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

A few days after this, late at night on 12 April, the news was received that President Roosevelt had died. How could that not be a portent, a historical analogy? How could it not be a turning point in Germany’s destiny? ‘At this moment in time, when destiny has removed from the Earth the worst war criminal of all time, the war will turn in our favour!’ Such was the exclamation with which Hitler concluded his orders to the troops. In it he spoke of the new offensive by the Red Army.

We foresaw this blow, and since January of this year everything has been done to create a strong front. The enemy is being met with powerful artillery. The losses of our infantry are being replenished with countless new divisions. Amalgamated subdivisions, new formations and the Volkssturm consolidate our front. This time it is the Bolshevik who will experience the ancient destiny of Asia: he must bleed to death, and will, in front of the capital of the Reich.

This order from Hitler, dated 16 April, began to arrive at the headquarters of the troops on the evening of 15 April, and was to be sent immediately all the way down to company level.

Look out first and foremost for those few traitors, officers and soldiers who, to protect their miserable lives, will fight against us in the pay of Russians, perhaps even in German uniform. If you are ordered to retreat by someone you do not know well, he must be immediately arrested and, if necessary, rendered harmless, irrespective of his rank.

Berlin will remain German, Vienna will again be German…

A day later the order was published in the Völkischer Beobachter and other newspapers.

From the bomb shelter Goebbels spoke on the radio:

The Führer has said that this year our fortunes will change and success will again attend us… True genius can always foretell and predict when change is imminent. The Führer knows the exact time this will happen. Destiny has sent this man to us so that we in this time of great outer and internal ordeals may be witness to a miracle…

On 16 April the Red Army began its offensive. The Oder defensive line was considered impregnable by the German high command. It was here, at the Oder, they firmly believed, that the advance of the Red Army would be repulsed.

Until quite recently Hitler had been intending to institute a reorganization of the army. The itch to reorganize gave Goebbels too no rest. In his ministry he was busying himself that April with projects to reform the press and radio departments (‘They need to become more flexible’), changing the staffing arrangements to ensure that the influential press chief, Dietrich, who, at Goebbels relentless insistence, had finally been sent off by Hitler ‘on leave’, would not be able to return to his old position for the simple reason that it would no longer be there; and thinking through harsh measures against Berlin’s arts elite and ‘superintellectuals’.

Career and status considerations continued to predominate among the top Nazi leaders. Sometimes this strikes even Goebbels as weird, especially if it concerns a rival.

Reich Minister Rosenberg is still opposing the dissolution of the Eastern Ministry. He is no longer calling it the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories, because that would be seen as grotesque, but the ‘Ministry of the East’. He wants to concentrate all our eastern policy in this ministry. I could with no less justification establish a western or southern ministry. It is complete nonsense, but Rosenberg is defending his status and refuses to accept that his ministry has long since failed.

The breakthrough of the fortifications on the Oder caused panic in Hitler’s headquarters. The Berlin bureaucracy fled: the Autobahn from Berlin to Munich was choked with their motor cars and nicknamed by the Berliners the ‘Reich Refugee Autobahn’. Nobody gave a second thought to the Berliners themselves.

The rumours were insistently repeated that a ‘new secret weapon’ would come into service on the Führer’s birthday. The mass psychosis of expecting a miracle spread to all sections of the population. Someone claimed to have seen vehicles shrouded with tarpaulins, concealing the secret weapon from prying eyes. People fantasized and tried to guess its destructive power. [1] During the Nuremberg Trials Albert Speer confirmed that Germany was considerably behind in atomic energy. ‘We would have needed another one or two years to split the atom.’ Everyone was waiting for an announcement on the radio.

On 20 April, however, the Führer’s birthday, the radio was silent during the day, and silent at night, too, when shells were heard exploding as the long-range artillery of our 3rd Shock Army began firing on Berlin. The following day shells were exploding in the streets of the city. Berliners hiding in their basements could not understand why the radio had not warned them of the danger by sounding a siren.

There was neither a siren nor any announcement from the German high command when Red Army troops entered the outskirts of Berlin and the Battle of Berlin began.

After the breakthrough on the Oder, Hitler and his Headquarters prepared to move to his residence in Berchtesgaden (Obersalzberg). Orders were given to prepare to fly out.

Bormann notes in his diary:

Friday, 20 April. The Führer’s birthday, but the mood, unfortunately, is anything but festive. The advance team is ordered to fly out.

In Bormann’s papers, which I was going through in the now deserted underground complex and which I was next to see in the Council of Ministers Archive, there are radio-telegrams to his adjutant, Helmut von Hummel, with instructions to prepare accommodation in Berchtesgaden. On 21 April Hummel responded with his plan for locating services and departments, already partly implemented, and a request to approve it. Certain services had been moved to Berchtesgaden, as had part of Hitler’s archive, one of his secretaries, and his personal doctor, Theodor Morell. (Hitler had long been unable to get by without strong stimulants and Morell was constantly by his side.)

Everything was ready for the final flight but, on 21 April, the day Soviet troops entered the outskirts of Berlin and artillery fire reached the city centre, Hitler ordered a counter-attack. On 22 April, at a regular meeting with the army, Hitler heard from the generals that his counter-attack, under the command of SS General Felix Steiner, had not taken place and that Berlin could not be expected to hold out for long. Accordingly, he should leave the capital in order to allow the troops to retreat. This was all the more necessary because it made no sense for Hitler, as the commander-inchief, to remain encircled in Berlin. It would no longer be possible for him to command the armies from there.

Hitler’s reaction was fury, hysterics, shrieking about treason and a threat to commit suicide. He halted the meeting and ordered that he should be put through on the telephone to Goebbels.

What happened then is described by Hitler’s SS adjutant, Otto Günsche: ‘After a few minutes Goebbels hobbled in. He was extremely agitated.’ Goebbels was conducted to the Führer’s office, where they talked. When Goebbels left the office, the generals and Bormann rushed to him. He said the Führer was in a state of collapse. He had never seen him in such a condition. He added, ‘how frightened he was when the Führer, in a cracking voice, told him over the telephone that he should immediately move with his wife and children to the bunker with him because it was all over.’

Later, when Jodl was arrested by the Allies, he told them under interrogation,

On 22 April Goebbels asked me whether it was possible to prevent the fall of Berlin by military means. I replied that it was possible, but only if we took all our troops from the Elbe and threw them into defending Berlin. On the advice of Goebbels, I reported my views to the Führer, he agreed and instructed Keitel and me, together with headquarters, to leave Berlin and personally lead the counter-attack.