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

In 1941, after experiencing the nightmarish December retreat from the gates of Moscow, Hitler told Goebbels that,

if he [Hitler] were to show a moment’s weakness, the front would turn into a landslide and a catastrophe would be imminent that would put that suffered by Napoleon completely in the shade.

Paradoxically, the Führer now found the dismal scenes of the German retreat from Moscow inspiring. They fed an illusion that a mortal threat would cause an upsurge of national fervour among the Germans and, at the critical moment, when German troops were defending the capital of the Third Reich, just as their enemy had when defending Moscow, they would bring about a turning point in the war.

Goebbels, instantly picking up on the direction in which the Führer’s thoughts and wishes were moving, was already describing the defence of Moscow as ‘an encouraging example’.

In his diary at this time we periodically find his traditional exaltation of the Führer. In part, this rhetoric is the autosuggestion Goebbels needs in order not to fall prey to doubts about Hitler’s ability to alter the course of events. ‘I am amazed how firmly the Führer is taking charge.’ But even the obsequious Goebbels allowed himself to criticize Hitler in his diary. At one time this is in connection with his orders: ‘We issue orders in Berlin which in reality do not go down the chain of command at all, quite apart from the question of whether they could possibly be carried out.’ Another time he complained that in this time of crisis Hitler cannot bring himself to make an appeal to the people on the radio. ‘The Führer has now a fear of the microphone I find completely incomprehensible.’ He goes on filling up the pages, one utterance cancelling out another, neutralizing it; one moment extolling Hitler, the next complaining about his lack of decisiveness.

Goebbels is dictating his diary, and has two full-time shorthand-typists employed at the Ministry of Propaganda for just that purpose. Every day he is dictating thirty, forty, fifty or more pathologically prolix pages.

Meanwhile, ‘Near Berlin the Soviets have begun what is admittedly only a local, but extremely powerful, offensive’ (23 March). The people are losing faith in the Führer and, more generally, losing hope. ‘The situation is intolerable.’ It has become known from a United Press report that the entire gold reserve of Germany and its art treasures (including the bust of Nefertiti) have fallen into the hands of the Americans in Thuringia. ‘If I were the Führer, I would know what needs to be done now… There is no strong hand…’ But what can be done? ‘I always insisted that the gold and the art treasures should not be evacuated from Berlin.’ On 8 April an unsuccessful attempt had been made to transfer them back from Thuringia to the capital, which Goebbels, the commissioner for the defence of Berlin, wholly irrationally supposed to be the most suitable safe place for them.

‘We live in such a lunatic time that human reason is completely unhinged,’ Goebbels dictates on 2 April. He, however, is the prime example of that, his reason long ago unhinged, completely subordinate to Hitler, atrophied, replaced by faith in the Führer.

‘Sometimes one wonders desperately where all this is going to lead.’ Goebbels, however, reassures himself: everything is in the hands of the Führer. ‘I trust he will master this situation’ (8 April ).

In Goebbels’ mind the outcome of the war depends ultimately less on the actual situation than on whether the Führer will manage by an effort of will to overcome everything and, like a deus ex machina, manifest himself an instant before catastrophe strikes.

The Führer believes… that this year, one way or another, there will be a turning point in the course of the war. The enemy coalition will fall apart, no matter what happens. The only question is whether it will fall apart before we are felled…

The situation is getting ever more trying.

The position on the fronts is like never before. We have all but lost Vienna. The enemy has made deep breakthroughs in Königsberg. The Anglo-Americans are stationed close to Brunswick and Bremen. In a nutshell, if you look at the map it is clear that the Reich is today reduced to a narrow strip.

In the concrete bunker under the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler was waiting for events to turn in his favour, Goebbels read to him and retold pages from the biography of Frederick the Great. Hitler had put considerable effort into encouraging his compatriots to see him as having a spiritual affinity with this successful king of Prussia. He had a portrait of Frederick hanging on the wall in his bunker. Now they had a further affinity through the military adversity the king had faced. At the point in the book where Frederick is facing defeat in the Seven Years War and has decided to end his life, the book’s author cries out to him, ‘Wait yet a little, and the days of your torments will be behind you. The sun of your good fortune is already there behind the clouds, and soon will shine upon you.’ The timely arrival of news of the death of his enemy, the Russian Empress Elizabeth, brings the king deliverance from humiliating defeat.

Hitler was greatly moved and decided he would like to consult his horoscopes, which Goebbels had been holding back for several days for just this eventuality. It is curious to go back and open Goebbels’ diary at the place where he is recording with exultant derision that all astrologers, mesmerists and anthroposophists have been arrested and an end put to their charlatan practices. ‘How amazing, not a single fortune-teller foresaw he was going to be arrested. Not much of an advertisement for the profession…’ (13 June 1941). Everything was being rationalized. Only the predictions of one person in the Reich, the Führer, were to be available to the people. In order to avoid inconsistencies, mistaken interpretations, duplication, unfavourable prophecies or, ultimately, competition, all other fortune-tellers were to be hounded mercilessly.

But that was then, on the threshold of a war with Russia which was predicted to be victorious. Now anything hinting at last-minute salvation was more than welcome.

‘I have been presented with voluminous material for astrological or spiritualist propaganda, including the so-called horoscope cast for the German Republic on 9 November 1918, as well as one for the Führer. Both horoscopes correspond remarkably to the truth,’ we now read in Goebbels’ diary on 30 March 1945.

I can understand the Führer forbidding the performance of such phenomena outside our control. Nevertheless, it is interesting that both the Weimar Republic’s horoscope and the Führer’s horoscope predict an easing of our military situation in the second half of April… For me such astrological predictions hold no significance, but I still intend to use them for anonymous and covert propaganda, because at a critical time like this most people will clutch at any straw, however insubstantial, if it promises salvation.

Predictions offering hope were so prized that they were forwarded through Party channels to the wife of Reich Minister Goebbels, which suggests that his ‘anonymous and covert’ propaganda was taking off. Horoscopes were becoming convincing. In Goebbels’ Berlin apartment our agents found the horoscope of his little son, Helmut, and brought it to me.

But then, the two most important horoscopes, which until recently had been kept by Himmler under lock and key in the ‘scientific’ department of the Gestapo, the Führer’s horoscope and the horoscope of the German Republic which Hitler had called for, were brought to the bunker. With the assistance of his Reich Minister of Propaganda, Hitler was able to see for himself that both horoscopes promised military success in the second half of April 1945, after severe defeats early in the month.