Hitler's Last Days (22 page)

Hitler plans to kill himself with a cyanide pill. Until recently he was frightened that it would not work. So he ordered that a similar pill be tested on his beloved dog, Blondi, the German shepherd who has been by his side for much of the war. Her jaws were pried open by Sergeant Fritz Tornow, the F
ü
hrer's dog handler. A pair of pliers containing a capsule of hydrogen cyanide, the liquid form of cyanide, was placed in her mouth by Dr. Werner Haase, the professor who devised Hitler's own unique suicide technique.

Blondi is a large dog, seen by the F
ü
hrer as a symbol of German pride because she resembles a wolf. But she trusts her master and allows Haase to press the pliers together, breaking the capsule and spilling the acid onto her tongue.

Blondi dies instantly.

Dr. Haase immediately calls for Hitler so that he might see for himself the pill's effectiveness. The F
ü
hrer is speechless at the sight of Blondi lying motionless on the floor. He takes one look and leaves, going directly to his bedroom.

Now it's his turn.

After dismissing the staff, Hitler and Eva retire to his sitting room and close the door. Eva Braun sits down on the end of the couch, resting her head on the arm as if she is lying down to take a nap.

Hitler has been carrying his Walther 7.65mm pistol for the past few weeks, and now he chambers a round. History does not record the final words between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. They have known each other for sixteen years. She has seen him rise to power, just as she now sees his physical decline and the end of his dreams of power.

Eva is curled up like a cat on the right side of the sofa. Adolf Hitler takes a seat on the other end, pistol in hand. Eva's own revolver rests on a nearby table, next to a vase of flowers.

She goes first, sliding the cyanide pill out of the small brass lipstick-size vial and placing it between her teeth. She rests her head on the armrest again and bites down on the capsule.

To prevent the possibility of failure, Eva is now meant to place her small handgun to her temple and finish the job. But Eva has already made it clear she will not shoot herself. “I want to be a beautiful corpse,” she insisted to Hitler.

The bunker sitting room immediately smells of bitter almond, a scent commonly associated with cyanide. Eva Braun's body loses the ability to absorb oxygen. Her heart and brain, the two organs that need air the most, shut down in an instant. It is a death not unlike that suffered by the millions of Jews her new husband sent to the gas chambers. The Zyklon B gas that was used in the death camps is also a form of cyanide.

Seconds later, still curled up in the fetal position, Eva Braun is dead.

The F
ü
hrer then places his capsule between his teeth. At the same time, he points the gun at his right temple. He bites down and pulls the trigger a split second later.

His body sags to the side, until his torso hangs limp against Eva Braun's. The F
ü
hrer's pistol drops to the floor next to his foot. Blood pours from his shattered skull, dripping off the couch, forming a great crimson puddle on the floor.

Adolf Hitler, the man who murdered millions, has claimed his last victim.

Russian artillery battle their way into Berlin.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

 

EPILOGUE

THE BATTLE OF BERLIN

I
T WAS
12:45
ON THE
morning of April 23, 1945, when German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel announced to General Walther Wenck that “the battle for Berlin has begun.” The city is now encircled by Soviet troops. Within the city, General Helmuth Weidling has about forty-five thousand men, boys, and veterans left. The days pass, and the Russians continue to strangle Berlin. There is no accompanying pincer movement by the Americans or British. It appears that the Soviets have the city to themselves. In fact, the western Allied armies have made an agreement that they will stay back from Berlin, although they are only sixty miles away, and let the Soviets take the city.

One thousand miles east, in Moscow, Joseph Stalin has foreseen the fall of Berlin. He signs a directive known as Stavka 11074, dictating that the First Belorussian and First Ukrainian armies will divide the city between them. Of his top generals, it will be Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov, the hero of Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow, who will get the honor of hoisting the Soviet flag atop the German Reichstag, the German parliament building.

Stalin's power is at its pinnacle. He has sent twenty armies, 6,300 tanks, and 7,500 aircraft to subdue Berlin. He has ordered that no brutality be spared the Germans. He wants maximum suffering inflicted.

There is no normal life in Berlin now. Food is short; homes are reduced to rubble; streets are filthy. People crouch in tunnels and churches to avoid bombings. The worst, however, is on the way. And as bad as the people of Berlin believe it will be, the truth will be far worse. The stories of the Russian soldiers' brutality will become legendary.

On April 30, the day that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide, the mortar and shell assaults intensified on the Reichstag. At 10:50 that night a huge Soviet flag, depicting the hammer and sickle, was placed on the rooftop. (The next day the placement was reenacted for photographers.)

A Russian soldier poses with the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

At 6
A.M.
on Wednesday, May 2, General Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin defense, walks across the front lines and surrenders to the Soviets. A German eyewitness recalls that “vans with loudspeakers drove through the streets ordering us to cease all resistance. Suddenly shooting and bombing stopped and the unreal silence meant one ordeal was over for us and another was about to begin.”

On May 2, 1945, General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin defense effort, emerges from a bunker to formally surrender.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

An estimated 80,000 Russians died or were missing after the Battle of Berlin. Civilian casualties are difficult to place, but it is estimated that 80,000 to 125,000 citizens of Berlin were killed. The number of German military casualties is a matter of debate. Early Soviet estimates were 460,000 killed and 480,000 captured, but later German estimates say 92,000 to 100,000 died.

AFTERWORD

T
HE BODIES OF
G
ERMAN
F
Ü
HRER
Adolf Hitler
and his wife,
Eva Braun
, were immediately wrapped in blankets and taken aboveground to be burned. Hitler was afraid that his corpse might otherwise become an exhibit in a Russian museum. Forty gallons of gasoline were used for the incineration. The Soviets confirmed the identity of the bodies within two weeks, but for years pretended to know nothing about Hitler's fate.

 

U.S. General George Patton
, commander of the Third Army, died on December 21, 1945, as the result of a car accident earlier in the month in Mannheim, Germany. He had been serving as commander of the Fifteenth Army in American-occupied Germany. He is buried at the American Cemetery just outside Luxembourg City with thousands of Third Army soldiers who fell during the Battle of the Bulge and in the advance to the Rhine. Patton's burial site became such a popular postwar attraction that the horde of visitors trampled the nearby graves. So on March 19, 1947, his body was exhumed and moved to the location where it now rests, in a solitary spot apart from the long rows of white crosses, at the very front of the cemetery. The location suggests that Patton is still leading his men.

An American soldier examines gasoline canisters that litter the ground above the bunker where Hitler and Eva Braun lived.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

The casket containing the body of General Patton is carried by an army half-track to a U.S. military cemetery in Hamm, Germany.
[Associated Press]

U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower
, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, returned home a hero. He did not believe that a military officer should interest himself in politics, so despite widespread popular support for an Eisenhower presidential candidacy in 1948, he accepted a position as head of Columbia University in New York City rather than run for office. However, he soon changed his mind. He was elected president of the United States in 1952 and served two terms. When doctors told him that his chain smoking was a hazard to his health, Eisenhower quit his four-packs-a-day habit cold turkey. He died of heart failure on March 28, 1969, at seventy-eight years of age.