The Berkut (8 page)

Hitler shook his head violently. "No. I forbid it. Absolutely not." Brumm responded softly. "Outside there is chaos. If the need arises, it may be advantageous for us to be Jews from the camps. It could get us through."

"No, not as a Jew."

Brumm ignored him and took Hitler's arm, told him to keep still and began applying the tattoo, using navy blue ink and a thick needle.

12 – May 2, 1945, 12:30 A.M.

Several hundred men and women gathered in the darkness under the low ceiling of the garage that served as a coal-storage area beneath the Chancellery complex. They were soldiers and bureaucrats, drivers and bakers, secretaries and sentries, party officials and clerks, all that
remained of the once elite Reich Chancellery Group. They had been trickling into position alone and in small groups since early evening. General Wilhelm Mohnke of the Waffen SS, the bunker troop commander, and Otto Gunsche, Hitler's SS adjutant, took responsibility for organizing them.

The plan was to divide into small groups, which would jump off at twenty-minute intervals. Each escape group would cross the street through an underground tunnel, then climb up and make a run across open ground from the Wilhelmplatz to Stadtmitte Station. Neither Mohnke nor Gunsche had any clear idea of what awaited them. The Russians were all around, mostly on the roofs with rifles, sniping at virtually everything moving below on the streets. Russian artillery was still coming in, but now it exploded in measured salvos, with an interval between barrages. No longer was there a steady, unrelenting rain of explosives, and this offered the Nazis a glimmer of hope. The basic plan was for each group to find its own way across the river Spree, then move northwest through the suburbs, eventually out of the city and northwest to a rendezvous in a forest near Mecklenburg, some hundred and eighty kilometers northwest of Berlin. The hope was not that they could evade capture completely, but that they might avoid being taken by the Russians. Thus, the route they chose would take them quickly through the three Soviet lines that ringed the city and toward the Western Allies, whose hospitality would be far less harsh than what they could expect from the Russians.

For Unterscharfü
hrer Gustav Rudolf of the SS, the escape seemed like a hopeless, idiotic effort. The hundred and eighty kilometers to the rendezvous might as well have been eighty thousand or eighty million. There was no way they could get through. He had a premonition of death, which chilled him and made his mouth dry. The thing he had feared most had finally descended upon him and he cursed his bad fortune. He had spent a terrible month cringing in the cellars of the Chancellery, guarding the final stronghold of the Reich. On the thirtieth he'd seen Hitler and had known from that mome
nt that the end was near. The Fü
hrer did not look like his old self, and he had been subdued. La
ter Rudolf had heard that the Fü
hrer had killed himself that same afternoon. The whole situation was a nightmare, and the single force that had held together what was left of Germany was gone. Now he was going to be forced to come to grips with an even greater terror. He'd just as soon wait for capture by the Russians. At least he'd be alive; he could cope with whatever came after that. But he kept his opinion to himself, because it was generally believed capture would bring immediate execution, especially for any Ger
man
who had served so close to Hitler. Rudolf was not one to go
again
st the grain. He often considered it, but seldom acted.

As the plan for the escape was being formulated, Rudolf tried his best to arrange to stay behind to provide protection for the hundreds of wounded being left in the Chancellery basement, but his officers
,
fanat
ics to the end, he told himself,
would not hear of it. They praised his courage and zeal for self-sacrifice, but they wanted him with the escape groups to provide cover for the noncombatants, which included a fair number of women. Had they agreed to his plan, he was going to slip onto a litter among the wounded and pretend that he was one of them. Instead, he was being forced out into the city, where people were still killing one another. It irked him that he had to provide protection for women; females never needed protection. Chancellery life was proof of that; they got what they wanted by spreading their legs, and there was no reason to think that the Russian males would be any less receptive than Germans.

As fate would have it, Rudolf was selected to provide combat cover for the first escape group led by Mohnke and Giinsche. It included the four women from Hitler's personal staff, a navy vice admiral, some adjutants from a number of organizations and Hilco Poppen, another guard. Rudolf suspected that Poppen, an independent and contrary sort from the Rhineland, would go his own way as soon as the escape group hit the open air. He toyed briefly with the idea of following him, but gave it up, preferring, as always, the security and anonymity afforded by the larger group.

Rudolf made only one hard decision. If any of the big shots fell during the escape, he'd pick their pockets. For months there had been rumors that the Nazi leaders were putting millions of Reichsmarks into Swiss banks. Surely these people would be carrying large quantities of money and valuables, and if they were killed during the escape, they'd have no need for earthly baubles.

The breakout turned out to be more of a nightmare than Rudolf had even imagined. The smell of dead bodies hung in the dust over the city. Berlin was so destroyed that there were few landmarks left to identify. He couldn't understand how they were going to get through such a wasteland. He decided that looking around was too depressing; instead, he concentrated on keeping low, watching only the footsteps of the person ahead of him, as they wound their way along single file in a low crouch.

By 2:00 A.M. the group was reduced to fifteen survivors. They took
a short break in the Franzosische Strasse Station. Mohnke tried to talk two armed guards of the Berlin Municipal Transport Authority into opening a hatch that led into an under-river tunnel, but the two steadfastly refused; opening the hatch was against regulations and contrary to their superior's orders. "Good, stupid Germans to the end!" Rudolf hissed at them after Mohnke stalked away, furiously slapping his Schmeisser against his leg.

Because the guards wouldn't open the passage under the river, they were forced to backtrack to the Friedrichstrasse Station. Emerging above ground, they saw a tank trap on the Weidendammer Bridge and heard German tanks clanking through the rubble behind them. Idiots! Rudolf thought. The tankers were still moving forward to fight. Good evidence of what sort of creatures volunteered to serve in panzer units, he told himself.

Mohnke managed to locate a flimsy catwalk under the main span of the bridge. They cut their way through heavy coils of concertina wire with field pliers and moved onto the swinging two-meter-wide bridge at double time.

Rudolf almost fell several times, but managed to keep running forward, his adrenaline driving him. Below them, the river was red from the glow of fires; bodies that were black dots floated everywhere. As they reached the midpoint on the catwalk, a sniper opened up on them with a small-caliber rifle. Somebody directly in front of Rudolf grunted loudly and toppled over the side into the river, making a loud splash below. All in the group went to their bellies while the leaders tried to identify the sniper's muzzle flashes in order to get a shot at him.

Even though they were prone, they kept crawling forward. Rudolf could feel his uniform shredding, his knees and elbows bruised and cut by the hard surface of the frail bridge. As he got within sight of the other side, he was struck hard in the helmet. There was no pain, just an incredibly stiff jolt. It felt as if he'd run into something, but when he tried to crawl, his limbs wouldn't respond. One of the others wriggled over to him and leaned down.

"Are you hit?" a voice asked.

Rudolf wanted to say that he was all right, but like his lifeless limbs, his voice failed him. He felt his own urine spill down his thighs, both warming and disgusting him. As he lay there unable to move or speak, somebody stripped off his ammunition belt and rifled his pockets, removing his wallet and ripping the watch off his wrist. Others
crawled over him and left him alone on the bridge over the red water. An officer robbed me he told himself
,
struck by the irony of the act.

He was on his
belly unable
'to see
,
unable to move
,
beginning to feel sleepy. There was no paint and he was thankful for that. He'd known all along that he was going to die during the escape
,
and now here he was doing just that. "Goddamn officers!" he shouted in his mind. "Goddamn
Hitler. Goddamn ... goddamn ...
"
Then he passed out.

13 – May 2, 1945, 5:40 A.M.

The two men remained in the tunnel for the next thirty-six hours
_t
until early on May 2. That morning
,
shortly before dawn
,
Brumm led the way to the hatch. Hitler wore a Wehrmacht officer's coat; both his eyes were black and swollen and he was still weak
_t
but even with the pain and discomfort
,
Brumm could see that he was excited about moving. They were both eager to get out.

Brumm entered the hall first
_t
then helped Hitler out. The Fü
hrer stood guard as Brumm replaced and tightened the screws in the hatch. "Where to?" he asked anxiously.

"Toward the Chancellery." They moved as quickly as they could
,
but their pace was slow; Hitler dragged his right leg behind him and stopped often to catch his breath.

They got out of the area without encountering anyone; the Chancellery seemed abandoned. Near a pile of broken beams
,
Brumm saw that the body of the guard he had killed earlier was still where he had placed it. To the west
,
near the Tiergarten
,
there were occasional exchanges of small-arms fire. They're mopping
up,
Brumm thought.

The two men crossed the Wilhelmstrasse moments before morning twilight and cut between several badly damaged government buildings. Bodies, both Russian and German, were strewn everywhere. On a side street German soldiers had been stripped and hanged by their necks from light posts. Their eyeballs bulged and their black tongues stuck out of their mouths like overcooked and swollen sausages. Hitler did not look up at them as they passed.

On the street ahead there was a brief volley of small arms, b
ut
Brumm did not concern himself with it and Hitler was too weak. do anything but follow closely, still breathing heavily. Eventually th
ey
crossed another wide avenue where trees were shattered and lyi
ng
across the brick street. A German Tiger tank was perfectly balance upside down on its turret, and a black thing, once human, hung fro
m
a hatch with its arms extended, frozen in rigor mortis. At the entran
ce
to an alley they found the body of an old woman. Her skirt had bee
n
tied around her neck to harness h
er arms; her legs and thighs were
covered with dried blood, and her mouth and eyes were open wid
e.
In the same alley the severed haunches of a gray horse were stack
ed
against a fire ladder that had bee
n pulled from a building. Swarms of
flies were everywhere.

When they reached a green building, Brumm pushed Hitler insi
de
and checked to be sure they had not been followed. He assumed th
at
the rooftops were still filled with Russian snipers and that Russia infantry now controlled the area. "B
eard!" he shouted up the stair.

"Up here with the boys," Rau bellowed.

Brumm moved up the stairs and the two soldiers embraced. "It went well?"

"So far. What's the situation here?"

"Bad case of nerves, but they're doing better than I expected.
The
Russians came through last night, but they seemed interested only i
n
those buildings that offered resistance."

"Problems?"

"Only one. Two Russians set up camp down below, inside
our
door. One of the girls enticed them upstairs and they were eliminate
d.
They used
knives
on them!" He leaned close. "Women seem to
like
cold steel, eh?" He nudged Brumm and winked.

"The girls eliminated them?"

"Clean as a whistle. Zip-zip, two dead Ivans. Not a sound." H
e
looked over Brumm's shoulder. "Where is he? Down there?"

"Go help him," the colonel said. "He's weak. I don't think he'
ll
be able to make the walk. We'll have to carry him out."