Hitler's Last Secretary (28 page)

26 April. We are cut off from the outside world, with nothing but a wireless telephone connection to Keitel. Not a sign of Wenck’s army and Steiner’s attack. It’s becoming certain that no army capable of saving us exists any more. The Russians have already reached the Tiergarten. They are meeting with less resistance on their way into the city centre, and are coming close to Anhalt Station. Nothing can stop them now.

The Führer is still leading his shadowy life in the bunker. He wanders restlessly around the rooms. Sometimes I wonder what he’s waiting for, why he doesn’t finally put an end to it all, because there’s nothing to be saved now. But the idea of his suicide disillusions me. To think of the ‘first soldier in the Reich’ committing suicide while children defend the capital! Once I talk to him about it. I ask, ‘My Führer, don’t you think the German people will expect you to fall in battle at the head of your troops?’ You can talk to him about anything now. His answer sounds weary. ‘I’m no longer in any physical shape to fight. My trembling hands can hardly hold a pistol. If I am wounded I won’t find any of my men to shoot me. And I don’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians.’ He is right. His hand shakes as he lifts a spoon or fork to his mouth, he has difficulty getting out of his chair, and when he walks his feet drag over the floor.

Eva Braun is writing farewell letters. All her beloved dresses, her jewellery and anything valuable that she liked has been sent to Munich. She too is waiting and suffering. Outwardly she seems as calm and almost cheerful as ever. But once she comes to me, takes my hands and says in a husky, trembling voice, ‘Frau Junge, I’m so dreadfully frightened. If only it was all over!’ Her eyes show all the torment hidden in her heart. She is surprised that Hermann Fegelein doesn’t seem at all concerned about her. She hasn’t seen him for two days. And even before that he seemed to be avoiding her. She asks me if I have seen him. No, Fegelein wasn’t in the bunker at all today. No one knows where he is. People are looking for him on some kind of SS business, but he can’t be found. Perhaps he’s gone to the front to see what’s going on? The officers who share a room with him in the Reich Chancellery don’t know. On 27 April Hitler wants to see Fegelein too. There’s no trace of him. Now the security service follows up his trail. That night SS General Fegelein is back in the Reich Chancellery but without his orders and decorations, dressed as a civilian and hopelessly drunk. I have never set eyes on him since. But Eva Braun, disappointed and shocked, tells me that last night Hermann called her from his private apartment. ‘Eva, you have to leave the Führer if you can’t persuade him to get out of Berlin. Don’t be stupid – it’s a matter of life and death now!’ She replies: ‘Where are you, Hermann? Come here at once, the Führer is asking for you, he wants to speak to you!’ But the connection has been cut.
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No more newspapers are being published in Berlin. Only the radio keeps broadcasting information that the Führer is still in the unhappy city, sharing its fate and conducting its defence personally. But the few of us in the Führer bunker know that Hitler withdrew from the battle long ago and is waiting to die. Over in the Reich Chancellery bunker the soldiers of the company on guard are gambling and singing old battle songs, while nurses and women auxiliaries work frantically. Refugees and auxiliaries from all over the city are gathering in the Reich Chancellery. There are living people here who are still hoping, fighting, working. But the Führer bunker isa wax works museum. Yet human nature is still here too. There ’s a birthday. Old Rattenhuber is sixty. We sit in the upper corridor of the bunker, where there are tables and benches and the staff of the Führer bunker have their meals, and drink schnapps with the birthday boy. Eva Braun on one side, me on the other. We talk about Munich and Bavaria, and how sad it is to have to die so far from home. ‘Among Prussians, of all things,’ says Rattenhuber, and his merry eyes are damp. We laugh once again, and try to forget everything for a few minutes.

Suddenly a great many people arrive in the bunker, some of them strangers, some of them faces I know from the other parts of the bunker complex. A long line forms, going all the way down to the Führer bunker. And then we see the Führer slowly coming closer. Stooping, left hand behind his back, he shakes hands with everyone, looking into all those faces but seeing none of them. Their eyes light up, they are glad to hear the Führer thanking them, and go back to their work feeling proud and refreshed. But we know better. This is not a way of saying thank you for their courage and industry, this is goodbye. We have fallen silent. I ask Eva Braun, ‘Has the time come, then?’ But she says, ‘No, you’ll hear about it first. The Führer will say goodbye to all of you too.’

That night there is even a wedding. A kitchenmaid is marrying one of the drivers of the column of heavy vehicles. One brave driver has even fetched the bride’s mother and family from the inferno of the city. We go up through dark corridors into the ruins of the Führer’s apartment. Somewhere there’s a high-ceilinged room dimly lit by candles. It is strange and uncanny. There are rows of chairs, and a podium. State Secretary Dr Naumann makes a speech, the couple join hands, and the guns known as Stalin organs make terrible music outside. Then we congratulate the young couple and go back to the bunker of death. The wedding guests celebrate, one of them has an accordion, another a fiddle. The newly-weds dance – on top of the volcano.

I play with the Goebbels children, read them fairy-tales, play forfeits with them and try to shield them from all the horrors. Their mother hardly has the strength to talk to them any more. At night they sleep peacefully in their six little beds, while the waiting in the bunker goes on and our doom comes closer and closer.

The last crushing blow falls on Hitler on 28 April. He still hasn’t decided what is to be done with Hermann Fegelein, who he feels has let him down and betrayed him, when Heinz Lorenz of the press office brings him alarming news: according to a Reuter’s report, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler has been conducting negotiations with the Allies through Count Bernadotte.
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I don’t know just where I was when the news reached Hitler. He may have ranted and raged one last time, but when I saw him again he was as calm as before. Only Eva Braun’s eyes were red with weeping, because her brother-in-law was condemned to death. He had been shot like a dog in the park of the Foreign Office, under the blossoming trees and near the sweet bronze statue of the girl. She had tried to explain to Hitler that it was only human nature for Fegelein to think of his wife and their child, and try to help them get through to a new life. But Hitler was implacable. All he saw was deceit and treachery. His ‘faithful Heinrich’, whom he had taken for a rock of loyalty in the middle of the sea of weakness and deceit, had gone behind his back too. Suddenly Fegelein’s actions took on another aspect: he had been part of a conspiracy. Hitler imagined terrible things about Himmler’s intentions. Perhaps Himmler meant to assassinate him? Hand him over to the enemy alive? By now he not only distrusted everyone from Himmler’s entourage still here with him, he even distrusted the poison that Himmler had given him. Dr Stumpfegger, who was with us in the bunker looking pale and thin, was more silent than ever. Hitler suspected him too.

So Professor Haase was brought over from the operating bunker in the New Reich Chancellery. We saw the Führer speak to him, give him one of the poison capsules, and then go with him to the little place at the entrance to the lavatories where Blondi and her puppies were kept. The doctor bent over the dog, a little waft of the bitter-almond scent reached us, and Blondi didn’t move again. Hitler came back. His face looked like his own death mask. Without a word he shut himself in his room. Himmler’s poison could be relied on!

Hanna Reitsch and General Greim prepared to fly out. […] After a long conversation with Hitler, they left the bunker.

We women took refuge in Eva Braun’s room with the children and the dogs. Decision was in the air now. Our nerves were stretched to breaking point. Eva told Frau Christian and me, ‘I bet you’ll be shedding tears this evening.’ We looked at her in alarm. ‘Has the time come?’ No, she said, we would see something else, something really touching, but she couldn’t tell us any more yet.

I don’t know now how we passed all those hours. It was like a nightmare. I don’t remember any more conversations or other details. What was there to talk about? Only the hellish noise made by the bombs, grenades, artillery and tanks spoke now. Soon the Russians would have reached the Potsdamer Platz, perhaps in a few hours’ time, and then they would be nearly at our door. Nothing happened in the bunker. The nation’s leaders sat there inactive, waiting for the decision, the last that Hitler would make. Even for the ever-zealous Bormann and the industrious Goebbels there was nothing more to do. Axmann, Hewel, Voss, the servants and adjutants, the orderlies and staff, they were all waiting for a decision. No one expected victory now. We all just wanted to be out of this bunker at last.

It seems to me almost incredible that we could still eat and drink, sleep and talk. We did it mechanically, and I have no memory of such things.

Goebbels made long speeches about the disloyalty of his colleagues. He was particularly indignant over Göring’s behaviour. ‘That man was never a National Socialist,’ he claimed. ‘He just basked in the Führer’s glory, he never lived by idealistic, National Socialist principles. It’s his fault that the German Luftwaffe failed, we have him to thank for it that we’re sitting here now about to lose the war.’ You suddenly realized that these two great figures had been bitter enemies and rivals. Frau Goebbels joined her husband in accusing the Reich Marshal.

We had become perfectly indifferent in those hours. We’d given up waiting. Time dragged wearily by while bedlam raged outside. We sat about talking, smoking, vegetating. You get tired doing that. The tension of the last few days now relaxes. There is only a great emptiness in me. I find a camp bed somewhere and sleep for an hour. It must be the middle of the night when I wake up. Servants and orderlies are busily coming and going in the corridor and in the Führer’s rooms. I wash, change my clothes, it must be time to drink tea with the Führer. We still drink tea with him. And death is always an invisible guest at the tea-party. But today something unexpected awaits me when I open the door to Hitler’s study. The Führer comes towards me, shakes hands and asks, ‘Have you had a nice little rest, child?’ When, surprised, I say yes, he adds, ‘There’s something I’d like you to take down from dictation later.’ I had entirely forgotten that this weary, weak voice sometimes used to race through dictation so energetically that I could hardly keep up. What was there to be written now? My glance passes Hitler and is attracted to the festively laid table. It is laid for eight tonight, with champagne glasses. And the guests are already arriving, Goebbels and his wife, Axmann, Frau Christian, Fräulein Manziarly, General Burgdorf and General Krebs. I can’t wait to know why they have all been summoned. Is Hitler going to make a big occasion of his farewell? Then he beckons me over. ‘Perhaps we could do it now. Come along,’ he says, leaving the room. Side by side we go to his conference room. I am about to remove the cover from the typewriter, but the Führer says, ‘Take it down on the shorthand pad.’ I sit down alone at the big table and wait. Hitler stands in his usual place by the broad side of the table, leans both hands on it, and stares at the empty table top, no longer covered today with maps or street plans. For several seconds, if the concrete didn’t act like a drumskin, mercilessly amplifying the reverberations of every bomb blast and every shot, you could have heard only the breathing of two human beings. Then, suddenly, the Führer utters the first words. ‘My political testament.’ For a moment my hand trembles. Now, at last, I shall hear what we’ve been waiting for for days: an explanation of what has happened, a confession, even a confession of guilt, or perhaps a justification. This final document of the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ should contain the real truth, told by a man with nothing more to lose.

But my expectations are not fulfilled. In tones of indifference, almost mechanically, the Führer comes out with the explanations, accusations and demands that I, the German people and the whole world know already. I look up in surprise as Hitler names the members of the new government. I really don’t understand what’s going on. If all is lost, if Germany is destroyed, if National Socialism is dead for ever, and the Führer himself can see no way out but suicide, what are the men he is appointing to government posts supposed to do? I can hardly grasp it. Hitler goes on speaking, scarcely looking up. He pauses for a brief moment, and then begins dictating his private will. And now I discover that he is going to marry Eva Braun before they are united in death. I fleetingly remember what Eva said, about the tears we’d shed today. But I can’t summon up any tears. The Führer lists his legacies, but here, suddenly, he does mention the possibility that there may be no German state left after his death. Then the dictation is over. He moves away from the table on which he has been leaning all this time, as if for support, and suddenly there is an exhausted, hunted expression in his eyes. ‘Type that out for me at once in triplicate and then bring it in to me.’ There is something urgent in his voice, and I realize, to my surprise, that this last, most important, most crucial document written by Hitler is to go out into the world without any corrections or thorough revision. Every letter of birthday wishes to some Gauleiter, artist, etc., was polished up, improved, revised – but now Hitler has no time for any of that.

The Führer returns to his party, which will soon be a wedding party. As for me, I sit in the waiting-room outside Goebbels’ room and type out the last page in the history of the Third Reich. Meanwhile the conference room has been turned into a registry office, a registrar fetched from the nearby front has married the Hitlers, Eva has begun to write her surname with a B when signing the register, and has had to have it pointed out that her new name begins with H. And now the wedding party is sitting in Hitler’s room. What will they raise their champagne glasses to? Happiness for the newly married couple?