it only for occasional snatches of fresh air to let Blondi out for a few minutes in the Chancellery garden or to take lunch with his secretaries above ground.118 From then on, he seldom saw daylight. For him and his ‘court’, spending almost their entire existence in the confines of the underground headquarters, night and day lost most of their meaning.
Hitler’s day usually began around this time with the sound of air raid sirens in the late morning. Linge was instructed to wake him, if he were not already awake, at noon, sometimes as late as 1p.m.119 Often — probably affected by the unholy concoctions of pills, potions, and injections he had daily (including stimulants as well as sedatives) — he had slept, so he claimed, for as little as three hours.120 The air-raids made him anxious. He would immediately dress and shave. The outer appearance of the Fuhrer had to be maintained. He could not face his entourage unshaven and in night clothes even during an air-raid. The afternoons were almost exclusively taken up with lunch and the first of the lengthy twice-daily military briefings. The evening meal, usually not beginning until eight o’clock, sometimes later, frequently dragged out until late in the evening. Hitler sometimes retired for an hour or two, sometimes taking a sleep until it was time for the second military briefing. By now, it was usually la.m. By the end of the briefing — invariably stressful in the extreme for all who attended, including Hitler himself — he was ready to slump on the sofa in his room. He was not too tired, however, to hold forth to his secretaries and other members of his close circle, summoned to join him for tea in the middle of the night. He would regale them, as he had done throughout the war, for up to two hours with banalities and monologues about the church, race problems, the classical world, or the German character.121 After fondling Blondi and playing for a while with her puppy (which he had named ‘Wolf’), he would at last allow his secretaries to retreat and finally retire himself to bed. It was by then, as a rule, according to Linge’s planned schedule, around five o’clock in the morning, though in practice often much later.
A piece of pure escapism punctuated at this time Hitler’s daily dose of gloom from the fronts: his visits to the model of his home-town Linz, his intended place of retirement, as it was to have been rebuilt at the end of the war, following a glorious German victory. The model had been designed by his architect Hermann Giesler (who had been commissioned by Hitler in autumn 1940 with the rebuilding of Linz), and was set up in February 1945 in the spacious cellar of the New Reich Chancellery. In January 1945, as the failure of the Ardennes offensive became apparent, as the eastern front caved in under the Red Army’s assault, and as bombs rained down also on the Danube region in which Linz was situated, Giesler’s office was repeatedly telephoned by Hitler’s adjutants, and by Bormann. The Fuhrer kept speaking of the model of Linz, they told Giesler; when would it be ready for him to inspect?
Giesler’s team worked through the nights to meet Hitler’s request. When the model was finally ready for him to see, on 9 February, Hitler was entranced. Bent over the model, he viewed it from all angles, and in different kinds of lighting. He asked for a seat. He checked the proportions of the different buildings. He asked about the details of the bridges. He studied the model for a long time, apparently lost in thought. While Giesler stayed in Berlin, Hitler accompanied him twice daily to view the model, in the afternoon and again during the night. Others in his entourage were taken down to have his building plans explained to them as they pored over the model.122 Looking down on the model of a city which, he knew, would never be built, Hitler could fall into reverie, revisiting the fantasies of his youth, when he would dream with his friend Kubizek about rebuilding Linz.123 They were distant days. It was soon back to a far harsher reality.
He spoke with Goebbels early in February about the defence of Berlin. They discussed the possible evacuation of some of the government offices to Thuringia. Hitler told Goebbels, however, that he was determined to stay in Berlin ‘and to defend the city’.124 Hitler was still optimistic that the Oder front could be held. Goebbels was more sceptical.125 Hitler and Goebbels spoke of the war in the east as a historic struggle to save the ‘European cultural world’ from latter-day Huns and Mongols. Those would fare best who had burnt their boats and contemplated no compromises. ‘At any rate even a thought of capitulation is never entertained among us,’ noted Goebbels.126 Even so, with Hitler still adamant that the coalition against him would collapse within the year, Goebbels recommended putting out feelers for an opening to the British. He did not embroider upon how this might be achieved. Hitler, as always, claimed the time was not conducive to such a move. Indeed, he feared that the British might turn to more draconian war methods, including the use of poison gas. In such an eventuality, he was determined to have large numbers of the Anglo-American prisoners in German hands shot.127
On the evening of 12 February, ‘the Big Three’ — Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill — put out a communique from Yalta on the Crimea, where they had been conferring for a week, spending much of the time on the post-war shape of Germany and Europe.128 The communique left the Nazi leadership under no illusions about Allied plans for Germany: the country would be divided and demilitarized, its industry controlled, reparations paid; war criminals would be put on trial; the Nazi Party would be abolished. ‘We know now where we are,’ commented Goebbels.129 Hitler was immediately informed. He seemed unimpressed.130 He needed no further confirmation of his unchanging view that capitulation was pointless. The Allied leaders, he commented, ‘want to separate the German people from its leadership. I’ve always said: there’s no question of another capitulation.’ After a brief pause, he added: ‘History does not repeat itself.’131
The following night, the city centre of Dresden was obliterated. Hitler heard the news of the devastation stony-faced, fists clenched.132 Goebbels, said to have been shaking with fury, immediately demanded the execution of tens of thousands of Allied prisoners-of-war, one for each citizen killed in air- raids.133 Hitler was taken with the idea. Brutal German treatment of prisoners-of-war would, he was certain, prompt retaliation by the Allies. That would deter German soldiers on the western front from deserting.134 Guderian recalled Hitler stating: ‘The soldiers on the eastern front fight far better. The reason they give in so easily in the west is simply the fault of that stupid Geneva convention which promises them good treatment as prisoners. We must scrap this idiotic convention.’135 It took the efforts of Jodl, Keitel, Donitz, and Ribbentrop, viewing such a reaction as counterproductive, to dissuade him from such a drastic step.136
A few days later, Hitler summoned the Gauleiter, his most trusted Party viceroys, to the Reich Chancellery for what would prove to be a final meeting. The last time they had assembled was in early August of the previous year, shortly after Stauffenberg’s attempt on Hitler’s life. The present occasion was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the Party Programme in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich on 24 February 1920.
Hitler had frequently addressed the Gauleiter at moments of crisis during the past years. The real purpose of the present gathering was to rally the core of his support as the regime faced its gravest crisis. He had nothing resembling good news to impart. In the west, the Allies were pressing towards the Rhine. In the east, the counter-offensive launched a few days earlier in Pomerania offered no more than a fleeting ray of light in the deep gloom. Himmler’s Army Group Vistula was encountering that very day a renewed assault from the Red Army. The absence of Erich Koch, whose East Prussian Gau was almost completely cut off by the Red Army, and Karl Hanke, besieged in Breslau, was a reminder of the fate of the eastern provinces. And the cluster of Gauleiter pressing Martin Mutschmann, Gauleiter of Saxony, for news about Dresden, or their Party comrades from the Rhineland about the failure of the Ardennes offensive and the fighting in the west, told its own tale.
Hitler’s appearance, when he entered the hall at 2p.m. that afternoon, was a shock to many of the Gauleiter, who had not seen him for six months or so. His physical condition had deteriorated sharply even during the space of those six months. He was more haggard, aged, and bent than ever, shuffling in an unsteady gait as if dragging his legs. His left hand and arm trembled uncontrollably. His face was drained of colour; his eyes bloodshot, with bags underneath them; occasionally a drop of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth.137
Bormann had warned the Gauleiter in advance not to raise any criticism.138 There was, as ever, little likelihood of confrontation. But the sympathy at Hitler’s outward appearance did deflect from the initial critical mood.139 Perhaps playing on this, he gave up at one point an attempt to raise a glass of water to his mouth in a trembling hand, without spilling it, and made reference to his own debilitation. He spoke sitting down at a small table for an hour and a half, his notes spread out in front of him. He began, as so often, with the ‘heroic’ Party history. With present and future so bleak, he had come more and more to take refuge in the ‘triumphs’ of the past. He looked back now once more to the First World War, his decision to enter politics, and the struggle of National Socialism in the Weimar Republic. He lauded the new spirit created by the Party after 1933. But his audience did not want to hear of the distant past. They were anxious to know how, if at all, he would overcome the overwhelming crisis currently sweeping over them. As usual, he dealt only in generalities. He spoke of the approaching decisive hour of the war, which would determine the shape of the coming century. He pointed as usual
