The official whom Goebbels had summoned to solemnize the marriage wrote that their request was granted, and invited them only to confirm by their signatures that they were members of the Master Race and not suffering from congenital diseases.
This was followed by a wedding breakfast with champagne, attended by an intimate circle of acquaintances. Magda Goebbels, wife of the Reich Minister, was also present at the funereal wedding, Hitler having been the proxy father at her own wedding. Among the papers of Frau Goebbels there are records of a conversation with the Führer. She had been about to leave Goebbels for being unfaithful to her (this apostle of Nazi rectitude had been popularly nicknamed ‘the Bullock of Babelsberg’ because of his predilection for film actresses), but the Führer urged her to keep the family together. He told her that she, too, as a member of the Party, a Parteigenossin, had a mission in life.
The Führer presented himself to the people as an exemplary ascetic who disdained earthly joys the better to serve the nation. Magda Goebbels and her unfaithful husband similarly exemplified the ideal Nazi family of many children.
Now one piece of hypocrisy was being replaced by another. The stench of mysticism and vulgarity emanating from this wedding would have choked all but the undead. After it, Hitler dictated his will. By 4.00 a.m. it was ready. The witnesses – Goebbels, Bormann, and Generals Burgdorf and Krebs – appended their signatures.
Hitler’s adjutant, Otto Günsche, testified during interrogation on 14 May 1945:
On the night of 28 April 1945 the Führer dictated his will to his secretaries Christian and Junge. The will was typed in three or four copies. On the morning of 29 April 1945 Major Johannmeier was sent with these wills to the commander of the Central Army Group, Field Marshal Schörner, to Sander, to Grand Admiral Dönitz, and to Field Marshal Kesselring.
A few days before the attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler was outlining the victorious course he anticipated the war would take and told Goebbels, who noted it in his diary, ‘When we are the victors, who will question our methods?’ (15 June 1941)
But it was defeat that came to Berlin and, evading responsibility, Hitler began his ‘political testament’ with the usual professions of love for the German people, declaring that he was without blame for the war that broke out.
It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. Those who wanted and sought it were exclusively foreign statesmen – Jews or people acting in the interests of the Jews.
At this last hour, his reflex was to blame the Jews. We have, however, only to leaf through Mein Kampf, a book permeated by justification of war and vengeful passion, to be persuaded that war lay at the very foundations of the doctrine of National Socialism. Its practice confirmed that unambiguously. Hitler himself goes on to give the lie to his cheap preamble in his farewell letter to the chief of staff of the Wehrmacht High Command, Field Marshal Keitel. Having brought ruin upon Germany and a catastrophic defeat upon the army, Hitler in concluding his missive insists that the goal remains unaltered: conquest for the German people of lands in the east. He enjoins the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force to use every means to rouse the spirit of resistance and National Socialist faith in the soldiers and to fight to the death.
In the testament he expels Göring and Himmler from the Party and appoints Admiral Dönitz president. The crowning absurdity is Hitler’s formation in the testament of a government headed by Goebbels, whom he appoints Reich chancellor. For Bormann he invents the new portfolio of minister of the Party. He charges the new government and its leader, Goebbels (who, as Hitler knew perfectly well, was never going to get out of Berlin), to continue the war, to adhere to the race laws to the end, and to combat world Jewry.
Everything is just as it was when Hitler started out: the Master Race, the conquest of territorial living space, Lebensraum, the anti-Semitism, the waging of war.
Goebbels accepted his short-lived promotion, a reward for loyalty, as Eva accepted her wedding. He had finally beaten all his rivals and reached the pinnacle of his career.
The exploding shells shaking the concrete shelter proclaimed that these were the last hours of the Third Reich.
On the evening of 29 April, General Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, came to the Führerbunker and reported the situation: the troops were totally exhausted and the situation of the population was desperate. In his opinion, the only possible solution now was for the troops to withdraw from Berlin and break out of the encirclement. Weidling asked Hitler for permission to begin the break out.
Hitler refused.
How would such a breakthrough help? We will merely get out of one ‘cauldron’ into another. Do you think I want to skulk around and wait for my end to come in a peasant house or some such? It is better, in this situation, for me to remain and die here. After that they can break through if they want to.
There could, however, be no delay. Under the circumstances there was not an hour to lose.
‘Even if a path from the bunker to freedom had been cleared for him, he would not have had the strength to take advantage of it,’ said Hanna Reitsch later. But, completely routed, incapable of effective action, he put off the hour of his death, steadily diminishing the prospects of survival for those he was holding back.
The situation in the bunker was bizarre. Until the previous day what was required was loyally to confirm your readiness to die with the Führer. Now, after the distribution of the symbolic portfolios, it was to confirm your readiness to continue a lost war at the head of a Germany defeated and occupied by the enemy. An entrenched habit of obedience, of reverence for orders, and of imbecile automatism continued in some to function like clockwork.
On the night of 29 April Professor Haase, head of the Reich Chancellery hospital, was brought to Hitler. ‘Hitler showed Haase three small glass ampoules, each in the casing of a rifle cartridge,’ Rattenhuber, who was present, relates,
Hitler said the ampoules contained a lethal, instantaneous poison and that he had been given them by Dr Stumpfegger. He asked the professor how the effectiveness of the poison could be checked, and Haase replied that it could be tested on an animal, for instance, a dog. Hitler then proposed summoning Sergeant Major Tornow, who looked after his favourite dog, Blondi. When the dog was brought, Haase crushed an ampoule with pliers and poured the contents into the dog’s mouth, which Tornow held open. A few seconds later the dog began to tremble and it died after thirty seconds. Hitler ordered Tornow to check later that the dog was really dead.
When we left Hitler, I asked Haase what the poison in the ampoules was and whether it guaranteed instant death. Haase replied that the ampoules contained potassium cyanide, and that it was instantly and lethally effective.
That was the last time I saw Hitler alive.