Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

way,’ replied the general. ‘And that’s to denude the Elbe frontand deploy all our troops in the defence of Berlin. It’s just possible then that theAmericans won’t press their offensive.’41GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 913Surprisingly, Hitler agreed to this at once and ordered Keitel and Jodl out of thebunker to take personal command of this historic about-face by Wenck’s TwelfthArmy.Moving into Morell’s old quarters directly across the gangway from Hitler’s roomsand the map room—the physician took one of the last planes out that same night—Goebbels sent out a ‘Führer Order’ for Panzer-Bär to print the next day. ‘Anybodywho encourages or approves any move that weakens our power to resist is a traitor!He is to be shot out of hand or hanged! This order stands even if his moves are allegedto have been ordered by the gauleiter Reich minister Dr Goebbels or by the Führerhimself.’42 Berlin’s cable radio announced that Hitler was staying in Berlin.43That evening he fetched his family. Rach drove him and Magda, the children followedin a second car. They passed Ribbentrop’s car: he was leaving Berlin for thenorth.44 Down in the bunker Magda moved with her children into adjoining rooms,not caring that her matrimonial separation from her husband—whose room was onefloor below—thus became obvious to everybody. Traudl Junge took the children tothe store-room where Hitler’s birthday presents still lay in a heap while their motherwent to work her magic on the Führer.45 Later she wrote to Harald that Hitler hadtold her to flee Berlin. ‘But you know your mother,’ she wrote, ‘we’re of the sameblood. That was out of the question.’46 She sent Rohrssen back to pick up a few thingsat Schwanenwerder, then released him from his duties.47From now on Goebbels directed what was left of the propaganda battle by telephonefrom the bunker. His old gau HQ had been converted into an emergencyhospital as had the Adlon and the chancellery’s main Voss Strasse bunker. Here insemi-darkness surgeons operated on casualties from the increasingly close battle areas.The stench was overpowering, but through it all came the laughter and chatter ofthe six Goebbels children as they collected round their table perched on one of thelandings and waited for the two armies that their father and ‘Uncle Führer’ had promisedwere coming to rescue them. Many people offered to take Magda and the childrento safety under a Red Cross flag. Shortly before midnight on the twenty-secondProfessor Karl Gebhardt, head of the Red Cross, knocked on Goebbels’ door;914 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHSchwägermann, the adjutant, inched it slightly ajar and Gebhardt called out to ask ifhe should take the children out of the city. Goebbels said sleepily, ‘No, we’re stayinghere,’ and motioned for Schwägermann to shut the door again.48AT mid-day on April 23 Keitel and Jodl were back. Those two armies were makingonly slow progress. At 12:40 P.M. Berlin’s radio broadcast that Hitler, Goebbels, andhis family were still in Berlin.49 ‘The propaganda ministry has been turned into afortress,’ it was announced. ‘The staff has been collected into a Volkssturm battalionunder Staatssekretär Naumann’s commend. Even women staff members have beentrained to use the Panzerfaust bazooka.’50 The following day all German short-wavepropaganda transmissions to the world ceased.51In the afternoons Hitler went to drink chocolate with the children. His favouritewas still the eldest daughter Helga, now twelve. Her long blond tresses were demurelyplaited—a truly Aryan maiden. She stood 1·58 metres in her socks, andbeamed all over her pretty, oval features. When her little brother Hellmut read outhis latest essay on ‘The Führer’s Birthday,’ she chirped, ‘You pinched that from Pappi!’‘Or Pappi from me!’ the eight-year old retorted, to everybody’s delight. The childrentold Hitler they were all looking forward to the new soldiers who were goingto chase the Russians away.52‘We’re all waiting for Wenck,’ he grimly advised an officer that day.53Doing what they could to lighten the descending gloom, Eva Braun was delicatelymade up and coiffed and wore a different dress each day, while Magda had carefullybrushed her own long blond hair and the hairpiece which she had elaborately wovenin. Once she had a young S.S. doctor from the Voss Strasse bunker attend to herteeth; she liked this young man—Helmut Kunz—and found it easy to confide in himas the final days approached.Hermann Göring, now in safety on the Obersalzberg, began acting as though Hitlerwere already dead. Hitler ordered his arrest.54 Traudl Junge glimpsed Goebbelsafterwards outside the map room, raging about the Reichsmarschall’s treason. ‘Thatman never was a true national socialist,’ he exclaimed. ‘He just basked in the Führer’sGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 915reflected glory. He never lived the life of a national socialist or idealist. It’s thanks tohim that we are down here now, in this bunker, and about to lose the war.’55Not that either he or Hitler had given up even now. Lorenz’s shorthand notes ofthe remaining bunker conferences show Hitler on April 25 reasoning to Goebbels, ‘Ican only win a real triumph here,’ meaning Berlin. ‘If I do that—even just a moralvictory—then it is at very least a way of saving face or gaining time.’56Unwilling to let anybody rob him of the glamour of sharing Hitler’s fast-approachingGötterdämmerung Goebbels used every argument to keep him in the city. ‘InBerlin,’ he agreed, ‘we can score a world-scale moral victory. Such a victory can beobtained only at the one point on which all the eyes of the world are riveted. Theworld will not take it half as hard that the Soviets are marching into Brandenburg, asif they get Berlin. But if they are thrashed at Berlin that will teach the whole world alesson.’‘If only!’, responded Hitler. ‘I hear that the talks between Eden and Molotov havebroken down. The Russians are demanding the whole [of Poland]. And that will meanthat Britain has lost the war… I think,’ he added, ‘that the time’s coming when therest of them, out of sheer self-preservation, will have to stand up to this insatiableMoloch, this proletarian-bolshevik monster. If I were to duck out like a coward today… then national socialism would be done for and the Reich with it. But if