When the order had reached him two days ago from Gestapo headquarters to report to the tower, they had offered him Goebbels’ rooms next door, where the propaganda minister had briefly held court as Reich Commissar for the Defence of Berlin before running to hide in the Führerbunker. Hoffman had refused, on the grounds that Goebbels might return, but in truth he could not bear to have his command post where that monster had been. And he had al he needed here: a couple of crates and a few planks to make a desk, a box of candles, ledger books to write in, a folding army cot against the wal , a bucket in the far corner with a makeshift wooden cover over it.
The breakdown in sanitation had been frightful.
Diehard Nazis had used the lavatories as places to commit suicide, barricading themselves inside and blowing their brains out amidst the squalor, their bloated corpses stil there. And the food supply had dwindled to virtual y nothing. Hoffman’s orderly had brought him his last meal the night before: a bowl of Wassersuppe made from potato peelings and beetroot, along with half a bottle of schnapps. He looked at the bottle on his desk, stil untouched. He needed a clear head for what was to come. And alcohol had been part of the scourge of Nazism. They were al drunk, the architects of this monstrosity, the gods of National Socialism, cowering in the Führerbunker. Alcohol had fuel ed the self-pity, the rage, the fantasies of victory that had brought Hitler’s dream of a thousand-year Reich to this frenzied climax of self-destruction and horror.
He heard the dul thud of a pistol shot through the wal , then another. He closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself. He knew what was happening. Half an hour before, on his way down the stairs from the gun platform, he had stood back as two Feldgendarmen had appeared, the hated military police. They were dragging a man between them, his jacket painted crudely with the letter H for Hungary.
The man was one of the foreign labourers who had been used to clear refuse from the tower, before that job became futile. The Feldgendarm colonel cal ed them the wily Greeks, the warriors of the Trojan Horse, a concealed enemy who would reveal themselves as the Russians moved in. Some of the labourers had removed the clothing with the painted letters and disappeared into the mass of people below, but others had kept their identity, imagining that the liberating Russians would treat them as heroes. Now they were paying the price for letting the Feldgendarmen see that too. The door to Goebbels’
office complex had been open, and Hoffman had seen the drawn pistols. He wanted to go in and scream at them: The Führer is dead. Why more killing? It is over. But to intervene would have been suicidal. And in truth it was not over, not yet. He had to keep his nerve for what lay ahead.
Another pulverizing shudder coursed through the tower. Hoffman pressed his elbows against the planks that formed his desk, trying to stop the vibrations from shaking them off the crates at either end. He peered again at the crate to his left, where he had seen his reflection in the metal. It was covered with stamps and inspection marks, with an inventory of the contents, al the usual evidence of Reich bureaucracy. He knew that this had been an official storage room for works of art, waiting for the time when Hitler’s grand scheme for a Führermuseum in his home town of Linz in Austria would be realized.
The room had been used since 1941 to house treasures from the Berlin museums, in one of the few places thought to be impregnable to Al ied bombing.
Several months ago, Reichsleiter Bormann and his henchmen had removed most of the treasures to a salt mine in Austria. Hoffman had snorted when he heard that. During his posting in Berlin over the last few months, he had got to know these people close-up. Bormann knew that Hitler’s days were numbered and was undoubtedly securing his own loot. The three crates that remained had apparently been left on the express instructions of Reichsführer Himmler, who had ordered a museum official, a Dr Unverzagt, to watch over them. Hoffman had found the man camped out here with the crates when he had arrived forty-eight hours before. Unverzagt had been one of Himmler’s stooges, a member of the Ahnenerbe –
Himmler’s absurd ‘Department of Cultural Heritage’ –
and Hoffman had instantly disliked him. But the man had left with no protest and had disappeared into the throng of desperate civilians below. Hoffman could not imagine any treasure valuable enough to induce someone to linger in that hel hole, and he was sure that Unverzagt would have bolted from the tower while there was stil a chance before the Russians closed in.
Hoffman had inspected the markings on the crates when he first entered the room. They contained the treasures from ancient Troy given by Heinrich Schliemann to the people of Berlin more than sixty years before. Hoffman himself had seen them as a schoolboy, in the Museum of Pre- and Proto-History.
Exactly why these crates should have remained here was unclear. But Hoffman knew Himmler personal y, and he knew enough of Himmler’s psychology to guess at the reason. Himmler was obsessed with ancient artefacts, with mythical kings and heroes, with Übermenschen – supposed races of supermen –
and with those he identified as Aryan forebears, and above al with lost civilizations. Perhaps these artefacts had some kind of mystical power for him.
Perhaps they were meant to stay in Berlin in her hour of greatest need. Hoffman shook his head derisively.
The artefacts had not saved Troy, and they would not save Berlin. It was irrelevant now; within a day, the Zoo tower and those crates would be in Soviet hands.
Meanwhile they served as good bench-ends to rest the planks of his desk against the incessant vibrations.
Hoffman realized that the flak guns had stopped firing, and he took his hands from his ears. Another sound was missing, the screech and rattle of the electric ammunition winch that brought shel s up from the magazine. The generators must have failed yet again. The electricity had worked in fits and starts al night, and he had relied on candles for his writing. He watched the last one now, the flame stil flickering and shuddering from the vibrations, barely casting enough light for him to read the open pages of his diary.
Candles had served another purpose in the tower.
Since the Soviet artil ery had come within range, the thick metal shutters on the windows had been closed and the ventilation tubes sealed. Down below, the people crammed together in the stairwel s used candles like underground miners to tel how much oxygen was left. When the candles on the floor went out, they lit them at waist level. When those went out, they held their children on their shoulders for as long as they could, hoping that someone above would take them. Already the bodies were piling up, and the hospital orderlies could no longer go outside to use the makeshift cemetery in the Tiergarten. The stench of decay was beginning to permeate the tower, along with the putrid odour from the hospital on the third floor above him, a charnel house where the wounded lay among piles of amputated limbs and shrouded corpses.
Hoffman closed his eyes, and rehearsed the plan he had devised with the flak-battery commander. At least he would not have to endure another night in this place, even if this day were to be his last. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes to go. At ten o’clock he would leave to find the battery commander. The evening before, two German soldiers captured by the Russians had arrived at the tower under a white flag with a peace offer from the commander of the Soviet division confronting them. The garrison commander had vacil ated, terrified of the Feldgendarmerie, who had orders to shoot anyone who showed the slightest sign of surrendering, even the commanding officer.
Hoffman and the battery commander had secretly decided to act on their own volition if the garrison commander stil had not delivered his surrender to the Russians by this morning. They would muster men in the battery loyal to them, kil the Feldgendarmen and go out under a white flag. It was a desperate scheme, almost guaranteeing civilian deaths, but not on the scale there would be if no surrender were forthcoming. The Feldgendarmen knew they would be shown no mercy by the Russians, so would never surrender. Hoffman and the battery commander had decided to wait overnight for the garrison commander to cha
nge his mind, but the man had been intractable, shut in his room and probably drunk, and now the Feldgendarmen were preventing anyone from getting near him.
There were two guards outside Hoffman’s door now, there to ensure that he did his duty as wel . He clenched his fists and took a deep breath, almost choking on the acrid air. His duty. He was the newly appointed commander of the 9th Luftwaffe Parachute Division Lebelstar. The division was a phantasm dreamed up by the drunkards and madmen in the Chancel ery, another gloriously named spearhead unit that would save the Reich, another ragtag band of old men, boys, the walking wounded and shel -shocked veterans who had somehow survived the carnage on the Eastern Front to die in this theatre of the absurd.
When Hoffman shut his eyes in this place he sometimes glimpsed stark images from the plays he had seen in Paris before the war, existentialist dramas by Beckett and Brecht that had so fascinated and disturbed him, on the border between theatre and reality. It was as if he had been seeing a premonition of his own final act, here where the stage setting also seemed surreal, on another level of consciousness, yet awash with real blood and real anguish and horror.
He undid the leather flap of the holster on his waist, took out his Luger, ejected the magazine and checked that it was ful , then pushed the magazine in again and cocked the pistol, shoving it back in the holster but leaving the flap open. He thought for a moment, then snapped the flap shut. The Feldgendarmen must see no hint of his intentions. He felt for the two extra magazines in the pouch on his belt, then straightened his jacket and peaked cap, passing his hand over the Luftwaffe badges on his tunic and the Knight’s Cross at his neck. He prayed that he and the battery commander had got the timing right. Al radio communication with the Chancel ery had ceased the day before. There had been rumours that the Führer had kil ed himself, and then a Chancel ery secretary who had fled across the Tiergarten had confirmed it. A Soviet red banner had been seen flying over the Reichstag, glimpsed in the light of a flare during the night, and the barrage of shel s and rockets had diminished. There had clearly been some kind of ceasefire, but Hoffman knew it could not last. The Chancel ery and Gestapo headquarters were defended by battle-hardened remnants of the SS-Nordland and SS-Charlemagne divisions, fascist sympathizers from occupied Europe who had volunteered for the force. It was the final ghastly irony, that the last-ditch defenders of Germany should be foreigners fighting in the name of an Austrian psychopath because the army he had created to defend his adopted homeland was an army of ghosts. With daylight now, it could only be a matter of time before the Soviets realized that the SS
would not surrender, and unleashed hel . As soon as that happened, any hope of surrendering the flak tower and saving the thousands of lives inside would surely be lost.
A drop of condensation splatted on the open diary in front of him. He quickly blotted it out with his sleeve, smearing the pencil writing of the final paragraph. He tore three blank sheets from the back of the book, folded them and put them with the pencil in his tunic pocket, then closed the book, resting his hand on the embossed gold swastika and eagle symbol on the front. He had written his diary in a foolscap army order book so that prying eyes might think he was drafting a plan of battle for his phantom division. Instead he had written down everything. Everything. It was an eyewitness account of the last weeks and days of the Reich, by one who had been close to the monsters who had created it. Hoffman had been a Luftwaffe ace, had chalked up enough missions to win the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves and swords, but after being wounded and grounded he had become one of Hitler’s strutting peacocks, a Nazi war hero. He had been promoted, showered with honours, feted. He had been inches from Hitler, from that chalk-like face, those eyes like a snake’s, the foul breath. He had played with Goebbels’ children, their names al beginning with H in honour of Hitler, their lives inextricably bound up with the fate of their Führer; he remembered the oldest girl, Heine, with her sad eyes, last seen in the Führerbunker when he had left it two days before. He had attended parties and celebrations, his face preserved for al time in the newsreels and propaganda photographs, waving and smiling as the Führer bestowed yet another award, inspected yet another doomed Hitler Youth regiment.
And as the final months had passed, as the Red Army had closed in, it had become even more grotesque.
Only ten days before, he had attended the final concert of the Berlin Philharmonic to hear the last act of Wagner’s Ring Cycle so beloved of the Nazis, the Götterdämmerung. On the way out, uniformed boys of the Hitler Youth had offered them trays of cyanide tablets to keep ready for the last curtain in Hitler’s own opera. Then Hoffman had been obliged to join the inner circle on a trip to the circus, and had watched the performers on horses go round and round, swirling like some vortex in his mind, amongst SS
officers with plump fröuleins on their knees, laughing and crying, maudlin and self-pitying, the champagne flowing. And meanwhile the kil ing had gone on al round
them:
the Feldgendarmen stringing up deserters from lamp posts, summary executions of slave labourers in the streets, bodies left in pools of blood to join those kil ed by the Al ied bombing and the relentless Soviet advance.
His own son. He steeled himself again. That was the only reason he had gone along with it al . The only reason. He knew what had happened to the families of those who had plotted against Hitler the year before. He had been on the Eastern Front then with his squadron, just trying to stay alive. But since being posted to Berlin and being sucked into the vipers’
nest, he knew that the eyes of the Gestapo and their informers had fol owed him everywhere, reporting his every move. Hitler the Führer loved his war heroes, but Hitler the man loathed them because he could never be one himself. Himmler was even more mercurial, the slipperiest of them al . It was a terrible truth, but every day of suffering in Berlin, every day in which thousands more died, was another day of hope for Hoffman’s family. The longer the Soviets could be staved off, the more chance there was that his wife and son might escape. They lived near Elsholz, thirty kilometres south of Berlin. Hoffman could not go there because any attempt to leave the city would be met with instant retribution from the Feldgendarmerie.
General Zhukov’s Third Army was sweeping in from the east, the Americans from the west. Terrible stories were reaching Berlin of mass rape by Red Army soldiers. He remembered, on his way back from that awful night at the circus, helping a limbless veteran of Stalingrad back into his wheelchair in a bombed-out S-Bahn station. The soldier had raised a stump in an ironic Heil Hitler salute. Don’t bother with me, he had said. If the Ivans do to us only half of what we did to them, then what you see of me now, this half of a man, this is nothing. There had been a chance, just a chance, that the Americans might get to Elsholz first, that the defence of Berlin might hold the Soviets off long enough for Hoffman’s family to fal into Western hands. But now there were reports of the Russians having passed west beyond the town and meeting the Americans on the Elbe. He could only pray that his wife Heidi and son Hans had escaped, and meanwhile try to save as many lives here as he could while there was stil time.
He looked at his watch. Three minutes to ten. He stood up and placed the order book containing his diary on top of the left-hand crate, the embossed Nazi eagle and swastika on the cover facing up. He would tel the Feldgendarmen outside the door that the order books on his desk contained top-secret plans for a breakout from Berlin, that they were on no account to let anyone in, and that he would be returning shortly with the flak-battery commander to discuss tactics. In truth he had no intention of returning, but he needed to leave the diary where it might be found by a Red Army intel igence officer. He knew the savage punishment meted out by the NKVD
to Russian soldiers who damaged anything of intel igence value, so any discovery like that would be likely to fal into the right hands. There was another book lying on the crate, an open copy of Schliemann’s Troy that had been there when he had arrived, evidently being read by the unpleasant
Dr Unverzagt while he had guarded the crates. He moved the volume so that it partly concealed the diary. He noticed that the opened page showed drawings of ancient pottery with swastika decorations, and he remembered a tediously mystical lecture by Von Schoenberg, a student acquaintance of his at Heidelberg University and now one of Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, about the swastika, claiming that it had been the symbol of the first Aryans, even of Atlantis.
Hoffman curled his lip in disdain. Atlantis. He shut the book. He hoped the Soviets would see these artefacts for what they were, as treasures for al mankind, and that their place in history would be shorn of al the twisted fiction that had been used to justify the appal ing crimes committed by Himmler and the SS.
There was a sudden commotion at the door. It swung open, and one of the Feldgendarmen clicked his heels. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. This man insists on seeing you. He tried earlier, but you were on the roof with the flak gunners. I’ve checked his papers. He’s a member of the Nazi party.’
Hoffman strode irritably over. ‘Who the devil is it?’
Then he saw the unsavoury form of Dr Unverzagt trying to squeeze in, being held back by the other Feldgendarm. Hoffman waved his arm dismissively. ‘I have no time for this man.’
The Feldgendarm nodded and pushed Unverzagt roughly
back,
but
he
shouted
out:
‘Herr
Oberstleutnant. Listen to me. I have news of your family.’
Hoffman stared at him. Saying that was the easiest way to gain entrance. Everyone wanted news of their families. But it might be true. He gestured at the guard to release him. ‘Al right. Two minutes, no more.’
Unverzagt sprang forward, and then pushed the door nearly shut. He turned back and hurried over to Hoffman, speaking urgently. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant.
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