Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

refugees, all clung on to life in the cellars, in packed shelters, and in underground stations as hell raged overhead.⁷⁸

As communications increasingly petered out — the lines to Jodl at OKH headquarters went dead for a time in the course of the evening⁷⁹ — ‘intelligence’ of troop movements in the city was gathered for the once-mighty Army High Command in the bunker by using the telephone directory to ring numbers at random. ‘Excuse me, madam, have you seen the Russians?’ ran the question. ‘Yes,’ would come a reply, ‘half an hour ago two of them were here. They were part of a group of about a dozen tanks at the crossroads.’⁸⁰

Despite the uneven contest, the regular troops, mostly insufficiently trained and badly equipped, often down to their last reserves of ammunition, continued the bitter struggle in Berlin’s streets. By the evening of 26 April, Soviet soldiers were close to Alexanderplatz, the very heart of the city. The Reich Chancellery in the government district, under heavy fire all day, was now less than a mile away.

A fresh moment of excitement gripped the inmates of the bunker during the early evening: the unexpected arrival of the wounded Colonel-General of the Luftwaffe Robert Ritter von Greim, propped up by his glamorous female companion, twenty years his junior, the flying-ace and test pilot Hanna Reitsch. Both were fervent, long- standing admirers of Hitler. Greim had been summoned two days earlier to Berlin.⁸¹ He and Reitsch had had to risk an extremely hazardous flight from Munich. Greim’s foot had been injured when their Fieseier Storch had been hit by artillery fire on approach to the centre of Berlin, and Reitsch had grabbed the controls and brought the plane down safely on the East-West Axis. They had then requisitioned a car to bring them to the Reich Chancellery. Propped up by Reitsch, the wounded Greim now limped painfully into the bunker. He still did not know why he had come.

Once his foot had been bandaged, Hitler came in to tell him. After railing at Goring’s ‘betrayal’, Hitler informed Greim that he was promoting him to Field-Marshal and appointing him as the new head of the Luftwaffe. It could all have been done by telephone. Instead, Greim had had to risk life and limb to receive the news in person. And, it seemed likely, he and Reitsch were now doomed to end their lives in the bunker. But far from being infuriated or depressed, or both, Greim and Reitsch were exhilarated. They begged to stay in the bunker with Hitler. They were given phials of poison, should the worst happen. But Hitler persuaded Greim that all was not lost. ‘Just don’t lose faith,’ Koller heard Greim say, when he telephoned the bunker. ‘It’ll all come to a good end. The meeting with the Fuhrer and his vigour have given me extraordinary new strength. It’s like the fountain of youth (Jungbad) here’. Koller thought it sounded more like a mad-house.⁸²

The briefing sessions were by this time much reduced in size and changed in character. Krebs was now the only senior military figure present. Goebbels had joined since taking up residence in the bunker. Hitler Youth Leader Axmann, General Weidling (responsible for the defence of Berlin), Vice-Admiral Vo? (Donitz’s liaison), Colonel Nicolaus von Below (the long-serving Luftwaffe adjutant), and SS-Brigadefuhrer Wilhelm Mohnke, just appointed by Hitler as commandant of the government quarter of Berlin (which had been dubbed ‘The Citadel’) were also present.

Discussion at the first meeting on 27 April, in the early hours, centred on the prospects of Wenck breaking through. He had reached the outskirts of Potsdam. But he had only three divisions at his disposal. He desperately needed reinforcements. The chances of Busse’s beleaguered 9th Army forcing their way north-westwards to join him were now slim in the extreme. But there were still hopes that troops under Lieutenant-General Rudolf Holste, to the north-west of Berlin, might fight their way south to link up with Wenck. Time was short. Krebs reported heavy street-fighting in the heart of the city. The Soviets had advanced on Alexanderplatz. They would soon have Potsdamer Platz in their sights; and that was where the bunker was situated. ‘May God let Wenck come!’ intoned Goebbels. ‘A dreadful situation crosses my mind,’ he added, grimly. ‘Wenck is located at Potsdam, and here the Soviets are pressing on Potsdamer Platz!’ ‘And I’m not in Potsdam, but in Potsdamer Platz,’ commented Hitler, laconically.’

His assessment of the situation was realistic: Wenck’s three divisions were not enough. They might suffice to take Potsdam, but they were only infantry divisions, lacking panzer support, and not capable of breaking their way through the Soviet tank units. Vo? breathed encouragement. ‘Wenck will get here, my Fuhrer! It’s only a question of whether he can do it alone.’ It was enough for Hitler to lapse into a new reverie. ‘You’ve got to imagine. That’ll spread like wildfire through the whole of Berlin when it’s known: a German army has broken through in the west and established contact with the Citadel (Festung).’ The Soviets, he thought, had suffered great losses, were suffering even more in the intense house-to-house fighting, and could only throw more troops into exposed forward positions. The thought sufficed: he had convinced himself that the situation was not wholly bleak. The constant explosions had kept him awake in recent nights. But he would sleep better tonight, he said. He only wanted to be awakened ‘if a Russian tank is standing in front of my cabin’ so that he had time to do what was necessary.⁸³

The second briefing of the day began with Mohnke announcing that the first enemy tanks had managed to penetrate to the Wilhelmsplatz, the heart of the government quarter. They had been repulsed — on this occasion — but time was running out. Krebs reckoned the bunker residents had no more than about twenty-four to twenty-six hours; the link-up between the armies of Wenck and Busse had to take place within that time if there was to be any hope. Hitler inwardly knew, however, that this would not happen. He repeatedly bemoaned ‘the catastrophic mistake’ of the 9th Army, which he blamed for ignoring his orders and trying to penetrate the Soviet lines in the wrong direction. The faint hopes from the remaining forces in the north, those of Holste and Steiner (in whom Hitler had lost all confidence days earlier), were now also — realistically, if not in dreams — largely abandoned.

Despite a desperate plea from Keitel to throw everything into the relief of Berlin, Jodl had diverted the hard-pressed units of Holste and Steiner to fend off Soviet forces to the north of the capital. It was tantamount to giving up on Berlin.⁸⁴ Bormann scathingly commented in his diary, in remarks pointedly directed at Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler’s recognized reluctance to deploy Steiner’s SS corps to help save Berlin: ‘The divisions marching to our relief are held up by Himmler-Jodl! We will stand and fall with the Fuhrer: loyal into death. Others believe they have to act “from higher insight”. They sacrifice the Fuhrer, and their lack of loyalty — shame on them — matches their “feeling of honour”.’⁸⁵

Hitler and Goebbels relapsed into reminiscences. They were prompted by Mohnke’s remark, entirely without irony: ‘We haven’t quite brought about what we wanted in 1933, my Fuhrer!’ Hitler’s explanation — it had scarcely been in his mind at the time — was that he had come to power too early. A year or more later, at Hindenburg’s death, would have been the right time. To bring about a complete revolution, the old system needed to have revealed itself as utterly bankrupt. As it was, he had been forced to compromise with Hugenberg, Schleicher — not much of a compromise since the former Reich Chancellor had, in fact, had been murdered by Hitler’s henchmen at the time of the ‘Rohm affair’ in 1934 — and other pillars of the old order. By the time of Hindenburg’s death, Hitler went on, the determination to rid himself of the conservatives had lessened, and the work of reconstruction was under way. ‘Otherwise, thousands would have been eliminated at that time,’ he declared. ‘It could have happened, if I had come to power through an express will of the people’ — presumably meaning a presidential election — ‘or through a putsch. You regret it afterwards that you are so good,’ he concluded.

This took the discussion inexorably once more back into pathos and an evocation of ‘heroism’. He was staying in Berlin, Hitler said, ‘so that I have more moral right to act against weakness… I can’t constantly threaten others if I run away myself from the Reich capital at the critical hour… I’ve had the right to command in this city. Now I must obey the commands of fate. Even if I could save myself, I won’t do it. The captain also goes down with his ship.’ Vo?, predictably, picked up the metaphor. Pathos and emotion got the better of him, too. ‘Here in the Reich Chancellery it’s just like the command-bridge of a ship,’ he implausibly ruminated. ‘One thing here applies to all. We don’t want to get away.’ (He would, ultimately, like most of the others, nevertheless seek to flee the bunker at the last moment.) ‘We belong together. It’s only a matter of being an upright community.’⁸⁶

IV

The news trickling in during the day could scarcely have been worse. Wenck’s troops, without assistance from the 9th Army (whose encirclement was by now accepted as practically a foregone conclusion), had been pushed back south of Potsdam. There was a ‘doomsday’ mood in the bunker, alleviated only by copious supplies of alcohol and food from the Reich Chancellery cellars.⁸⁷ Hitler told Below he had decided to give