Blaming his generals for not achieving the fantasy feats he imagined for them, Hitler relieved them of their commands, stripped them of their honors. He fired his best tank commander, Heinz Guderian, for failing to stop the Russians; he sentenced the city commandant of Königsberg to death in absentia for failing to hold that city; and he cursed General Walther Wenck, whose Twelfth Army was situated southwest of Berlin on the Elbe, for not hastening to the rescue of the capital. His fury embraced some of his closest colleagues as well. He ordered Göring arrested for high treason because the Reich Marshal offered to take over leadership of the country in view of Hitler’s decision to stay in the bunker in Berlin. Similarly, he ordered Himmler’s arrest upon learning that the SS leader had tried to broker a capitulation to the Western powers. Finally, he turned his rage against Berlin itself, ordering the demolition of bridges, waterways, electrical plants, communications installations, and all remaining heavy industry.
Shocked that the man who considered himself the “Savior of Berlin” in the 1930s should now be determined to destroy it, Albert Speer worked during the last weeks of the Reich to prevent this order from being carried out. He also planned—so he claims in his memoirs—to kill Hitler by feeding poison gas into the ventilation shaft of the bunker, only to give up the attempt upon discovering that the ground-level shaft had been replaced by a high chimney. If this story is true (and with Speer, one can never be sure), Hitler’s death was deferred not only by the ill-luck of his enemies but also by the irresolution of his disillusioned henchmen.
In late April Hitler was joined in the bunker by Goebbels, his main partner in the conquest of Berlin. Like Hitler, Goebbels vowed to fight on to the bitter end, giving orders that anyone who obstructed the defense of the city should be summarily executed. He too insisted that if the Reich could win in Berlin, the rest of the nation would rally to throw out the invaders. It is impossible to know whether he actually believed such nonsense, but very probably he did: the surreal atmosphere in the bunker, where the sound and shock of Russian shells barely penetrated, encouraged the wildest flights of fancy.
The scene aboveground in the last week of April allowed for few illusions among the defenders, but many nonetheless elected to fight on as their Führer commanded. In addition to battling Soviet troops, SS units and so-called “Werewolf bands executed Berliners who opted for surrender. Here and there bodies dangled from lampposts with signs reading: “We were too cowardly to defend Berlin from the Bolsheviks. We raised the white flag and thereby betrayed Greater Germany and the Führer. Thus we must die without honor!”
Marshal Zhukov in Berlin, 1945
The German resistance was such that the Russians had to blast their way through the city block by block, house by house. Shells from their tanks and artillery added significantly to the devastation wrought by the years of bombing. After the Soviets had secured a neighborhood, there was often not a single building left intact.
Alas, the Russians left more than physical devastation in their wake. Hungry for revenge against an enemy that had terrorized their own land, Soviet soldiers gave themselves over to an orgy of plunder and rapine. They raped women of all ages, from five to eighty, often dozens of times over. According to the horrified mayor of Charlottenburg, “a woman could not escape being raped unless she kept in hiding.” Such behavior violated an order from Stalin to maintain strict discipline when taking Berlin, so as not to alienate the German people. Zhukov, too, admonished his troops to remember that they were in Berlin to destroy Hitlerism, not to humiliate the people. “Soldiers,” he said, “make sure that in looking at the hemlines of German girls you don’t look past the reasons the homeland sent you here.” But in the heat of the moment such admonitions had little currency. Before entering the capital Soviet soldiers had posted signs saying “Here it is, the fascist lair—Berlin!” Once inside the city, it was unlikely that that they would try to distinguish between “fascists” and ordinary citizens—at least not until they had slaked their thirst for revenge and garnered the rewards traditionally accorded the conqueror.
By the end of April the Soviets had fought their way to the center of the city. They were pouring artillery fire on the Neue Reichskanzlei, Albert Speer’s monumental down payment on the future Germania. When he built this structure, Speer could hardly have known that his theory of “ruin value” would be tested so soon—and be found so sorely lacking.
On April 29 Hitler got word that that there would be no rescue of Berlin from the army under General Wenck, which in fact no longer existed. Aware now that there was no hope of victory, he decided to do what he had often threatened to do in the past: commit suicide. Before doing so, however, he married his mistress Eva Braun, who had joined him in the bunker on April 15. That he waited to wed until the eve of his suicide was perhaps a commentary on his views of married life. As required by Nazi law, he and Eva declared that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of hereditary diseases. After the ceremony, which was performed by a Berlin city councilor, Hitler dictated his Last Will and Testament, in which he blamed the Jews for the sorry plight of the Third Reich. He named Admiral Karl Donitz as his successor. In a separate document he ordered that his body be “burnt immediately in the place where I have performed the greater part of my daily work during the course of my twelve years’ service to the German people.”
On the next day, April 30, Hitler took leave of those remaining in the bunker, including Goebbels, and disappeared with Eva Braun into their private quarters. The time was about 3:00 P.M. Although different accounts have been given as to what happened next, the most likely scenario is that Hitler and his bride took cyanide capsules—previously tested on Hitler’s dog, Blondi—following which Hitler also shot himself in the head. The bodies were carried by SS men out of the bunker through an emergency exit to the Chancellery garden. They were placed in a shallow crater, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Because of the steady Russian artillery barrage, however, the SS officers did not stand around and attend the flames, much less stir the ashes to break up any identifiable clumps. Rather, they quickly gave the Nazi salute and ran back in the bunker, returning to the garden only once to pour more gas on the fire. About seven hours later, after nightfall, they emerged a third time to wrap the partially charred corpses in tarps and cover them with a thin layer of dirt. Hitler’s instructions regarding the treatment of his remains were therefore not carried out to the letter. The Führer was buried in Berlin after all, if only for a brief time.
Goebbels disobeyed another of Hitler’s final orders by remaining in the bunker instead of joining Admiral Donitz in his rump government northwest of the capital. He sent a telegram to the admiral informing him of the Führer’s death, which news the admiral broadcast to the German people on May 1, telling them however that Hitler had died leading his troops in battle. Then, after failing through General Hans Krebs to negotiate a conditional surrender to the Soviets, Goebbels decided that he, too, must die in Berlin, the city of his destiny. He insisted, moreover, that his family, which had recently moved into the bunker, must die along with him. Accordingly, on the day after Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels and his wife Magda arranged for the murder of their six children—Helga, Hilda, Helmut, Holde, Hedda, and Heide—with cyanide-laced bedtime chocolates. They then went up to the garden and committed suicide themselves. Their bodies were set on fire, but no one made an effort to bury them. This was not a time to stand on ceremony.