Nevertheless, Hitler undertook one last attempt to ascertain the possibilities of relief, even at this late hour. With nothing heard throughout the day of Wenck’s progress (or lack of it), he cabled five questions to Jodl in the most recent OKW headquarters in Dobbin at eleven o’clock that evening, asking in the tersest fashion where Wenck’s spearheads were, when the attack would come, where the 9th Army was, where Holste’s troops were, and when
Keitel’s reply arrived shortly before 3a.m. on 30 April: Wenck’s army was still engaged south of the Schwielow Lake, outside Potsdam, and unable to continue its attack on Berlin. The 9th Army was encircled. The Korps Holste had been forced on to the defensive.146 Keitel added, below the report: ‘Attacks on Berlin not advanced anywhere.’147 It was now plain beyond any equivocation: there would be no relief of the Reich capital.
Hitler had, in fact, already given up. Before 2a.m. he had said goodbye to a gathering of around twenty to twenty-five servants and guards. He mentioned Himmler’s treachery and told them that he had decided to take his own life rather than be captured by the Russians and put on show like an exhibition in a museum. He shook hands with each of them, thanked them for their service, released them from their oath to him, and hoped they would find their way to the British or Americans rather than fall into Russian hands. He then went through the same farewell ceremony with the two doctors, Haase and Schenck, and the nurses and assistants, who had served in the emergency hospital established below the New Reich Chancellery.148
At dawn, Soviet artillery opened up intensive bombardment of the Reich Chancellery and neighbouring buildings. Hitler inquired soon afterwards of the commandant of the ‘Citadel’, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Mohnke, how long he could hold out. He was told for one to two days at most.149 In the last briefing, in the late morning, Berlin’s commandant, General Weidling, was even more pessimistic. Munition was fast running out; air- supplies had dried up and any replenishment was out of the question; morale was at rock-bottom; the fighting was now in a very small area of the city. The battle for Berlin would in all probability, he concluded, be over that evening. After a long silence, Hitler, in a tired voice, asked Mohnke’s view. The ‘Citadel’ commandant concurred. Hitler wearily levered himself out of his chair. Weidling pressed him for a decision on whether, in the event of a total ammunitions failure, the remaining troops could attempt to break out. Hitler spoke briefly with Krebs, then gave permission — which he confirmed in writing — for a break-out to be attempted in small numbers. As before, he rejected emphatically a capitulation of the capital.150
He sent for Bormann. It was by now around noon. He told him the time had come; he would shoot himself that afternoon. Eva Braun would also commit suicide. Their bodies were to be burnt. He then summoned his personal adjutant, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Gunsche. He did not want to be put on display in some waxworks in Moscow, he said. He commissioned Gunsche with making the arrangements for the cremation, and for ensuring that it was carried out according to his instructions. Hitler was calm and collected. Gunsche, less calm, immediately rushed to telephone Hitler’s chauffeur, Erich Kempka, to obtain as much petrol as was available. He impressed upon him the urgency. The Soviets could reach the Chancellery garden at any time.151
Hitler took lunch as usual around 1 p.m. with his secretaries, Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, and his dietician Fraulein Manziarly. Eva Braun was not present. Hitler was composed, giving no hint that his death was imminent. Some time after the meal had ended, Gunsche told the secretaries that Hitler wished to say farewell to them. They joined Martin Bormann, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, General Burgdorf and General Krebs, and others from the ‘inner circle’ of the bunker community. Looking more stooped than ever, Hitler, dressed as usual in his uniform jacket and black trousers, appeared alongside Eva Braun, who was wearing a blue dress with white trimmings.152 He held out his hand to each of them, muttered a few words, and, within a few minutes and without further formalities, returned to his study.
Eva Braun went into Magda Goebbels’s room with her. Magda, on whom three days earlier Hitler had pinned his own Golden Party Badge — a signal token of esteem for one of his most fervent admirers — was in a tearful state. She was conscious not only that this was the end for the Fuhrer she revered but that within hours she would be taking, as well as her own life, the lives of her six children, still playing happily in the corridors of the bunker. Highly agitated, Magda immediately reappeared, asking Gunsche to speak to Hitler again. Hitler somewhat grudgingly agreed and went in to see Magda. It was said that she begged him a last time to leave Berlin. The response was predictable and unemotional. Inside a minute, Hitler had retreated behind the doors of his study for the last time. Eva Braun followed him almost immediately. It was shortly before half-past three.153
For the next few minutes, Goebbels, Bormann, Axmann (who had arrived too late to say his own farewell to Hitler) and the remaining members of the bunker community waited. Gunsche stood on guard outside Hitler’s room.154 The only noise was the drone of the diesel ventilator. In the upstairs part of the bunker, Traudl Junge chatted with the Goebbels children as they ate their lunch.155
After waiting ten minutes or so, still without a sound from Hitler’s room, Linge took the initiative. He took Bormann with him and cautiously opened the door. In the cramped study, Hitler and Eva Braun sat alongside each other on the small sofa. Eva Braun was slumped to Hitler’s left. A strong whiff of bitter almonds — the distinctive smell of prussic acid — drifted up from her body. Hitler’s head drooped lifelessly. Blood dripped from a bullet-hole in his right temple. His 7.65mm Walther pistol lay by his foot.156
‘Europe has never known such a calamity to her civilisation and nobody can say when she will begin to recover from its effects.’
Hitler was dead. Only the last obsequies remained. They would not detain the inhabitants of the bunker for long. The man who, living, had dominated their existence to the last was now merely a corpse to be disposed of as rapidly as possible. With the Russians at the portals of the Reich Chancellery, the bunker inmates had thoughts other than their dead leader on their minds.
Within minutes of the deaths being established, the bodies of Adolf Hitler and his wife of a day and a half, Eva Braun, were wrapped in the blankets that Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet, had quickly fetched. The corpses were then lifted from the sofa and carried through the bunker, up twenty-five feet or so of stairs, and into the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Linge, helped by three SS guards, brought out the remains of Hitler, head covered by the blanket, his lower legs protruding. Martin Bormann carried out Eva Braun’s body into the corridor, where Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur, relieved him of his burden. Otto Gunsche, Hitler’s personal adjutant, and commissioned with overseeing the burning of the bodies, then took over on the stairs and carried Eva Braun up into the garden. He laid the bodies side by side, Eva Braun to Hitler’s right, on a piece of flat, open, sandy ground only about three metres from the door down to the bunker. It was impossible to look around for any more suitable spot. Even this location, close to the bunker door, was extremely hazardous, since an unceasing rain of shells from the Soviet barrage continued to bombard the whole area, including the garden itself. General Hans Krebs, Hitler’s last Chief of the General Staff, Wilhelm Burgdorf, his Wehrmacht adjutant, Joseph Goebbels, newly-appointed Chancellor of what was left of the Reich, and Martin Bormann, now designated Party Minister, had followed the small cortege and joined the extraordinary funeral party witnessing the macabre scene.
A good store of petrol had been gathered in the bunker in readiness. Kempka had himself provided, at Gunsche’s request, as much as 200 litres. More was stored in the bunker’s machine-room. The petrol was now swiftly poured over the bodies. Nonetheless, as the hail of shells continued, setting the funeral pyre alight with the matches Goebbels supplied proved difficult. Gunsche was about to try with a grenade, when Linge managed to find some paper to make a torch. Bormann was finally able to get it burning, and either he or Linge hurled it on to the pyre, immediately retreating to the safety of the doorway. Someone rapidly closed the bunker door, leaving open only a small crevice, through which a ball of fire was seen to erupt around the petrol-soaked bodies. Arms briefly raised in a final ‘Heil Hitler’ salute, the tiny funeral party hurriedly departed underground, away from the danger of
