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

‘You talk now about German blood, Herr Reichsführer! You should have thought about that long ago, before identifying yourself with the pointless shedding of it.’

A sudden air raid interrupted the conversation.

This verbal skirmish was all that eventuated. A new Reich President was already in office, with whom Himmler initially hoped to make common cause by offering his cooperation.

At Dönitz’s meeting everyone was in agreement that within a few more days further resistance would be impossible. Nevertheless, Greim flew to Field Marshal Schörner, who was in command of troops in Silesia and Czechoslovakia, to urge him to hold out, even if there was an order to surrender, to allow the German population to move west.

On the morning of 9 May, Greim and Reitsch surrendered to American forces. Two weeks later, Greim took the poison Hitler had given him. Pravda reported:

London, 27 May (TASS). London radio reports that General Ritter von Greim, who succeeded Göring as commander of the German Air Force, has committed suicide in a hospital in Salzburg. Greim was captured by the Allies a few days ago. He poisoned himself with potassium cyanide.

When researchers are examining the last days in the Reich Chancellery, they often quite rightly note the degeneration and moral monstrousness that then became so evident in Hitler, but they allow the scenes of hysteria and farce to overshadow his final plan of action.

Under the relentless pressure of the advancing armies, the feverish intentions of taking refuge in Berchtesgaden or Schleswig-Holstein, or in the South Tyrol fortress (much advocated by Goebbels), were abandoned. When the Gauleiter of Tyrol suggested an evacuation to the mountain fortress, Hitler, according to Hans Rattenhuber,

shrugged despairingly and said, ‘I no longer see any point in this rushing from place to place.’ The situation in Berlin in late April left us in no doubt that these were our last days. Events were unfolding more rapidly than expected.

Hitler’s hope that the Allied coalition would collapse had proved vain. At the Gatow airfield Hitler’s last plane still stood at the ready, and when it was destroyed, hasty preparations began to construct a runway near the Reich Chancellery. A squadron allocated for use by Hitler was set ablaze by Soviet artillery but his personal pilot remained with him.

Greim, the new commander-in-chief of the Air Force, did send planes, but not a single one made it through to Berlin. Greim had accurate information that no aircraft crossed the line of encirclement to get out of Berlin either. There was, in any case, nowhere left to evacuate to: armies were advancing from every direction.

To flee from defeated Berlin, to fall like a spent pawn into the hands of the Anglo-Americans, Hitler considered out of the question. He came up with a different plan: he would enter negotiations, from Berlin, with the British and Americans, who, he believed, should be interested in preventing the Russians from capturing the capital of Germany, and obtain some tolerable conditions for himself. He believed, however, that such negotiations would only be possible if the military situation in Berlin improved.

It was an unrealistic plan with no prospect of being implemented, but it obsessed Hitler, and if we want a full picture for history of the last days of the Third Reich, it should not be overlooked. Hitler must surely have realized that even a temporary improvement in Berlin’s situation would have no major impact in the context of the catastrophic military situation of Germany. He calculated, however, that it was a political prerequisite for the negotiations on which he was pinning his last deluded hopes. That is why he kept talking so frenziedly about Wenck’s army. There is no doubt that he was completely incapable of coordinating the defence of Berlin: we are talking here only about his plans.

I read in Rattenhuber’s testimony, written shortly after he was captured in Berlin, that Hitler was profoundly shocked by the treachery of Göring and Himmler, not because they began negotiating with the Allies, but because they did so behind his back. Göring and Himmler betrayed Hitler and finally took the feet from him when they bypassed him.

Going through the materials in the Council of Ministers Archive, I found a letter signed by Bormann and Krebs and addressed to General Wenck. It is dated 29 April. Lost in our archive and lacking its explanatory note, it seems to me an important document that reveals Hitler’s last intentions. I found it in Folder 128, in which miscellaneous documents judged to be of little interest were placed without careful scrutiny. As I have mentioned, in the preceding twenty years the archive had not been adequately sorted and systematized, but that had the fortunate side effect of allowing a degree of serendipity in the course of my researches.

And here, in this file, under the category ‘Documents and items found in May in Hitler’s bunker and at Goebbels’ apartment in Berlin’, a long list that extended from ‘Certificate of Award to Goebbels, Magda, of an Olympic Badge’ to ‘Horoscope for Helmut Goebbels’ (what future would that be promising the Reich Minister’s small son?) to the uniforms of Hitler and Voss (note of identification by Rattenhuber of two caps and two tunics attached), I discovered an orphaned, unlisted sheet of paper.

22.V.45. Detained Brichzi, Josef, d.o.b. 1928, member of the Hitler Youth, apprentice electrician.

In February 1945, conscripted into the Volkssturm militia and served in an anti-tank detachment, operating in Berlin. On the night of 28 April this year. Brichzi was summoned from a barracks located on Wilhelmstrasse and, escorted by a soldier, taken to the Reich Chancellery together with a youth of approx. 16 years of age.

At the Chancellery they were brought to Bormann, who said he was entrusting them with an important mission, to cross the front line and hand to General Wenck, the commander of the Twelfth German Army, packages that Bormann would give them.

Early in the morning on 29 April Brichzi darted across the front line on a motorcycle near the Reich sports field. He was fired at but escaped the Berlin encirclement uninjured and moved towards the west because General Wenck was believed to be in the vicinity of the village of Ferch, northwest of Potsdam.

Having reached Potsdam, Brichzi talked to soldiers of the German Army but obtained no definite information on the whereabouts of Wenck’s headquarters and decided to go back to Spandau, where his uncle lived.

His uncle advised him not to carry out the mission but to report to the Soviet Military Commandant’s Office and hand the documents over, which he did on 7 May 1945.

Text of the letter:

Dear General Wenck,

As can be seen from the enclosed reports, SS Reichsführer Himmler has made a proposal to the Anglo-Americans, which unconditionally hands our nation to the plutocrats.

Such a change of policy can be made only by the Führer personally, only by him!

A prerequisite for this is the prompt establishment of contact between the Wenck Army and us, in order to provide the Führer with the domestic and foreign policy freedom to conduct negotiations.

In the last days of Hitler we see clearly the vicious falsity of his entire life, inspired by the desire to wield power over other people, and with the real aim of personal aggrandizement, primarily through the agency of the German people.

For as long as he had breath, he continued to kill. The courtyard of the Reich Chancellery became a place of execution, of firing squads. Hitler made his threats, but the treason spread.