with the man who was then your adjutant.”

  Heinrici said, “Yes—Rommel.”

  “Well, sir,” the captain continued, “I hope you will forgive me for saying that I would not like the same fate to overtake you that befell Field Marshal Rommel.”

  “What do you mean?” Heinrici asked, looking at him sharply. “Rommel was killed in action.”

  The captain replied: “No sir, he was not. He was forced to commit suicide.” Heinrici stared at him. “How do you happen to know this?” he snapped.

  “I was Rommel’s aide,” the officer told him. “My name is Hellmuth Lang. I beg of you, drive as slowly as you can to Plön. That way the war will probably be over by the time you get there.”

  Heinrici hesitated. Then he shook Lang’s hand. “Thank you,” he said stiffly. “Thank you very much.”

  Heinrici walked on down the corridor and out of the building. Drawn up there were the members of his small staff. Someone gave an order and every man came to the salute. Heinrici walked over to each of them. “I want to thank you all,” he said. Captain Heinrich von Bila, the General’s aide, opened the car door. Heinrici got in. Von Bila climbed in beside the driver. “Plön,” he said.

  Heinrici leaned over and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. “We’re in no great hurry,” he said.

  Late the next night Heinrici reached the barracks at Plön. As he entered his room a radio was playing. There was a sudden interruption. After a low roll of drums it was announced that the Führer was dead. The time was 10 P.M., May 1.

  Warrant Officer Dixie Deans sat beside his German guard, Charlie Gumbach, listening to the news. It was the best news Dixie had heard for a long time. “… In the battle against Bolshevism, the Führer fought to the last breath before his death,” the announcer solemnly stated. Deans looked around him. He and Gumbach were somewhere east of Lauenburg, sheltering in the cellar of a house just back of the German lines. The whole family was present and the wife was in tears at the news. Deans restrained his own delight. Though the Führer might be dead, the war was not yet over. The German lines were just ahead and Dixie had to get through them. It would not be easy; the firing was heavy.

  Everyone settled down in the uncomfortable quarters for the night. Sleep came easily to Deans. He had been cycling for days, trying to get through to the British lines. Now with a bit of luck he might just make it—if he could persuade the next lot of Jerries to let him by. It was the last thing Deans remembered before he fell asleep.

  Hours later he awoke with a jolt. There was a tommy gun sticking in his ribs. A voice said, “Okay, chum; on your feet.” Dixie looked up into the face of a tough-looking British 6th Airborne paratrooper. The area had been taken during the night, while they slept. Deans leaped up, overjoyed, and explained who he was. He and Charlie were marched back to company headquarters, then passed along first to division headquarters and then to corps. Finally they were seen by Lieutenant General Evelyn H. Barker, 8th Corps commander.

  Deans quickly expla
ined the situation. “There are 12,000 R.A.F. POWs marching toward the lines,” he said urgently. “Our planes are shooting them up!” He showed General Barker where he had left the men. The General looked startled; hastily he reached for the phone—and canceled another air strike scheduled for the same area. “Everything will be all right now,” said General Barker, looking relieved. “We should overrun the area within the next forty-eight hours; you’d better get some rest.”

  “No, sir,” Deans said. “I promised Colonel Ostmann that I would return.”

  Barker looked at him in amazement. “Isn’t that a bit silly?” he asked. “After all, we will be there in a matter of hours.”

  But Deans was insistent. “Well,” said the General, “I’ll give you a car with a Red Cross flag that may get you through. And tell those Jerries that you meet that they might just as well pack it in now.”

  Deans saluted. As he passed through the Chief of Staff’s office he looked about him. “Where’s my German guard, Charlie Gumbach?” he asked. Somebody said, “He’s on his way to the POW camp.” Deans was annoyed. “I’m not leaving here without him,” he growled. “I gave my word of honor.” Charlie was quickly returned, and they set off in a captured Mercedes with a Red Cross flag across the hood.