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

Having gone up the stairs, the SS officers put the bodies in a small pit near the entrance to the shelter. The constant shelling of the territory did not allow us to pay even minimal respects to Hitler and his wife. There was not even a national flag to cover their remains.

Günsche:

They were doused in petrol prepared by Reichsleiter Bormann.

Linge:

There we laid the bodies side by side at the entrance, each took a canister of petrol, and doused the bodies with it. At that time the grounds were under heavy Russian artillery and mortar fire, and we could not light the petrol with matches. Then I took cover in the entrance of the bomb shelter [i.e., the bunker], took some paper out of my pocket, lit it and handed it to Bormann. He threw the burning paper on the bodies, and the petrol ignited.

Rattenhuber:

A huge and terrible fire flared up.

Linge:

The bodies burned and turned a dark brown. We saluted and returned to the bomb shelter.

Bormann, Goebbels, Generals Krebs and Burgdorf, and Reichsjugendführer Axmann observed, hiding from the bombardment in the shelter, crowded on the stairs of the emergency exit from the bunker.

They did not comply with Hitler’s last order, to wait until the bodies had completely burned to ashes. The grounds of the Reich Chancellery were under heavy bombardment and it was dangerous to remain there.

Günsche:

After the bodies, doused with petrol, were lit, the door of the shelter was immediately closed against the heat and smoke of the fire. All present went back down to the anteroom… The door to the Führer’s private rooms was slightly ajar, and a strong smell of bitter almonds was coming from there…

Hitler’s death caused a sudden discharge of nervous energy in the tense atmosphere of the bunker. Cigarettes appeared, that no one would have dared to smoke while Hitler was alive. There was a grisly sense of excitement, with wine being drunk and preparations made to escape.

Rattenhuber:

The Führer was dead. Everybody in the bunker now knew that. To my surprise, the event did not have a depressing effect on everyone. Certainly, shots were heard here and there in nooks of the bunker as those who had lost all hope of being saved killed themselves. Most people, however, busied themselves with getting ready to flee.

Günsche: Even as the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burning,

I made for the meeting room. The new situation was being discussed there, and the Führer’s order according to which, after his death, we were to break out of Berlin in small groups. I heard that Reichsleiter Bormann wanted at all costs to try to make his way to Grand Admiral Dönitz in order to pass on to him the Führer’s last thoughts before he died. I do not know what thoughts were being referred to. After that I again left that room and went into the next room to rest a little.

Shortly afterwards Günsche heard that

General Krebs had been instructed to make contact with the Russian Marshal Zhukov in order to achieve a cessation of hostilities; accordingly, the breakthrough of the Berlin garrison was postponed. After that I returned to my room and after that put myself at the disposal of the combat group of SS Brigadeführer Mohnke.

This group was formed mainly from the Führer and SS escort battalions.

More hours passed as they waited for a response and anticipated an opportunity to get out of Berlin.

Bormann’s diary has an entry about the death of Hitler and Eva Braun under the date 30 April 1945.

On 1 May, evidently after Krebs returned, the entry consists of just one phrase: ‘Attempt to escape the encirclement!’ On that the diary ends.

At 18.00 hrs the previous day, Bormann had informed Grand Admiral Dönitz by radio-telegram that the Führer had appointed him, Dönitz, as his successor instead of Göring. Dönitz, not having heard of Hitler’s death, responded with effusions of devotion to the Führer and promised to come to his aid.

On 1 May at 07.40 hrs Bormann sent a top secret radio-telegram to Dönitz: the Führer’s will had come into force, but an official announcement should be postponed until Bormann himself arrived to see Dönitz.

Later the same day, at 15.00 hrs, he, jointly with Goebbels, sent Dönitz a last radio-telegram reporting the death of the Führer and his appointments to the top posts.

‘In the buffet corks were popping ,’ Rattenhuber writes, ‘as the SS men ratcheted themselves up before a desperate attempt to escape under Russian fire.’

The only people who remained were less fearful of retribution. All the others fled.

Voss:

SS Brigadeführer Mohnke, responsible for defending the area of the Reich Chancellery, saw that further resistance was useless and, in accordance with the orders of the commissioner for the defence of Berlin, assembled the remnants of his combat group, about 500 individuals. He was joined by surviving officials intending to fight their way out of the encirclement. All these people gathered by Dugout No. 3 at the Reich Chancellery… I was one of them.

The refusal Krebs brought back, and the words of Sokolovsky and Chuikov he reported – that, as agreed among the Allies, only unconditional surrender could be discussed – were the final catastrophe for Goebbels. He told Vice Admiral Voss that there was no point in him, with his limp and his children, even attempting to escape. He was doomed.

In fact, as I write about this now, I very much doubt he had any illusions about the possibility of an armistice. The British king had already rejected Himmler’s machinations out of hand. It was a fanatical careerist who sent Krebs to parley, purely in order to consolidate his place in history, Goebbels the second person in the Reich, Goebbels the Reich Chancellor, in case his emissaries to Dönitz proved unable to deliver the will.

He was no stranger to gestures and hypocrisy. In his will, Goebbels wrote that he was disobeying the Führer’s order to leave the capital and participate in the government he had appointed only because of his desire to be at the Führer’s side during these difficult days in Berlin.

In fact, however, for as long as Hitler was alive he did not allow Goebbels to leave him. When he decided on 22 April to remain in Berlin, Hitler surrounded himself with people devoted to him. It was he who, knowing Goebbels’ unquestioning obedience, ordered him to move, together with his wife and children, into the bunker.

Magda Goebbels told Dr Kunz and Hanna Reitsch that she had pleaded with Hitler at this time to leave Berlin. If Hitler had agreed in a timely fashion, both they and their children would have been able to get out. She must obviously have been thinking about that. There is testimony to the effect that she asked her husband to have the children evacuated in armoured personnel vehicles, but by that time it was impracticable.

Murdering his children if defeat seemed imminent was something Goebbels had thought about a long time ago, and imposed on his obedient wife. As early as August 1943 he advised his devoted adjutant, Wilfried von Oven, of his intention. Oven wrote later that ‘his thinking was directed to just one end: the effect on history.’ [1] Wilfried von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, Buenos Aires: Dürer, 1950.

Careerism was fundamental to Goebbels’ personality. Right up until the end of his life, he fusses tirelessly, backstabbing his rivals, portraying them in a bad light to the Führer and in his diary, and extolling himself at every turn in the expectation that his monstrous diary, which reads like misbegotten self-parody, will remain a primary source on the basis of which history will award points to fanatics inflamed by their own vanity.

In the farewell letter Magda Goebbels wrote from the Führerbunker to her elder son, Harald, ‘The world that will come after the Führer and National Socialism will not be worth living in, and that is why I also brought the children here. I could not bear to leave them for the life that will come after us, and a merciful God will understand me if I myself give them deliverance from it.’