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

Hitler refused.

How would such a breakthrough help? We will merely get out of one ‘cauldron’ into another. Do you think I want to skulk around and wait for my end to come in a peasant house or some such? It is better, in this situation, for me to remain and die here. After that they can break through if they want to.

There could, however, be no delay. Under the circumstances there was not an hour to lose.

‘Even if a path from the bunker to freedom had been cleared for him, he would not have had the strength to take advantage of it,’ said Hanna Reitsch later. But, completely routed, incapable of effective action, he put off the hour of his death, steadily diminishing the prospects of survival for those he was holding back.

The situation in the bunker was bizarre. Until the previous day what was required was loyally to confirm your readiness to die with the Führer. Now, after the distribution of the symbolic portfolios, it was to confirm your readiness to continue a lost war at the head of a Germany defeated and occupied by the enemy. An entrenched habit of obedience, of reverence for orders, and of imbecile automatism continued in some to function like clockwork.

On the night of 29 April Professor Haase, head of the Reich Chancellery hospital, was brought to Hitler. ‘Hitler showed Haase three small glass ampoules, each in the casing of a rifle cartridge,’ Rattenhuber, who was present, relates,

Hitler said the ampoules contained a lethal, instantaneous poison and that he had been given them by Dr Stumpfegger. He asked the professor how the effectiveness of the poison could be checked, and Haase replied that it could be tested on an animal, for instance, a dog. Hitler then proposed summoning Sergeant Major Tornow, who looked after his favourite dog, Blondi. When the dog was brought, Haase crushed an ampoule with pliers and poured the contents into the dog’s mouth, which Tornow held open. A few seconds later the dog began to tremble and it died after thirty seconds. Hitler ordered Tornow to check later that the dog was really dead.

When we left Hitler, I asked Haase what the poison in the ampoules was and whether it guaranteed instant death. Haase replied that the ampoules contained potassium cyanide, and that it was instantly and lethally effective.

That was the last time I saw Hitler alive.

Gertraud Junge, Hitler’s secretary, who retyped papers addressed to him, accompanied him on trips and took down his speeches in shorthand, said a month later,

On 30 April Hitler assembled Goebbels, Krebs and Bormann, but I do not know what they talked about. I was summoned to Hitler later by his valet Linge, I think. I do not remember exactly. When I went in to see Hitler, all the persons named were there, all standing. Hitler said goodbye to me and said the end had come and that everything was now over. After that I left the office and went up the stairs to the upper landing. I did not see Hitler again. This was on 30 April, between 15.15 and 15.30 hrs.

On 30 April it was reported that the Russians were within 200 metres of the main Wilhelmstrasse entrance to the Reich Chancellery. In the past this had always been besieged by journalists. (Goebbels, four years earlier, had bypassed it, secretly entering the underground complex through the emergency exit for his clandestine meeting with the Führer.) It was 3.30 p.m. Berlin time. That was the moment when the ampoule of poison came into play. A fateful time by the hands of the clock! It had been at 3.30 a.m. on 22 June 1941 that, on Hitler’s orders, Germany began its war against the Soviet Union.

Death is death, and the bodyguards now carried the body out through the emergency exit of the concrete shelter to burn it, as they had been ordered to by Hitler. The doctor present in the bunker was not called.

Rattenhuber wrote later,

On the day before, Hitler called me, Linge and Günsche and told us in a barely audible voice that his body and that of Eva Braun were to be burned. ‘I do not want our enemies to display my body in a panopticon.’ I found this statement strange, but then I was told that on 29 April Hitler had received the news of the death of Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci in Milan, who had fallen into the hands of Italian partisans. Perhaps the circumstances of Mussolini’s death caused Hitler to decide his body should be burned.

Much the same words were repeated to Günsche:

After my death, my body is to be burned, because I do not want my body to be displayed, exhibited later.

How events unfolded on that day, 30 April, was described by three of the surviving witnesses: Hitler’s adjutant, Otto Günsche; the head of his bodyguard, Hans Rattenhuber; and his valet, Heinz Linge. [1] Birstein reports that during the Battle of Berlin, NKVD operatives arrested Hitler’s pilot, Hans Baur; his adjutant, Otto Günsche; and his valet, Heinz Linge. ‘They were held in NKVD/MVD prisons in Moscow, separately from Smersh prisoners, and brutally interrogated.’ Birstein, p. 308.

Günsche: At 15.30 he was at the door of Hitler’s anteroom, together with the chauffeur, Kempka, and the commander of the Führer’s personal SS bodyguard, Franz Schädle.

We stood for some time without moving. The reception door was suddenly opened slightly and I heard the voice of the Führer’s valet, SS Sturmbannführer Linge, who said, ‘The Führer is dead.’ Although I had not heard a shot, I immediately went through the anteroom to the meeting room and told the leaders there, word for word, ‘The Führer is dead.’

Rattenhuber:

At this time, the territory of the Reich Chancellery was already being subjected to Russian small arms fire. I went into Hitler’s anteroom and left again several times on business, as the situation was extremely tense; I considered it my duty personally to ensure that the shelter was properly protected, because at any minute we could expect the Russians to break through into the territory of the Reich Chancellery. At approximately 3–4 o’clock in the afternoon, when I went into the anteroom, I detected a strong smell of bitter almonds. (Potassium cyanide.)

His deputy, Peter Högl, told Rattenhuber that Hitler had committed suicide. The Führer’s valet, Linge, came to him and confirmed it. ‘My nervous tension gave way to depression, and for a time I could not recompose myself.’

Linge:

I spread a blanket on the floor… wrapped Hitler’s body in it, and together with Bormann we transferred it to the garden.

Günsche: After he announced to those waiting in the meeting room for the end, ‘The Führer is dead’,

they stood up and came out with me to the anteroom, and there we saw two bodies being carried out, one was wrapped in a blanket, as was the other, but not completely… The Führer’s feet were protruding from one blanket. I recognized them by the socks and shoes he always wore. From the other blanket feet protruded and the head of the Führer’s wife was visible.

Günsche helped to carry them out.

Rattenhuber:

I was shaken out of the stupor I was in by a noise and saw that from Hitler’s private room, Linge, Günsche, the Führer’s chauffeur Kempka, and two or three SS men, accompanied by Goebbels and Bormann, had brought out the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun wrapped in grey blankets. Pulling myself together, I went behind them to follow on his last journey the man to whom I had devoted twelve years of my life.

Linge:

I was holding the body by the legs, and Bormann by the head. Eva Braun’s body was carried by two others; it too was wrapped in a blanket.

Günsche:

Both bodies were carried out through the emergency exit of the Führer’s concrete shelter into the garden.

Rattenhuber: