Next morning our ranks had thinned out. The prominent people who had come with birthday wishes had left the sinking ship, slipping through the last narrow escape route to the south. Ribbentrop had tried to use one last way of persuading Hitler to set out too. He talked to Eva Braun. She told me about it later. ‘You are the only person who can get the Führer away from here,’ he begged her. ‘Tell him you want to leave Berlin with him. You will be doing Germany a great service.’ But Eva Braun replied, ‘I shall not pass on a word of your proposition to the Führer. He must decide alone. If he thinks it right to stay in Berlin, then I will stay with him. If he leaves, I shall leave too.’
Aircraft and columns of vehicles were setting off south all the time. Fräulein Wolf and Fräulein Schroeder, the other two secretaries, were among those who left. Fräulein Wolf had tears in her eyes when she said goodbye, as if she sensed that she would never again see Hitler, who had been her boss for 25 years.[91] One after another, people shook hands with Hitler as they said goodbye. Only the most important liaison officers stayed behind.
VI
22 April 1945. Feverish restlessness in the bunker. All hell is let loose outside. We’ve heard shooting and thunderous gunfire all day, you can hardly put your head out of doors. The Wilhelmsplatz looks bleak, the Kaiserhof has collapsed like a house of cards; its ruins reach almost all the way to the Reich Chancellery. All that’s left of the Propaganda Ministry is its white façade standing symbolically in the empty square.
I ask everyone I meet how the attack is going. It should be in full swing now. Are those German guns and tanks that aremaking such a noise? None of the officers know. They are all chasing around like waxwork figures pretending to be busy and deluding themselves.
The doors of Hitler’s conference room are closed. There’s an agitated discussion in progress behind them. My colleague Frau Christian, Martin Bormann’s secretary Fräulein Krüger[92] and I are sitting in the dietician’s kitchen drinking strong coffee. We are talking about trivial things just to quell the desperate fear we feel. Each of us is trying to deal with the situation in her own way. No one thinks of eating lunch, although it was lunchtime long ago. Our restlessness makes us go to the door of the conference room again. We hear voices rising and falling. Hitler shouts something, but we can’t make out what. Martin Bormann comes out looking agitated and hands Fräulein Krüger some sheets to be typed out immediately. For a moment we see uniformed backs bent over the street map of Berlin. The meeting looks baffled. Distraught, we move back into the anteroom, where we smoke, wait, whisper…
At last the heavy iron door opens. Linge calls Frau Christian and me in to the Führer With an expression on his face that tells us nothing he goes on to fetch Fräulein Manziarly too. Only a few steps separate us from the life-and-death decision. Now we shall hear the truth.
All the officers who have been discussing the situation are standing outside the open door of the conference room with white, stony faces. Hitler stands motionless in the little anteroom outside his study. All the expression has vanished from his face; his eyes are blank. He looks like his own death mask. His gaze sees nothing. Impersonally, in commanding tones such as I’ve never heard him use to a woman before, he says, ‘Get changed at once. A plane is leaving in an hour and will take you south. All is lost, hopelessly lost.’
I am frozen rigid. The picture on the wall is hanging crooked, and there’s a mark on the lapel of Hitler’s jacket. Everything feels far away, as if it were packed in cotton wool.
Eva Braun is the first to rouse herself. She goes towards Hitler, who has already placed his hand on the handle of his door, takes both his hands and says, smiling and in the comforting tones you might use to a sad child, ‘But you know I shall stay with you. I’m not letting you send me away.’ Then Hitler’s eyes begin to shine from within, and he does something none of us, not even his closest friends and servants, have ever seen him do before: he kisses Eva Braun on the mouth, while the officers stand outside waiting to be dismissed. I don’t want to say it, but it comes out of its own accord; I don’t want to stay here and I don’t want to die, but I can’t help it. ‘I’m staying too,’ I say.
I had to pack a crate with the most important files,the paperwork and documents given to me by Schaub. Mechanically I put them together one by one. Should I send my own things home too? Perhaps there wouldn’t be any room left for luggage in the last few planes going south tomorrow? But perhaps we’d have to hold out here for weeks? I didn’t send anything. The plane that took off with its important cargo and two of Hitler’s orderlies was never seen again.
Hitler shook hands with everyone in turn, saying goodbye. Only the most important liaison officers stayed behind. And Bormann too, of course, always the channel for any news that had to reach Hitler.
That afternoon there was another long military briefing. The Russians were now right outside the gates of the city. Hitler gave orders for one final attack, with all the troops and planes to be found in Berlin. Every single tank, every gun must go to the front. The bunker echoed with the explosions of the small bombs that the Russians kept dropping over the city, and with Hitler’s imperative voice too. The generals left the small, stuffy conference room red-faced. Frau Christian and I sat timidly outside in the corridor. Fräulein Krüger, Bormann’s secretary, had joined us in these last few days. She too could say only that her boss expected either to leave Berlin in the next few days, or… We had no clear idea of the other alternative.
Once again we had to wait. Even Hitler could do nothing more now. He retreated to be with his dogs, which were now being kept in a cubicle near the lavatories. Then he sat in silence on the little bench in the corridor with the puppy on his lap, watching people coming and going. The staff unwaveringly went about their duties. The servants functioned calmly and reliably as ever, carrying out Hitler’s wishes. Theo Morell, who had heart trouble, sat in his room in the bunker worrying. The tension was unbearable.
Eva Braun came out of her room. It was quiet outside now. We had no idea what the weather was like. There was no window to show us where the sun stood in the sky. We wanted to go out in the park, to give the dogs and ourselves a little fresh air and daylight. A hazy cloud of dust and smoke hung over Berlin. The air was mild and you could feel the spring. Eva Braun, Frau Christian and I walked through the park of the Reich Chancellery in silence. There were deep holes everywhere in the well-tended turf, with empty metal containers and broken branches lying around. We saw dugouts and heaps of bazookas at regular intervals along the perimeter wall. Was this to be the final line of defence? We didn’t believe it. Tomorrow, or maybe in the next few days, German troops would drive out the enemy.
We passed through a gap in the ruined, fallen wall and went into the grounds of the Foreign Office. The trees were in blossom, quiet and peaceful. Only a few days ago we women had practised with pistols here. Hitler had finally given his permission. Back in East Prussia, when the Russians were coming closer and closer, Frau Christian and I had already asked if it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to learn how to handle a pistol. At the time Hitler had replied, smiling, ‘No, ladies! I don’t want to die by the hand of a secretary. Aim darts with your eyes, that will do!’ But now he suddenly had no more objections. We had shot at huntsman’s practice targets under Rattenhuber’s supervision. Hitler sent us into the abandoned grounds of the Foreign Office so that we couldn’t do any harm, and here we still saw the tattered paper targets recording our hits. We had no chance to practise any more◦– the Russian artillery was doing all the shooting around here. But today, briefly, all was quiet. Hidden behind some shrubs in a small round flowerbed we found a beautiful bronze statue. A young naiad with a charming figure stood here in the garden under the blossoming trees. She suddenly seemed to us incredibly beautiful in all this bleakness. All at once we heard the birds still twittering, we saw the daffodils flowering in the grass, and nature waking to new life. We were almost glad to see that all this still existed. That dreadful bunker was surely to blame for the terrible, oppressive atmosphere. Up here in the open air you could breathe more easily, your head was clearer. The dogs romped about on the grass, and we sat on a rock and smoked. Even Eva Braun lit a cigarette. Seeing our surprised looks, she said, ‘Oh, children, I just have to start smoking again. With extraordinary worries like mine, surely I can do something out of the ordinary too.’ But she had a box of menthol pastilles in her bag and took the precaution of popping one in her mouth when we heard the first siren sound and clambered down again.
91
In fact Johanna Wolf had worked for Adolf Hitler from 1929 to 1945, and thus for about 16 years.
92
Else Krüger, married name James,