Елена Ржевская - Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter - From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker

Fierce fighting against the invading troops would last from August until November 1944, but in early November the Allies would suffer their greatest defeat in the entire war. In April 1945, Germany would be ready to redirect all its strike force to the Eastern Front, and after fifteen months Russia would finally be conquered by Germany. Communism would be eradicated, the Jews driven out, and Russia would break down into smaller states.

In summer 1946, German submarines would be equipped with a new and terrifying weapon with the aid of which, in the course of August 1946, the remnants of the British and American fleets would be destroyed.

On one of the folders Magda Goebbels had written ‘Harald als Gefangener’. Harald as a prisoner. This refers to her eldest son, from her first marriage. Four years before Goebbels had written in his diary, ‘Magda is extremely happy about the award for Harald, which can be considered a done deed’ (14 June 1941). The file contains everything relating to him since the moment he was captured. The first sheet relates the circumstances of his capture. They are being described by a non-commissioned officer reporting to his commander. The report was forwarded to Dr Goebbels. His stepson was last seen during fighting in an African village. Then there is a letter written by Harald from his American captivity. He writes that he is being well treated. There are photographs. Harald in front of flower beds. Greetings on ‘German Mothers’ Day’.

This all provided atmosphere, pictures of events, but no direct clues as to what had happened to Hitler.

The Bormann folder contained an important document, a radio-telegram Bormann had sent from the Reich Chancellery shelter to his adjutant. [1] Bormann’s radio-telegrams to Munich and Obersalzberg were filed in the Council of Ministers Archive folder No. 151.

22 April 45.

To Hummel. Obersalzberg.

Proposed relocation overseas and south agreed.

What did that mean?

Bormann was evidently preparing a hideaway for himself far beyond the borders of Germany. And here is how matters stood beyond the borders of his diary, which I also found was in the archive. If I had had Martin Bormann’s notebook-cum-diary in front of me then, I would have read the following in the last entries:

Sunday 29 April.

A second day begins with a hurricane of gunfire. During the night of 28 April the foreign press reported Himmler’s offer of surrender. Marriage of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. The Führer dictates his political and personal will.

The traitors Jodl, Himmler and the generals have abandoned us to the Bolsheviks!

Again a hurricane of gunfire!

According to an enemy report, the Americans have burst into Munich!…

30 April 45.

Adolf Hitler

Eva H.

Next to their names Bormann had drawn an inverted runic cross, an emblem of death.

If we had been able to read that at the time, we would have had important confirmation that Hitler had died on 30 April, but we did not have sight of the diary. It was found in the street by reconnaissance agents of our neighbouring army and we did not get to see it. Admittedly, the peculiar circumstances in which the diary was found would probably not have allowed us then, at the preliminary stage of inspecting it, to trust it uncritically: it could have been a forgery, planted for us to find. Now, however, we can say with complete confidence that this is the genuine diary of Martin Bormann, which he dropped while trying to break through the ring of Soviet troops as a member of Mohnke’s group, probably when he was fatally injured. [1] Bormann evidently poisoned himself during the escape attempt in order to avoid capture. Tr.

The diary, although recording events at quite a different level, is absurdly similar to the diaries of the very stupidest German front-line soldiers, which in turn are closely similar to each other. The similarity is no sign of democratic ways but of the monstrous uniformity of thinking that Hitler counted on and Nazism cultivated.

Although the Reich Chancellery was only 550 metres or so from the Reichstag, it was in the zone allocated to our neighbouring 5th Assault Army, which captured it. We were not allowed to cross that dividing line, but the fighting was over and everything was a muddle. Absolutely anybody who got the chance came rushing into our army’s zone, which contained the Reichstag, in order to record, ‘I was here,’ to sightsee, to write their name on the Reichstag, to go inside. That was true, first and foremost, of our neighbours in the 5th Army.

Certain officers in our army proved shrewder and decided to trespass on our neighbour’s territory, the Reich Chancellery. I was one of them. I left my name on the Reichstag only three days later.

I actually did manage to tear myself away from the documents for a short while, and walk round the city in the company of our driver, Sergey, and several officers. We stood at the Brandenburg Gate through which German troops had triumphantly marched when they returned from Warsaw, Brussels and Paris. Nearby, on a square piled with broken bricks, burnt metal and charred, overturned trees, the grey building of the Reichstag, not yet cool after the fire, was still smoking. Above it, above the skeleton of its dome, a red banner fluttered high in the overcast sky.

Skirting shell craters and piles of rubble, we reached the Reichstag. We climbed the pitted steps, inspected the soot-blackened pillars, stood for a while by the walls and looked at each other. A soldier was sitting asleep on the steps, leaning his bandaged head against a pillar and with a forage cap pulled over his face. A moustachioed guardsman with a bedroll over his shoulder was pensively rolling a cigarette. The large windows of the lower floor of the Reichstag were firmly boarded up with wooden panels, which were covered from top to bottom with graffiti. Sergey took out a pencil stub and, under someone’s sweeping inscription of ‘Where are you, dearest friend? We are in Berlin, visiting Hitler,’ scrawled in a shaky hand, ‘Hello to all Siberians!’ After him, too emotional to speak, I added my greetings to all Muscovites.

We went inside. Our soldiers were wandering around, battered folders of documents were strewn about and there was a smell of burning. The Reichstag’s documents were being used as cigarette paper.

Then we walked on through the city. The pavements were almost deserted. On pillars we saw the proclamation of the commander of the 1st Byelorussian Front to the civilian population of Berlin and the province of Brandenburg: ‘At the present time no government exists in Germany…’ In places, groups of residents were clearing the rubble, passing each other a brick at a time. Soldiers with red armbands on their sleeves were pasting up the order of the Soviet commandant of the city. A wooden arch was erected in honour of Victory in Berlin. It had a large red star set in the middle of it, and the flags of the Allies flanking it.

Vehicles were making their way through gaps where collapsed masonry had been cleared. The girls directing traffic, wearing white gloves specially issued to mark our arrival in the German capital, were energetically, tirelessly spinning round on their traffic police pedestals and enlivening Berlin’s crossroads.

Looking at them brought a lump to my throat. I remembered how very recently they had been standing in foot wrappings with rifles over their shoulders, carrying out their duties on roads at the front, chilled to the marrow, hoarse, insistent. (Just try ignoring the orders of such a girl: before you knew it she would be firing that rifle at your axles.)