Hitler's Last Days (20 page)

Johanna Wolf (left), one of Hitler's former secretaries, and Ingeborg Sperr, Rudolf Hess's former secretary, wait to testify at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
[National Archives and Records Administration, College Park]

A distant explosion makes the room shake. The party ceases, but only temporarily. So Eva Braun dances on, “in a desperate frenzy, like a woman who has already felt the faint breath of death,” Traudl Junge will remember. Her thirty-three-year-old friend has just ten days before she will bite into a cyanide capsule and take her own life.

“No one said anything about the war. No one mentioned victory. No one mentioned death. This was a party given by ghosts.”

This photograph of Eva Braun was found among her possessions after her death. Date unknown.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

CHAPTER 23

WALDENBURG, GERMANY

APRIL 15, 1945

P
ATTON IS IN A PENSIVE
mood. His Third Army is waiting in place. It is still a powerful force. In fact, Patton has just been given an additional three tank divisions. The Third Army was poised to wheel north to capture Berlin—as it had made a hard left turn and liberated Bastogne—but Eisenhower refused to grant permission. The Allied supreme commander has been communicating directly with the Russian generals now approaching the German capital. Ike has promised them that they can have Hitler all to themselves. So Patton and Lieutenant General Jacob Devers's armies will carry out the final American attacks of the war in southern Germany and leave Berlin to the Russians.

British forces under Field Marshal Montgomery are also ordered away from Berlin to secure the Danish border.

As the Russians pound the Nazi capital city with artillery, the German people steel themselves for the inevitable moment when those they consider “subhumans” take over. Throughout Germany, fear of the Russians is everywhere. During the next month, millions of civilian refugees will flee toward the American lines—only to be turned back. More than a million German soldiers have already raised their hands in surrender and will not have to face the Russians. In fact, so many German fighters are giving up that the Allies no longer accept all prisoners of war because it is impossible to house and feed so many men. Thus, a number of terrified Germans are turned back to fend for themselves against the rampaging Russians. In early May, when the men of the once feared Eleventh Panzer Division attempt to quit the war, the Third Army will accept them as prisoners only under the condition that they bring their own food.

Although they were not allowed to advance into Berlin, soldiers of Patton's 12th Armored Division continued to find Nazis in the surrounding forests.
[Department of Defense Visual Information]

As Patton sips coffee in his headquarters, he knows that his future may lie as a civilian. He has once again appeared on the cover of
Time
magazine and is finally getting the public respect and glory he so desperately craves.

But the war is still ongoing. There are four million Allied soldiers in Germany right now, and three million of them are American.

CHAPTER 24

WIESENBURG FOREST

THIRTY MILES WEST OF BERLIN
APRIL 23, 1945
12:45 A.M.

G
ENERAL
W
ALTHER
W
ENCK, COMMANDER OF
the German Twelfth Army with the mission to guard against an Allied attack from the west, is up past midnight in his headquarters. It is a gamekeeper's house hidden in a thick forest thirty miles west of Berlin. The location is an ideal hiding place from Allied reconnaissance planes.

The phone rings. Wenck answers, only to learn that he will soon be paid a visit by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Adolf Hitler's arrogant commander of the armed forces—and a man whom Wenck loathes.

Walther Wenck is a fine officer. At forty-four, he is the youngest general in the German armed forces and bears the nickname Boy General. Currently, Wenck has taken it upon himself to house and feed a half million war refugees who have fled Berlin. He does this without informing his superiors. Rather than drawing up battle plans, Wenck spends his days “like a visiting priest,” checking in on the children and sick to make sure they have food and medicine.

General Walther Wenck (right) was the youngest general in the German army.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Positioned west of Berlin, Wenck's Twelfth Army stood poised to fight. But the days passed, and the Russians encircled Berlin without any accompanying pincer movement by the Americans or British. So his Twelfth Army stands down. Unbeknownst to the men, their general is preparing to surrender to the Allies rather than let them fall into Russian hands.

True to form, Keitel shows up at Wenck's headquarters in his best uniform, complete with field marshal's baton.

“The battle for Berlin has begun,” Keitel says somberly.

The field marshal then divulges a terrible secret: Wenck's army is Berlin's only hope. He orders the Twelfth to ignore any threat by the Americans and immediately turn in the opposite direction to save Berlin.

General Wenck has no time to plot. If he disobeys Keitel, he will be relieved of his command and most likely shot. Any hope of saving his men, who fondly call him Papi, will be lost. Yet if he follows the field marshal's order, his army will be destroyed by the Russians, and the refugees to whom he now devotes his days will be left to endure whatever horrors the Red Army wishes to impose.

There is no good outcome for Wenck. Yet Field Marshal Keitel demands an answer right now.

Map legend is
here
.

A member of the Hitler Youth learns to use a bazooka at a training camp in Germany.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

“Of course,” Wenck tells him. “We will do as you order.”

But General Walther Wenck is lying.

*   *   *

Berlin is hopeless. Some 2.5 million Russians ring the city. They outnumber German soldiers three to one in men, tanks, aircraft, and artillery. The city's inner limits are defended by teenage Hitler Youth, the people's militia, and units of elderly Home Guardsmen. Few of them are battle-tested.