Chocolate Cake With Hitler (15 page)

(In alphabetical order of name in text.) Any characters who do not appear on this list are fictional.

Albert Speer,
1905-1981, was Hitler's chief architect, and designer of Nazi rallies. As Armaments Minister he organised Germany's war machine using forced labour. He is famous for apologising at the Nuremberg Trials. There has been much controversy about how much he knew about the murder of Jews. He was imprisoned in Spandau until 1966, where he measured the prison's garden and walked 31,936 kilometres around it,
imagining
he was walking around the world, the detailed terrain in his mind's eye.

Angelica Kauffmann,
1741-1807, was a Swiss-Austrian painter and friend of Joshua Reynolds, whose work Hitler admired. Popular in her own lifetime, her
reputation
has declined.

Auntie Emmy,
the High Lady – Emma Goering, née Sonnemann, 1893-1973, was an actress before
marrying
Hermann Goering. At the end of the war she spent one year in prison as a punishment for being a Nazi. She spent the rest of her life living in a small flat in Berlin.

Auntie Maria
– Maria Kimmich, née Goebbels, 1910-1949, was Josef Goebbels' younger sister. She was
married
to the German film director Max Kimmich.

Blondi
– Hitler's Alsatian, was killed in the bunker together with her puppies, to test the batch of cyanide that Eva Braun would later use to kill herself.

Dara
– Gerda Christian, née Daranowski, 1913-1997, was a former model and one of Hitler's secretaries. She escaped the bunker on 1 May, 1945. She became a leading neo-Nazi and spent the rest of her life in Dusseldorf.

Dr. Kunz
– Helmut Kunz was an SS dentist who is believed to have injected the children with morphine prior to their poisoning, although he is said to have refused to poison them himself. It is not known what became of him.

Dr. Stumpfegger
– Ludwig Stumpfegger, 1910-1945, was an SS doctor who became Hitler's personal doctor in 1944. He helped Magda administer cyanide to the sleeping children. He died escaping from the bunker, possibly committing suicide by taking cyanide himself.

Edda Goering
– b. 1938, she was the only child of Hermann and Emmy Goering and is still alive. She is said to be a lifelong Nazi supporter. Her birth was
celebrated by a 500-plane flyover of Berlin. Hermann Goering allegedly boasted that he would have ordered 1000 planes if Edda had been a boy.

Empire Marshall Goering
– Uncle Hermann,
1893-1946
, was head of the German Air Force. He was famed for his extravagance, his drug addiction and his
accumulation
of wealth and body fat during the Nazi period. He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials and committed
suicide
the night before he was due to be hanged.

Ernst Speer
, b. 1943, was the youngest of the Speer's six children, all of whom survived the war.

Flight Captain Reitsch
– Hanna Reitsch, 1912-1979 was a record-breaking pilot said to be Hitler's favourite personal pilot. After flying out of Berlin, she was
captured
by the Americans with von Greim and held for eighteen months. During this time, her father killed her mother, sister and sister's children after they were expelled from their home in Poland. After her release Reitsch continued to fly. Some of her gliding records are still unbroken.

Frederick the Great
– King Friedrich II of Prussia, 1712-1786.

General Field Marshall Rommel
, 1891-1944, known
as the Desert Fox, for his cunning tactics in North Africa in World War II. He was famous for defying orders to kill Jewish prisoners of war. He was suspected of involvement in the plot to kill Hitler of 20 July, 1944 and was forced to commit suicide.

General Robert Ritter von Greim
, 1892-1945, was a Field Marshal, pilot and the last Head of the German Air Force, when Hitler replaced Goering with him at the very end of the war. He committed suicide after being captured by the Americans in May, 1945.

Georg Schertz
, b. 1935, went on to become President of the Berlin police. He has lived his whole life on Schwanenwerder (Swan Island) where he first met Helmut Goebbels.

Gerda
, this is a fictional name for an unknown maid whom Magda sacked for attempting suicide.

Grandpa Friedlander
, b.?-1939, was the boyfriend of Magda's mother, Auguste Behrend. They separated around the time of Magda's marriage to Gunther Quandt in 1921. He is believed to have visited Goebbels to try to get dispensation from anti-Jewish legislation, but to have been rejected. He was probably sent to Buchenwald in 1938, where he is believed to have died in 1939.

Grandpa Ritschel
– Oskar Ritschel, died 1941, was Magda's father. He was probably never married to her mother and they separated when Magda was very young. He was an engineer and businessman. He is said to have introduced Magda to Buddhism.

Granny Behrend
– Granny B., Auguste Behrend, 1879-?, was Magda Goebbels' mother. She survived the war. She was never able to discover what the Russians did with her grandchildren's bodies.

Granny Goebbels
– Katharina Maria Goebbels, née Odenhausen, was a Dutch Roman Catholic, from a poor farming background. She survived the war.

Grete Speer
– Margret Speer, b. 1938, was the second daughter of Albert and Margret.

Gretl
– Gretl Fegelein, née Braun, 1915 -1987, was Eva Braun's sister. She gave birth to Fegelein's daughter on 5 May, 1945, a week after his death and a few days after Eva's. She called her daughter Eva.

Gunther Quandt
, 1881-1954, was Magda Goebbels' first husband and the father of Harald. He founded an industrial empire which today includes BMW. He had two sons from his first marriage, Helmut and Herbert. Magda was rumoured to be in love with
Helmut, who was much closer to her in age than her husband. Helmut died in her arms of appendicitis when he was nineteen years old. Magda and Gunther divorced two years later.

Hans Silverstein
, b.?-1915, a Jewish soldier who was killed fighting for Germany in the First World War.

Harald Quandt
, 1921-1967, was Magda Goebbels' only son from her first marriage to Gunther Quandt. He served in the German Air Force during the war and was injured and captured by the British in Italy in 1944. He was released in 1947. In 1954, he and his
half-brother
inherited their father's industrial empire, becoming two of the richest men in Germany. He
married
and had five daughters. He died in an air crash.

Head Storm Leader Schwagermann
– Gunther Schwagermann, 1915-?, was adjutant to Josef Goebbels. He left the bunker on the evening of 1 May, 1945 and escaped to West Germany, where he was held by the Americans until 1947. What happened to him after that is unknown.

Hedda
– Hedwig Johanna, the second youngest of the Goebbels children, was born in 1938. She was killed in the bunker just before her seventh birthday.

Heide
– Heidrun Elisabeth, the youngest of the Goebbels children, was born in 1940. She was four years old when she was killed.

Helga
– Helga Suzanne, the narrator of the story, was born in 1932 and was twelve years old when she was killed.

Helmut
– Helmut Christian, the only son of the Goebbels, was born in 1935. He was nine years old when he was killed.

Hilde
– Hildegard Traudl, the second oldest of the Goebbels children, was born in 1934. She was just eleven when she was killed.

Holde
– Holdine Kathrin, the fourth child of the Goebbels, was born in 1937. She was eight when she was killed in the bunker.

Horst Caspar
, 1913-1952, was the star of the 1945 propaganda film,
Kohlberg
.

Hubi
– Kathe Hubner, later Leske, was governess to the older Goebbels children between 1943 and 1945. She survived the war.

Lida
– Lida Baarova, 1914-2000, was a Czech actress and star of the German film industry who had an affair
with Josef Goebbels, which ended with her deportation on Hitler's orders in 1938. At the end of the war she was imprisoned for a year in Czechoslovakia for her Nazi past. After her release she continued to make occasional films. She never regretted her affair.

Liesl
– Anneliese, Eva Braun's personal maid. In a letter Eva Braun wrote to her sister Gretl from the bunker on 23 April, 1945, she says “My faithful Liesl will not leave me.” I am very grateful to Elizabeth Humphris for the information that her surname was Ostertag and that she survived the war.

Margret Speer
– Margarete Speer, née Weber,
1905-198
?, wife of Albert Speer. Miss Braun/Auntie Eva – Eva Braun, Hitler's girlfriend and, finally, wife, 1912-1945. She committed suicide by taking a cyanide capsule on the afternoon of 30 April in Hitler's sitting room. The children would never have known this.

Miss Flegel
– Erna Flegel, 1911-2006, was a Red Cross nurse. She stayed in the bunker during the Soviet
capture
, and went on to live a long and quiet life.

Miss Kempf
– Annemarie Kempf, née Wittenberg, 1914-1991, was Albert Speer's secretary until the end of the war. When Albert Speer failed to persuade Magda
Goebbels to try to save her children and send them to the barge, he sent Annemarie Kempf to speak to her, in the hope that Magda would listen to a woman. She did not. After the war Annemarie Kempf devoted her life to looking after disabled children.

Miss Manziarly
– Constanze Manziarly, Hitler's cook. She was last seen being led into a subway bunker by two German soldiers, having escaped from the bunker on the evening of the 1 May, 1945. After Hitler's suicide, she continued to cook meals for him in order to hide his death from all but his inner circle in the bunker.

Miss Schroeter
– governess to the younger Goebbels children.

Mr. Bormann
– Martin Bormann, 1900-1945, was Hitler's private secretary. He died escaping the bunker, probably committing suicide by taking a cyanide
capsule
. His wife died of cancer the following year, leaving their nine children orphaned.

Mr. Himmler
– Heinrich Himmler, 1900-1945, was head of the SS, and coordinated the killing of millions of Jews. He committed suicide in 1945, after being captured by the British.

Mr. Leske
– Herbert Leske was married to Kathe Hubner. Four years after the war ended she learnt that he had been killed in action.

Mrs. Junge
– Traudl Junge, born Gertraud Humps, 1920-2002, was Hitler's secretary from 1943 to 1945. She escaped from the bunker on the evening of 1 May and survived the war. Her memoir,
Until the Final Hour
, has been an important source of information for this book.

Mr. Misch
– Rochus Misch, b.1917, was the telephone operator in the bunker. He escaped from the bunker on 2 May, 1945 but was captured by the Russians and held prisoner in the Russian gulags until 1954. In 2005, when the Holocaust Memorial was opened in Berlin, he called for a memorial plaque for the Goebbels
children
at the site of the bunker and was widely criticised. He is the last survivor of the bunker.

Mr. Naumann
– Werner Naumann, 1909-1982, was one of Goebbels' secretaries in the propaganda ministry. Magda Goebbels is believed to have been in love with him in 1944, but after a warning from Goebbels, he distanced himself from her. He escaped from the
bunker
on 1 May, 1945, and went on to become director of a metal factory owned by Magda's son Harald.

Mummy
– Magda Goebbels, 1901–1945. After killing her children, she went down to the lower bunker in tears, and played patience. She then went with Josef Goebbels to the garden of the Reich Chancellery, where they both committed suicide. She took cyanide.

Papa
– Josef Goebbels, 1897-1945, was Hitler's
propaganda
chief. He shot himself in the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 1 May, 1945. When the Russians entered the bunker compound on 3 May, his charred corpse was found beside his wife's body. There had not been enough petrol to burn the bodies totally.

Reggie
– Regine Goldschmidt, 1924-1944, was the daughter of Samuel Goldschmidt, the Jewish banker and neighbour of the Goebbels family on Schwanenwerder (Swan Island) whose property Josef Goebbels appropriated. The Goldschmidt family fled to France, where Samuel Goldschmidt died in 1940. Regine was presumably deported, for she died in Auschwitz. All details about her have been
imagined
.

State Secretary Hanke
– Karl Hanke, 1903-1945, worked in Goebbels' propaganda ministry. He is believed to have had an affair with Magda Goebbels in 1938. He is thought to have been executed by Czechs or Poles in 1945.

The dusty soldier boy
– the young soldier boy who dropped the glass was Armin D. Lehmann, b.
1928-2008
, and was the author of
In Hitler's Bunker
, in which he recalls the incident with the glass. He was a boy soldier in the bunker working as a courier. He escaped on 1 May, 1945. He was a lifelong peace campaigner. He emigrated to the US in 1953 and worked in California as a professor of tourism. His significance to Helga is imagined.

The Leader
– Uncle Leader, Uncle Adi – Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945. On the afternoon of 30 April, 1945 he and Eva Braun withdrew to his sitting room in the lower bunker. Sitting next to each other on the sofa, he shot himself in the head; she took a cyanide capsule. The children never learnt of their deaths.

Upper Group
Leader Fegelein
– Hermann Otto Fegelein, 1906-1945. He was a General of the Waffen SS. He married Eva Braun's sister Gretl in 1944. He left the bunker and was caught drunk in his Berlin flat and accused of trying to flee. He is believed to have been executed on 29 April, 1945 on Hitler's orders.