The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (222 page)

The brilliant architect and Armament Minister, though he had always prided himself on being apolitical, had had, like some other Germans, a late—a too late—awakening. When he had finally realized that his beloved Fuehrer was determined through his scorched-earth decrees to destroy the German people he had decided to murder him. His plan was to introduce poison gas into the ventilation system in the bunker in Berlin during a full-dress military conference. Since not only the generals but invariably Goering, Himmler and Goebbels now attended these, Speer hoped to wipe out the entire Nazi leadership of the Third Reich as well as the High Command. He procured his gas, inspected the air-conditioning system and then discovered, he says, that the air-intake pipe in the garden was protected by a twelve-foot-high chimney, recently installed on Hitler’s personal orders to discourage sabotage, and that it would be impossible to inject his gas into it without being interrupted by the S.S. guards in the garden. So he abandoned his project and Hitler once again escaped assassination.

Now on the evening of April 23 Speer made a full confession of his insubordination in refusing to carry out the wanton destruction of Germany’s
remaining installations. To his surprise Hitler showed no resentment or anger. Perhaps the Fuehrer was touched by the candor and courage of his young friend—Speer had just turned forty—for whom he had long had a deep affection and whom he regarded as a “fellow artist.” Hitler, as Keitel also noted, seemed strangely serene that evening, as though having made up his mind to die in this place within a few days had brought a peace of mind and spirit. But it was the calm not only after the storm—of the previous day—but before the storm.

For Goering’s telegram had meanwhile arrived in the Chancellery and after being held up by Bormann, who saw his opportunity at last, was presented to the Fuehrer by this master of intrigue as an “ultimatum” and as a treasonous attempt to “usurp” the Leader’s power.

“Hitler was highly enraged,” says Speer, “and expressed himself very strongly about Goering. He said he had known for some time that Goering had failed, that he was corrupt and a drug addict”—a statement which “extremely shook” the young architect, since he wondered why Hitler had employed such a man in so high a post so long. Speer was also puzzled when Hitler calmed down and added, “Well, let Goering negotiate the capitulation all the same. It doesn’t matter anyway who does it.”
¹⁶
But this mood lasted only a few moments.

Before the discussion was finished, Hitler, prompted by Bormann, dictated a telegram informing Goering that he had committed “high treason,” for which the penalty was death, but that because of his long service to the Nazi Party and State his life would be spared if he immediately resigned all his offices. He was ordered to answer with one word: Yes or No. This did not satisfy the wormlike Bormann. On his own hook he got off a radiogram to the S.S. headquarters in Berchtesgaden ordering the immediate arrest of Goering, his staff and Lammers for “high treason.” Before dawn the next day the Number Two man of the Third Reich, the most arrogant—and opulent—of the Nazi princes, the only Reich Marshal in German history and the Commander in Chief of the Air Force, found himself a prisoner of the S.S.

Three days later, on the evening of April 26, Hitler expressed himself even more strongly on the subject of Goering than he had in the presence of Speer.

Two more interesting visitors had meanwhile arrived in the madhouse of the Fuehrer’s bunker: Hanna Reitsch, the crack woman test pilot who, among other qualities, had a capacity for monumental hatred, especially of Goering, and General Ritter von Greim, who on April 24 had been summoned from Munich to appear personally before the Supreme Warlord and had done so, though the plane in which he and Reitsch flew the last lap on the evening of the twenty-sixth had been torn over the Tiergarten by Russian antiaircraft shells and Greim’s foot had been shattered.

Hitler came into the surgery, where a physician was dressing the general’s wound.

At this point, says Hanna Reitsch, who was present, the Fuehrer’s face began to twitch and his breath came in explosive puffs.

Then and there he named the startled General lying wounded on his cot the new Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe—a promotion he could have made by radio, which would have spared Greim a crippled foot and left him at headquarters, the only place from which what was left of the Air Force could be directed. Three days later Hitler ordered Greim, who by now, like Fräulein Reitsch, expected and indeed desired to die in the bunker at the side of the Leader, to depart in order to deal with a new case of “treachery.” For “treason,” as we have seen, was not confined among the leaders of the Third Reich to Hermann Goering.

During those three days Hanna Reitsch had ample opportunity to observe the lunatic life in the underground madhouse—indeed, she participated in it. Since she was as emotionally unstable as her distinguished host, the account she has left of it is lurid and melodramatic, and yet it is probably largely true and even fairly accurate, for it has been checked against other eyewitness reports, and is thus of importance for the closing chapter of this history.

Late on the night of her arrival with General von Greim—it was April 26—Russian shells began falling on the Chancellery and the thud of the explosions and the sound of crashing walls above increased the tension in the bunker. Hitler took the aviatrix aside.

“My Fuehrer, why do you stay?” she said. “Why do you deprive Germany of your life? … The Fuehrer must live so that Germany can live. The people demand it.”

“No, Hanna,” she says the Fuehrer replied. “If I die it is for the honor of our country, it is because as a soldier I must obey my own command that I would defend Berlin to the last.”

That was one mood of Hitler that evening; he still had hope in General Wenck’s relieving Berlin. But a few moments later, as the Russian bombardment of the Chancellery reached great intensity, he was in despair again. He handed Reitsch a vial of poison for herself and one for Greim.

“Hanna,” he said, “you belong to those who will die with me … I do not wish that one of us falls to the Russians alive, nor do I wish our bodies to be found by them … Eva and I will have our bodies burned. You will devise your own method.”

Hanna took the vial of poison to Greim and they decided that “should the end really come” they would swallow the poison and then, to make sure, pull a pin from a heavy grenade and hold it tightly to their bodies.

A day and a half later, on the twenty-eighth, Hitler’s hopes seem to have risen again—or at least his delusions. He radioed Keitel:

“I expect the relief of Berlin. What is
Heinrici
’s army doing? Where is Wenck? What is happening to the
Ninth
Army? When will Wenck and Ninth Army join?”
¹⁹

Reitsch describes the Supreme Warlord that day, striding

But Wenck’s “campaign,” like the Steiner “attack” of a week before, existed only in the Fuehrer’s imagination. Wenck’s army had already been liquidated, as had the Ninth Army. Heinrici’s army, to the north of Berlin, was beating a hasty retreat westward so that it might be captured by the Western Allies instead of by the Russians.

All through April 28 the desperate men in the bunker waited for news of the counterattacks of these three armies, especially that of Wenck. Russian spearheads were now but a few blocks from the Chancellery and advancing slowly toward it up several streets from the east and north and through the nearby Tiergarten from the west. When no news of the relieving forces came, Hitler, prompted by
Bormann
, began to expect new treacheries. At 8
P.M
. Bormann got out a radiogram to Doenitz.

Later that night Bormann sent another message to Doenitz.

Bormann was now speaking for himself. Hitler had made up his mind to die in a day or two, but Bormann wanted to live. He might not succeed the Fuehrer but he wanted to continue to pull the strings behind the scenes for whoever did.

Finally, that night Admiral Voss got out a message to Doenitz saying that all radio connection with the Army had broken down and urgently requesting the Navy to send over the naval wave length some news of what was happening in the outside world. Very shortly some news came, not from the Navy but from the listening post in the
Propaganda Ministry
, and it was shattering for Adolf Hitler.

Besides Bormann there was another Nazi official in the bunker who wanted to live. This was Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s representative at court and typical of the type of German who rose to prominence under Hitler’s rule. A former groom and then a jockey and quite illiterate, he was a protégé of the notorious Christian Weber, one of Hitler’s oldest party cronies and himself a horse fancier, who by fraudulence had amassed a fortune and a great racing stable after 1933. Fegelein, with Weber’s help, had climbed quite high in the Third Reich. He was a general in the
Waffen S.S.
and in 1944, shortly after being appointed Himmler’s liaison officer at Fuehrer headquarters, he had further advanced his position at court by marrying Eva
Braun
’s sister, Gretl. All the surviving S.S. chiefs agree that, in alliance with Bormann, Fegelein lost no time in betraying his own S.S. chief, Himmler, to Hitler. But disreputable, illiterate and ignorant though he was, Fegelein seems to have been possessed of a simon-pure instinct for survival. He knew a sinking ship when he saw one.

On April 26 he quietly left the bunker. By the next afternoon Hitler had noticed his disappearance. The Fuehrer’s easily aroused suspicions were kindled and he sent out an armed S.S. search party to try to find the man. He was found, in civilian clothes, resting in his home in the Charlottenburg district, which the Russians were about to overrun. Brought back to the Chancellery, he was stripped of his S.S. rank of Obergruppenfuehrer and placed under arrest. Fegelein’s attempt at desertion made Hitler immediately suspicious of Himmler. What was the S.S. chief up to, now that he had deliberately absented himself from Berlin? There had been no news since his liaison officer, Fegelein, had quit his post. It now came.

   April 28, as we have seen, had been a trying day in the bunker. The Russians were getting close. The expected news of Wenck’s counter
attack, or of any counterattack, had not come through. Desperately the besieged had asked, through the Navy’s radio, for news of developments outside the encircled city.

The radio listening post of the Propaganda Ministry had picked up from a broadcast of the
BBC
in London one piece of news of what was happening outside Berlin. It was a Reuter dispatch from
Stockholm
and it was so sensational, so incredible, that one of Goebbels’ assistants, Heinz Lorenz, had scampered across the shell-torn square late on the evening of April 28 to the bunker with copies of it for his Minister and for the Fuehrer.

The dispatch, says Reitsch, struck “a deathblow to the entire assembly. Men and women alike screamed with rage, fear and desperation, all mixed into one emotional spasm.” Hitler’s spasm was the worst. “He raged,” says the aviatrix, “like a madman.”

Heinrich Himmler—
der treue Heinrich
—had also deserted the sinking ship of state. The Reuter dispatch told of his secret negotiations with Count
Bernadotte
and his offer to surrender the German armies in the West to Eisenhower.

To Hitler, who had never doubted Himmler’s absolute loyalty, this was the heaviest blow of all. “His color,” says Reitsch, “rose to a heated red and his face was virtually unrecognizable … After the lengthy outburst Hitler sank into a stupor and for a time the entire bunker was silent.” Goering at least had asked the Leader’s permission to take over. But the “
treue
” S.S. chief and Reichsfuehrer had not bothered to ask; he had treasonably contacted the enemy without saying a word. This, Hitler told his followers when he had somewhat recovered, was the worst act of treachery he had ever known.