Christa Schroeder - He Was My Chief - The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Secretary

AT THE END OF June 1934 a large number of secret machinations was afoot. Hitler had gone to Essen as witness to the marriage of Gauleiter Terboven. [37] Hitler attended the wedding ceremony with Göring on 28 June 1934 and afterwards visited the Krupp works at Essen. On the evening of 28 June in Berlin I received telephoned instructions to fly by Ju 52 that night from Tempelhof aerodrome to Godesberg. We took off at about 0300. Goebbels was aboard with some of his staff. It was my first flight high above the clouds and I was enchanted by the sight; I seemed to be over a white, foaming sea. I was still in this dreamy state when I arrived at Hotel Dreesen, where I was soon awakened to raw reality. Chief adjutant Brückner gave me the job of making telephone reservations at Hotel Hanselbauer, Bad Wiessee, for some high-ranking SA leaders for the next day. No explanation was given why .There was nothing you could put your finger on, but one could sense something in the wind. Hitler was not visible; he had conferences to attend.

In the early hours of 30 June, without previous warning, we received orders to fly to Munich. Hitler was in the first aircraft to go. He was accompanied by his closest staff: Brückner, Schaub, Reich press chief Dr Dietrich, Goebbels and the officials of the Criminal-Police Division [38] In March or April 1933 Hitler formed a ‘Police Commando for Special Purposes’ headed by Johann Rattenhuber, a lieutenant in the Bavarian provincial police force and from 10 March 1933 adjutant to Himmler as president of police. The squad, all from Munich, was eight strong and worked alongside Hitler’s bodyguard, the SS-Begleitkommando . By 1944, designated RSD (Reich Security Service) it had grown in size to 250 men. under Rattenhuber. I flew in the second aircraft, the only woman present amongst the SS-Begleitkommando (bodyguard) under Gesche, which always took off a little later than Hitler’s aircraft. When we arrived in Munich something unexpected occurred. Bruno Gesche had not been informed of where to go from Munich. The adjutants had simply forgotten to tell him. Gesche was scratching his head as to how to proceed and I mentioned to him the SA conference at Wiessee set for that day, intending that to be a clue for him. Gesche had already asked if there were any orders left for him at Hitler’s flat in the Prinzregenten-Platz but had drawn a blank.

We were all still in the dark when, after a long drive to Bad Wiessee, we entered the foyer of the Hotel Hanselbauer to find there the same oppressive atmosphere we had sensed in Godesberg. There was something in the wind but impossible to identify what. The Criminal-Police officials looked at me in surprise as I went up to SA chief of staff Röhm, who was sitting in a winged-back armchair, his fine shepherd dog resting alongside him, gave him the friendliest handshake and said: ‘ Heil Hitler, Stabschef !’ What must he and the police have thought? I had no inkling of what had transpired beforehand, that Hitler himself, only half an hour previously, had roused his former friend Röhm for his bed and had him arrested.

We, the occupants of the second aircraft, knew nothing of the main drama which had played out in the Hotel Hanselbauer, being left only with this scene in the reception lounge. After Rattenhuber had briefly updated Gesche on events, we had to almost do an about-face and get back in our cars. Röhm and other arrested SA leaders were driven at once to Munich in Hitler’s convoy of vehicles. [39] Hitler’s driver Erich Kempka stated postwar that Hitler went to Bad Wiessee with his staff and the police commando only. The SS-Begleitkommando was left in the dark, a fact of which they took a dim view. Hitler, in the leading car, stopped all vehicles coming from the opposite direction (mostly containing SA leaders I had told to proceed to Wiessee), had them get out and personally tore the shoulder straps from their uniforms. I saw this perfectly clearly from where I sat in one of the cars to the rear. Those arrested were slotted into Hitler’s column of vehicles in their own car but under guard.

The journey, interrupted by various stops of a similar nature, ended in the courtyard of the Braunes Haus on Brienner Strasse 45, where a Reichswehr company had paraded, and saluted Hitler. Hitler, visibly moved, delivered a brief address from which one phrase has stuck in my mind: ‘I am pleased◦– or I am proud, that I have you!’ Meanwhile alarming news had filtered through, talk being of shootings at Stadelheim [40] On 30 June 1934 at Stadelheim prison, Munich, the SA leaders Uhl, von Spretti, Heines, Hayn, Heydebreck, Schneidhuber and Schmidt were shot. Other executions followed next day at Dachau concentration camp and elsewhere. The official list has eighty-three names, but the actual number of victims was greater. amongst other things. The event of that day which remains imprinted indelibly in my memory was my meeting alone with Hitler in the SS-Begleitkommando dining room at the Radziwill Palace. After the return to Berlin I had gone to the dining area at the Reich Chancellery for a snack. I was sitting at a table all alone when the door opened and Hitler came in. He glanced at me, sat himself near me at the oval table and, taking a deep breath, said: ‘So, I have bathed and feel as if newly born.’

I was very surprised at Hitler’s presence in this area, in the kitchen region, where I had never seen him before. This part of the kitchen was not on the way to his private apartment on the first floor of the palace. What had brought him there? What did he mean when he told me he felt ‘as if newly born?’ In his own dining room on the park side Goebbels and the other men of his staff were waiting for him, yet he sat with me, rather like a person who, having gone through some dreadful experience, has to say: ‘Thank God…’ This ‘feeling as if newly born’ was a ‘thank God’, a sigh of relief from Hitler delivered to somebody who knew nothing of the background particulars to the occurrence.

After 30 June 1934 people puzzled a lot over whether Röhm really had been planning a coup. Purely subjectively, in my opinion he had not, but after Himmler had inveigled his SS people into the police, Röhm probably wanted at least the status of a people’s militia for his uneasy and temporarily unemployed SA force. That would have been a breach of the political accord with France. Hitler wished to avoid difficulties in that direction and feared that Röhm had a private political agenda. Judging by the files to which I had access later, and Röhm’s order to the SA of 10 June 1934, it cannot be ruled out however that it was his intention. The last paragraph of his order reads:

I expect that on 1 August the SA will be ready, fully rested and invigorated, to fulfil those honourable and onerous duties which Volk and Fatherland expect of them. If the enemies of the SA are hopeful that the SA will not become involved after their leave, or only partially, then we shall allow them this short, joyful respite. At the time and in the manner which appears necessary afterwards they will receive the appropriate answer. The SA is and remains the destiny of Germany.

This means that chief of staff Röhm had sent his 4.5 million SA men on leave, but as he did so threatened to strike out with a hefty paw. He spoke of ‘enemies of the SA’. According to this order by Röhm, the SA ‘fully rested’ would serve not ‘Führer and Reich’ as it was then the practice to say, but be at the disposal of ‘Volk und Vaterland’. What also struck me in this order was the absence of the usual salute ‘Heil Hitler!’ with which it was customary to conclude all official correspondence.