Killing Hitler (49 page)

Authors: Roger Moorhouse

Tags: #History, #General, #Europe, #Western, #Germany

Hitler’s resolve to commit suicide was not, however, a snap decision. It was not, as some commentators have suggested, a knee-jerk reaction to an unfavorable turn of events. Indeed, there is every reason to conclude that Hitler had made the decision already on 22 April, when he committed himself to remain in Berlin for the duration. Only the exact timing of the final act remained to be fixed.

To a large degree, that timing would be dictated by the inexorable advance of the Soviets. But, beyond that, Hitler was still determined to follow his own agenda. Even, or perhaps especially, in death, he wanted to remain in control. He ordered many of his papers to be burned on the twenty-second. Three days later, he instructed his valet on the disposal of his personal effects. Two days after that, on the twenty-seventh, he called a macabre meeting of the bunker staff, where his plans for suicide were discussed. Yet, in spite of all that, it may be that it was the high-level defections of Göring and Himmler, demonstrating that even the Nazi inner circle had lost the will to fight, that determined the exact timing of Hitler’s death.

The night of the twenty-eighth, which followed the news of
Himmler’s unilateral peace offensive, was one of feverish activity. Hitler was tying up the loose ends of both his personal and political lives. His first pressing task was to marry his long-standing mistress, Eva Braun. For this purpose a civic registrar was required, who was duly hauled, bewildered and bedraggled, from a nearby
Volkssturm
detachment to officiate. The ceremony took place in the map room of the bunker. Braun wore a black silk gown; Hitler was in uniform. It was a brief service: the bridal pair declared themselves to be of pure Aryan descent and free from hereditary diseases. Bormann and Goebbels stood as witnesses. The party then retired to Hitler’s private suite, where they drank champagne and reminisced about happier times.

Hitler left the celebration to dictate his “political testament,” a long-awaited justification for his actions, intended presumably to provide inspiration to those still fighting and give succor to those who were not.
³¹During this period of reflection, it might have been appropriate for Hitler to cast a retrospective eye over his would-be assassins, if only to cover them once again with accusations of dishonor, treachery, and cowardice. He was aware of a few of them. Maurice Bavaud and Georg Elser were certainly well known to him, as was Claus von Stauffenberg, who had come closest to killing him. He may also have been made aware of Hans Oster’s conspiracy, unearthed during the latter’s interrogation and trial, concluded some weeks before.

However, there were many more assassins and enemy agents whose plottings had escaped Hitler’s attention. The attempts mounted by the Poles, for example, were as yet largely unknown; so, too, were the plans hatched by the NKVD in the Soviet Union and by the SOE and RAF in Britain. Closer to home, Hitler was also ignorant of the plots of some of his own officers. Tresckow, for instance, had taken his secrets with him to the grave, while Schlabrandorff had resisted all attempts to persuade him to implicate his confederates Gersdorff, Boeselager, Breitenbuch, and Bussche. Speer, too, had been predictably tight-lipped about his halfhearted plotting during his final meeting with Hitler some days earlier.

In short, notwithstanding the frenzy of bloodletting of the
previous autumn—much of which had still not reached its conclusion—Hitler was unaware of the sheer number of plots that had been hatched against him and was unaware of the scale of the German resistance. He was also unaware of just how fortunate he had been to avoid assassination. His security regime had been formidable, but it had not been without its failings. His survival had not been due, as he believed, to the intervention of providence; rather, it had been due to the ill-fortune of his enemies, or even his own devilish good luck. Though he often did not know it, Hitler had flirted with death numerous times. Had his speech in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in 1939 lasted only fifteen minutes longer, for example, he would have been killed by Georg Elser’s ingenious bomb. Had he dallied to take in the Armory exhibition in 1943, he would have fallen victim to the world’s first suicide bomber. And had the fuse in Tresckow’s “brandy bottles” not malfunctioned, Hitler would have been blown to oblivion in the skies above Byelorussia. It may be that this ignorance was bliss for the Führer, as it enabled him to pose, in his final act, as the beloved and respected leader of the “Aryan people” and to die, as he put it, “with a happy heart.”

If Hitler did entertain any thoughts for his would-be assassins, he certainly did not consign them to paper. His political testament would disappoint all those who were seeking profundity or revelation. It consisted of little beyond a final bilious rant against the Jews, who, he believed, had plunged Germany into war and would have to atone for their guilt. Speaking without interruption, his eyes fixed on the middle distance, Hitler criticized the British for their “warmongering” and fired a Parthian shot at Göring and Himmler, attacking their “disloyalty” and the “immeasurable harm” that they had done to Germany by their treacherous dealings with the Allies. He concluded by announcing his intention to remain in Berlin:

I cannot forsake the city which is the capital of the Reich…. I have decided therefore to remain in Berlin and there, of my own free will, to choose death at the moment when I believe the position of the
Führer
and Chancellor can no longer be held.
³²

Contrary to his usual custom of endless revisions and alterations to dictated text, he accepted the first draft as final.
³³There was simply no time for stylistic flourishes.

The following day, the twenty-ninth, was the calm before the storm. One eyewitness’s diary entry noted laconically: “29 April—We’re trapped here, we just sit waiting.”
³⁴Emissaries left the bunker to deliver Hitler’s testament to the newly appointed chiefs of the party, military, and government. Others sought to escape by proposing to make contact with the relief force that was being annihilated to the west of the capital. Hitler now freely gave his consent, adding: “Tell [them] to hurry or it will be too late.”
³⁵With Soviet troops now only 500 meters from the bunker, morale among those who remained sank to new depths. Talk of suicide was commonplace, and cyanide capsules were liberally distributed by the SS doctor. One member of the bunker entourage described himself as an “inhabitant of a morgue” where the corpses were stubbornly pretending to be alive.
³⁶

Death, however, was already casting its long shadow. That afternoon, news reached Berlin of the grisly fate of Mussolini, Hitler’s fellow fascist and onetime ally. Captured by Italian partisans, he had been beaten and shot before being strung up by the ankles from a Milan gas station, to be vilified by a baying mob. The news strengthened Hitler’s resolve to meet his end at a time of his own choosing. He reiterated the order that his body was to be burned, saying: “I will not fall into the hands of the enemy, dead or alive.”
³⁷Soon after, Hitler’s beloved Alsatian bitch, Blondi, was poisoned. Her five puppies were shot in the Chancellery garden. The six Goebbels children, meanwhile, were also being readied for death. That afternoon, they were told that they were to receive an injection to prepare them for a long journey. In due course, they would be sedated with morphine and given cyanide. Their mother believed that they could have no place in a world without Adolf Hitler.

That night, the commander of the Berlin garrison, General Weidling, attended his last situation conference in the
Führer-bunker.
He brought word of terminal ammunition shortages at the front and announced the impossibility of the situation. The Russians, he said, were making significant gains across Berlin and were currently only four blocks distant—less than 300 meters away. They would reach the Chancellery within twenty-four hours, he warned, while the capital itself would fall within two days at the outside. Hitler received the news in weary silence. Presently he gave his verdict: there was to be no breakout. The forces within the city were expected to fight to the last man.

The thirtieth of April 1945 was a day that had begun much like any other in the surreal world of the
Führerbunker.
Dawn had broken to the deafening cacophony of an intense Soviet artillery bombardment as the final advance on the Reichstag was begun. Hitler, who had retired to bed only shortly before dawn, rose unusually early, at around 6 a.m., and wandered listlessly through his quarters, past the still-sleeping figures of his adjutants and secretaries. He spent the morning attempting to marshal the last—largely imaginary—German armies, though the telephone line out of the bunker was barely functioning. He received General Krebs and SS Brigadier Mohnke, the military commander of the Chancellery district, and listened in silence to their dire predictions. The time had come. He instructed his personal adjutant on the arrangements for his cremation—200 liters of precious fuel were to be requisitioned for the task. After that, he lunched, as usual, with his secretaries and his cook. His new bride—who was happily calling herself Eva Hitler—had declined to join them, and they ate in a curious atmosphere of forced levity, listening, according to one account, to Hitler giving forth about the correct procedures for mating dogs. As one of the secretaries recalled, it was “a banquet of death under the mask of cheerful calm and composure.”
³⁸

After lunch, Hitler requested a final meeting with his entourage. He emerged from his private apartment in his trademark
brown tunic and black trousers. He looked tired and drawn, and he stooped more than usual. His left hand tremored uncontrollably. Eva followed close behind, elegantly coiffured and wearing Hitler’s favorite dress. The pair shook hands with each of the inner circle in turn. Few words were exchanged. Hitler mumbled, barely registering the former intimates before him. Eva smiled weakly and asked to be remembered to her beloved Bavaria. The pair then returned to their study and closed the heavy steel door behind them.

According to most accounts, there was now a lull of around twenty minutes, interrupted only by the vain last effort of Magda Goebbels to persuade Hitler to leave Berlin.
³⁹While the valets and adjutants waited outside the door, Hitler and Eva presumably composed themselves and said their own goodbyes. Eva was the first to die. Sitting demurely on the sofa, with her legs tucked beneath her, she opened the brass hull of a poison capsule, placed the glass vial of cyanide between her teeth, and bit down. The poison would have caused similar symptoms to a massive coronary. It was a quick death, but by no means the silent or dignified one she had desired. She would have suffered fits and convulsions and would have gasped for breath before losing consciousness. Hitler probably observed her death throes. He could not allow his new wife, by some quirk of fate, to survive him and be taken alive by the Soviets—the ultimate trophy of war. Once she was still—her body slumped over the arm of the sofa, her lips puckered and discolored—he sat down by her side, put his Walther pistol to his right temple, and squeezed the trigger.

Illustrations

Men of Hitler’s bodyguard formation, the RSD
(Imperial War Museum HU75384, reproduced by permission of the Imperial War Museum, London).

Hitler reviewing an honour guard of the SS Leibstandarte
(akg-images).

Maurice Bavaud
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin).

Georg Elser
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin).

The annual Nazi parade in Munich in 1938
(Ullstein).

Hitler speaking at the Bürgerbräukeller in November 1939
(Bavarian State Library, Munich).

The Bürgerbräukeller after Elser’s attempt
(Ullstein).

Hans Oster
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin).

Friedrich-Wilhelm Heinz
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin).

Erich Kordt
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin).

Wilhelm Canaris
(Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin).