Hitler's Last Days (21 page)

Russian soldiers load Katyusha rocket launchers during the Russians' final advance into Berlin.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

It will be a slaughter. Hordes of approaching Red Army soldiers, many of whom have marched a thousand miles to see their nation's flag raised over the capital of Germany, are eager to brutalize the German people.

Forty thousand Russian artillery guns hammer the city around the clock. Death screams down from all angles, filling the streets with rubble and setting homes ablaze. Berliners no longer pretend that life is normal. Thousands of refugees leave the city each day, hoping to find safety in the countryside. They walk, push their belongings in carts, and choke the roads in vehicles that are often abandoned for lack of gasoline. They sleep in churches, forests, abandoned railway cars, and any other space that keeps them relatively warm and dry. Everyone travels west. Only a fool would travel east, toward the lethal Russians.

For those who choose not to leave Berlin, the nightly ritual of sleeping in cellars and underground stations has become revolting. The smell of excrement and body odor makes these spaces appalling.

Aboveground, roving gangs of Nazi thugs and SS units travel from house to house, searching for deserters. The captured offenders are quickly hanged from light posts. Signs bearing the word
TRAITOR
are pinned to their chests, and their bodies are left to swing freely as a warning to others who might wish to quit the war prematurely.

At the notorious Lehrter Strasse prison, nothing stops the Nazi fanatics from finishing their dirty work. A special Gestapo contingent known as the
Sonderkommando
pretends that it is freeing political prisoners. As the men depart their cells, however, armed Gestapo agents fire bullets into the back of their necks.

There is no gas. There is no electricity. There is little food. German women kneel in the streets, butchering for meat workhorses that have been killed by Russian shelling. Other citizens seek food by trekking to the city's rail yards and breaking into freight trains, searching for canned goods and anything else that will fill their bellies.

Uniformed Hitler Youth members walk into grocery stores and demand food at gunpoint. “You are a godless youth, using American gangster methods,” one woman screams at her nephew after she watches him terrorize a shopkeeper into giving him a hidden cache of food.

“Shut up,” the Hitler Youth sneers. “It's now a matter of life and death.”

No gun is needed to procure food in some parts of Berlin. Not wanting their supplies to fall into Russian hands, some shopkeepers give away everything on their shelves.

The injured and homeless line the streets of Russian-occupied Berlin.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

CHAPTER 25

BERLIN, GERMANY

APRIL 30, 1945

A
WEEK PASSES.
T
HE BATTLE
rages nonstop. Russian troops advance street by street, slowly taking control of the city. The young boys and old men enlisted as a last line of German defense now tear off their uniforms and armbands, frantically changing back into civilian clothing to avoid being murdered. Those who chose to stand and fight are now retreating into the heart of the city. An attempt to blow up vital bridges to stall the Russian advance ends in tragedy when an underground railway tunnel is mistakenly detonated. Inside are thousands of civilians and wounded soldiers trying to avoid the shelling aboveground. Rumors spread that hundreds drown as the four-mile-long tunnel floods with water.

Nazi leaflets litter the city, dropped from one of the few remaining Luftwaffe aircraft. “Persevere!” they read. “General Wenck and General Steiner are coming to the aid of Berlin.”

Last-ditch efforts: Germans build tank defenses in Berlin.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

Wenck has decided to try, although not how Nazi officials had hoped. He has turned Twelfth Army back toward Berlin—but keeps his positions on the Elbe—and surprises Russian forces near the suburb of Potsdam. But he is vastly outnumbered and can go no farther. Rather than fight onward, Wenck orders his troops to open a corridor from the city that will allow refugees and troops of the German Ninth Army to escape to the safety of the American lines. “It's not about Berlin anymore,” he tells his soldiers as they turn their backs on the German capital. “It's not about the Reich anymore.” In time, Wenck will push more than a hundred thousand German civilians and soldiers westward across the Elbe River, where he will surrender to American troops. The Russians chase the people in Wenck's long columns all the way to the American lines, attempting to kill them with artillery right up until the moment they cross the Elbe.

But even if General Wenck had succeeded in reaching central Berlin, there would be no stopping the Russians. Berlin is a city with 248 bridges, and only 120 have been destroyed as the Soviets penetrate closer and closer to the F
ü
hrerbunker.

Russian troops cross pontoon bridges into Berlin, April 1945.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

CHAPTER 26

THE FÜHRERBUNKER

BERLIN, GERMANY
APRIL 30, 1945
SHORTLY BEFORE 2 P.M.

T
HE
F
Ü
HRER IS SAYING FAREWELL
. His personal staff lines up in the corridor outside his bedroom. Wearing a dark gray uniform jacket and creased black pants, Hitler shakes each hand and whispers a personal message to the two dozen secretaries, soldiers, and doctors who have tended to him during his three months in the bunker. They have all sworn an oath of loyalty to the F
ü
hrer, but he releases them from that bond. He gives them permission to leave the bunker immediately and flee to the American lines, should they choose.

Throughout it all, Eva Braun stands at the F
ü
hrer's side, wearing a black dress with pink roses framing the square neckline. She has chosen this dress because it is Hitler's favorite. Her blond hair is washed and perfectly styled, as befitting her new position of Nazi Germany's first lady.

Almost exactly three years earlier, Hitler celebrates his birthday with Eva Braun and guests.
[Mary Evans Picture Library]

After the F
ü
hrer speaks with secretary Traudl Junge, Eva pulls her close and whispers in her ear: “Please do try to get out. You may yet make it through.”

Eva Braun, of course, is not leaving. She has just sworn the ultimate loyalty oath to the F
ü
hrer—yesterday they were married. These same staff members had gathered to celebrate the wedding of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. Glasses of champagne were filled. Only the F
ü
hrer did not partake. The mood was outwardly joyous, but there was a somber tone to the proceedings. Marriage is normally a time of hope for the future. But one and all know that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun will soon kill themselves.

General Walther Wenck and his Twelfth Army will never save Berlin. The Soviet army is close by. Its advance units are just five hundred yards away from the F
ü
hrerbunker, and they now shell the compound from their positions in the Tiergarten, the sprawling park in the heart of the city, where Eva Braun once delighted in afternoons of target practice with her pistol. Many of the trees there are now mere splinters. Yet those still standing bear the first blooms of spring—signs of life that contrast sharply with the nearby Reichstag building and Kroll Opera House, both battered and pocked by artillery, a reminder that the once proud city of Berlin is soon to die.

Adolf Hitler has filled the bunker's corridors with talk of suicide for the last ten days, pragmatically stating that the only other option is to become a Russian prisoner—and for the F
ü
hrer, that fate is no option at all. Eva Braun, of course, would be a similar trophy if the Russians took her alive, so she, too, must die by her own hand. Earlier today she chose not to have a dentist examine a sore tooth, laughing that it soon wouldn't matter anyway. And she surprised Traudl Junge just a few hours ago by giving her a fur coat made of silver fox. Eva's initials were sewn onto the lining inside the well-known symbol of good luck: a four-leaf clover.