Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler (35 page)

On combat patrol, the forward torpedo room was also crew quarters. With the stowed torpedoes removed and the normal crew of forty-four reduced to thirty-two, the compartment now provided a bare degree of comfort for Hitler, Eva, and Blondi, but the passengers’ privacy must often have been disturbed by sailors carrying out routine maintenance on essential equipment. Most of the crew of a U-boat, apart from specialists such as the radio operators, worked in eight-hour shifts. Crew space was always at a premium, privacy was nonexistent, and even with twelve of their shipmates transferred out the men of U-518 must have been unusually cramped during this voyage. They must also have felt constrained by the presence of the passengers—or of two of them, anyway. To have a dog on board a submarine was not absolutely unknown; Blondi was given the free run of the boat and became a firm favorite with the crew. She quickly got used to the tray provided for her toilet needs, but for humans using the toilet in a submarine was something of a trial.

On U-518, the
toilets
were equipped with a flushing supply from the sea, which emptied into a sanitary tank that was “blown into the sea periodically.” Normally there was only one toilet available until the
food
stored in the other two had been eaten. For this voyage the toilet in the forward torpedo room was kept for the exclusive use of the Führer and Eva Braun; it also had a metal cabinet with a mirrored front, which housed two fold-up washbasins. Fresh water was limited and strictly rationed, but water for washing was made available to the passengers—a privilege unknown to U-boat crews, for whom laundry had to wait, and liberal use of the standard-issue “Kolibri” cologne was ordered.

Food consisted mainly of canned goods supplemented by a bland soy-based filler called Bratlingspulver; the crew called it “diesel food,” due to its constant exposure to engine fumes. A major problem caused by running submerged for an entire patrol was the disposal of the garbage that inevitably accumulated on board, in humid and fetid conditions. Garbage could be dumped in small quantities from the ejector for the BOLD sonar decoy, but the usual practice was to store it in an empty forward torpedo tube for firing into the sea when safe to do so. After dark on May 4, 1945—two days after the “official” announcement of Hitler’s death, which caused some wry smiles aboard U-518—the boat anchored for four hours off the southwestern side of the uninhabited island of Branco, in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. Taking the opportunity to “air” the boat, Offermann allowed Eva Braun in particular to come up onto the bridge to smoke—she was finding the conditions aboard the submarine almost intolerable. For a fleeting moment four days later, at approximately 30°W, Offermann considered surfacing for the customary equator ceremony of “crossing the line,” but he quickly dismissed the idea. He had a rendezvous.

SS GEN. HERMANN FEGELEIN
arrived off the Argentine coast aboard U-880
on the night of July 22–23, some five days ahead of the Führer’s boat. The boat had maintained maximum speed throughout its journey to enable Eva’s brother-in-law to organize preparations for the Führer’s arrival. He transferred into a tugboat of the Delfino SA line about thirty miles off Mar del Plata in the early hours of July 23. Sailors from U-880 off-loaded forty small but heavy boxes, the size of ammunition chests, from the submarine onto the Delfino tug. U-880’s final service to the Reich had now been performed. The crew transferred to the tugboat, the last men opened the seacocks and scrambled to safety, and as they watched quietly their U-boat flooded with seawater and sank for the last time into the South Atlantic depths.

Meanwhile, in the tugboat captain’s cabin, Fegelein showered and shaved for the first time in fifty-four days. Fifteen minutes later, Fegelein was dressed in a sharp grey double-breasted suit, courtesy of Buenos Aires’s finest tailor. This had been brought aboard for him by Col. Juan Perón’s personal representative Rodolfo Freude, the son of the Nazi “ambassador” in Argentina, the wealthy businessman Ludwig Freude. For the trip to the shore the two men were joined in the wheelhouse by U-880’s other passenger, Willi Koehn, the chief of the Latin American division of the German Foreign Ministry and former head of the Nazi Party in Chile.

Koehn had last been in Buenos Aires in January 1944, when he had also made use of the regular U-boat run from Rota in Spain to Mar del Plata to bring in forty heavy boxes. Koehn was well known to the anti-Nazis in Argentina; three weeks after his arrival with Fegelein, democratic Argentine exiles in Montevideo, Uruguay, confirmed that
Koehn was back
in Argentina. This time he was in Patagonia, with “the knowledge of the Buenos Aires government.” He was not alone.

When Fegelein and Freude landed on the quay at Mar del Plata, a black Argentine navy staff car was waiting for them. A short while later the SS general and the Argentine Nazi boarded a
Curtiss Condor II
biplane—freshly painted in the colors of the Fuerza Aérea Argentina, established less than six months before—and took off. This Curtiss was one of four originally ordered by the Argentine navy in 1938; the type was renowned for its short take-off and heavy payload capability. It touched down again just half an hour later, on the grass airstrip at a German-owned ranch four miles from the coast near Necochea.

IN THE LAST days of the Nazi regime, Ernst Kaltenbrunner conducted the largest armed robbery in history against the wishes of Martin Bormann. Accordingly, he was denied an escape route and was left to face justice. Here, along with other Nazi leaders he stands trial in September 1946 at the Nuremberg International Tribunal for crimes against humanity. Seated in the middle row, from left to right: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, and Kaltenbrunner. He was condemned to death and hanged on October 16, 1946.

WITH THE BOMB-DAMAGED Old Reich Chancellery looming in the background of this photograph taken some time after 1945, the bodies of the Hitler and Braun doubles were soaked in gasoline and burned in the small depression visible halfway between the tree and the conical ventilation tower. The blockhouse and doorway were above the stairway and emergency exit of the Führerbunker. To the right of the ventilation tower is the ballroom of the Old Reich Chancellery, below which the Vorbunker was situated. Hitler used to walk his dog Blondi in this area of the Reich Chancellery gardens every day up until their escape.

NAZI MINISTER OF Propaganda Joseph Goebbels poses with his wife Magda, three of their six children, and the Führer at the Obersalzberg, 1938. The entire Goebbels family died in the Führerbunker on May 1, 1945, with the six children poisoned and their parents committing suicide. The bodies were burned in a funeral pyre in the Reich Chancellery garden—the same fate that befell the body doubles of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. The little boy is Helmut Goebbels, who was reputedly the bastard son of Magda Goebbels and Adolf Hitler following a passionate affair during a vacation on the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1934.

IN “HITLER’S” LAST official appearance, he left the safety of his bunker to hand out medals to members of the Hitler Youth in the Chancellery garden on March 20, 1945. In actuality this was the unfortunate Gustav Weber, whose uncanny resemblance to Hitler deceived even those quite close to him; on this occasion the National Leader of the Hitler Youth, Artur Axmann, was either taken in or warned to play along.

THE NAZI-FINANCED Gran Hotel Viena built on the isolated shores of Argentina’s inland sea, Mar Chiquita, now in ruins. Hitler and Eva visited the hotel’s hospital and health spa in 1946.

A MODERN-DAY aerial view of the town center of San Carlos de Bariloche, with its German-influenced architecture. In the background are Lake Nahuel Huapí and the Andes in the far distance, below which was situated “Adolf Hitler’s Valley.”