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

With one cross I am indicating on the photo where the bodies of Hitler and Braun were burned, with two crosses the place where they were buried, and with three crosses the emergency exit from Hitler’s bunker.

The next time I saw that photo with Mengershausen’s crosses on it was in the Council of Ministers Archive.

I was told later at front headquarters that SS officer Mengershausen, when he was taken there, told them in his written testimony that he not only watched the Führer being cremated but was also involved in it himself. What exactly that consisted of I did not hear at the time, and found nothing he had written about it among the archive documents. But then, in a manuscript written by his superior, Rattenhuber, I read,

The bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun did not burn well, and I went downstairs to arrange for more fuel to be sent. When I came back up, the bodies had already been sprinkled with a little soil. The sentry Mengershausen told me it was impossible to stand at his post because of the intolerable smell and that he, together with another SS soldier, had, on the instructions of Günsche, pushed them into a pit where Hitler’s poisoned dog lay.

Going on to describe the behaviour of those in the shelter, who set about preparing to escape the moment they became aware of the Führer’s death, Rattenhuber once more mentions Mengershausen.

I was startled by the cold calculation of SS guard Mengershausen, who made his way into Hitler’s office and removed a gold badge from the Führer’s tunic, which was draped over a chair, hoping that ‘They’ll pay a good price for this relic in America.’

Mengershausen’s testimony was the missing link we had needed in order to produce an evidence-based reconstruction of the last hours of Hitler’s life and the exact nature of his death. It was time to summarize. Reports that Hitler had been positively identified went first to front headquarters, and from there to the top.

The people involved in this investigation had a sense of great personal responsibility to obtain irrefutable evidence, recognizing only too well that a lack of clarity about Hitler’s death would be harmful. It could only facilitate his intention of disappearing without a trace, turning into a myth, and thereby fuelling the fanaticism and galvanizing the Führer’s adherents. Nazism was very centred on Hitler personally, and the peoples of the USSR, who had put everything they had into winning the victory over Nazism, had an inalienable right to know that the last full stop had been written in this history.

Having obtained incontrovertible evidence, I really believed that all the nonsensical rumours would be swept away and truth would prevail. I wrote a brief letter to my family, which they have preserved, to say that I had taken part in an important mission, that we would shortly be returning to Moscow, and I would see them soon.

I was sure we would be sent to Moscow with all the data and principal witnesses to the identification. I was sure that Käthe Heusermann, for her services to history, would be appreciated and rewarded. Nothing stirred. Everything stayed just as it was. Now what was going to happen?

Hitler – corpse or legend? We moved to Finow, a small town near Berlin, and then our Colonel Gorbushin was told specifically by Colonel Andrey Miroshnichenko, [1] Head of the Smersh counterintelligence section of our 3rd Shock Army. that too much time was being spent on all this messing about with dead bodies and he should stop. Vasiliy Gorbushin departed for Flensburg, as a member of the Allied delegation to accept Dönitz’s surrender. He entrusted to Major Bystrov the task of ensuring the safety of our ‘trophies’. They were secretly moved to Finow and buried, still in their crates.

A few days later, on 18 May, a general appeared from General Headquarters, flanked by Lieutenant General Alexander Vadis, [2] Head of the Smersh counterintelligence directorate of the 1st Byelorussian Front. Birstein, pp. 306–7. Andrey Miroshnichenko and other bigwigs from front and our army headquarters, with, we were told, instructions from Stalin to check everything relating to Hitler’s death and return with a report. Miroshnichenko could have been in big trouble for failing to realize that Stalin’s reluctance to make Hitler’s death public, or indeed to let anyone else know about it, did not indicate that he was prepared to take the fact on trust, without having everything thoroughly verified by his personal representative. Stalin wanted to ‘own’ this secret all by himself.

There is a well known saying that in war a day lived is equivalent to three days in peacetime, but in those days of May 1945, even with the war over, the days were so busy and passed so rapidly they exceeded that score.

Something major was afoot. Käthe Heusermann and dental technician Fritz Echtmann had been arrested and brought in; SS bodyguard Harry Mengershausen, whom we had questioned, reappeared. A new investigation began. The whole identification and interrogation process restarted and was referred to as a ‘repetition’.

In these interrogations, Käthe Heusermann and Fritz Echtmann are referred to as ‘detainees’. This time, each interrogation was preceded by an official warning to me, as the interpreter, of my potential liability under Article such-and-such. At no time during the war, no matter what level I was translating for, had there been anything of that kind. This was new. In part, no doubt, it reflected the special burden of responsibility I bore in the interrogation, but it reflected no less the coming of a new, postwar era. During the war there had been more trust and less formality but, of course, a full seventeen days had elapsed since victory had been celebrated in Berlin.

The general studied everything, asked questions and listened attentively. He did not sign the records, but during breaks their text was forwarded verbatim to General Headquarters over the government’s special highsecurity communication lines. The records were signed by the assembled top brass and, in front of my eyes, I witnessed the brazen falsification of history. Anyone reading those documents would suppose Miroshnichenko was the leading figure in the investigation, the man who made history. It was straightforward fraud. Gorbushin is nowhere in the records. The historian commentators, bless them, are unaware that he had been sent off to Flensburg as a member of the Allied Commission.

At the end of the second day, this terribly senior investigation reached its climax. Picture the scene: a small town, the gentle light of evening, and a strange procession on its way to the city outskirts. There, in sparse woodland, during the curfew to ensure no snoopy spy among the local townsfolk should witness the deed, the crates containing the remains brought from Buch had been committed to the earth and a covert 24-hour guard deployed. Now Major Bystrov again walks ahead, showing the way. Behind him, the general, the Supreme Government Inspector, so to speak. Next, the military. Next, Hitler’s dentists Heusermann and Echtmann. Next the Führer’s bodyguard, Mengershausen, then some others.

Hardly speaking among ourselves, we walk slowly, oppressed by knowledge of what is imminent, our approaching confrontation of the mystery that always surrounds death. Finally we enter the woodland. The crates have already been exhumed.

Another report is compiled. All present, the Germans as well as the Soviet military (except for the general), sign. This report, compiled in the presence of his nuncio, is for Stalin himself.

The materials discovered by the investigation, the irrefutable proof of Hitler’s death, namely his jaw and his denture, are readied before my eyes to be sent to front headquarters and thence, presumably, to Moscow with the general, who departs shortly afterwards.