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

‘The lads are tired and no longer have the strength to take part in battles,’ I read in a report addressed to Bormann on 22 April. On the same day, in another report, Reichsführer of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann and his closest colleagues state they are planning to move to 63–64 Wilhelmstrasse, near the Reich Chancellery. He intends to deploy 40–50 members of the Hitler Youth and requests Reichsleiter Bormann’s consent, which is duly forthcoming.

A report from the District of Charlottenburg-Spandau on 26 April reports the retreat of soldiers under the onslaught of Soviet units, adding: ‘A Hitler Youth detachment was to hold the bridge, but proved unable to do so.’ Goebbels in his Berliner Frontblatt on 27 April exhorts the young:

Reichsjugendführer Axmann was yesterday awarded the Golden Cross… Last night, the Führer in his principal apartment presented this mark of distinction to Axmann with the words, ‘Without your young men, it would be impossible to continue the struggle not only here in Berlin [when we read these words of 27 April they provide circumstantial evidence that Hitler was in Berlin], but throughout the whole of Germany.’ To this Axmann replied, ‘They are your young men, my Führer!’

Perhaps the duped boys believed they really were defending Germany, and died while a wedding was taking place in the bunker. Or was it a wake? Certainly, death was a guest at the table, and the bride was wearing black.

The walls of the bunker were shaking from direct artillery hits. Down in the crypt it was totally macabre, Rattenhuber tell us of these hours in his manuscript:

Everyone was preoccupied with their anxieties, their search for their own way out. Some, in despair, had given up all hope of rescue and, cowering in a corner and not looking at anyone, waited for the end to come; others, instead, went to the buffet and drowned their sorrows with brandy and wine from the Führer’s cellars.

SS guards patrolled slowly round the Reich Chancellery. In the garden, it was impossible to breathe because of the smoke and fumes. Berlin was burning, houses collapsing, shells exploding. Rifle fire could already be heard. Wounded people were groaning in the corridors of the shelter; there was no other place in the vicinity for them to go to.

It was in these conditions that, on the evening of 28 April, Hitler and Eva Braun were married. The formalities established by the Hitler regime were relaxed for the occasion. The bride and groom did not present, as was normally required, documents certifying their Aryan antecedents, their marriageability, their lack of a criminal record, their political reliability and a report from the police on the behaviour of the two parties. The marriage certificate notes that they requested that account should be taken of the wartime situation and the abnormal circumstances under which they were marrying, and to take on trust their verbal declarations, as well as relaxing the period of notice normally required for the ceremony to be legally valid.

The official whom Goebbels had summoned to solemnize the marriage wrote that their request was granted, and invited them only to confirm by their signatures that they were members of the Master Race and not suffering from congenital diseases.

This was followed by a wedding breakfast with champagne, attended by an intimate circle of acquaintances. Magda Goebbels, wife of the Reich Minister, was also present at the funereal wedding, Hitler having been the proxy father at her own wedding. Among the papers of Frau Goebbels there are records of a conversation with the Führer. She had been about to leave Goebbels for being unfaithful to her (this apostle of Nazi rectitude had been popularly nicknamed ‘the Bullock of Babelsberg’ because of his predilection for film actresses), but the Führer urged her to keep the family together. He told her that she, too, as a member of the Party, a Parteigenossin, had a mission in life.

The Führer presented himself to the people as an exemplary ascetic who disdained earthly joys the better to serve the nation. Magda Goebbels and her unfaithful husband similarly exemplified the ideal Nazi family of many children.

Now one piece of hypocrisy was being replaced by another. The stench of mysticism and vulgarity emanating from this wedding would have choked all but the undead. After it, Hitler dictated his will. By 4.00 a.m. it was ready. The witnesses – Goebbels, Bormann, and Generals Burgdorf and Krebs – appended their signatures.

Hitler’s adjutant, Otto Günsche, testified during interrogation on 14 May 1945:

On the night of 28 April 1945 the Führer dictated his will to his secretaries Christian and Junge. The will was typed in three or four copies. On the morning of 29 April 1945 Major Johannmeier was sent with these wills to the commander of the Central Army Group, Field Marshal Schörner, to Sander, to Grand Admiral Dönitz, and to Field Marshal Kesselring.

A few days before the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler was outlining the victorious course he anticipated the war would take and told Goebbels, who noted it in his diary, ‘When we are the victors, who will question our methods?’ (15 June 1941)

But it was defeat that came to Berlin and, evading responsibility, Hitler began his ‘political testament’ with the usual professions of love for the German people, declaring that he was without blame for the war that broke out.

It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. Those who wanted and sought it were exclusively foreign statesmen – Jews or people acting in the interests of the Jews.

At this last hour, his reflex was to blame the Jews. We have, however, only to leaf through Mein Kampf, a book permeated by justification of war and vengeful passion, to be persuaded that war lay at the very foundations of the doctrine of National Socialism. Its practice confirmed that unambiguously. Hitler himself goes on to give the lie to his cheap preamble in his farewell letter to the chief of staff of the Wehrmacht High Command, Field Marshal Keitel. Having brought ruin upon Germany and a catastrophic defeat upon the army, Hitler in concluding his missive insists that the goal remains unaltered: conquest for the German people of lands in the east. He enjoins the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force to use every means to rouse the spirit of resistance and National Socialist faith in the soldiers and to fight to the death.

In the testament he expels Göring and Himmler from the Party and appoints Admiral Dönitz president. The crowning absurdity is Hitler’s formation in the testament of a government headed by Goebbels, whom he appoints Reich chancellor. For Bormann he invents the new portfolio of minister of the Party. He charges the new government and its leader, Goebbels (who, as Hitler knew perfectly well, was never going to get out of Berlin), to continue the war, to adhere to the race laws to the end, and to combat world Jewry.

Everything is just as it was when Hitler started out: the Master Race, the conquest of territorial living space, Lebensraum, the anti-Semitism, the waging of war.

Goebbels accepted his short-lived promotion, a reward for loyalty, as Eva accepted her wedding. He had finally beaten all his rivals and reached the pinnacle of his career.

The exploding shells shaking the concrete shelter proclaimed that these were the last hours of the Third Reich.

On the evening of 29 April, General Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, came to the Führerbunker and reported the situation: the troops were totally exhausted and the situation of the population was desperate. In his opinion, the only possible solution now was for the troops to withdraw from Berlin and break out of the encirclement. Weidling asked Hitler for permission to begin the break out.