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

To leave the Western Front open and withdraw all forces from there to defend Berlin was now Hitler’s decision. General Wenck’s Twelfth Army was ordered to fight its way through to aid Berlin.

Throughout 22 April the airwaves were heavy with radio-telegrams from Bormann to Hummel. Initially there are feverish orders to prepare for the Führer’s arrival in Berchtesgaden. By the end of the day, however, everything is reduced to a request in a telegram that survives in Bormann’s file:

22 April 45.

From Berlin.

To Hummel, Obersalzberg.

Send immediately with today’s planes as much mineral water, vegetables and apple juice as possible, and my mail.

The evacuation by air never happened. Anglo-American troops had reached Munich, which was near Berchtesgaden. Hitler could not bring himself to flee from defeated Berlin only to become a played-out pawn in the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

On 21 April Hitler had withdrawn German troops from the Elbe, opening the road to Berlin to the Americans, but they were still far away. In order to set back the hour of his death, he gave orders to blow up the barriers on the canal and flood the underground railway, which assault detachments of the Red Army, rapidly advancing towards the government district, had entered. Hitler gave that appalling order in the full knowledge that thousands of his compatriots would die as the water poured in: the wounded, women and children who had taken refuge in the underground tunnels.

His intention to remain in Berlin was seen by the generals as confirming his inability to continue to command the army.

Berlin was abandoned by the High Command of the German Armed Forces: Grand Admiral Dönitz; Field Marshal Keitel, Chief of Staff of the High Command; Colonel General Jodl, chief of the operations staff of the High Command; and Air Force General Koller. They and their headquarters staffs departed in search of a more secure base and there was subsequently almost no contact with them.

The infantry and tank divisions of the Red Army rapidly surrounded Berlin. In heavy fighting they flattened one belt of the German defences after another and the troops rushed towards the city centre. Russian artillery shells were reaching the Reich Chancellery, and it was only the heavy concrete of his bunker that saved Hitler after a direct hit. The Chancellery’s radio mast collapsed and its underground cable was damaged.

A month after the fall of Berlin, Hitler’s secretary, Gertraud Junge, described those days: ‘Hitler was certain the Red Army knew where he was, and he was expecting Red Army units to storm his refuge at any moment.’

No reports from the army commanders on the course of the fighting were now being received. The radio link with Obersalzberg was unreliable. It was periodically lost completely, then briefly restored. News of the fate of German cities and the situation in Berlin came mainly from Allied journalists reporting over the radio from locations where there was fighting. Rumours, each more desperate than the last, seeped down from the streets into the underground complex.

In spring 1941, as Goebbels was hatching his conspiracy against humanity, he flooded the world with rumours to sow panic, fear and despair. With diabolical glee he wrote in his diary that he was doing it ‘in the name of havoc’. ‘Rumours are our daily bread,’ he had written then. Now the epicentre of the earthquake had moved, and was directly underneath the Reich Chancellery.

In the Berliner Frontblatt Goebbels urged soldiers and the Berliners not to listen to rumours. ‘Rumours are used by the enemy as a weapon to paralyse our resistance and undermine our confidence. That is why at times like this we must stick only to the facts.’

At this same time, Hitler’s own headquarters was reduced to extrapolating facts from the rumours on which the reports to Bormann from the local Nazi leaders were based. They found their way into his radio-telegram folder which I was analysing in the Reich Chancellery. Twenty years later, I copied detailed extracts from these reports in the archive, [1] Council of Ministers Archive, folder 151. which reflected the situation in Berlin in the days immediately before capitulation.

Reinickendorf–Wedding reports: the Borsigwalde subdistrict picked up a rumour a few hours ago that the US government has resigned. Ribbentrop is said to have flown to America, presumably for negotiations. Troops are thought to be being withdrawn from the West in order to reinforce the Eastern Front.

Other rumours:

There are Russians in basements from Gallich Boulevard to Graf von Redern Allee.

Three vehicles: one with Russian officers, one with private soldiers, the third with an unidentified load paused in Heiligensee near the anti-aircraft gunners’ barracks before driving off in the direction of Velten. The Russians talked to the local people and reportedly told them everyone should immediately take cover in basements because heavy artillery would shortly be firing. Then they shared cigarettes with the residents and told the German girls they could go out without fear because nobody would do anything to them.

It is impossible to verify these rumours since Heiligensee is in the hands of the Russians. 22 April 45. 20.00 hours.

The facts were even more dismaying than the rumours. They were contained in such communications as:

Report of Police President Gerum

22 April 45 / 14.15 hrs

Köpenick is currently wholly occupied by the enemy. The enemy is rushing across the Spree in the direction of Adlershof.

Or in messages which, more colourfully, were reporting the same thing, namely, districts that had fallen.

Wilmersdorf District, Zehlendorf.

Sector E reports:

From there a phone call was made on official business to the shelter in Struveshof. A Russian came to the telephone and demanded schnapps. The official at the shelter only managed to shout, ‘The Russians are here!’ 22 April 45. 06.00 hrs

Soviet tanks. Fires. A barrage of enemy artillery fire. Captured streets. People killed and injured. A lack of armaments. A request for artillery support… The reports of the Nazi Party district leaders characterize the hopelessness of those fighting in the streets of Berlin and the disasters experienced by the Berliners.

The leader of another district reported that the enemy had advanced along Schönhauser Allee as far as Stargarderstrasse and that there was no possibility of offering resistance in that area. He asked:

Question: what provision is there for food for the populace? People are no longer coming out of their basements, have no water and cannot cook anything.

Similar reports must have found their way to Goebbels as commissioner for the defence of Berlin and head of the Nazi Party in Berlin, but they fell on deaf ears. No notice was taken of them. In his diary there is not a shred of evidence, not a hint or word written there that would enable us to conclude that, in those days of calamity for the German people, the authors of all their misfortunes gave a moment’s thought to what their nation was now going through, or felt in the least bit answerable to them.

‘I and history’, ‘My historic mission’, ‘I have assumed responsibility for my people’: these were words the Germans heard constantly from Hitler. ‘The Führer is Germany,’ Nazi propaganda drummed into their heads, using every conceivable means to bamboozle the people as it created a cult of Hitler. They were insistently told: ‘The Führer does your thinking: yours is only to carry out his orders.’ On 23 April, while still in Poznań, I heard on Berlin radio, ‘The Führer is in the capital and calls on soldiers to defend themselves more steadfastly.’