Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

him.⁴³

For hard-headed military men like Karl Koller, the perspective was very different: Hitler was abandoning the German people at the time of their greatest need; he had renounced his responsibility to armed forces, state, and people at the most critical moment; it was dereliction of duty worse than many offences for which draconian retribution had been meted out.⁴⁴

There were indeed serious practical considerations following from Hitler’s hysterical behaviour. He had simply said he was staying in Berlin. The others should leave and go where they wanted.⁴⁵ He had no further orders for the Wehrmacht.⁴⁶ But he was still supreme commander. Who was now to give orders? Berlin was doomed for certain within a few days. So where were Wehrmacht Headquarters to be? How could forces simply be withdrawn from the western front without any armistice negotiations? After fruitless pleading with Hitler, Keitel decided to travel to the headquarters of General Wenck’s 12th Army. Hitler had finally agreed to sign an order to Wenck to abandon his previous operational plans — defending against the Americans on the Elbe — and march on Berlin, linking up with the remnants of the 9th Army, still fighting to the south of the city. The aim was to cut off enemy forces to the south-west of the capital, drive forward ‘and liberate (freikampfen) again the Reich capital where the Fuhrer resides, trusting in his soldiers’.⁴⁷ Wenck’s army had been hastily put together at the beginning of April. It was inadequately armed; its panzer support was weak; and many of its troops were poorly trained.⁴⁸ They were outnumbered by the Soviet troops facing them, and possessed only a quarter of the weaponry.⁴⁹ What Wenck was supposed to do in the unlikely event of breaking through to the centre of Berlin — other than bringing out Hitler, if need be by force (as Keitel later put it) — was left entirely unclear.⁵⁰

Hitler, his equilibrium now temporarily restored, was solicitous enough to make sure that Keitel was well fed before he set out on his journey. Jodl was meanwhile to take steps to ensure that part of the High Command of the Wehrmacht was immediately transferred to Berchtes-gaden, while the remainder would be moved to the barracks at Krampnitz, near Potsdam. Hitler’s overall direction would remain intact, maintained through telephone links to Krampnitz and Berchtesgaden. The regular briefings would continue, though with reduced personnel.⁵¹

In the bunker, meanwhile, Hitler had ordered Schaub to burn all the papers and documents in his private safe in the bunker. He was afterwards instructed to do the same in Munich and at the Berghof. After a perfunctory farewell from the master he had served for twenty years, he left Berlin and flew south.⁵² The bunker company had by now shrunk.⁵³ Those left behind consoled themselves with drink. They referred to the bunker as ‘the mortuary’ and its inmates as ‘a show house of living corpses’. Their main topic of conversation was when and how to commit suicide.⁵⁴

Remarkably, Hitler had regained his composure by the next morning. He was still venting anger at troops that seemed to have evaporated into thin air. ‘It’s so disgraceful,’ he fumed. ‘When you think about it all, why still live!’ But Keitel’s news about his meeting with Wenck had provided yet another glimmer of hope. Hitler ordered all available troops, however ill-equipped, to be added to Wenck’s army. Donitz had already been cabled the previous evening to have all available sailors as the most urgent priority, overriding all naval concerns, flown to Berlin to join the ‘German battle of fate (deutsche Schicksalsschlacht)’ in the Reich capital. Telegrams were also dispatched to Himmler, and to Luftwaffe high command to send their remaining reserves to aid the reinforcement of Berlin. ‘The enemy knows I’m here,’ Hitler added, referring to Goebbels’s proclamation to the Berlin people that day, telling them that the Fuhrer would remain in the city to lead its defence.⁵⁵ They would concentrate all their efforts on taking the capital as soon as possible. But that, thought Hitler, gave him a chance to lure them into the trap of Wenck’s army. Krebs reckoned they still had four days. ‘In four days the business has to be decided,’ agreed Hitler.⁵⁶

That afternoon, Albert Speer arrived back in the bunker. He had had a tortuous ten-hour journey to cover only 100 or so miles from the Hamburg area. He had quickly given up an attempt to drive along roads choked with refugees desperate to leave Berlin by any route still open, and flew first to the airfield at Rechlin in Mecklenburg, then on to Gatow aerodrome in the west of Berlin. There, he picked up a Fieseier Storch light aircraft, eventually navigating a landing on the East-West Axis approaching the Brandenburg Gate, the wide boulevard on which he had triumphantly paraded six years earlier during Hitler’s fiftieth birthday celebrations, now, its lampposts removed, converted into a makeshift landing-strip.⁵⁷ For weeks, as we have noted, Speer had been working with industrialists and generals to sabotage Hitler’s ‘scorched earth’ orders. Only two days earlier, in Hamburg, he had recorded an address — never, in the event, broadcast, and probably made with more than one eye on embellishing his own prospects in a world after Hitler — urging an end to the pointless destruction. But despite the growing alienation, Speer could still not break free of Hitler. The emotional bonds remained strong. After his unsung departure on the evening of Hitler’s birthday, the former Armaments Minister felt unhappy at ending their special relationship without an appropriate farewell. That was the reason for his wholly unnecessary, extremely hazardous flight back into the cauldron.⁵⁸

On his way to Hitler’s room in the bunker, he encountered Bormann. Not anxious to end his own days in the bunker catacombs, the Secretary to the Fuhrer implored Speer to use his influence to persuade Hitler to leave for the south. It was still just possible. In a few more hours it would be too late. Speer gave a non-committal reply. He was then ushered in to see Hitler, who, as Bormann had foreseen, lost no time in asking Speer’s opinion whether he should stay in Berlin or fly to Berchtesgaden. Speer did not hesitate. It would be better to end his life as Fuhrer in the Reich capital than in his ‘weekend house’, he said. Hitler looked tired, apathetic, resigned, burnt out. He had decided to stay in Berlin, he murmured. He had just wanted to hear Speer’s opinion. As the previous day, he said he would not fight. There was the danger that he would be captured alive. He was also anxious to avoid his body falling into the hands of his enemy to be displayed as a trophy. So he had given orders to have his body burnt. Eva Braun would die alongside him. ‘Believe me, Speer,’ he added, ‘it will be easy to end my life. A brief moment, and I am freed from everything, released from this miserable existence.’⁵⁹

Minutes later, in the briefing — by now a far smaller affair,⁶⁰ over much more quickly, and, because of communications difficulties, often lacking precise, up-to-date intelligence — Hitler, immediately after speaking of his imminent death and cremation, was again trying to exude optimism. Only now did Speer realize how much of an act the role of Fuhrer had always been.⁶¹

All at once, there was a commotion in the corridor. Bormann hurried in with a telegram for Hitler. It was from Goring. The report of the momentous meeting the previous day, which Koller had personally flown to Berchtesgaden to deliver verbally, had placed the Reich Marshal in a quandary. Koller had helped persuade a hesitant Goring that, through his actions, Hitler had in effect given up the leadership of state and Wehrmacht. As a consequence, the edict of 29 June 1941, nominating Goring as his successor in the event of his incapacity to act, ought to come into force. Goring was still unsure. He could not be certain that Hitler had not changed his mind; and he worried about the influence of his arch-enemy, Bormann. Eventually, Koller suggested sending a telegram. Goring agreed. Koller, advised by Lammers, drafted its careful wording, cautiously stipulating that, had Goring not heard by ten o’clock that evening, he would presume that the terms of the succession law would come into operation, and that he would take over the entire leadership of the Reich. He would take immediate steps, he told Koller, to surrender to the western powers, though not to the Russians.

His telegram to Hitler (with a copy to Below, the Luftwaffe adjutant still in the bunker) gave no inkling of disloyalty.⁶² But, as Goring had feared, Bormann was immediately at work to place the worst possible construction upon it. Hitler seemed at first unconcerned, or apathetic. But when Bormann produced another telegram from Goring, summoning Ribbentrop to see him immediately, should he have received no other directive from Hitler or himself by midnight, it was an easy matter to invoke the spectre of treachery once more. Bormann was pushing at an open door. For months, as we have had cause to note, Goebbels (and Bormann himself) had been the most prominent among those urging Hitler to dismiss Goring, portrayed as an incompetent, corrupt, drug-taking sybarite, single-handedly responsible for the debacle of the Luftwaffe and the air-superiority of the Allies which they saw as so decisive for Germany’s plight. Given Hitler’s extreme volatility, as the events of the previous day had demonstrated only too plainly, the uncontrolled torrent of rage at Goring’s ruination of the Luftwaffe, his corruption, and his morphine addiction was utterly predictable.

Savouring his victory, Bormann swiftly drew up a telegram, stripping Goring of his rights of succession, accusing him of treason, but refraining from further measures if the Reich Marshal resigned all his offices forthwith on health grounds. Goring’s agreement was received within half an hour.⁶³ But that evening, the once most powerful man in the Reich after Hitler was nevertheless put under house-arrest, the Berghof surrounded