A month after the fall of Berlin, Hitler’s secretary, Gertraud Junge, described those days: ‘Hitler was certain the Red Army knew where he was, and he was expecting Red Army units to storm his refuge at any moment.’
No reports from the army commanders on the course of the fighting were now being received. The radio link with Obersalzberg was unreliable. It was periodically lost completely, then briefly restored. News of the fate of German cities and the situation in Berlin came mainly from Allied journalists reporting over the radio from locations where there was fighting. Rumours, each more desperate than the last, seeped down from the streets into the underground complex.
In spring 1941, as Goebbels was hatching his conspiracy against humanity, he flooded the world with rumours to sow panic, fear and despair. With diabolical glee he wrote in his diary that he was doing it ‘in the name of havoc’. ‘Rumours are our daily bread,’ he had written then. Now the epicentre of the earthquake had moved, and was directly underneath the Reich Chancellery.
In the Berliner Frontblatt Goebbels urged soldiers and the Berliners not to listen to rumours. ‘Rumours are used by the enemy as a weapon to paralyse our resistance and undermine our confidence. That is why at times like this we must stick only to the facts.’
At this same time, Hitler’s own headquarters was reduced to extrapolating facts from the rumours on which the reports to Bormann from the local Nazi leaders were based. They found their way into his radio-telegram folder which I was analysing in the Reich Chancellery. Twenty years later, I copied detailed extracts from these reports in the archive,[1] which reflected the situation in Berlin in the days immediately before capitulation.
Reinickendorf–Wedding reports: the Borsigwalde subdistrict picked up a rumour a few hours ago that the US government has resigned. Ribbentrop is said to have flown to America, presumably for negotiations. Troops are thought to be being withdrawn from the West in order to reinforce the Eastern Front.
Other rumours:
There are Russians in basements from Gallich Boulevard to Graf von Redern Allee.
Three vehicles: one with Russian officers, one with private soldiers, the third with an unidentified load paused in Heiligensee near the anti-aircraft gunners’ barracks before driving off in the direction of Velten. The Russians talked to the local people and reportedly told them everyone should immediately take cover in basements because heavy artillery would shortly be firing. Then they shared cigarettes with the residents and told the German girls they could go out without fear because nobody would do anything to them.
It is impossible to verify these rumours since Heiligensee is in the hands of the Russians. 22 April 45. 20.00 hours.
The facts were even more dismaying than the rumours. They were contained in such communications as:
Report of Police President Gerum
22 April 45 / 14.15 hrs
Köpenick is currently wholly occupied by the enemy. The enemy is rushing across the Spree in the direction of Adlershof.
Or in messages which, more colourfully, were reporting the same thing, namely, districts that had fallen.
Wilmersdorf District, Zehlendorf.
Sector E reports:
From there a phone call was made on official business to the shelter in Struveshof. A Russian came to the telephone and demanded schnapps. The official at the shelter only managed to shout, ‘The Russians are here!’ 22 April 45. 06.00 hrs
Soviet tanks. Fires. A barrage of enemy artillery fire. Captured streets. People killed and injured. A lack of armaments. A request for artillery support… The reports of the Nazi Party district leaders characterize the hopelessness of those fighting in the streets of Berlin and the disasters experienced by the Berliners.
The leader of another district reported that the enemy had advanced along Schönhauser Allee as far as Stargarderstrasse and that there was no possibility of offering resistance in that area. He asked:
Question: what provision is there for food for the populace? People are no longer coming out of their basements, have no water and cannot cook anything.
Similar reports must have found their way to Goebbels as commissioner for the defence of Berlin and head of the Nazi Party in Berlin, but they fell on deaf ears. No notice was taken of them. In his diary there is not a shred of evidence, not a hint or word written there that would enable us to conclude that, in those days of calamity for the German people, the authors of all their misfortunes gave a moment’s thought to what their nation was now going through, or felt in the least bit answerable to them.
‘I and history’, ‘My historic mission’, ‘I have assumed responsibility for my people’: these were words the Germans heard constantly from Hitler. ‘The Führer is Germany,’ Nazi propaganda drummed into their heads, using every conceivable means to bamboozle the people as it created a cult of Hitler. They were insistently told: ‘The Führer does your thinking: yours is only to carry out his orders.’ On 23 April, while still in Poznań, I heard on Berlin radio, ‘The Führer is in the capital and calls on soldiers to defend themselves more steadfastly.’
That same day, this brief appeal appeared in the German newspapers: the last public statement by the Führer, signed on 22 April.
Remember:
Everyone who advocates, or even merely approves of, orders that weaken our resolve is a traitor! He should immediately be shot or hanged!
That applies also to orders allegedly originating from a Gauleiter, the Minister Dr Goebbels, or even in the name of the Führer.
As the situation deteriorated, only these words, scorched by hatred, remained in Hitler’s vocabulary, calling for reprisals: ‘Traitor! ‘Shoot!’ ‘Hang!’ Instant, merciless retribution awaited any German suspected of being insufficiently fanatical and imbued with blind faith in the victory of the German Army.
Goebbels’ speech that day contained a summons to all soldiers, to the wounded, to the entire male population of Berlin immediately to join the ranks of the defenders of the city. He declared that anyone who failed to respond to this appeal and did not immediately go to the assembly point, at the Berlin Commissioner’s Office on Johannistrasse near the Friedrichstrasse station, was a despicable swine.
Here, next to the station, and in other busy places, Nazis carried out executions to intimidate the public. I myself was confronted by the sight of a hanged German soldier in Berlin when we had just entered the city.
The commander of the SS Adolf Hitler Lifeguard Regiment, Lieutenant General Mohnke, also called on ‘the men of Berlin’ to join the ‘Mohnke Volunteer Corps’, invoking their fanaticism, ‘indomitable will’ and fearlessness as ‘decent lads’. He, too, listed assembly points. Appeals, appeals… threats, executions, abuse, flattery. Assembly points… And all the while the scale of the disaster was escalating beyond all bounds. The city had been abandoned to its fate by the regime. No evacuation was organized. Not even the children were taken out of Berlin, which was left without bread or water.
Even at a time like this, the district leaders’ reports to Bormann contain the customary spats reflecting a struggle for influence within the Nazi Party. Here is an example. Kreisleiter Koch, reporting the rapid advance of the Russians, lists areas captured, and concludes this section, ‘In Friedrichsfelde the Ivans broke through to the south as far as Bielefeld.’ He then moves on to another matter: