Hitler's Final Days in the Bunker

"Downfall" [Der Untergang] is a 2004 German historical war film depicting the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's rule over Nazi Germany in 1945. It was based on several histories of the period. The film was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, and written and produced by Bernd Eichinger. The film received critical acclaim upon release and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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The film begins with an excerpt from the documentary "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary" [2002], featuring the real Traudl Junge expressing her guilt and shame for admiring Hitler in her youth.

The film continues with Traudl Junge [Alexandra Maria Lara] and four other young women arriving at Führer's Headquarters Wolf's Lair in Rastenburg, East Prussia  in November 1942. The women are met by Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge. After he gives the women an introduction,  Hitler [Bruno Ganz] emerges from his office and proceeds to individually ask each woman her name and where she is from. Traudl Junge is the first woman chosen to have her secretarial skills tested and is eventually chosen to be Hitlers personal secretary.

When Traudl Junge heard of a vacancy in the Chancellery, she played up her typing and shorthand skills to land the job. "I thought I would be at the source of all information. But I was really in a blind spot".

In an interview with the Journalist Gitta Sereny, on 25 September 2000, she described Hitler as "very paternal", adding:

"I have never understood the effect he had on all of us. Sometimes, when he went off somewhere without us, it was almost as if the air around us had become deficient . . . some essential element was missing . . . There was a vacuum".

Traudl is convinced that Hitler basically had two separate personalities, of which she and all the "ladies" of his close circle -- his mistress Eva Braun [for just 24 hours at the end his wife], his four secretaries, the wife of his personal physician [Annie Brandt], his favourite military aide [Maria von Below] and Albert Speer's wife Margret -- saw only the human, often charming side.

"We never saw him as the statesman, we didn't attend any of the conferences. We were summoned only when he wanted to dictate, and he was as considerate then as he was in private. And our office, both in the Reichschancellery and in the Bunkers, was so far removed from his command quarters that we never saw or even heard any of his rages that we heard whispers about. We knew his timetable, whom he received, but except for the few men he sometimes had to meals we attended, such as Speer, the other architect, [Hermann] Giesler, or his photographer, [Heinrich] Hoffmann, we rarely saw any of them.

"My colleagues told me that in the earlier years he talked incessantly, about the past and the future, but after Stalingrad, well, I don't remember many monologues. We all tried to distract him, with talk about films, or gossip, anything that would take his mind off the war. He loved gossip. That was part of that other side of him, which was basically the only one we saw".

Traudl recalls the first dictation she took from him, the test that was to decide her future, at the "Wolfsschanze", his East Prussian field HQ, in December 1942:

"Later I realised what a dreadful time that was for him, just before Stalingrad. But you wouldn't have guessed it: the only thing he seemed to have on his mind was to make me comfortable and reassure me".

Hitler's voice when dictating -- always straight into the machine, Junge says -- was usually quiet but, at times, when working on speeches, it would suddenly became raucous, his gestures studiedly expansive.

"It happened from one moment to the next, and he was clearly acting, rehearsing, performing".

This "performance" would include the use of awful words that he never used in private.

"His speeches all had these words in them [about the Jews and the Slavs] and I now know that one simply got used to them, didn't really hear them, blocked them. And an instant later, he would be quiet again, professorial with his steel-rimmed glasses".

Traudl Junge is impressed by Ian Kershaw's objectivity:

"He is different, perhaps because he is of a different generation. The way he presents what the 'Red Threat' meant to us in the early years, and how Hitler used it, is quite extraordinary. It isn't that he defends or justifies us in any way, but he appears to understand, better than others have done, how it ended up with the Germans being not oppressed, of course, as were the Poles and Russians later, but psychologically subjugated by Hitler. That terrible, terrible charisma of his, all of it serving -- we know it now but didn't then -- his ultimate megalomaniac goal, a race-selected United Europe under German domination.

"Only a foreign historian can look at Hitler like this; no German could have this 'Distanz', not even the younger ones, not yet. That is probably why, except for Joachim Fest's 20 years ago, there is barely a Hitler biography written by a German.

"Kershaw's biography reminded me how unsystematic everything was, his political and military decisions, his life, really. Putting together what this book now shows us and what I probably felt in my bones then but only understand consciously now, the essential thing about Hitler probably was that his mind and his actions were ruled not by knowledge, but by emotion. I had never understood until now how he, who supposedly so loved the Germans, was prepared to sacrifice them so cold-bloodedly at the end. I have never understood myself the effect he had on all of us, including the generals. It was more than charisma, you know. Sometimes when he went off somewhere without us, the moment he was gone, it was almost as if the air around us had become deficient. Some essential element was missing: electricity, even oxygen, an awareness of being alive -- there was a . . . a vacuum.

"What was decisive, perhaps from the start I think, was that -different, I now know, even from other dictators- he had no peer; there was no one whom he could, or indeed would, consult for advice, or who would have dared to question his decisions. Speer was basically the only one he felt emotion for, listened to and could really talk with, but not about politics. [Josef] Göbbels could have filled that other role, except that -we knew this though Göbbels never did- Hitler didn't feel anything for him; he was, in a way, too intellectual. It sounds absurd, but I think he intimidated him. Of course, Göbbels would have done anything for him and in the end he, his wife and their children died for him".

The story resumes jumps ahead to 20 April 1945, Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday, during the Battle of Berlin. In Berlin, inside the Führerbunker, a loud blast by the bombardment of Soviet artillery from above, wakes up Traudl, Gerda Christian and Constanze Manziarly in the room they share. A furious Hitler storms out of his office and asks his Generals to inform him where the gunfire is coming from. General Wilhelm Burgdorf informs Hitler that Central Berlin is currently under fire from Soviet artillery, but he does not know where its coming from.

General Vasily Kazakov had pushed forward his breakthrough artillery divisions and all the other heavy gun batteries with 152mm and 203mm Howitzers. 

The gun crews were encouraged into a frenzied rate of fire by political officers. Senior artillery officers felt especially proud and made self-satisfied remarks about "the bloody god of war", which had become an almost universal euphemism for Soviet gunnery.

From that morning until 2 May, they were to fire 1.8 million shells in the assault on the city

Burgdorf gives Hitler a phone connected to General Karl Koller who informs Hitler that  the Red Army has advanced to within 12 kilometres [7 .5 mi] of central Berlin. After finding out the Soviets are much closer than he was told, Hitler yells at his Generals for not informing him and that he had to find out this news for himself.

Above ground in the Reich Chancellery, many head Nazi figures gather for Hitler's Birthday reception.

 

On 20 April 1945, Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday in his Bunker, with his senior Nazi lieutenants in attendance, including Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels, Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. The Americans had also given the Führer a birthday present that morning: a massive bombing raid on Berlin that inflicted major damage on the city, cutting gas and water supplies. Officials began to flee west.

Down in the Bunker, Göring was dressed in an olive drab field uniform instead of his usual imperial silk-and-satin dress uniforms. There were whispers at the party that he looked like an American general, presumably because he wanted to put on an agreeable appearance when he surrendered. In fact, Göring had already fled his mansion at Karinhall to the northwest of Berlin, with a convoy of dozens of trucks loaded down with the loot he had stolen from Germany's conquests. He personally had detonated the charge that blasted the mansion into ruins when he left. The failure of Göring's Luftwaffe to help stop the Allied tide against Germany -a failure that had made even more vivid by Göring's tendency to make overblown boasts that he could not back up - had left him out of favor with the Führer, but Hitler was feeling agreeable with Göring that day.

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler was not in the Hitler's favor either. The Führer was disappointed in Himmler's poor performance as commander of Army Group Vistula. Hitler would have been even more disappointed if he had known that Himmler was putting out feelers to make a deal with the Western Allies, going through the motions of smuggling some Jews from the concentration camps to safety in hopes the Americans and British would think he had turned over a new leaf.

Himmler was almost as deluded as Hitler. Whatever misgivings and problems the Western Allies had with the Soviets, Hitler and his lieutenants were the enemy, pure and simple, and at that late date the Germans had no real bargaining position. The Allies would win the war and soon; what did they have to discuss with vermin like Himmler? One German Army colonel who was sounded out by one of Himmler's underlings on the Reichsführer's scheme replied that it was too little, too late, and Himmler was "the most unsuitable man in the whole of Germany for such negotiations".

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz's star was still bright in Hitler's eyes. To be sure, Dönitz' attempt to strangle Britain with his U-Boat fleet had failed, but Hitler, in an outburst of reasonableness, had recognized that submarine construction had been given low priority. Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi, so devoted to the Führer that he was regarded in some quarters as an overgrown Hitler Youth, and Hitler admired his crisp military efficiency. Hitler saw Dönitz as a possible successor -- though the Admiral had competition in the form of Martin Bormann, the low-profile master schemer, "dear Martin" to the Führer.

The guests urged Hitler to flee Berlin and go south to the mountains to lead continued resistance. He refused, saying he could not flee Berlin and expect his soldiers to go on fighting. The meeting soon broke up, with most of the guests departing. Göring went to his castle in Bavaria, where he would soon be under house arrest. Himmler went off to pursue his absurd peace initiatives. Dönitz was dispatched to take command of the defense of the Reich in the south.

Göbbels remained behind. He was the purest of pure Nazis, Hitler's old and trusted friend. That morning he had performed one of his last Propaganda broadcasts, calling on Germans to trust in the Führer and saying Hitler would lead them out of difficulties.

Hitler's Birthday
Chaotic Conditions
Kalgoorlie Miner [WA]
21 April 1945

London, 20 April: At noon today -Hitler's birthday- Berlin's sirens wailed as the German "Achtung" radios reported bombers, says Reuter's monitoring service.

Germany's principal radio station, Deutschlandsender, believed to be situated at Königs-Wüsterhausen, had not been heard for 17 hours up to 2 p.m. A few of the remaining medium wave stations were working at half or quarter power, and to hear Germany's voice clearly one had to tune in to Oslo or the transmitter operating on the former Vienna wave length.

Thus, on Hitler's birthday, Germany's once great network, which once filled the ether from Calais to the Caucasus, began to operate on two different programmes — one for the Reich's southern rump and the other for the northern. The German News agency said that many Berliners had to read Göbbels's speech for Hitler's birth day from the newspapers because the electric current had failed. Berlin papers featured the speech, with photographs.

Some Berliners listening to the broadcast concluded that Göbbels had gone completely mad. In any case, Hitler had asked him to stay. Göbbels would share the fate of the Führer.

At the party, SS General Hermann Fegelein informs Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler that Hitler is ordering the evacuation of all German military offices by initiating Operation Clausewitz.

Operation Clausewitz was part of the defence of Berlin by Nazi Germany during the final stage of the European conflict of World War II. Hitler ordered "Fall Clausewitz"on 20 April 1945 which called for a number of unknown actions but did include the evacuation of all Wehrmacht and SS offices in Berlin and the destruction of official papers and documents of the state. After this operation was initiated Berlin became a front line city.

There is no available information today on the details of Operation Clausewitz.

There are a number of different theories as to what Operation Clausewitz meant:

• Richard Wires wrote that it was a defence plan for the Sector Z [Zitadelle] of the city of Berlin, which included the Government quarter.
• Mark McGee calls it the Nazis' last stand against the Soviets.
• Erich Kuby refers to it simply as a password that alerted the defenders of Berlin about the incoming battle, while the password Kolberg meant that the battle had started.
• Earl Ziemke also calls it a password that meant to indicate that the Red Army was approaching Berlin.
• Everette Lemons defines it not as an operation but the stage in which the Nazi military considered Berlin to be part of the front line.

The film "Downfall" makes references to it, saying that after it was started "all ministries and departments" were leaving Berlin. The film states that once Hitler started Clausewitz Berlin is a "front city". Finally the film also suggests that the burning of official papers and documents was a direct result of the initiation of Operation Clausewitz.

On 20 April 1945, Hitler's private secretary, Martin Bormann, put into action Operation Seraglio [Fall Serail], a plan to evacuate the key and favoured members of Hitler's entourage from the Berlin  Führerbunker where they were based, and Hitler's archives to an Alpine command center near Berchtesgaden—Hitler's retreat in southern Germany.  A convoy of 10 Ju-52 aircraft departed for Munich from Gatow airfield under the overall command of General Hans Baur, Hitler's personal pilot, on the night of 20/21 April. The final flight out was a Junkers Ju 352 transport plane, piloted by Major Friedrich Gundlfinger—on board were ten heavy chests under the supervision of Hitler's personal valet Sergeant Wilhelm Arndt. The plane crashed into the Heidenholz forest, near the Czechoslovak border.

Some of the more useful parts of Gundlfinger's plane were appropriated by locals before the police and SS cordoned off the crash. When Baur told Hitler what had happened, the German leader expressed grief at the loss of Arndt, one of his most favoured servants, and added:

"I entrusted him with extremely valuable documents which would show posterity the truth of my actions!"

Apart from this quoted sentence, there is no indication of what was in the boxes.

A Deutsche Luft Hansa Focke Wulf FW200B-2 D-ASHH 'Hessen', crashed on high ground 21 April 1945 on a flight to Spain with documents and staff from the Chancellery at Berlin.

Himmler says that Hitler will take the whole Reich down if he remains in Berlin. He suggests that Fegelein speak to his sister-in-law, Eva Braun, to see if she can convince Hitler to leave the city. Soon after, Hitler enters the room, for his birthday reception, and is greeted with a salute and "Sieg Heil" from everyone.

The film jumps over to the evacuation of the SS Führungshauptamt. It also introduces a parallel story surrounding Professor Dr. Ernst-Günter Schenck, an SS colonel and doctor still in Berlin. Upset by the orders to evacuate, Dr. Schenck argues with SS General Tellermann that because he is both a colonel for the SS and a doctor for the Wehrmacht, he should not be ordered to evacuate so that he can stay to take care of the sick. Tellermann finally agrees and issues Schenck an authorized permit to stay in Berlin.

Tellermann was an SS-Obergruppenführer who was overseeing the evacuation of the building where Schenck's office resided, when "Clausewitz" started. All ministries and departments were ordered to leave Berlin, and therefore all documents were being destroyed, before the personnel was to be evacuated.

Current knowledge of the "Untergang" community, however, establishes him as a fictional character.

Back in the Reich Chancellery, many of the remaining generals are giving their final goodbyes to Hitler. When Himmler says goodbye, he begs Hitler to leave Berlin and suggests getting in touch with the Western Allies,  plead with Hitler to leave the city,. but Hitler refuses and declares, "I will defeat them in Berlin, or face my downfall".  As the generals are getting into their cars to evacuate.

Himmler tells Fegelein that he thinks Hitler has finally lost it and that since Berlin will fall in the next few days, he is going to have to take it in his own hands and to negotiate surrender terms with the Western Allies, behind Hitler's back.

At the same time, Albert Speer arrives at the Reich Chancellery to talk with Hitler.

 

The Summit at Gut Hartzwalde

Of all the extraordinary "summits" in history, an incontestable place must be given to a two-hour wartime meeting on 20 April 1945 between Heinrich Himmler, the arch-killer of Jews, and Norbert Masur, Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress. As Allied armies closed in on Nazi redoubts in the spring of 1945, Himmler, aware of Germany's desperate situation [and his own], became more and more receptive to the idea of negotiating the release of the ill and starving in concentration camps such as Ravensbrück. The godfather for that extraordinary meeting was Felix Kersten, Himmler's masseur whose "magical hands" had been indispensable to Himmler since 1939.

This was not the first time that Himmler tried to strike a deal behind Hitler's back. Almost a year earlier, Kersten and Walter Schellenberg, the latter since 1944 head of both the SS and Wehrmacht security apparatus, made a proposal to the Allies that Himmler assumed they would not refuse. The aim was audacious and bizarre. As Professor John H. Waller reveals in his 2002 book "The Devil's Doctor: Felix Kersten and the Secret Plot to Turn Himmler," Himmler proposed deposing Hitler. On 20 March 1944 General William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services [OSS], passed on to President Roosevelt a message from Sweden that Himmler considered ousting Hitler and negotiating peace with the Allies in order to form a united front against the Soviet Union. Roosevelt and Churchill wasted no time rejecting the offer.

Time was running out for Nazi leaders. On 20 July 1944 there was an unsuccessful attempt on Hitler's life and the circle of opposition to Hitler was destroyed or under surveillance. Himmler had to watch his every step. There was enough treachery for several Shakespearean dramas.

The meeting between Himmler and Masur took place at Gut Hartzwalde, Kersten's estate, not far from the Ravensbrück camp where starving and mutilated women were unaware that Himmler and Masur were meeting to decide their fate. Originally Hillel Storch of the Swedish branch of the Jewish World Congress was to meet with Himmler, but Masur was chosen instead. According to Joseph Kessel in "Les Mains de Miracle" [The Miraculous Hands, 1960], Storch feared for his life. He had already lost 17 members of his family in concentration camps. On 19 April 1945, after Jewish officials obtained a promise of safe passage, Masur received the long-awaited invitation. Himmler was expecting him that evening. Masur and Kersten left for Berlin on a regularly scheduled flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen, then boarded another plane emblazoned with Swastikas, hardly an auspicious symbol, as they flew to Berlin through skies crossed regularly by Allied planes on their bombing missions. Kersten referred to his companion, the visaless Masur, as a "dangerous piece of contraband".

This was the historical adventure that Masur has described in a booklet titled "Ein Jude Talar Med Himmler" [A Jew Speaks with Himmler, 1945], a rare document still not available in English.

"It was a horrifying idea," he wrote a year after the meeting, "that I would be confronted and negotiate with the man responsible for the extermination of millions of Jews".

After they circled over roofless Berlin, Masur witnessed the destruction that became more visible as they drove from Tempelhof airport through the city. Kersten's estate was some 30 miles north of Berlin, almost halfway to the hell of Ravensbrück. The Gestapo vehicle drove with its lights dimmed through the ghost-like ruins, past endless piles of rubble, the moonlit scene pierced from time to time by searchlights seeking out Allied bombers. They arrived at the estate before midnight to await Himmler.

A birthday party in the Berlin Bunker delayed the meeting. When Schellenberg arrived the following morning to welcome Masur he explained that it was Hitler's birthday, and Himmler could only come after the party. The meeting, he emphasized, was dangerous for all concerned. Hitler was against the release of any camp inmates and had been enraged the previous fall when Himmler agreed to send 2,700 concentration camp survivors to Switzerland as a gesture of conciliation to the Allies as Germany's war fortunes waned. Before long there was another message from Himmler that he could not come until 2:30 in the morning. They awaited him in candlelight since electricity was cut off as soon as the air-raid sirens sounded. At the stroke of 2:30 Himmler arrived, followed by his aide, Rudolf Brandt. Masur was relieved that he was greeted with a "Guten Tag", instead of a "Heil Hitler". They all sat down to tea, coffee, sugar, and cakes brought from Sweden, items in short supply in wartime Germany.

As Kersten reminisced:

"Here round the table at my Hartzwalde house were peacefully seated the representatives of two races who had been at daggers drawn, each regarding the other as its mortal enemy. And this attitude had demanded the sacrifice of millions; the shades of those dead hovered in the background. It was a shattering reflection".

No less shattering, to be sure, than the blindness in Kersten's words of equivalence.

As Masur described him, Himmler was dressed in a well-fitted uniform, decorations prominently displayed, his manner calm and self-controlled. Masur could not believe that the man in front of him was history's worst mass murderer. Himmler soon launched into a monologue. Like other Nazi leaders whose point of reference was the defeat in World War I, he recalled that he was 14 when that war began and he blamed the Spartacist uprising and Jews for the social upheavals that followed. The Jews were a foreign element, he said, that had been driven out of Germany but always returned. He was always in favor of emigration as a solution but not even countries that claimed to be friends of Jews wanted to accept them. When Masur interjected that it was not customary to expel people from their homes and from a country where they had lived for generations, Himmler argued that it was mainly the eastern Jews who created new problems and that "Jewish masses were infested with severe epidemics". He conflated the conditions in Germany in the 1920s with those that prevailed in the ghettoes and camps that he himself established.

Himmler bemoaned his poor image in foreign media, and complained that when Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald were liberated it provided "mud slinging Propaganda" and that when he released 2,700 Jews to go to Switzerland he was accused of doing it to get an alibi. "I do not need an alibi. I have always only done what I have considered necessary for my people, this is my belief". As for the crematoria, these were built because of epidemics in camps, an argument that anticipated that used by Holocaust deniers. [The bodies of the sick were ostensibly burnt in the crematoria in order to prevent the spread of typhus or other infectious diseases. No responsible historian has accepted the Nazi account on this matter]. He wished that the camps had been called "training camps," rather than concentration camps, since the purpose was to incarcerate and punish criminals. He wanted them to be like Theresienstadt, a community inhabited by Jews who governed themselves. "My friend Heydrich and I wanted all the camps to be patterned this way". He did not say that Theresienstadt was designed for Propaganda and that many of its "privileged Jews" ended up in the crematoria of Auschwitz.

Masur finally found it difficult to contain himself. He sensed that Himmler's self-pitying pleadings were a sign of weakness and he reminded Himmler of the "gross misdeeds" that were perpetrated in camps. "I could not nor did I want to control my indignation . . . it was a great satisfaction to me to tell him to his face of some of the crimes. . . ." Masur sensed that he was now "the stronger one" and that this enabled him to make the request that all Jews in camps which were close to Scandinavia and Switzerland be evacuated. Supported by Kersten, he asked for the release of all the inmates of Ravensbrück.

Himmler conferred with his aides and returned to say that he was willing to release 1,000 women from Ravensbrück, as long as the Jewish women were referred to as Polish. He also agreed to release a certain number of prisoners and hostages in other camps. The meeting lasted two and a half hours. Masur, who had bargained for the lives of Jews with the devil incarnate, wrote proudly that "a free Jewish man was alone with the feared and merciless Chief of Gestapo who had the lives of five million Jews on his conscience". He characterized Himmler as an intelligent and educated man and contrasted Hitler's "idiosyncratic" view of Jews with Himmler's "rationalist" attitude, one that allowed him to bargain for the release of some Jews, a policy Hitler opposed to the end. Still, Masur found no "logic in construction, no grandeur of thought", only "lies and evasions" in Himmler's arguments.

In the morning Masur left for Berlin, the road filled with a "stream of human misery. . . . [T]he Germans," he wrote, "finally had a taste of what they had inflicted on other people". He could hear the sound of bombing nearby. Now he saw Berlin in daylight, a "field of ruins of a gigantic proportion". They went to the Swedish legation to meet Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish nobleman who had been involved with Kersten and Himmler in earlier releases, such as the freeing of 423 Danish Jews from Theresienstadt on 14 April, but he was away. In the meantime, many thousands of prisoners were being marched away from Ravensbrück as the Western and Russian armies were approaching. These cruel evacuations took a terrible toll and hundreds of women died from exhaustion or were shot to death by the accompanying SS. Some were killed by Allied bombs and German civilians. Schellenberg assured Masur that Red Cross transports, the white buses that would eventually take the Ravensbrück inmates to Denmark and Sweden, were being prepared. Masur flew back to Copenhagen, his mission completed.

"The Memoirs of Felix Kersten" [1947] fills in some gaps in Masur's overly formal account. Kersten, a physiotherapist, who had also treated Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Count Ciano, as well as the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina's husband, realized as he began treating Himmler for painful stomach spasms that his "magic touch" made him indispensable. Kersten, the "Magical Buddha," as Himmler referred to him, found the "recumbent" patient at his weakest. "I used my power over him to save the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands," he recalled proudly in notes he had hidden in a brick wall. The decorations he received after the war testified to the truthfulness of this, even though his closeness to Nazi party leaders made him suspect in the eyes of many. Kersten's description of Himmler as a "narrow-chested, weak-chinned man . . . with a high-pitched shrill voice, an ingratiating smile and eyes owlishly innocent," a copy of the Koran always at hand, a man who believed himself to be the reincarnation of Henry the Fowler and Genghis Khan, provides us with a unique portrait of the maniacal personality that impressed Masur with his intelligence. Himmler, according to Kersten, accused Göbbels as the one who planned the destruction of European Jewry, a plan that included Hitler's intention of exterminating the Jews of Latin and North America and handing over to the Arabs the task of exterminating Jews in their territories.

According to Kersten, Himmler told him: "I want to bury the hatchet between us and the Jews. If I had my own way many things would have been done differently. But I have already explained to you how things developed with us and also what the attitude was of the Jews and of the people abroad". And he added that "the Führer gave me his personal orders to follow the harshest course". Himmler's shared confidences with Kersten included the "blue folder" with Hitler's medical history and plans for a tomb with a hall that was to be over 1,600 feet high and a mile in diameter, that would hold 300,000 people. [Kersten has been proven to be a very reliable recorder of information, and likely reports correctly here as well]. "Hitler," he said, "was in extremely poor state of health."

Kersten recorded that one of the last conversations he had with Himmler was about a "secret weapon," more powerful than the V-1 and V-2 rockets, that was to end the war. "One or two shots and cities like New York or London will simply vanish from the earth". He was told of a village built near Auschwitz where the new weapon was tried out. Twenty thousand Jewish men, women, and children were brought to live there. A single shell according to Himmler caused 6,000 degrees of heat and everything and everybody there was burned to ashes. Kersten assumed that the Germans had nearly completed constructing an atomic bomb. [Himmler's startling revelations are unconfirmed].

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals after the war, an amazing exchange occurred between former architect cum Nazi minister of armaments, Albert Speer, and Mr. Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor.

JACKSON: Now, I have certain information, which was placed in my hands, of an experiment which was carried out near Auschwitz and I would like to ask you if you heard about it or knew about it.

The purpose of the experiment was to find a quick and complete way of destroying people without the delay and trouble of shooting and gassing and burning, as it had been carried out, and this is the experiment, as I am advised.

A village, a small village was provisionally erected, with temporary structures, and in it approximately 20,000 Jews were put. By means of this newly invented weapon of destruction, these 20,000 people were eradicated almost instantaneously, and in such a way that there was no trace left of them; that is developed, the explosive developed, temperatures of from 400 degrees to 500 degrees Centigrade and destroyed them without leaving any trace at all.

Do you know about that experiment?

SPEER: No, and I consider it utterly improbable. If we had had such a weapon under preparation, I should have known about it. But we did not have such a weapon. It is clear that in chemical warfare attempts were made on both sides to carry out research on all the weapons one could think of, because one did not know which party would start chemical warfare first...

-- Cited in Harald Fath, "Geheime Kommandosache-S III Jonastal und die Siegeswaffenproduktion: Weitere Spürensuche nach Thüringens Manhattan Project" [Schleusingen: Amun Verlag, 1999]. Original text cited in English

This exchange is remarkable in several respects, not the least of which is that its "explosive contents" are almost entirely overlooked in standard histories of the war and its aftermath.

Judge Jackson's question remained unanswered but it was not proposed to any of the other accused people, not even to those in charge of supervising the concentration camps [although it must be considered that  two of the most important creators of the extermination programs, Hans Kammler, who, in the initial phase of his career was responsible of the realization of Auschwitz, and Heinrich Müller, leader of Amt 4 of the "Reichssicherheitshauptamt" [Reich’s Main Security Office and of the Gestapo] were not even considered as accused people; there was not any certain proof of their death: they had simply disappeared.

Furthermore, nobody worried about calling Walter Gerlach [responsible of the Reichsforschungrat and therefore of the whole German nuclear program] who, in theory, should have been well informed about such an experiment, to testify.

20,000 prisoners dead, maybe with a nuclear experiment and the Tribunal which has to judge the crimes committed against humankind happily ignores the event, accepting the denial of Speer.

The German government, like its American counterpart, had rigidly "compartmentalized" its atom bomb production program and placed it under the tightest security. But clearly, by the time of the exchange between Jackson and him, Speer and the whole world had heard of the atom bomb. So Speer appears to obfuscate his answer somewhat by redirecting the topic to chemical warfare.

The question of a revolutionary chemical explosive is not, however, as far-fetched as it might at first seem, for Jackson's comments suggest it by referring to temperatures of 400 to 500 degrees centigrade, far below the enormous temperatures produced by an atomic explosion. Was Speer obfuscating his answer, or was Jackson his question?

Information obtained from Targets of Opportunity in the Sonhofen area [HMSO London]:

"During 1944 an explosive mixture of 60% liquid air and 40% finely powdered coal dust, invented by Dr Mario Zippermayr, was tested at Döberitz explosives ground near Berlin, and found to be very destructive over a radius of 600 metres. Waffen SS scientists then became involved and added some kind of waxy substance to the explosive. The bombs had to be filled immediately prior to the aircraft taking off. Bombs of 25 kgs and 50 kgs were dropped on the Starnberger See and photos taken. Standartenführer Helmut Klemm showed these to Rudolf Brandt [Himmler’s scientific advisor]. The intensive [sic] explosion covered an area up to 4.5 kms. This waxy substance was a reagent of some kind, which was said to interact with air during the development of the explosion, causing it to change its composition and so create meteorological change in the atmosphere. Lightning storms at ground level consumed all available oxygen. Göring’s statement upon his arrest in May 1945 is significant. He claimed to have led a revolt against Luftwaffe use of the bomb, "which would have destroyed all civilization". The bomb was not a nuclear weapon, and it appears to have been a conventional explosive which used a reagent or catalyst produced by Tesla methodology or similar, for its inexplicable effect".

The prosecutor's statements and question also clearly alludes to the use of some type of weapon of mass destruction, possessed of enormous explosive power, in the east, and significantly, at or near Auschwitz, site of the I.G. Farben "Buna factory". It is to be noted that the Nazis had apparently gone so far as to build an entire mock town and placed concentration camp inmates in it, an obvious though barbaric move to study the effects of the weapon on structures and people. His statements afford a serious clue and one often overlooked even by researchers into the "alternative history" of the war- into the nature of the Nazi's secret weapons development and use, for it would appear that insofar as the Third Reich possessed weapons of mass destruction of extraordinary power, atomic or otherwise, they were tested and used against enemies considered by the Nazi ideology to be racially inferior.

Thus there is a speculative answer to the all-important question: If the Germans had the bomb, why didn't they use it? And the answer is, if they had it, they were far more likely to use it on Russia than on the Western allies, since the war in the East was conceived and intended by Hitler to be a genocidal war from the outset. And it certainly was that: fully one half of the approximately fifty million fatalities of World War Two were inflicted by the efficient Nazi war machine on Soviet Russia.

Douglas Dietrich was librarian of the U.S. Department of Defense, responsible for the destruction of archived WW2 records in the Presidio military base in San Francisco, claims to have destroyed documents about German use of tactical nukes against the Soviets in Pomerania at the end of WW2.

The publication of Kersten's personal papers, "The Kersten Memoirs" [1956], with an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper, sheds additional light on those momentous meetings. Trevor-Roper, while praising Kersten, downplayed the role of Folke Bernadotte. In an essay, 'The Strange Case of Himmler's Doctor Felix Kersten and Count Bernadotte' ["Commentary", April 1957], Trevor-Roper elaborated on Folke Bernadotte's shortcomings both as a person and a diplomat. He referred to the Himmler-Masur meeting at Gut Hartzwalde as "one of the most ironical incidents in the whole war". From Kersten's personal papers one learns that when Masur arrived at the Tempelhof airport he was saluted by "half a dozen smartly turned-out men with Heil Hitler". It was surely the only time in the history of Nazi Germany that an SS detachment saluted a Jew! According to Kersten, Masur took off his hat and politely said: "Good evening".

It remained for one more participant, Walter Schellenberg in his book "The Labyrinth" [1956], to comment on the astounding Himmler-Masur meeting. As one of Kersten's patients [Himmler insisted that all his SS leaders undergo an examination], he said that the gifted masseur could feel nerve complexes with his finger tips and through manipulation increase blood circulation, thus reconditioning the entire nervous system. Schellenberg said that he had indirect contacts with the Russians through Switzerland and Sweden after 1942, was involved in the proposals made by Himmler to the Allies as late as March 1944, and was negotiating with Folke Bernadotte a surrender to General Eisenhower. All these attempts failed to break the fanatical phalanx around Hitler. Schellenberg remembered telling Himmler that there were only two courses open to him. He should confront Hitler and force him to resign or remove him by force. Himmler responded that if he did that Hitler would shoot him out of hand.

In April 1945, dozens of buses painted white and bearing the emblems of Sweden and the Red Cross left the hell of Ravensbrück for Denmark and eventually Sweden, carrying with them thousands of women of different nationalities. The buses included many Jewish survivors. Eventually, some 13,500 women were released from Ravensbrück, of whom 3,000 were Jewish. In fact, the Swedish white buses left thousands behind. When Russian troops entered Ravensbrück on 30 April, the day that Hitler committed suicide, there were still 23,000 Jewish and non-Jewish women and children in Ravensbrück.

Overlooking a model for the proposed "Welthauptstadt Germania", Hitler praises Speer on his genius for realizing what Germany will become once they win the war. Fegelein and Traudl Junge speak up urging Hitler to leave the city before it is too late, but he refuses again. Speer backs him up by telling Hitler that he must be on stage when the curtain falls.

The film cuts away to the streets of Berlin and the civilians trying to leave before the Russians capture the city. Another parallel story is introduced surrounding a boy named Peter Kranz and his small outfit of Hitler Youth soldiers manning a FlaK 88. An older man, who is missing his left arm, walks up to the group of kids and is identified as Peter's father. He tells Peter and his fellow soldiers that they are to young to fight and to stop. After several minutes of arguing, the group of soldiers tells Peter's father that they will fight until the very end because they swore an oath to The Führer. Peter calls his father a coward and runs away.

In his war room, Hitler refuses the plea from General Alfred Jodl to begin the retreat of the 9th Army. Hitler states that General Felix Steiner will be able to counterattack the Russians once his men arrive in Berlin. He also orders SS General Wilhelm Mohnke to defend the city at all costs. Mohnke requests the evacuation of civilians, but Hitler refuses. Outside of the war room, many of the generals express their concern that Hitler is going crazy, stating that he is ordering army divisions that only exist on the map. Hitler makes his way up to the surface to present awards to the Hitler Youth which happens to include Peter. Back in the Bunker, Traudl Junge and some of the other girls discuss how they can't abandon Hitler like so many other people are doing.

Back in his office, Hitler tells Speer about his scorched earth plan and that he wants to systematically destroy important industrial parts of the city before the Allies arrive. Begging for the mercy of the German people, Speer tells him it will only do harm to the future of Germany, but Hitler states that the only German people left are the weak and that they deserve to die.

Meanwhile, up in the Reich Chancellery, Eva Braun and many other guests are having a party. Fegelein grabs Eva aside and begs her to convince Hitler to leave, but she refuses. Off to the side, Traudl Junge tells her friend Gerda that the whole situation is unreal and is like a bad dream. The whole party suddenly comes to an end when an artillery shell hits right outside the building, sending debris through the windows. Everyone descends back down into the Bunker.

The first Soviet shells slamming into Berlin, took citizens by surprise and scattered dead and wounded over the streets. Hitler thought that the Red Army must have been using long-range railroad guns, but was told that there were no rail lines in condition to bring such a weapon so far forward; the shells were from conventional heavy field artillery. In fact, the Soviets were close enough that they could see the landmarks of the city through field glasses.

In yet another part of the city, SS physician Ernst-Günther Schenck convinces a general to allow him to ignore an evacuation order, and then back in the SS Führungshauptamt, he receives a call from Mohnke  requesting him to bring any available medical supplies to the Reich Chancellery.

The next day, while his unit is fighting off the Red Army, General Helmuth Weidling is summoned to the Bunker to await execution for ordering a retreat to the west.

Dr. Schenck arrives at a military hospital to get the requested medical supplies, but it has been abandoned and cleaned out except for dead bodies. Schenck also discovers a group of elderly and sick patients who have been left for dead.

Back in the Bunker, General Wilhelm Keitel informs General Weidling that his report has impressed Hitler and not only will he no longer be shot, but that he has been promoted to the commander of Berlin's crumbling defenses. Weidling states that he would rather have been shot. On the other side of the Bunker, Fegelein pleads to Traudl and Gerda to leave and informs them that what Hitler has told them about a possible victory is false.

In the war room, Hitler orders an attack by Felix Steiner's unit to stem the Russian advance - army groups which at this point only exist on paper.

Later, Hitler is informed by Krebs and Alfred Jodl that General Steiner was not able to gather enough soldiers for a counter-attack. Hitler orders everyone leave except Keitel, Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf. Hitler, flying into a furious rage against what he perceives are traitorous actions against him, yells at them for disobeying a direct order, and that his entire military has been lying to him, that his generals are cowards and traitors and incompetent, and finally acknowledges that the war is lost. However, he is determined to stay in Berlin to the bitter end, even if it means killing himself.

On the second day of the Battle of Berlin, 17 April, 1945,  General Gotthard Heinrici, the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula, stripped SS Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner's III [Germanic] SS Panzer Corps, [the Army Group's reserve], of its two strongest divisions, the SS Nordland Division and the SS Nederland Division. He placed them under the command of General Theodor Busse, commander of the Ninth Army, as Busse had most of the other units in the III Corps. The Nordland was sent to join Helmuth Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps defending the Seelow Heights, to stiffen the sector held by the 9th Parachute Division. The Nederland Division was sent south-west of Frankfurt [Oder] and assigned to the V SS Mountain Corps, where it was destined to be destroyed in the Battle of Halbe.

By 21 April Adolf Hitler, ignoring the facts, started to call the ragtag units that came under Steiner's command "Army Detachment Steiner". He ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the huge salient created by the 1st Belorussian Front's breakout. Simultaneously the Ninth Army, which had been pushed south of the salient, was to attack north in a pincer attack. To facilitate this attack Steiner was assigned the three divisions of the Ninth Army's CI Army Corps, the 4th SS Polizei Division, the 5th Jäger Division, the 25th Panzergrenadier Division — all were north of the Finow Canal [4] — and Weidling's LVI Panzer Corps, which was still east of Berlin with its northern flank just below Werneuchen.

The three divisions to the north were to attack south from Eberswalde [on the Finow Canal and 24 km [15 miles] east of Berlin] towards the LVI Panzer Corps, so cutting the 1st Belorussian Front's salient in two. Steiner called Heinrici and informed him that the plan could not be implemented because the 5th Jäger Division and the 25th Panzergrenadier Division were deployed defensively and could not be redeployed until the 2nd Naval Division arrived from the coast to relieve them. This left only two battalions of the 4th SS Police Division available, and they had no combat weapons. Heinrici called Hans Krebs, Chief German General Staff of [OKH], told him that the plan could not be implemented and asked to speak to Hitler, but was told Hitler was too busy to take his call.

When, on 22 April, at his afternoon conference Hitler became convinced that Steiner was not going to attack he fell into a tearful rage against his generals. He declared that the war was lost, he blamed the generals and announced that he would stay on in Berlin until the end and then kill himself. After 22 April "Army Detachment Steiner" was little mentioned in the Führerbunker.

 

Hitler leaves the war room and tells Traudl that she can leave if she wants, but she refuses to. The rest of the remaining generals argue over what to do now that Hitler has given up.

Eva, Gerda and Traudl take a walk just outside the entrance of the Bunker to grab a smoke. Eva talks about how she hates Adolf's German Shepherd, Blondi, and abuses the dog whenever Hitler is not around. Bombs start to fall again and they retreat inside the Bunker.

On his way back to the Bunker with medical supplies, Dr. Schenck runs into a group of soldiers about to execute a small group of old men for not helping defend the city. Schenck pleads to the soldiers to spare the old mens' lives, but they are shot anyway. Schenck leaves and finally arrives at the Bunker with the supplies and is shocked to see how many wounded civilians are there.

Meanwhile, Josef Göbbels' wife and six children arrive at the Bunker to stay with him under the care of Traudl. The Göbbels children dress up and present a song to Hitler. After the children leave, Hitler discusses the best ways to commit suicide with Eva, Gerda and Traudl, giving them each a cyanide capsule.

After seeing conscripted civilians of the Volkssturm needlessly gunned down in battle, General Mohnke confronts Josef Göbbels, their commander, about the slaughter. Göbbels tells Mohnke that he has no pity for the civilians, as they chose their fate. Hitler loses his sense of reality and orders Field Marshal Keitel to find Admiral Karl Dönitz, who Hitler believes is gathering troops in the north, and help him plan an offensive to recover the Romanian oil fields.

Now 23 April, Eva and Mrs. Göbbels each write letters to their families informing them that the war is almost over and that they plan on staying with Hitler until the end. Meanwhile, Hitler orders General Keitel to link up with Admiral Karl Dönitz to capture more oilfields for offensive maneuvers once they push back the Russians.

 

Albert Speer had managed to reach a relatively safe area near Hamburg as the Nazi regime finally collapsed, but decided on a final, risky visit to Berlin to see Hitler one more time.  On 23 April 1945 Albert Speer and Col Manfred von Poser flew from Reichlin to Gatow on the western edge of Berlin by Fw-190 and from Gatow to Brandenburg Gate in the Tiergarten at Berlin in a pair of Fiseler Storch.

Beate Uhse, a Luftwaffe captain [and the only woman to have piloted a jet fighter] landed an Arado 66, probably on 23 April, at Gatow Airfield. Tony Le Tissier, in "Race for the Reichstag: The 1945 Battle for Berlin", says Uhse came to rescue her infant son from the family home in the suburb Rangsdorf. When she returned to the airport the Arado had been destroyed. She flew out in another aircraft with her son, his nanny, a mechanic and two wounded soldiers.

The Arado Ar 66 was a German single-engined, two-seat training biplane, developed in 1933. It was also used for night ground-attack missions on the Eastern Front. It was engineer Walter Rethel's last design in collaboration with Arado, before Walter Blume, assigned as Arado Flugzeugwerke's chief design engineer in 1933, took over the bulk of the Arado firm's design duties.

Luftwaffe Gen Karl Koller began flying a fleet of 15 Ju-52 into Berlin from 23 April onwards, and flew directly to Berchtesgarden from Berlin to visit Göring.

Karl Koller was  General der Flieger and the Chief of the General Staff of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe during World War II.

An exemplary officer, in 1936 Koller graduated valedictorian at the Air War Academy.  He was the Chief of Staff for Hugo Sperrle during the Blitz. For Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of the United Kingdom by the Wehrmacht, Oberstleutnant Koller was to serve as the Operations Officer of Luftflotte 3, in coordination with the German 9th Army. Koller became the Chef der "Luftwaffenführungsstabes" [Chief of the Luftwaffe Operations Staff] in October 1943, which essentially made him an assistant to the General Staff.

Dissatisfied with Hermann Göring's leadership of the Luftwaffe, Adolf Hitler wanted to replace him with Robert Ritter von Greim. Unable to convince Greim to accept the role, Hitler forced Göring to sack the Chef der Generalstabs der Luftwaffe [Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe], Generalleutnant Werner Kreipe, and provisionally replace him on 19 September 1944 with the stolid Koller, who was officially assigned the position on 12 November 12.However, Koller was unable to reform the Luftwaffe, which had been mismanaged by Göring and had lost air superiority over the skies of Europe.

Although Koller supported Göring against the Heer and the Kriegsmarine, he was one of Göring's harshest critics.

Koller was in Adolf Hitler's Führerbunker in Berlin on 20 April 1945 to attend the dictator's final birthday. Although several high-ranking leaders abandoned the city that night, Koller remained behind to represent the Luftwaffe in nearby Werder [Havel] Göring did not acknowledge the Chief of Staff's salute as he left. Koller was represented within the Bunker by General Eckhard Christian. Hitler ordered Koller to send his remaining planes and airmen to assist in Felix Steiner's relief of Berlin, explaining, "Any commander who holds back his forces will forfeit his life in five hours. You yourself will guarantee with your head that the last man is thrown in". With the few troops remaining to him, Steiner was unable to come to the city's defense.

After Alfred Jodl told Koller that Hitler had decided to commit suicide, the Luftwaffe general flew to Obersalzberg at 3:30 a.m. on 23 April to inform Göring in person. In the ensuing power struggle between the Nazi leaders as Hitler's mental state declined, Martin Bormann sent SS troops to place Göring, Koller, and Hans Lammers under house arrest at Obersalzberg. Göring was able to dissuade the SS men from their mission and travel with him to his castle at Mauterndorf. Koller, who was free at Berchtesgaden, convinced Göring to meet him at Castle Fischhorn at Zell am See, where American forces took them into custody on 7 May.

After the war ended, Koller was imprisoned by the British at Oxford; Charles Lindbergh visited him during this time. Koller was released in December 1947 and returned to Bavaria. In 1949 he published his wartime shorthand diary as the memoir "Der letzte Monat" [The Last Month, Mannheim], which provided information about Hitler's last days during the Battle of Berlin.

On Monday 23 April, Luftwaffe Col Niklaus von Below also flew the opposite direction from Göring's side in Bavaria to Berlin to hand deliver Bormann a copy of the signal which Göring sent proposing to assume leadership of the Reich at 10 pm that evening.

Later on, Martin Bormann interrupts a meeting between Hitler, Göbbels, and Walther Hewel to read a message from Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring requesting permission to assume command and become head-of-state. Hitler responds, declaring Göring a failure and a traitor, by stripping Göring of his rank, ordering his arrest, and naming Robert Ritter von Greim as his replacement.

It was 23 April 1945, almost a year after American troops landed at Normandy. Americans had crossed the Rhine in early March, but it was Soviet troops that now had Hitler and many of his top advisers surrounded.

But not Hermann Göring. An ace fighter pilot in World War I, Göring had helped Hitler take power in 1933 and stayed at his side as the Third Reich hungrily expanded. So close was he to Hitler that in June of 1941, the Führer issued a secret decree stating that should he be captured or killed, Göring would take over.

As the war dragged on, however, Hitler became suspicious of his No. 2. And as the Soviets advanced to within two blocks of Hitler’s Bunker, Göring was nowhere to be found. He was holed up nearly 500 miles south in the Bavarian Alps.

From a Nazi base in the mountainous town of Berchtesgaden, Göring sent a telegram to Hitler shortly after midnight:

My Führer:

General Koller today gave me a briefing on the basis of communications given to him by Colonel General Jodl and General Christian, according to which you had referred certain decisions to me and emphasized that I, in case negotiations would become necessary, would be in an easier position than you in Berlin. These views were so surprising and serious to me that I felt obligated to assume, in case by 2200 o’clock no answer is forthcoming, that you have lost your freedom of action. I shall then view the conditions of your decree as fulfilled and take action for the well being of Nation and Fatherland. You know what I feel for you in these most difficult hours of my life and I cannot express this in words. God protect you and allow you despite everything to come here as soon as possible.

Your faithful Hermann Göring

According to an autobiography by Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect turned minister of armaments and war production, those close to the Führer used the telegram to pollute Hitler’s already fragile mind against Göring:

". . . there was a flurry of excitement in the vestibule. A telegram had arrived from Göring, which [top Nazi official Martin] Bormann hastily brought to Hitler. I trailed informally along after him, chiefly out of curiosity. In the telegram Göring merely asked Hitler whether, in keeping with the decree on succession, he should assume the leadership of the entire Reich if Hitler remained in Fortress Berlin.

"But Bormann claimed that Göring had launched a coup d’etat; perhaps this was Bormann’s last effort to induce Hitler to fly to Berchtesgaden and take control there. At first, Hitler responded to this news with the same apathy he had shown all day long. But Bormann’s theory was given fresh support when another radio message from Göring arrived. I pocketed a copy which in the general confusion lay unnoticed in the Bunker. It read:

To Reich Minister von Ribbentrop

I have asked the Führer to provide me with instructions by 10 p.m. April 23. If by this time it is apparent that the Führer has been deprived of his freedom of action to conduct the affairs of the Reich, his decree of 29 June 1941, becomes effective, according to which I am heir to all his offices as his deputy. [If] by 12 midnight 23 April 1945, you receive no other word either from the Führer directly or from me, you are to come to me at once by air.

[Signed] Göring, Reich Marshal

Here was fresh material for Bormann. "Göring is engaged in treason!" he exclaimed excitedly. "He’s already sending telegrams to members of the government and announcing that on the basis of his powers he will assume your office at twelve o’clock tonight, mein Führer".

Although Hitler remained calm when the first telegram arrived, Bormann now won his game. Hitler immediately stripped Göring of his rights of succession – Bormann himself drafted the radio message – and accused him of treason to Hitler and betrayal of National Socialism. The message to Göring went on to say that Hitler would exempt him from further punishment if the Reich Marshal would promptly resign all his offices for reasons of health.

Bormann had at last managed to rouse Hitler from his lethargy. An outburst of wild fury followed in which feelings of bitterness, helplessness, self-pity, and despair mingled. With flushed face and staring eyes, Hitler ranted as if he had forgotten the presence of his entourage:

“I've known it all along. I know that Göring is lazy. He let the air force go to pot. He was corrupt. His example made corruption possible in our state. Besides he’s been a drug addict for years. I’ve known it all along".

According to Speer’s biography, "Inside the Third Reich" [written while serving 20 years in prison following his trial at Nuremberg], Hitler’s fury instantly dissolved into depression.

“Well, all right,” he said, according to Speer. 'Let Göring negotiate the surrender. If the war is lost anyhow, it doesn’t matter who does it'.

“Hitler had reached the end of his strength,” Speer wrote. “He dropped back into the weary tone that had been characteristic of him earlier that day. For years he had overtaxed himself; for years, mustering that immoderate will of his, he had thrust away from himself and others the growing certainty of this end. Now he no longer had the energy to conceal his condition. He was giving up".

Göring, had pondered whether or not to announce he was the new leader of the Reich, since Hitler was presently cut off from the rest of Germany in besieged Berlin, and apparently incapacitated. But the inherent danger of such a move, even at this late stage, gave him pause for concern. And so Göring put off a decision and instead sent Hitler the carefully worded telegram, trying to feel him out.

Göring didn't know that Hitler had since rebounded from his meltdown of 22 April  and regained a measure of composure. Therefore, Hitler's response to Göring's telegram, prompted by Martin Bormann, was that the Reich Marshal had committed "high treason." Although this carried the death penalty, Göring would be spared if he immediately resigned all of his titles and offices – which Göring promptly did. Next, Bormann, a longtime behind-the-scenes foe of Göring, transmitted an order to the SS near Berchtesgaden to arrest Göring and his staff. As a result, just before dawn on 24 April, Göring was put under house arrest. Thus ended the long career of the man who would be Führer.

In contrast to Göring's cautiousness, Himmler took a much bolder approach. At the very moment that Hitler was reading Göring's telegram, Himmler was secretly proposing the surrender all German troops in the West to General Eisenhower.

Himmler had traveled to the city of Lübeck in northern Germany to meet with Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler's idea was to have Bernadotte contact Eisenhower regarding the surrender in the West, while at the same time Germany would continue fighting the Russians in the East, soon to be joined by the Americans and British. Playing a key role in this new German-American-British alliance would be the leader of post-Hitler Germany, Heinrich Himmler himself.

His proposal got nowhere. By now, Himmler's name, and that of the SS organization he headed, was already synonymous with mass murder.

By 27  April, Russian bombardment of the Reich Chancellery buildings had reached its peak with numerous direct hits, causing Hitler to send frantic telegrams to Field Marshal Keitel demanding that Berlin be relieved by now non-existent armies.

For Hitler, the worst blow of all came the next day when BBC news radio reports concerning Himmler's surrender negotiations were broadcast from London and picked up by Göbbels' Propaganda Ministry. According to eyewitnesses in the Bunker, Hitler "raged like a madman" with a ferocity never seen before when informed of the betrayal. Himmler had been at his side since the beginning, earning the fond nickname "Der Treue Heinrich" [Faithful Heinrich] through years of murderous, fanatical service to his Führer.

"The Frog Prince or Iron Henry" [German: 'Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich', literally 'The Frog King or the Iron Heinrich'] is a fairy tale, best known through the Brothers Grimm's written version.

The 2009 Disney film, "The Princess and the Frog", is loosely based on this story.

Traditionally, the Frog Prince also has a loyal servant named "Der Treue Heinrich" who had three iron bands affixed around his heart to prevent it from breaking in his sadness over his master's curse, but when the prince was reverted to his human form, Heinrich's overwhelming happiness caused all three bands to violently break, freeing his heart from its bonds.

In the meantime, advance units of the Red Army had smashed through the German defenses in Berlin and were only a few miles away from the Bunker. Hitler was informed there was perhaps a day or two left before the Russians arrived at his doorstep.

 A week later, Hitler and his companion, Eva Braun, killed themselves.

Göring was put under house arrest but freed by the Luftwaffe, the Nazi air force. He then made his way west in the hope of surrendering to the Americans instead of the Soviets. He was captured by the U.S. Army on 6 May and imprisoned in Luxembourg and later Nuremberg, where he was among the top Nazi officials to be put on trial. He was sentenced to hang but killed himself hours beforehand by swallowing a cyanide capsule.

Shortly after Hitler’s suicide, his Berlin Bunker was overrun by Soviet soldiers

 

Did the Brutal Death of Mussolini Contribute to Hitler’s Suicide?
By Benjamin Soloway
28 April 2015

Seventy years ago, partisans in the backwoods of northern Italy summarily executed Benito Mussolini after they happened to foil the dictator’s attempted escape across the Swiss border.

"You can imagine the shock when they found him. They had no idea what to do with him," said Professor David Kertzer, whose book, "The Pope and Mussolini", won a Pulitzer Prize last week. The partisans settled on shooting Mussolini alongside his young mistress, Claretta Petacci, and passed their bodies to an angry crowd, which brutalized the corpses and hung them upside down from a girder in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, for display and preservation. Mussolini and Petacci greeted U.S. military authorities when they arrived in the city, where the dictator had ruled as a Nazi puppet over his ever-dwindling territory until the bitter end. Days earlier, the bodies of partisans had adorned the same plaza.

Mussolini’s rule of Italy since 1922, and since 1925 as a fascist dictator, had been predicated upon a cult of propaganda that often focused on his body, representations of which dominated the country’s visual culture. His death was marked by the same emphasis. “His omnipresence meant that he was recognized the next day when he was hanging upside down, despite the desecration of his body,” Kertzer said.

Some historians now believe that Mussolini’s death also influenced Adolf Hitler’s decision to commit suicide and have his body burned in the final days of World War II, though historian Hugh Trevor-Roper argues in his seminal book "The Last Days of Hitler" that the news out of Milan would have been unlikely to strengthen what he describes as “an already firm decision".

News of Mussolini’s public, humiliating death reached Hitler by radio the following day, 29 April 1945, in his Führerbunker below Berlin, where he had been confined for two weeks as Soviet forces approached the German capital. “This will never happen to me,” Hitler said of his role model’s death, according to statements made by top Nazi official Hermann Göring carried in a 1946 newspaper account of the Nuremberg trials. The same day, Hitler composed his will. “I do not wish to fall into the hands of an enemy who requires a new spectacle organized by the Jews for the amusement of their hysterical masses,” he wrote.

Hermann Göring on 14 March 1946 at the Nuremberg Trials stated that Hitler never wanted to give up power through a document:

 

On 30 April, Hitler said a final goodbye to his remaining inner circle, which included top official Martin Bormann and Minister of Propaganda Josef Göbbels. With Russians practically on his doorstep, Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Braun, whom he had just married, killed themselves and were burned. On 1 May, the final day the Nazis held the Bunker, Göbbels and his wife killed their six children and themselves.

By ensuring that all trace of his body was destroyed, Hitler aided the Allies in one respect: Their effort to prevent any material legacy of the Führer from becoming the object of reverence or pilgrimage for future fascists. The story played out differently for Mussolini: He was buried in an unmarked grave, but fascist radicals later exhumed the body and hid it in various places until the Italian government agreed to reinter it, this time in a family crypt.

In 1945, Mussolini’s death was celebrated widely in the Allied nations as evidence of the war’s imminent conclusion [the world celebrated V-E day on 8 May, less than two weeks later].

"The wretched end of Benito Mussolini marks a fitting end to a wretched life," the "New York Times" rejoiced. "Shot to death by a firing squad, together with his mistress and a handful of Fascist leaders, the first of the Fascist dictators, the man who once boasted that he was going to restore the glories of ancient Rome, is now a corpse in a public square in Milan, with a howling mob cursing and kicking and spitting on his remains".

"The Times" never had the pleasure of writing the same about Hitler.

Meanwhile, Albert Speer arrives at the Bunker and pleads with Traudl and Mrs. Göbbels to reconsider staying with Hitler.

Speer meets with Hitler to say his goodbyes. He also begs that Hitler spare the German people and not take everyone down with him, but once again, Hitler refuses. Speer then informs Hitler that he has personally ignored and even defied many of Hitler's scorched earth policy orders for some time. Hitler does not punish Speer, but he does not shake his hand as Speer leaves.

Speer stated at Nuremberg, "I felt that it was my duty not to run away like a coward, but to stand up to him again". 

Hitler seemed calm and somewhat distracted, and the two had a long, disjointed conversation in which the dictator defended his actions and informed Speer of his intent to commit suicide and have his body burned.

In the published edition of "Inside the Third Reich", Speer relates that he confessed to Hitler that he had defied the Nero Decree of 19 March 1945 ordering a scorched earth policy in both Germany and the occupied territories but, then assured Hitler of his personal loyalty, bringing tears to the dictator's eyes.

Speer biographer Gitta Sereny argued, "Psychologically, it is possible that this is the way he remembered the occasion, because it was how he would have liked to behave, and the way he would have liked Hitler to react. But the fact is that none of it happened; our witness to this is Speer himself". Sereny goes on to note that Speer's original draft of his memoirs lacks the confession and Hitler's tearful reaction, and contains an explicit denial that any confession or emotional exchange took place, as had been alleged in a French magazine article.

The following morning, Speer left the Führerbunker, with Hitler curtly bidding him farewell. Speer toured the damaged Chancellery one last time before leaving Berlin to return to Hamburg.

Gatow and Kladow airports came under artillery fire from 24 April, but were not closed or captured until 27 April 1945. Tempelhof was captured 25 April and at 1 pm that day Bormann learned that Berlin had been encircled by Russian forces, yet it seems Gen Hans Baur was operating a regular airport from the Tiergarten by then

James P O'Donnell, in his book "The Berlin Bunker,"  refers to a row between Hitler's pilot Hans Baur and Speer; Speer before being flown out protested in his capacity as Berlin's chief planner about Baur desecrating trees for an emergency runway which were lining Unter den Linden. 

On 29 April, the day before committing suicide, Hitler dictated a final Political Testament which dropped Speer from the successor government. Speer was to be replaced by his own subordinate, Karl-Otto Saur.

Ironically, Speer was found guilty of war crimes against humanity, but it was recognized in mitigation that in the closing stages of the war he was one of the few men who had the courage to tell Hitler that “the war was lost and to take steps to prevent the senseless destruction of production facilities".

Peter, who has left his unit and been fleeing from the approaching Russians, is able to make it to his home to find his father and mother waiting for him.

On 25 April, the Red Army captured the Max Planck Institute for Physics in the city, which had been a center for Nazi nuclear research. The physicists, led by Werner Heisenberg, had fled West to surrender to the British, but the Soviets captured some real trophies, in the form of 250 kilograms [400 pounds] of refined Uranium and tons of unrefined Uranium oxide. NKVD specialists descended on the Institute to pick its bones clean. The Institute was in a sector of Berlin marked for later occupation by the Western Allies, and the Soviets wanted to make sure that nothing was left behind.

In the meantime, Red Army artillery pounded the center of Berlin, while assault teams worked block by block, building by building, backed up by flame-throwers, as well as antitank guns and armor firing into German strongpoints at point-blank range. The assault troops tunneled through buildings by blasting holes in walls or crept through sewers to infiltrate and compromise German positions.

The Soviets kept on creeping closer to the center of the city. If they encountered resistance in an area, they pounded it with Katyusha barrages to soften it up, grinding Berlin into rubble as they went. The rubble actually helped the defenders, allowing them to quickly set up strongpoints and roadblocks that had to be dug out with steel and blood. In fact, the Germans gradually began to destroy buildings themselves to set up obstacles to the Soviets.

Many of the Volkssturm surrendered under the pressure, but hardcore Waffen SS troops often persisted to the last man. About half of them were not even Germans, instead being survivors of foreign Waffen SS units. They fought very hard, since they had signed up to fight the loathsome Bolshevik, and in the new European order of the near future, their prospects were very dim anyway. SS death squads also did what they could to brace up less motivated troops, executing on the spot anyone who seemed to be less than enthusiastic about carrying on the struggle. Any civilian flying a white flag from a window was likely to be hanged immediately. The squads were manned by junior SS officers, blindly fanatical youngsters with no real combat experience.

Such disciplinary actions were not so easy when the potential victims were well armed and perfectly willing to shoot back. Along with the Volkssturm and Hitler Youth on the lines, there were also scarred combat veterans, survivors of Army Group Vistula who had fallen back on the city. The German Army had never had much liking for the SS; the dislike had been growing rapidly over the previous few months, since they found the SS much more willing to execute deserters, real or imagined, than to come to grips with the Red Army. German Army soldiers had little tolerance for being bullied by what amounted to overgrown Hitler Youth, and were more than a match for them. Major General Werner Mummert, commander of the Müncheburg Panzer division, bluntly ordered the SS to stay out of his sector, saying his troops would shoot them on sight if they didn't.

A particular focus of the Red Army's drive into Berlin was the Tempelhof airport, in the south of the city, since Stalin wanted to make sure that Hitler couldn't fly out of the trap. The defenders resisted stubbornly, but the airfield finally fell at about midday on 26 April. Actually, if Hitler had wanted to escape, Tempelhof was not necessary. That same day, General Robert Ritter von Greim, the Luftwaffe commander in the Munich area, flew into Berlin with notable female test pilot, Hannah Reitsch, in a Fieseler Storch, in response to an order from Hitler. Initially they flew from the central Luftwaffe test facility airfield, the Erprobungsstelle Rechlin to Gatow [a district of south-western Berlin] in a Focke Wulf 190. As the cockpit only had room for the pilot, Reitsch flew in the tail of the plane, getting into it by climbing through a small emergency opening. Having landed in Gatow, they changed planes to fly to the Chancellery; however, their Fieseler Storch was hit by anti-aircraft fire over the Grünewald. Greim was incapacitated by a bullet in the right foot, but Reitsch was able to reach the throttle and joystick to land on an improvised air strip in the Tiergarten, near the Brandenburg Gate.

Reitsch had completely broken the mold of the Nazi stereotype that a woman's place was in the home and gotten away with it, having become a national celebrity. She had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class and was a personal confidante of the Führer. She pleaded with Hitler to fly out of the city with her and save himself, but he said he would remain in Berlin and die there.

During dinner, Hitler receives a report that Himmler has  contacted Folke Bernadotte in an attempt to negotiate and offered Germany's surrender to the western allies. Upset that his most loyal general has betrayed him, Hitler orders Himmler to be executed and for Fegelein to report to the Bunker to be promoted in place of Himmler.  He appoints General von Greim as the Commander in Chief of the Air Force with order to reorganize and correct the mistakes that have been made. He tells von Greim that he must be ruthless because compassion is for the weak and a betrayal of natural selection.

Hitler orders von Greim and his companion, test pilot Hanna Reitsch, to find Himmler and that his adjutant Fegelein to be brought to him.

Hitler has a meeting with Reichsphysician SS General Ernst-Robert Grawitz, the head of the German Red Cross, who is requesting to leave Berlin with his family can escape, for fear of reprisal from the Russians for his actions. He is denied. After Grawitz is dismissed, Otto Günsche informs Hitler that Fegelein has left the Bunker and cannot be found, upsetting Hitler even more. Meanwhile, at home, Grawitz kills himself along with his entire family with grenades, and Fegelein is executed for treason once he is found.

Back in the war room, news grows even grimmer as Weidling reports to Hitler there are no reserves left, and Mohnke reports that the Red Army is only 300 to 400 metres from the Reich Chancellery. Hitler is informed that Berlin no longer has any air support, stopping any more supplies from reaching the remaining army. However, Hitler reassures the officers he still has hopes that General Walther Wenck's 12th Army will be able to rescue Berlin and save them. After Hitler leaves the conference room, the remaining generals all agree that Wenck lacks the manpower to do anything to the Russians, but they cannot surrender. 

After midnight, Traudl Junge reports to Hitler so that he can dictate his Last Will and Testament. Hitler states that since WWI, all of his thoughts and actions have been dictated by his love and loyalty to the German people. As Traudl is typing it up, Göbbels informs her that Hitler has ordered him to leave Berlin, but he cannot do it and will need her to write up his will too.

On the evening of 28 April, Hitler knew that he soon would have to commit suicide. Before doing so, he desired to marry his long-time mistress Eva Braun and write his final Political Testament and Personal Will.

Hitler’s secretary, Trudl Junge, tried that evening to sleep for an hour. Sometime after 11 pm she woke up. She washed, changed her clothes, and thought it must be time to drink tea with Hitler, the other remaining secretary Frau Gerda Christian, and Hitler’s vegetarian cook, Fräulein Constanze Manzialy, a nightly occurrence. When she opened the door to Hitler’s study, Hitler came toward her, shook her hand and asked "Have you had a nice little rest, child?" Junge replied "Yes, I have slept a little". Thereupon he said, "Come along, I want to dictate something". This was between 11:30 pm and midnight.

They went into the little map or conference, room near Hitler’s quarters. She was about to remove the cover from the typewriter, as Hitler normally dictated directly to the typewriter, when Hitler said "Take it down on the shorthand pad". She sat down alone at the big table and waited. Hitler stood in his usual place by the broad side of the table, leaned both hands on it, and stared at the empty table top, no longer covered that day with maps. For several seconds Hitler did not say anything. Then, suddenly he began to speak the first words: "My Political Testament". As Hitler began speaking, she had the impression that he was in a hurry. "In tones of indifference, almost mechanically, the Führer",  Junge would later observe, "comes out with the explanations, accusations and demands that I, the German people and the whole world know already".

After finishing his political testament, according to Junge, Hitler paused a brief moment and then began dictating his private will. Hitler’s personal will was shorter. It explained his marriage, disposed of his property, and announced his impending death.

The dictation was completed. Hitler had not made any corrections on either document.  He moved away from the table on which he had been leaning all this time, and "suddenly there is an exhausted, hunted expression in his eyes". Hitler said, "Type that out for me at once in triplicate and then bring it in to me". Junge felt that there was something urgent in his voice, and thought the most important, most crucial document written by Hitler was to go out into the world without any corrections or thorough revision. She knew that "Every letter of birthday wishes to some Gauleiter, artist, etc., was polished up, improved, revised–but now Hitler had no time for any of that".

In his book "The Bunker", James O'Donnell, after comparing the wording of Hitler's last Testament to the writings and statements of both Hitler and Josef Göbbels, concluded that Göbbels was at least partly responsible for helping Hitler to write it. Junge claimed Hitler was reading from notes when he dictated the Testament; since Hitler could barely write by this stage.

Junge took her notepad and typewriter across the hall to type up the political and personal wills. The room she used was next to Josef Göbbels’ private room.  There she began typing up her shorthand notes of the two documents, knowing that Hitler wanted her to finish as fast as possible. As she began typing the wedding at this point had not taken place.

While Junge was busy typing the two documents, the wedding took place and the party had begun.  At some point during the party Junge stopped her typing and walked across the corridor to the room where the party was taking place to express her congratulations to the newlyweds and wish them luck. She stayed for less than fifteen minutes and then returned to her typing.

And during the time she was typing, Hitler left the party and came in three times in order to ask how far she had gotten. According to Junge, Hitler would look in and say “Are you ready?” and she said, “No my Führer, I am not ready yet".  Bormann and Göbbels also kept coming to see if she was finished.  Not only did these comings and goings make Junge nervous and delay the process, but being upset about the whole situation, Junge made several typographical errors. Those were only crossed out in ink.

Also complicating the finishing of the typing was that the names of some appointments of the new Dönitz government needed to be added to the political testament. During the course of the wedding party, Hitler discussed and negotiated the matter with Bormann and Göbbels. While she was typing the clean copies of the political testament from her shorthand notes, Göbbels or Bormann came in alternately to give her the names of the ministers of the future government, a process that lasted until she had finished typing the three copies.  

Towards 5am, Junge finished typing the three copies each of the political testament and personal will. They were timed at 4 am as that was when she had begun her typing of the first copy of the political testament.  Just as she finished, Göbbels came to her and wanted the documents, almost tearing the last piece of paper from the typewriter. She gave them to Göbbels without having a chance to review the final product because Göbbels was in such a hurry. She asked Göbbels whether they still wanted her. Göbbels said “no, lie down and have a rest". Junge went into one of the room where there were sleeping accommodations and lay down. At that point Eva Braun had already retired and the wedding party had ended or just about to end. Göbbels, meanwhile, took the copies of the documents to Hitler.  

The documents were ready to be signed. First Hitler asked Göbbels and Bormann whether everything was correct. Apparently they answered in the affirmative. The personal will was signed by Hitler and signed by the witnesses: Bormann, Göbbels, and von Below. The political testament was also signed at the same time by Hitler and the witnesses Göbbels, Bormann, Burgdorf, and Krebs.  After signing the wills, sometime before 6 am, Hitler retired to rest.

Junge believed that Hitler would send the documents out by courier and then his suicide would only be a question of a short time. He only wanted to wait, she thought, for a confirmation that the wills had arrived at their destination before committing suicide.  By 6 am with her work completed, Junge slept for some hours in the Bunker and then retreated to the shelter room of the New Chancellery, which she shared with Frau Gerda Christian, Miss Else Krüger [Bormann’s secretary], and three Reich Chancellery secretaries.

Three messengers were assigned to take the Will and Political Testament out of the besieged Führerbunker to ensure their presence for posterity. Two copies of these testiments were to be sent to Dönitz at Plön to the north, by separate couriers to ensure delivery, one courier being SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander, Bormann's aide, and the other Heinz Lorenz from the Propaganda Ministry, while a third copy was to be taken by Major Willi Johannmeyer, Hitler's army adjutant, [with Corpl Heinz Hummerich, a clerk in the Adjutancy of the Führer Headquarters] to give to Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner. Göbbels [named as Chancellor] added a political appendix of his own to one set of documents, intending that they should ultimately find their way to Munich, the cradle of Nazism, for posterity.

These emissaries set off at midday on 29 April, making their way via the Tiergarten, Zoo position, Kantstrasse and the Olympic Stadium to the Hitlerjugend Regiments' position on the Havel, where they rested until midnight before continuing down river by boat. Three adjutants, Major Bernd Freytag von Löringhoven [Krebs' aide], Rittmeister Gerhard Boldt [von Löringhoven's aide] and Oberstleutnant Rudolf Weiss [Burgdorf's aide], asked permission to leave the Bunker and break out to Wenck's 12. Armee, and left by the same route that afternoon. At midnight they were followed by Oberst von Below, with Corpl Heinz Matthiesing, taking with them a missive to Keitel concerning the appointment of Dönitz as Hitler's successor as head of state. These last two groups met near the Olympic Stadium and then had to wait until the following night with the Hiterjugend for a chance to slip down the Havel.

Meanwhile, Hitler's emissaries had reached the remains of the 20. Panzergrenadier Division bottled up on Wannsee Island and managed to get a radio message out asking Dönitz to retrieve them by flying boat. They then moved to Pfaueninsel [Peacock Island] where they were joined by Weiss's party, but von Below's group had landed on the west bank of the Havel and was already heading west. A three-engined Dornier flying boat duly landed close to Pfaueninsel on the night of 1 May and established contact with the party waiting to be taken off. Unfortunately the 20 Panzergrenadier Division were making a desperate bid to break out over the Wannsee Bridge and attracted so much Soviet artillery fire on their old locations that the pilot took off again without them.

The standard, perhaps misleading account, is that these men all escaped 50 miles on foot through Russian lines along the Havel river to the Elbe, but astonishingly in his book "The Bunker", James P. O'Donnell  said that Col von Below, flew from Berlin on 29 April 1945.

Why is it that von Below flew when the others before him were said to have escaped by foot ? 

Who flew von Below out and which aircraft was used ?

Von Below actually had orders from Hitler to fly south and have Göring arrested and the astonishing thing is that von Below actually did this. A number of Bv138 flying boats of KG200 are now known to have landed at Tiegel See northwest of Tiegel Airfield and to have evacuated senior Nazis from an island in that lake. 

Heinz Lorenz was arrested by the British while traveling under an alias as a journalist from Luxembourg. He revealed the existence of two more copies and messengers: Willy Johannmeyer and  Wilhelm Zander. Zander was using the pseudonym "Friedrich Wilhelm Paustin". These two messengers were apprehended in the American zone of occupation. Thus, two copies of the papers ended up in American hands, one set in British hands.

All the documents, except those carried by von Below, which he destroyed once he realized the futility of his task, were recovered by the Allies.

On 7 May, Dr Helmut Kunz, who had worked in the Reich Chancellery dental surgery from 23 April 1945 onwards, was interrogated by the Soviets. The evidence he gave on this occasion cannot be lightly dismissed because it was the first account ever given by a Bunker survivor—meaning that it is the least influenced by accounts given by others. It is also the most reliable, in the sense that the events it discusses had taken place only a week before. Dr Kunz explicitly affirmed seeing Eva Hitler alive on at least two occasions on the evening of 30 April. Kunz told the Soviets he had seen Eva playing with the Göbbels children on that evening and that a little later, between 10 and 11 pm, he, Professor Werner Haase and two of Hitler's secretaries had joined her for coffee. On this occasion, Eva told Kunz that Hitler was not yet dead but he "would die when he received confirmation that his will had reached the person it had been sent to".

-- V. K. Vinogradov et al. [eds], "Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB", Chaucer Press, London, 2005. Dr Haase's interrogation record, as well as those of several other Bunker survivors, affirms that Dr Kunz was in the Bunker in the period in which these events took place. Unfortunately, the record of Dr Haase's interrogation published in "Hitler's Death", contains no information pertaining to either Adolf or Eva Hitler.

It's hard to imagine that Kunz could have been confused about the date...or that in the circumstances he could have mistaken Eva Hitler for someone else or that Eva did not actually know whether Hitler was yet dead or not. Since Hitler's will never reached its intended recipient(s), it is entirely plausible that Hitler would not have decided to die until the last possible moment we "know" about - 6.30 pm on 1 May! 

The evidence of the eyewitness, Hermann Karnau, is interesting because he is the only eyewitness to the alleged cremation of Adolf and Eva Hitler who fell into the hands of the British whose story has ever reached the public. Karnau escaped from Berlin, but by mid-May he had made his way to his British-occupied hometown, Wilhelmshaven, where he surrendered to Canadian troops. After being interrogated by British intelligence officer Captain K. W. E. Leslie, Karnau related his version of the events he had witnessed to an audience of reporters which included Walter Kerr from "Reuters" and Daniel De Luce of the "Associated Press". Leslie told the reporters: "I am sure that Karnau's report about Hitler's death is authentic. I have interrogated many German prisoners of war and I would call this man a reliable witness." 

-- "TASS, 'Report on the Evidence of Hitler's Death', 21 June 1945

First, Karnau claimed to have been certain that one of the bodies was that of Hitler. He told the reporters that he had been able to recognise Hitler "by his brown uniform and his face"  and, in particular, by his distinctive moustache.

--  "Hitler's Death" 

Second, Karnau claimed that the cremation had taken place at 6.30 pm on 1 May. Karnau's account of the events of 1 May is sufficiently detailed that it cannot be said that he was mistaken about either the date or the time at which the cremation occurred. Karnau had seen Adolf Hitler alive and sitting in his favourite wicker chair when he went for breakfast on the morning of 1 May. During that morning, he recalled, four men arrived carrying gasoline cans "for the air conditioning system". Karnau said that as he knew the Bunker's air conditioning system used Diesel oil, he denied them entrance. He only allowed them in after Linge intervened.

-- Daniel De Luce, 'Saw Bodies of Hitler, Braun Burn, Says Guard', Globe & Mail, 21 June 1945

Karnau, who last saw Hitler alive at around 4.00 pm, believed that Hitler was subsequently poisoned by one of his personal physicians, Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger, and cremated at around 6.30 pm that same day. It should not be concluded that Karnau was wrong about a cremation having taken place on 1 May.

29Hitler then has a small ceremony where he marries Eva.

Guests began entering to attend the wedding ceremony. In the meantime Hitler was in his sitting room with a few people, trying to get the wedding ready in a dignified way, while the conference room was turned into a registry office and set up for the wedding ceremony.  SS-Major Heinz Linge [Hitler’s valet since 1935] began getting things ready for the post-wedding ceremony, including gathering up food and drink for Hitler’s inner circle.

Meanwhile, Josef Göbbels, in his capacity of Gauleiter of Berlin, knew of someone authorized to act as a registrar of marriage who was still in Berlin, fighting with the Volkssturm.  He was a 50-year-old municipal councilor named Walter Wagner. A group of SS men was dispatched across the city to bring him back. Wagner appeared shortly before 1 am 29 April in the uniform of the Nazi Party and the arm-band of the Volkssturm. The ceremony took place in the small conference room or map room, probably at some point between 1 am and 2 am.  Immediately afterwards Wagner rejoined his unit. .

Hitler and Eva Braun left their apartment hand in hand and went into the conference room. Hitler’s face was ashen, his gaze wandered restlessly. Eva Braun was also pale from sleepless nights. Josef Göbbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, and Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and private secretary to Hitler, were waiting for them in the antechamber.

In the conference room Hitler and Eva greeted the functionary who had taken up his position at the table. Then they sat down in the first two chairs, and Bormann and Göbbels too went to their assigned places. The door was closed. The two parties declared that they were of pure Aryan descent and were free from hereditary disease. In a few minutes the parties had given assent, the register had been signed, and the ceremony was over. When the bride came to sign her name on the marriage certificate she began to write "Eva Braun," but quickly struck out the initial letter B, and corrected it to "Eva Hitler, nee Braun". Bormann and Göbbels and Wagner also signed the register as witnesses. The ceremony lasted no longer than ten minutes.

Bormann opened the door again when Hitler and Eva were signing the license. Hitler then kissed Eva’s hand. They went into the conference passage where they shook hands with those waiting.  They then withdrew into their private apartments for a wedding breakfast. Shortly afterwards, Bormann, Göbbels, Frau Göbbels, and Hitler’s two secretaries, Frau Gerda Christian and Frau Junge, were invited into the private suite. Junge would not come right away as she was typing across the hall. Wagner lingered for some 20 minutes at the reception. He munched a Liverwurst sandwich, had one or two glasses of champagne, chatted with the bride, and headed back to the front lines.

He will be shot in the head two days later, caught in the crossfire of a street battle.

For part of the time General of Infantry Hans Krebs, Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Burgdorf, and Lt. Col. Nicolaus von Below [Hitler’s Luftwaffe Adjutant since 1937] came in and joined the party, as did Werner Naumann [State Secretary in Ministry of Propaganda since 1944], Arthur Axmann [Reich Youth Leader since 1940], Ambassador Walter Hewel [permanent representative of Foreign Ministry to Hitler at Führer headquarters since 1940], Heinz Linge [Hitler’s valet], SS-Major Otto Günsche [personal adjutant to Hitler], and Fräulein Constanze Manzialy, the vegetarian cook. There they sat for hours, drinking champagne and tea, eating sandwiches, and talking. Hitler spoke again of his plans of suicide and expressed his belief that National Socialism was finished and would never revive [or would not resurrect so soon again], and that death would be a relief to him now that he had been deceived and betrayed by his best friends.

The cropped picture above is claimed to be  taken of Adolf Hitler, on the evening of 29 April 1945; found in a camera with photographs by the Russians in the Bunker 2 May.

It is also claimed that the photograph was probably taken by Walther Hewell.

It was actually taken at the Berghof at the Obersalzberg during a Christmas party in December 1943, on the steps in front of the Berghof fireplace in the living room - not at Hitler's Wedding in the Bunker. On the right is a photo of the living room  - note the steps, statue, curved doorway and paintings on the wall,  that match the photo on the left.

Also the entire photo includes Albert Speer, Heinrich Hoffmann, Walter Frentz, Nikolaus von Below, Dr. Karl Brandt, Frau Margret Speer, Frau Gerda Bormann, Frau Ema Hoffmann and several others,

Most of them were not even near Berlin on 29 April 1945.

 

Hitler who raises the difficult subject. "I’ll never fall into the enemy’s hands, dead or alive," he tells them. "I’m leaving orders for my body to be burned so no one can ever find it".

Traudl Junge eats mechanically as the conversation turns to the best method of suicide.

Hitler says, matter-of-factly: "The best way is to shoot yourself in the mouth. Your skull is shattered and you don’t notice anything. Death is instantaneous".

Eva is horrified. ‘I want to be a beautiful corpse . . . I’m going to take poison,’ she says. She shows the secretaries a little brass box containing a phial of cyanide, which she keeps in the pocket of her dress. "I wonder if it hurts very much," she says. "I’m so frightened of suffering for a long time . . . I’m ready to die heroically, but at least I want it to be painless".

Hitler reassures her: "The nervous and respiratory systems are paralysed within seconds".

Junge and Gerda Christian exchange glances, then turn in unison to the Führer. "Do you have any phials we could use?" Neither woman is keen to commit suicide, but poison could be preferable to capture by the Russians.

The Führer says he’ll make sure they each get one. "I’m very sorry I can’t give you a better farewell present".

There are conflicting accounts by witnesses to Hitler's wedding that it happened before midnight on 29 April and before Reitsch departed Berlin, yet Reitsch denied all knowledge of the wedding. The Marriage certificate stated the wedding happened on 29 April, yet at least four witnesses said the wedding happened before before midnight 28 April. 

Later on, Hitler is informed that neither General Wenck nor any other army division will be able to rescue Berlin. Hitler tells them that he cannot surrender and that neither can any of his generals. Hitler informs Otto Günsche that he and Eva will commit suicide and that he is to make sure that the Russians will never be able to find his body.

Hitler summons Dr. Schenck, Dr. Werner Haase, and Nurse Erna Flegel to the Bunker to thank them for their medical services for the wounded. Dr. Haase explains to Hitler the best method for suicide as well as for administering poison to Hitler's dog, Blondi.

Meanwhile, Eva and Traudl talk about the approaching end. Eva gives Traudl one of her best fur coats and makes her promise to try and make it out of the Bunker alive. Hitler then has his last meal with Traudl and a few others, and then informs them that the time has come. He gathers around Traudl and his remaining friends, including the Göbbels, to wish them goodbye. He then gives Magda Göbbels his own Golden Party Badge Number 1. Emotionally overcome by the gesture, Magda attempts one last time to convince Hitler to leave Berlin, but he refuses, stating that millions of people will curse him tomorrow. Hitler and Eva retire to their room and commit suicide. Otto Günsche then informs the remaining generals that Hitler is indeed dead and his and Eva's bodies are carried to the surface, and, as per his orders, are cremated in the Chancellery garden.

Evidence on Eva Braun doubted
The Canberra Times
12 November 1981

LONDON, Wednesday [AAP] The woman's body found with that of Adolf Hitler in a Berlin Bunker in May 1945, may not have been Eva Braun, according to new medical evidence.

A group of scientists has traced her dental records and is now challenging a Soviet claim to have recovered her remains, according to findings published in the British Medical Association's "News Review".

Official accounts said Hitler shot himself, and Eva Braun poisoned herself in the Bunker on 30 April 1945.  The bodies were than carried up to the Chancellery garden under shellfire and burnt with petrol.

The Soviets, who carried out an autopsy on what was assumed to be her body — it was burnt beyond recognition — found six teeth and a gold bridge of four artificial teeth.

A team of forensic experts led by Norwegian-born Professor Reidar F. Sognnaes, emeritus professor of oral biology and anatomy at the University of California, has spent the past 10 years unearthing. Eva Braun's dental records. They found that she did not have a gold bridge, but did have two false porcelain teeth, which would almost certainly have survived a fire.

Professor Sognnaes says the plastic parts of the bridge would in any case have exploded in the fire. He has produced evidence from a Mrs Heusermann, now in her 50s, who said the bridge, had been made for Eva Braun in the dental laboratory where she worked in 1945, but was never fitted. She says the Soviets, found it in the basement dental office in the Reich Chancellery, not in Eva Braun's body.

Professor Sognnaes said, "It is possible that Eva Braun escaped. After all, there were a number of men in the Bunker unaccounted for who could have helped her. No one actually witnessed her death.

There was no suggestion that Hitler might have escaped with her.

Meanwhile, Krebs meets with Marshal Vasily Chuikov of the Red Army informing him that Hitler is dead, and to negotiate peace terms, stating that Germany will not accept unconditional surrender. However, Krebs returns unsuccessful.

Göbbels berates his generals, reminding them Hitler forbade them to surrender. Hans Fritzsche leaves the room to try and take matters into his own hands, only to nearly be shot by an angry Burgdorf.

Later on, with the help of SS Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger, Magda kills her six young children with cyanide. She and her husband commit suicide not long after, as well as Generals Krebs and Burgdorf. The remaining staff in the Bunker begin to evacuate, and General Weidling orders the Germany Army to cease fire.

Günther Schwägermann [born 24 July 1915] served in the Nazi government of German dictator Adolf Hitler. From approximately late 1941, after being wounded on the Eastern front, Schwägermann served as the adjutant for Dr. Josef Göbbels. He reached the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer [captain].

In January 1945, Göbbels sent Schwägermann to his villa at Lanke, ordering him to bring his wife, Magda, and their children to stay at an air raid shelter on Schwanenwerder.

By 22 April 1945, the Soviets were attacking Berlin and Josef and Magda Göbbels brought their children to the Vorbunker to stay. Schwägermann came with them. Adolf Hitler had already taken up residence in the lower Führerbunker in January 1945. It was in that protected Bunker complex below the Reich Chancellery garden of Berlin that Hitler and a few loyal personnel were gathered to direct the city's final defence.

By the time of Hitler's death on 30 April 1945, the Soviet Army was less than 500 metres from the Bunker complex. On 1 May 1945, Göbbels arranged for an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz, to inject his six children with morphine so that when they were unconscious, an ampule of cyanide could be then crushed in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's later testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Göbbels and SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who administered the cyanide.

At around 20:30, Göbbels and his wife, Magda left the Bunker and walked up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they committed suicide. There are several different accounts of this event. According to one account, Göbbels shot his wife and then himself. Another account was that they each bit on a cyanide ampule and were given a coup de grâce immediately afterwards. Schwägermann testified in 1948 that the couple walked ahead of him up the stairs and out into the Chancellery garden. He waited in the stairwell and heard the shots sound. Schwägermann then walked up the remaining stairs and once outside he saw the lifeless bodies of the couple. Following Josef Göbbels' prior order, Schwägermann had an SS soldier fire several shots into Göbbels' body, which did not move. The bodies were then doused with petrol, but the remains were only partially burned and not buried.

In one of Hitler's last orders, he had given permission for the Berlin forces to attempt a breakout of the Soviet encirclement after his death. General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, and SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke, the (Kommandant) Battle Commander for the center government district, devised a plan to escape out from Berlin to the Allies on the western side of the Elbe or to the German Army to the North. Mohnke split up the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker soldiers and personnel into ten main groups. Schwägermann was in one of the break-out groups of 1 May. He made it out of Berlin and escaped to the west. There Schwägermann was taken into custody and held in American captivity from 25 June 1945 until 24 April 1947.

Although Rochus Misch upon his death in September 2013, at the age of 96, is believed to have been the last living occupant of the Führerbunker, Schwägermann, at 101, is still alive.

Traudl Junge, along with a few other women, is able to make it out of the Bunker dressed as soldiers. Dr. Schenck informs the women that they don't have to be taken prisoner because the Russians aren't looking for them.

Traudl, Gerda, and the remaining SS troops that managed to leave the Bunker are sticking with Schenck, Mohnke, and Günsche as they try to flee the city. Hewel manages to join them, but after word reaches them of the surrender he and several others shoot themselves. The same thing happens to many others the group comes across. Meanwhile, the child soldiers have all fallen victim to the Russian charge except for Peter, who also discovers that a Greifkommando or Feldgendarmerie squad has executed his parents.

Traudl is joined by the now orphaned Peter, and the two of them are able to pass through the Russian army.

While the Red Army ranks are only streets away, Traudl decides to leave. Peter pulls her through the masses, but she blunders into a celebrating drunken Red Army soldier. Peter tugs her arm, and she hastens away. At a ruined bridge, Peter finds a bicycle and they pedal away from Berlin.

The movie "Der Untergang", which has been widely cited for its historical accuracy, depicts Junge being saved by a boy with whom she walks through Russian lines unscathed and then literally rides off into the German sunset, but this is a fictional [and metaphorical] dramatic device invented for the film's ending.

The reality was wholly different from the fictionalized ending as portrayed in the film. Together with others in the Bunker, Gerda Christian, Traudl Junge, Else Krüger and Constanze Manziarly left the Bunker on 1 May led by SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke. This group slowly made its way north hoping to link up with Heer holdouts on the Prinzenallee. Hiding in a cellar, they were captured by the Soviets on the morning of 2 May.

Like thousands of other German women during the fall of Berlin, Gerda Christian was repeatedly raped by soldiers of the Red Army in the woods near Berlin. And despite the film stating that Manziarly vanished in 1945, Junge recounts Manziarly being taken into an U-Bahn tunnel by two Soviet soldiers, reassuring the group that "They are just going to see my papers".

In truth, Junge was raped repeatedly by Russian soldiers, as were many other German women during the fall of Berlin in 1945. She was subsequently held for a year as the "personal prisoner" of a Russian major.

James P. O'Donnell in "The Bunker" states that Junge's skull was fractured when she resisted. However Junge's own book, "Until the Final Hour," gives considerable details of her departure from the Bunker and makes it clear that she was not molested in any way.  

The epilogue then tells the fates of the other characters and one final excerpt from the 2002 documentary, where the real life Traudl appears before the credits.

---

The film was based upon the books "Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich" [2004], by historian Joachim Fest; "Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary" [1947], the memoirs of Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's secretaries [co-written with Melissa Müller]; "Inside the Third Reich" [first published in German in 1969], the memoirs of Albert Speer, one of the highest-ranking Nazi officials to survive both the war and the Nuremberg trials; "Hitler's Last Days: An Eye–Witness Accoun"t [first English translation 1973], by Gerhard Boldt; "Das Notlazarett unter der Reichskanzlei: Ein Arzt erlebt Hitlers Ende in Berlin" by Doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck; and "Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936–1949" [1992], Siegfried Knappe's memoir.

Bruno Ganz conducted four months of research to prepare for the role, studying an 11-minute recording of Hitler in private conversation with Finnish Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim in order to mimic Hitler's conversational voice and distinct Austrian dialect properly.

 

 

These are two main clips from the YLE archives of  Adolf Hitler visit with Finnish Marshall Freiherr Karl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim 4 June 1942, Mannerheim's 75th birthday. The Finnish sound engineer of the broadcasting company YLE, Thor Damén's original purpose was to record official birthday speeches and Mannerheim's responses. However, Damen decided to continue recording after the conversation switched from official to private.

The second recording is often called "the secret recording", and begins at 13:57. In fact, there is nothing sensational about the recording.

What is stated in places like "Wikipedia" is not correct, and is based on obsolete literature. The microphone was the same visible microphone used to record the official speeches in Mannerheim's personal railway car, it was only about two meters away from the gentlemen sitting down discussing. It is visible in the lead picture of this video, and was not "thrown into the compartment on the luggage racks" as was claimed by Damén, who was in possession of a tape copy. Damén perhaps made these claims in order to increase the sales value of the tape copy he had, the text of which was published in the press in Sweden, where he lived post-war, in 1947. There were no "SS guards" or even "German officers" who would have stopped the recording. It was terminated by the Finnish P.R. captain Kalle Lehmus on his own initiative. The recording was secured but not destroyed nor confiscated.

The included recorded speech by Mannerheim in the restaurant car is not connected to the other recordings. It was delivered both in German and in Finnish with a written German translation, which Hitler is seen to read in one of the pictures.

There were no German troops present, and they would have had no jurisdiction. For close personal support, Hitler brought with him a handful of German SS police officers, his military adjutants, his doctor and his valet. Hitler's vegetarian meals were prepared for him in advance by the Finnish HQ restaurant.

Captain Lehmus was also terrified by the guests having had lit up their cigars in the restaurant car after the dinner, as Hitler was a strict non-smoker. There was no "cigar smoke blown by Mannerheim onto Hitler's face", as sometimes has been claimed. We do not know what Hitler's exact reaction was, but we know that he himself offered Mannerheim a cigar to smoke when Mannerheim made the required courtesy visit to Germany the same summer.

The impression left by Hitler on the audience was mostly a favourable one. He was positively noted for his unexpectedly humble and matter-of-fact style of presentation and manners.

This is the only known sample of Hitler using his normal voice, and was used by the actor Bruno Ganz for his deeply impressive Hitler in "Der Undergang".

 

The film is set mostly in and around the Führerbunker. Hirschbiegel made an effort to reconstruct accurately the look and atmosphere of the Bunker through eyewitness accounts, survivors' memoirs and other historical sources. According to his commentary on the DVD, "Der Untergang" was filmed in Berlin, Munich, and in a district of Saint Petersburg, Russia, which, with its many buildings designed by German architects, was said to resemble many parts of 1940s Berlin. The film was ranked number 48 in "Empire" magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.

By various accounts, at 3:30 p.m. 30 April 1945, the Führer put a gun to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Then, his body vanished.

But what happened after that became perhaps World War II’s most peculiar mystery, one that inspired decades of conspiracy theories and wild fantasies, ranging from the 1978 Hollywood thriller "The Boys From Brazil", which imagined fugitive Nazi scientists cloning Hitler’s DNA in an attempt to create a master race, to the more recent appearance of a few Hitler autopsy photos of dubious authenticity on the Web, and Russian officials’ claim that they still possess fragments of the hated dictator’s skull. But the story of Hitler’s posthumous Odyssey still remains murky, despite the advent of forensic technology that didn’t exist back in 1945.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, when he learned of Hitler’s death the next day, had one question. “Where is his corpse?” he demanded. Stalin was obsessed with making sure that his former ally-turned-bitter adversary was indeed gone, and ordered an exhaustive secret investigation. The result is reproduced in "The Hitler Book", a 2006 translation of a file prepared for Stalin in the late 1940s, based upon captured Nazi officials’ eyewitness accounts of what happened in the wake of Hitler’s suicide.

According to the file, Martin Bormann and another aide wrapped the dead dictator’s still-warm corpse in a blanket and carried him outside. Because of the bombardment, they could not take the body into the garden, as originally planned, so they laid it down about six feet from the entrance and doused it with 200 liters of Benzene. Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun, who also had committed suicide, got similar treatment. Then the bodies were ignited with a burning piece of paper, and the door to the Bunker was slammed shut because of the heat. Then the aides set about hastily removing the blood-soaked carpet, Hitler’s personal possessions and papers, and whatever other traces of his presence and demise remained, in order to throw Soviet trophy hunters off the trail.

Nevertheless, on 4 May, members of the Soviet military counter-Intelligence agency SMERSH found two badly burned bodies outside the Führerbunker. Not immediately realizing that they were Hitler and his mistress, the soldiers buried them in a bomb crater. The next day, however, after a search of the Bunker turned up nothing, the Smersh officials remembered the two bodies and hastily disinterred them and moved them to their new working HQ in Berlin. They imposed tight secrecy, perhaps fearful of arousing Stalin’s wrath if it turned out that they did not have Hitler after all. On 8 May, an autopsy reportedly was performed, and finally, on 11 May, a dentist reportedly verified that the bodies belonged to Hitler and Braun.

The Soviets long kept those results a secret from their Western Allies. So what did they do with Hitler’s supposed remains? In 2009, according to a CNN story, Gen. Vasily Khristoforov, head archivist of Russia’s Federal Security Service, said that long-secret Soviet documents revealed the official version of events. In June 1945, a month after Hitler’s suicide, Smersh supposedly moved his corpse and buried it in a forest near the German town of Rathenau. Eight months later, they exhumed the dead dictator and re-buried his remains, along with those of Eva Braun and Hitler’s propaganda chief Josef Göbbels and his family, in the Soviet Army garrison in Magdeburg. The body remained in that grave until 1970, when the Kremlin decided to close the military outpost and turn it over to the East German government. The Soviets still feared that Hitler’s grave site might somehow be discovered by neo-Nazis and turned into a shrine. KGB head Yuri Andropov [who later would briefly become head of state] ordered his agents to dispose of the USSR’s most hated enemy, this time for good.

Two protocols were compiled after the operation was carried out on 4 April 1970, the general said. The first documented the opening of a grave that contained the remains of the Nazi leaders and their family members, and the other one detailed their physical destruction. "The remains were burnt on a bonfire outside the town of Schönebeck, 11 kilometers away from Magdeburg, then ground into ashes, collected and thrown into the Biederitz River", the second document reads, according to Khristoforov.

But as the official story goes, the Soviets could not resist keeping a few pieces of Hitler for posterity, though their existence was not revealed to the world until after the USSR’s own demise. In 1993, the Russian state archive revealed that it had found what officials believed to be a piece of the Nazi dictator’s skull, complete with damage from a gunshot wound, and other bone fragments, in a cardboard box marked 'Blue Ink for Pens'.

Investigators from other countries, however, were skeptical of the skull’s authenticity. "New Scientist" reported at the time that French forensic dental experts concluded that the grisly trophy actually came from another corpse, one they believed that Smersh officials may have shipped to Moscow in 1945 and passed off as Hitler’s remains, in an attempt to placate Stalin’s blood lust. Finally, in 2009, a "Spiegel" article details, a DNA analysis by University of Connecticut researchers revealed the  skull actually was that of a woman between the ages of 20 and 40, who had died in Hitler’s Bunker. [It was not Eva Braun’s, since she reportedly died from cyanide poisoning, not a bullet].

That revelation, however, raises scores of other questions. If the skull that the Russians presented as Hitler’s is clearly not his, how reliable was SMERSH’s original dental identification of Hitler’s remains? Was the account given by captured aides of Hitler’s suicide and the subsequent attempt to cremate him really truthful, or was it a clever hoax? Did Hitler really die in the Bunker, or could he possibly have escaped? Unless scientists invent a time machine, we may never know the complete story.

 

David Irving was at the studios of Twentieth Century Fox in London for a private viewing of "Downfall" [Der Untergang] -- the new German film of Hitler's Last Days:

I must say that after all the hoopla in the German media, I am disappointed. From the opening title of Constantin Film Verleih, worse than the clumsiest that Ufa could produce, to the closing sequence -- pictures of the actors, with where-are-they-now biographies of the real characters, the film was unbelievably clunky and amateurish in parts. The German producers did not stoop to Steven Spielberg's trick of making it in black and white ["to provide documentary footage for the future", as the chief camera director of "Schindler's List" disingenuously told his trade journal "Der Kameramann"]; the colour in "Downfall" is washed-out, low key, Berlin-grim.

The actors are sometimes easy to identify -for us Nazi experts anyway- by the uniform they are wearing, and sometimes not; Dr Josef Göbbels is far too big to be the "Little Doctor", but he is evidently chosen for his ability to mimic the Propaganda Minister's superb Rhineland elocution, and at times he does so with chilling verisimilitude.

• A corpulent army general is identified to us only in the closing titles as having been Alfred Jodl, hanged at Nuremberg; we would never have guessed - the real Jodl was a wiry, balding, and spare-framed mountain-artillery officer.

• Martin Bormann, the same: fat, perspiring, unhealthy in the film, in reality burly, muscular, slicked haired, and scowling.

• Otto Günsche, Hitler's long-time SS adjutant, we would never have recognized from the tall handsome dark-haired officer in the film; the real Günsche, who provided to me in the 1960s the first hand narrative on how Hitler and Eva Braun took their own lives, and the dialogue between them which mysteriously turns up verbatim in this film script, was burly, Aryan, and blonde.

• In the film Walther Hewel, Ribbentrop's liaison officer to Hitler, is a thin, nervous, weedy, pharmacy-clerk type of man; in reality he was a broad shouldered, suave, dark-haired diplomat, a handsome ladies man - the only top Nazi to have seen the outside world, having spent twelve years of his life as a rubber planter in Java.

Having said that, I can say what saves this film and elevates it into a stellar category are the spectacular and deeply human portrayal by Bruno Ganz of the aging and defeated Adolf Hitler - he has perfected the guttural Austrian accent down to the last rolling rrrrr; and the warm, affectionate portrayal of his secretary Traudl Junge.

She is played by a Transylvanian-born actress of great feminity and beauty, with moist, limpid eyes that are able eloquently to convey her feelings, for example the delicate disgust when Göbbels dictates his final will, emphasizing the purity and unblemished [makellos] character of his actions, before turning away to mastermind the murder of his six children.

The one scene which does bring a tear to my eyes, I confess, even though the script falsely has Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger administering a sleeping draught to the reluctant infants, whereas they were in fact anesthetized with a morphine injection by the SS dentist in the Bunker; when they were sound asleep their mother Magda crushed a glass a cyanide ampoule in each tiny mouth using a pair of pliers.

Göbbels's Last Testament, appended to Hitler's, claimed that his wife and children supported him in his refusal to leave Berlin, qualifying this by asserting that the children would support the decision if they were old enough to speak for themselves. Both pilot Hanna Reitsch [who had left the Bunker on 29/30 April) and Traudl Junge [who left on 1 May] carried letters to the outside world from those remaining. Included was a letter from Magda to her son Harald who was in an Allied POW camp.
 
The following day, on 1 May 1945, the Göbbels' six children were injected with morphine [by an SS dentist, Helmut Kunz] and then, when they were unconscious, killed by having a crushed ampoule of cyanide placed in their mouths. Accounts differ over how involved Magda was with the killing of her children. According to Kunz, he administered the morphine but it was Magda Göbbels and Ludwig Stumpfegger [Hitler's personal doctor] who administered the cyanide tablets.

This contradicts the testimony of Oberscharführer Rochus Misch, a member of Hitler's Führerbegleitkommando bodyguard and head of communications in the Führerbunker and statements by Göbbels State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, Werner Naumann. Naumann and Misch both stated it was actually Hitler's surgeon SS Dr. Stumpfegger who mixed a sweetened narcotic drink to put the Göbbels children into a deep sleep before Magda Göbbels placed cyanide capsules into their mouths.

Another account says that the children were told they would be leaving for Berchtesgaden in the morning, and Ludwig Stumpfegger was said to have provided Magda with morphine to sedate the children. Erna Flegel claims that Magda reassured the children about the morphine by telling them that they needed inoculations because they would be staying in the Bunker for a long time. Erich Kempka reported after the war that he believed the children had been "taken away by a nurse" that day, just before he left the Bunker. Some witnesses claimed that SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger crushed the cyanide capsules into the children's mouths, but as no witnesses to the event survived it is impossible to know.

James O'Donnell, author of "The Bunker", concluded that, although Stumpfegger was probably involved in drugging the children, it was Magda who killed them. He suggested that witnesses blamed the deaths on Stumpfegger because he was a convenient target, having disappeared [and died, it was later learned] the following day. Moreover, Stumpfegger may have been too intoxicated at the time of the deaths to have played a reliable role.

Hans Otto Meissner in "Magda Göbbels, First Lady of the Third Reich" claims that Stumpfegger refused to take any part in the deaths of the children, and that a mysterious "country Doctor from the enemy-occupied eastern region" appeared and "carried out the fearful task" before disappearing again, but this explanation may owe more to Meissner's characteristic diplomacy and consideration than any reality.

Magda Göbbels here is a departure from reality; she is played as a cunning, fiendish, Machiavellian, raven-haired and slender female displaying all the warmth and maternal charm of the evil Mrs Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca"; I do know real women who are like that, but in reality Magda Göbbels was a simple, charming, feminine woman, once platinum-blonde, whose comeliness as a female was a not lessened by having borne six children. She had once dated Chaim Arlosoroff, a Zionist fanatic later assassinated in Palestine, and her step father [and I believe real father] Robert Friedländer was Jewish [and met his end like many other Jews as a dehumanized prisoner in the concentration camp at Buchenwald].

There is no evidence that Magda attempted to intervene to save her Jewish stepfather from the Holocaust. Though his fate has not been established, it is widely assumed that he perished in the camps.

Asked about her husband's anti-Semitism, Magda answered: "The Führer wants it thus, and Josef must obey". It is unknown how much she actually knew about the concentration camps.

At the beginning of the war she threw herself enthusiastically into her husband's Propaganda machine. Her other official functions involved entertaining the wives of the foreign heads of state, supporting the troops and comforting war widows.

Magda's son by her first marriage, Harald Quandt, became a Luftwaffe pilot and fought at the front, while, at home, she lived up to the image of a patriotic mother by training as a Red Cross nurse and working with the electronics company Telefunken, and travelled to work on a bus, like her colleagues.

I was taken aback by the two figures selected by scriptwriter Bernd Eichinger for "good guy" treatment in the script. One is Professor Dr Dr Ernst-Günther Schenck; I interviewed him many times in the 1970s and obtained from him the graphic descriptions and dialogues of the last two days in the Bunker -- which now strangely turn up, unchanged, in this film's script. Note that in the German façon, having won two doctorates, he sported both Dr's in his title. He headed an SS branch on nutritional medicine, and there are the inevitable allegations against him as an SS doctor.

Ernst-Günther Schenck was an Obersturmbannführer [lieutenant-colonel] and doctor who joined the SS in 1933. Because of a chance encounter with Adolf Hitler during the closing days of World War II, his memoirs proved historically valuable. His accounts of this period influenced those of Joachim Fest and James P. O'Donnell regarding the end of Hitler's life, and were included in the film "Downfall" [2004)].

Schenck was born in Marburg, Hesse-Nassau. He trained as a doctor and joined the SS. During the war, Schenck was actively involved in the creation of a large herbal plantation in Dachau concentration camp, which contained over 200,000 medicinal plants, from which, among other things, vitamin supplements for the Waffen-SS were manufactured. In 1940 he was appointed as inspector of nutrition for the SS. In 1943 Schenck developed a protein sausage, which was meant for the SS frontline troops. Prior to adoption, it was tested on 370 prisoners in Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, some of whom died of hunger edema.In his own memoirs, Schenck stated that his only concern was to improve nutrition and fight hunger. However, a report in 1963 condemned Schenck for "treating humans like objects, guinea pigs". In the Federal Republic of Germany, Schenck was later not allowed to continue his medical career.

According to Waffen SS-Oberscharführer Hans Bottger with the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Schenck left his government duty post to go to the Eastern Front for his so-called "Iron Cross apprenticeship" during the Germans' first campaign. Schenck proved himself while serving as the battalion physician. Further, instead of just manipulating his way into getting the award like many others, Schenck found himself taking command of a gun battery after the commander had been killed. Schenck performed "well" in combat and earned the Iron Cross, Second Class.

In April 1945, during the battle in Berlin, Schenck volunteered to work in an emergency casualty station located in the large cellar of the Reich Chancellery, near the Vorbunker and Führerbunker. Although he was not trained as a surgeon and lacked the experience, as well as the supplies and instruments necessary to operate on battle victims, he nonetheless assisted in approximately 100 major surgical operations.

During these surgeries, Schenck was aided by Dr. Werner Haase, who also served as one of Hitler's private physicians. Although Haase had much more surgical experience than Schenck, he was weakened by tuberculosis, and often had to lie down while trying in vain to give verbal advice to Schenck. Due to the combination of terrible conditions and his own inexperience, after the war, Schenck told author/historian James P. O'Donnell that he was unable to track down a single German soldier he had operated on who had survived [he kept records of the operations].

During the end time in Berlin, Schenck saw Hitler in person twice, for only a brief time: once when Hitler wanted to thank him, Dr. Haase, and Nurse Erna Flegel for their emergency medical services, and once during the "reception" after Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun, and by his own admission, was extremely exhausted and dazed during these meetings [at the time, he had been in surgery for numerous days without much sleep]. Also, some of Schenck's opinions were based on hearsay from Dr. Haase.

Schenk later wrote a book ["Patient A"] about Hitler's relationship with his personal physician, and was quoted in "American Medical News" to the effect that Hitler was neither clinically insane nor chemically dependent on drugs. Schenk says that  Hitler's regular injections consisted of vitamins mixed with glucose and caffeine. Hitler was not a regular user of any stronger drug, but was given them on occasion: codeine and cocaine for colds, strong painkillers and barbiturates for cramps and colitis (an intermittent condition in most people that suffer it). By the end of his life, Hitler showed obvious symptoms of Parkinson's disease, and also had a heart problem that was treated with nitroglycerin and digitalis. Schenk says that medically there was nothing unusual about Hitler (AP, 10 October 1985)  and there is no reason to believe that drugs adversely affected Hitler's judgment.

In 2010 the book "War Hitler Krank?" by Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann [published in English in 2012 as Was Hitler Ill?], offered generally the same assessment as Schenk. They write that "at no time did Hitler suffer from pathological delusions," ["Eine Besessenheit im Sinne eines krankheitsbedingten Wahns gab es bei Hitler zu keinem Zeitpunkt"] and they find no indication that Dr. Theodor Morell was anything other than a competent and ethical physician.

When questioned in 1945, the doctors who had treated Hitler were unanimous that he had been sane until the very end. One of them, Professor Hans Karl von Hasselbach, would subsequently observe, "The German public would have been lunatic to have given their virtually unanimous support to any man such as Hitler is portrayed today".

There were virtually no clinical symptoms of abnormality. He showed no mental faults like inappropriate euphoria, incontinence, anosmia [loss of smell)] or personality changes. Brain examinations disclosed no "sensory aphasia' and no "dream states". Tests on his reflex centres and spinal root functions revealed no abnormalities. The doctors would put on record that his orientation as to time, place, and persons was excellent. Their report adds: "He was changeable, at times restless and sometimes peculiar but otherwise co-operative and not easily distracted. Emotionally he was very labile – his likes and dislikes were very pronounced. His flow of thought showed continuity. His speech was neither slow nor fast, and was always relevant". Common symptoms of insanity were absent. The doctors concluded that in Hitler "no hallucinations, illusions, or paranoid trends were present".

 -- David Irving, "Hitler's War"

Schenck was captured by the Soviet Army during the Berlin "break-out" of 1 May 1945. Following their surrender Schenck, Mohnke and other senior German officers from the group were treated to a banquet by the Chief of Staff of the 8th Guards Army with the permission of Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov. At 10:30 pm, the Germans were ushered out into another room where they were confined under guard. On the following night of 3 May, Schenck and the rest of the Germans were handed over to the NKVD. Schenck was later released from Russian captivity in 1953 and returned home to [then] West Germany.

Prior to writing his memoirs, Schenck was interviewed in depth by O'Donnell for the book "The Bunker", which recounted portions of Schenck's memories of Hitler's last days. The possibility that Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease was first investigated by Schenck. Schenck died on 21 December 1998 aged 94 in Aachen.

In this film however Schenck is an unquestioned moralising hero, as is a far darker figure, Hermann Fegelein. The real Hermann Fegelein was a murderous, womanizing, power-hungry SS cavalry officer.

Hermann Fegelein's adjutant, the late Johannes Göhler, an upstanding Waffen SS officer, was a good source of mine and provided to me with a sheaf of his private letters written from Hitler's HQ from August 1944 to the end.  

Fegelein's fate, shot for desertion, is well documented. The film shows Hitler however virtually foaming at the mouth as he demands this execution. Not so:

• first, Hitler's adjutants assured me that he did not foam, even metaphorically, but was always calm and measured in his elocution [except for the one occasion, 22 April 1945, when he did suffer a dramatic breakdown on hearing of the failure of military operations for the relief of Berlin]; and

• second, Otto Günsche told me that it was he personally who had gone to Hitler and advised him that he and the other adjutants, hearing that the Chief was minded to show clemency, were demanding that Fegelein be stood before a firing squad for his cowardice.

On 27 April 1945, Reichssicherheitsdienst [RSD] deputy commander SS-Obersturmbannführer Peter Högl was sent out from the Reich Chancellery to find Hermann Fegelein who had abandoned his post at the Führerbunker after deciding he did not want to "join a suicide pact". Fegelein was caught by the RSD squad in his Berlin apartment, wearing civilian clothes and preparing to flee to Sweden or Switzerland. He was carrying cash—German and foreign—and jewelry, some of which belonged to Braun. Högl also uncovered a briefcase containing documents with evidence of Himmler's attempted peace negotiations with the Western Allies. According to most accounts, he was intoxicated when arrested and brought back to the Führerbunker. He was kept in a makeshift cell until the evening of 28 April. That night, Hitler was informed of the BBC broadcast of a Reuters news report about Himmler's attempted negotiations with the western Allies via Count Bernadotte. Hitler flew into a rage about this apparent betrayal and ordered Himmler's arrest. Sensing a connection between Fegelein's disappearance and Himmler's betrayal, Hitler ordered SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller to interrogate Fegelein as to what he knew of Himmler's plans. Thereafter, according to Otto Günsche [Hitler's personal adjutant], Hitler ordered that Fegelein be stripped of all rank and to be transferred to Kampfgruppe 'Mohnke' to prove his loyalty in combat. However, Günsche and Bormann expressed their concern to Hitler that Fegelein would only desert again. Hitler then ordered Fegelein court-martialed.

Fegelein's wife was then in the late stages of pregnancy [the baby was born in early May], and Hitler considered releasing him without punishment or assigning him to Mohnke's troops. Junge—an eye-witness to Bunker events—stated that Braun pleaded with Hitler to spare her brother-in-law and tried to justify Fegelein's actions. However, he was taken to the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 28 April, and was "shot like a dog". Rochus Misch, who was the last survivor from the Führerbunker, disputed aspects of this account in a 2007 interview with "Der Spiegel". According to Misch, Hitler did not order Fegelein's execution, only his demotion. Misch claimed to know the identity of Fegelein's killer, but refused to reveal his name.

Journalist James P. O'Donnell, who conducted extensive interviews in the 1970s, provides one account of what happened next. SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke, who presided over the court martial for desertion, told O'Donnell that Hitler ordered him to set up a tribunal. Mohnke arranged for a court martial panel, which consisted of generals Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hans Krebs, SS-Gruppenführer Johann Rattenhuber, and himself. Fegelein, still drunk, refused to accept that he had to answer to Hitler, and stated that he was responsible only to Himmler. Fegelein was so drunk that he was crying and vomiting; he was unable to stand up, and even urinated on the floor. Mohnke was in a quandary, as German military and civilian law both require a defendant to be of sound mind and to understand the charges against them. Although Mohnke was certain Fegelein was "guilty of flagrant desertion", it was the opinion of the judges that he was in no condition to stand trial, so Mohnke closed the proceedings and turned the defendant over to General Rattenhuber's security squad. Mohnke never saw Fegelein again.

An alternative scenario of Fegelein's death is based on the 1948/49 Soviet NKVD dossier of Hitler written for Josef Stalin. The dossier is based on the interrogation reports of Günsche and Heinz Linge [Hitler's valet]. This dossier differs in part from the accounts given by Mohnke and Rattenhuber. After the intoxicated Fegelein was arrested and brought back to the Führerbunker, Hitler at first ordered Fegelein to be transferred to Kampfgruppe Mohnke to prove his loyalty in combat. Günsche and Bormann expressed their concern to Hitler that Fegelein would desert again. Hitler then ordered Fegelein to be demoted and court-martialed by a court led by Mohnke. At this point the accounts differ, as the NKVD dossier states that Fegelein was court-martialed on the evening of 28 April, by a court headed by Mohnke, SS-Obersturmbannführer Alfred Krause, and SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Kaschula. Mohnke and his fellow officers sentenced Fegelein to death. That same evening, Fegelein was shot from behind by a member of the Sicherheitsdienst.

Based on this stated chain of events, author Veit Scherzer concluded that Fegelein, according to German law, was deprived of all honours and honorary signs and must therefore be considered "a de facto but not de jure" recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

There are loose ends left unexplained in the film. General Hans Krebs is shown at the end, negotiating with Marshal Zhukov's officers and speaking fluent Russian; left as it is, it gives the impression that he may have been a Soviet traitor in Hitler's headquarters. In fact he spoke fluent Russian having been military attaché in Moscow until Barbarossa began in June 1941.

We are not told why the secretary Traudl Humps' name changes in mid-film to Traudl Junge. She had married Hitler's Ordonnanz, SS Hauptsturmführer Wolf Junge, but the wartime marriage did not last long. She described to me how in June 1944 "the Chief" [wrongly translated as Führer, several times, in the sub-titles] had sent for her, tears in his eyes, taken both her hands in his, and said, "Ach, mein Kind, I am so sorry" -- and broken to her the news that Wolf had just been killed in action in the Normandy fighting.

Although the "consultant" credited in the titles is Joachim Fest, a well-known German TV presenter and personality and author, I suspect that my own name might by rights have been there in the titles too. As my readers will recognize immediately, at least fifty percent of the dialogue has been lifted straight out of my book "Hitler's War" [first published in Germany in 1975], and much of the rest from my Josef Göbbels biography too!

There is nothing new or even unusual about this. Fest is not an author well known for original research but, as they say, using just one book is plagiarism; using two is investigation; while using three or more is deep, profound, original, and overwhelming in-depth research.

Several times, as a scene was set up in this film, I found that I knew precisely what was going to come next; once, the screen fills with Hitler handing out cyanide capsules to his staff, standing dutifully in line as though at a Christmas reception, and he reaches Traudl:  "I am so sorry that I can offer you nothing better than this".

I am sorry too - sorry to see that the film makers have done to Traudl what they did to Lida Baarova [Göbbels' girlfriend] in her Westdeutscher Rundfunk television interview about him: they required the latter female to come back on screen and gently grovel [but Lida cleverly changes her dress for this final shot, so that future cognoscenti can recognize what has happened].

So here too, after the Hitler film ends, it produces the real Traudl Junge, now in her late 80s, wrinkled and with her once-fair complexion pocked and blemished by the imminent onset of death, and she apologises for not having seen how wicked her Chief, Adolf Hitler, really was.

At one point in this toe-curling postscript her memorized lines make her say that she has recently realized, walking past the memorial tablet for Sophie Scholl -one of the student traitors in Munich- that Sophie was the same age as she, and had been executed on the same day that she was being interviewed by Hitler for her job as a secretary. But that cannot have been so, because her job interview was in November 1942, as the film also makes plain at the beginning; and the Scholl sisters were executed in 1943 -- in March, if memory serves. But even here something of the real Traudl tweaks through. She says that had she known what was going on . . . to the Jews . . . then, of course . . . but she never heard even a murmur of that while working next to Hitler.

At Hitler's headquarters! At Hitler's side: present at his conference table, and at his table talks: throughout the remaining months of the war, from Stalingrad onwards, literally to the very end: never heard a murmur about what since the 1970s is called The Holocaust. Now what can that portend?

That is a real conundrum, which may or may not sink in with the movie-goers. All of Hitler's staff, including his surviving verbatim conference stenographers, confirmed this to me -that nothing was ever said or known about it at Hitler's HQ- as did Richard Schulze, his personal SS adjutant, when I invited him to attend a live David Frost TV program devoted to my Hitler biography on 9 June 1977; just as Hitler's personal staff had all told the American and British interrogators shortly after the war, at a time when to say otherwise would certainly have earned them favours, like a transfer from the criminal wing to the privileged witness wing at Nuremberg. Kurzum: Not a word of the atrocities filtered back into Hitler's "monastery-like" headquarters.

Some of the scenes in this film are breathtaking, almost religious tableaux, constructed to the nearest millimeter from the surviving photos:

• Hitler ten days before the end handing out Iron Crosses to schoolboy-age Hitler Youths for heroism against the Soviet tanks.

 

Reichjugendführer [Reich Youth Leader] Artur Axmann had just presented twenty Hitler Youth with the Eisernes Kreuz [Iron Cross] Second Class, before Hitler arrived.

Hitler never actually awarded the medals.

The scene was filmed and Willi Hübner told his story for the cameras.

This event actually occurred on 20 March 1945.

It was a view was taken from "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" Nummer 755 [The German Weekly Review Number 755], which was the last newsreel circulated to non-occupied Germany in March 1945. 

Hitler did decorate Hitlerjugend boys on his birthday on 20 April 1945, but it is an undocumented ceremony in the Ehrenhof of the Chancellery.

The cover of the 12 April 1945 issue of the "Völkischer Beobachter".

Obviously the photos were taken before 20 April if they appeared 8 days earlier in the paper.

Hitler did decorate some Hitler Jugend boys on his birthday, the last issue of the "Völkischer Beobachter" dated 20 April, mentions an awards presentation, but it was not photographed.

Below is a photo of where the 20 March event took place.

The boys were lined up from left to right along the wall at the base of the back of the Reichs Chancellery.

 

 

 

A rare and unusual still picture from  a completely different angle. 
The photographer had to climbed up on the wall and steps to take this shot.

 

.


 

 
These still photos of Hitler were the last ever taken of him and  are usually identified as taken in LAST TWO DAYS BEFORE HIS SUICIDE

There is another photo taken at the same time that seems to have been forgotten.

While Hitler and Schaub are looking at the damage, Bormann walks up and joins them and another photo is snapped. 

This photo is very rarely published [the last time in German publications in the 60s and 70s] It is a semi close-up with Hitler in the middle with Bormann on the left and Schaub on the right, and may in fact be the last of the three photos taken inside the dining hall.

 

• Hitler emerging briefly from the ruined Bunker to the garden, surrounded by his staff [a photograph actually taken after a British air raid in November 1943, according to Julius Schaub]

There are some minor flaws. History shows that Hitler orders the thirty or so nurses brought in to his Bunker from the next-door Voss Street Bunker, which has been turned into an emergency hospital, to decorate and commend them for their courage in tending the injured. Schenck described the scene to me -and here it is, like magic, in Bernd Eichinger's film- but there is only one nurse here, the one who sinks in hysterics to the ground and clutches Hitler's knees and implores him to leave Berlin. Economising on extras?

Around 1:30 am on 30 April, Hitler asked that all the medical staff of the hospital at the Reichs Chancellery visit him.  By 2 am they were gathered in the the lobby of the Bunker outside of Hitler’s quarters.  In this group were Chief physician of the hospital; Obersturmführer Dr. Werner Haase; Senior physician of the hospital, Standartenführer Dr. Schenck; the second physician of the hospital Sturmbannführer Dr. Kunz; surgical nurses Erna Flegel, Liselotte Chervinska, and, Elisabeth Lyndhurst; another surgical nurse Rut [full name not known]; Frau Heusermann [Dr. Blaschke’s dental assistant]; and perhaps another 15 to 20 nurses and some other women, including Irmengard Baroness von Varo [apparently the mistress of an officer of Hitler’s escort commando]. 

Schenck recalled Hitler’s clothes were "sloppy, food-stained". He "could see Hitler's hunched spine, the curved shoulders that seemed to twitch and tremble". "He struck me as an agonized Atlas with a mountain on his back". Hitler seemed hardly able to shuffle the two paces forward to greet them. "His eyes although he was looking directly at me, did not seem to be focusing… The whites were bloodshot…Drooping black sacks under his eyes betrayed loss of sleep…" Hitler then greeted them individually, inquiring about the names of the persons whom he did not know. According to von Varo, Hitler's eyes "were glaring into emptiness...his left hand trembled", and that Hitler did not seem to look at the person when he shook hands. 

After greeting each person individually, Hitler then thanked all of whom that had earlier in the night had been decorated for their services.  and tells them he intends to take his own life rather than be captured by the Russians.

"I don’t want to be put on show like an exhibition in a museum," and tells them they are released from their oath of loyalty.

When Hitler takes Erna Flegel's hand, she breaks down, sobbing. "My Führer! Have faith in the final victory. Lead us and we will follow you!"

Hitler does not respond.

-- Strategic Services Unit, War Department, Intelligence Dissemination No. A-65458, Subject: Interview with Erna Flegel, Red Cross Nurse in Hitler’s Shelter, Date of Report: 11 December 1945, Distributed: 25 February 1946, File: 0240346, Army Intelligence Document Files [NAID 305269], RG 319; Interrogation of the Baroness von Varo, 1 October 1945, enclosure to Memorandum, Brigadier [no name given], Counter Intelligence Bureau [CIB], GSI [b], Headquarters, British Army of the Rhine to Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 [CI], Headquarters, US Forces European Theater, Subject: Investigation into the Death of Hitler, 22 November, 1945, Document No. CIB/B3/PF.582, File: Major Trevor-Roper Interrogations, Reports Relating to POW Interrogations, 1943-1945 [NAID 2790598], RG 165; Interrogation of Baroness von Varo, Stein Castle, Stein, 2000-2330 Hours, 10 March 1948, Interrogations of Hitler Associates, Musmanno Collection, Gumberg Library Digital Collections, Duquesne University; Record of Interrogation of the Reich Chancellery Physician Helmut Kunz, by 4th Section of the Smersh Counter-Espionage Department of the 1st Byelorussian Front, 7 May 1945, in Vinogradov, V.K.; Pogonyi, J.F.; Teptzov, N.V.,"Hitlers Death: Russia's Last Great Secret"; Evidence of the Head of Hitler’s Bodyguard Hans Rattenhuber, Moscow, 20 May 1945 in Vinogrado, Pogonyi, and Teptzov, "Hitler’s Death"; O’Donnell, James P., "The Berlin Bunker"; Trevor-Roper, Hugh, "The Last Days of Hitler"; Joachimsthaler, Anton, "The Last Days of Hitler"

Dr. Schenck believed that it was with Haase that Hitler discussed the manner and method of his own suicide. “I know this because Professor Haase told me so, the day after the suicide". They also, according to Schenck, were discussing the problem of how to destroy the bodies.

-- O’Donnell, James P., "The Berlin Bunker"

When Hitler and Haase withdrew from the room, everyone, according to von Varo, asked each other what the meaning of it could be, and they concluded that it must be the preliminary to suicide.  She added that she and her colleagues stayed up all night, contemplating what they would do and talking about how Hitler would commit suicide. "We waited for it. It had to come".

-- Interrogation of Baroness von Varo, Stein Castle, Stein, 2000-2330 Hours, 10 March 1948, Interrogations of Hitler Associates, Musmanno Collection, Gumberg Library Digital Collections, Duquesne University

After the meeting with Hitler, Schenck was invited to join a party that was taking place.  Günsche, whom he knew, introduced him to the others. Among them were Bormann, the Göbbels, Krebs, Burgdorf, Bauer, Rattenhuber, Axmann, Hewel, Voss, Linge, and Kempka. He recalled Krebs remarking that it was his guess that the Red Army would want to wait another 24 hours, until May Day, so that Russian Marshal Zhukov could present the big prize [Berlin] to Stalin. "This touch of gallows humor drew rather hollow laughs".

-- O’Donnell, James P., "The Berlin Bunker"

Another tiny flaw: I would swear that the exit staircase from the Bunker was a Wendeltreppe, a spiral staircase, not the square concrete staircase shown in the film. Otto Günsche told me how awkward he had found it to carry the cyanide-reeking body of Eva Braun up the spiral to the garden. But Winston Ramsay, editor-in-chief of "After the Battle", has also attended the screening, and he has actually visited the ruins, and he tells me over a modest supper in Soho afterwards that he thinks that "square is right, not spiral".

The Reich Chancellery Bunker was initially constructed as a temporary air-raid shelter for Hitler [who actually spent very little time in Berlin during most of the war], but the increased bombing of Berlin led to expansion of the complex as an improvised permanent shelter. The elaborate complex consisted of two separate levels, the Vorbunker [the upper Bunker] and the newer Führerbunker, located one level below. They were connected by a stairway set at right angles [they were not spiral] which could be closed off from each other by a bulkhead and steel door.

Unimportant? But there are also major excesses and distortions. The bacchanalian scenes and orgies -- routine in such narratives now -- are fiction. Not a cigarette was lit in the Bunker until Hitler was dead.

Major Bernd Freiherr von Freytag-Löringhoven aide-de-camp to General Hans Krebs, in his book "In the Bunker with Hitler," reveals many things about these last days: for example, that the conversations and mindset of the people in the Bunker during the last days were often farcical and absurd; that although Hitler was deluded and often angry he never screamed or foamed at the mouth, instead his rage was one of ice-cold and forceful aggression; that Hitler was obsessed with wreaking vengeance on all those responsible, however remotely, for the 20 July attempted assassination and this hampered his ability to govern; that drunkenness was a not uncommon means of avoiding contemplating the inevitable end [Löringhoven claims to have never seen any sexual orgies/dalliances attested to by others]); that the news that Himmler had attempted to negotiate a peace hit Hitler like a psychological bomb.

The drinking did begin, but it was necessarily discreet.

Göbbels’ Secretary was instructed to fuel Hitler’s Bunker with Booze as Berlin fell
Deccan Chronicle
Sneha Jaiswal
17 August 2016

In a tell all documentary that sheds light on the Nazi way of life during the world war days, Brunhilde Pomsel, the former secretary of Hitler's right hand man Josef Göbbels, reveals how she was instructed to continuously supply alcohol to the Nazis in their final hours.

105-year-old Pomel is one of the very few people alive, who knew Hitler personally and had walked in his inner circle. She was inside the Führerbunker in Berlin on 30 April 1945, the day when Hitler shot himself and talks about her life as a Nazi assistant in a documentary which was recently released at the Munich film festival.

Pomel started working with Hitler’s Propaganda minister in 1942. She was noticed by Göbbels himself, the man responsible for brainwashing the Nazis against Jews, and was appointed as his assistant. She worked as his secretary, stenographer and typist until his suicide, which took place just 24 hours after Hitler killed himself.

The Nazis, according to Pomel, were more worried about their depleting alcohol supplies than Russian soldiers closing in on them while Berlin fell. She was instructed to constantly supply booze to the Hitler Bunker "in order to retain the numbness".

Her face is lined with wrinkles, weather-hardened from a long life but there is no sign of repentance for the past. Pomsel claims, she only "typed" at Göbbels' office and knew nothing of the horrors that were unfolding against the Jews.

"Although Brunhilde Pomsel always described herself as just being a side-line figure and not at all interested in politics, she nevertheless got closer to one of the worst criminals in world history than anyone else presently alive", says the description of the documentary titled "A German Life".

In her interview, Pomsel talks about what it was like to know Göbbels from close quarters and describes how he metamorphosed from a "civilised, serious" person to a "ranting midget". For Pomsel, Göbbels’ seemed to have gone through his life as if he was giving a theatrical performance.

"The only thing you can say about Göbbels was that he was an outstanding actor. No other actor could have been better at performing the transformation from a civilised, serious person into that ranting, raving rowdy than himself," she says in the documentary.

"To experience him directly at a distance of 10-15 metres, someone who you saw every day, who came to office all smart, elegant with a kind of noble elegance and then to see him like a raging midget. Well, you couldn't imagine a greater contrast," she adds.

Pomsel called herself "stupid" for having worked under the "evil" Göbbels and claims that she did not know about the Holocaust, despite the fact that one of her closest friends died in Auschwitz.

"No-one believes me now but I knew nothing, it was all a well kept secret" she claims.

The documentary is directed by Christian Krönes, Olaf S. Müller, Roland Schrotthofer and Florian Weigensamer and chronicle’s Pomsel’s life from her birth till the present day.

 

I cannot credit at all one final scene, showing General Helmut Weidling, the city's Kampfkommandant, driving round Berlin in a loudspeaker van roaring that Hitler has committed suicide and betrayed his men.

On 2 May, General Weidling had his Chief-of-Staff, Colonel Theodor von Dufving, arrange a meeting with General  Vasily Chuikov. Weidling told the Soviets about the suicides of Hitler and Göbbels, and Chuikov demanded complete capitulation.

Per Chuikov's direction, Weidling put his surrender order in writing. The document written by Weidling read as follows:

"On 30 April 1945, the Führer committed suicide, and thus abandoned those who had sworn loyalty to him. According to the Führer's order, you German soldiers would have had to go on fighting for Berlin despite the fact that our ammunition has run out and despite the general situation which makes our further resistance meaningless. I order the immediate cessation of resistance. Every hour you keep on fighting prolongs the suffering of the civilians in Berlin and of our wounded. Together with the commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces I order you to stop fighting immediately. Weidling, General of Artillery, former District Commandant in the defence of Berlin".

The meeting between Weidling and Chuikov ended at 8:23 am on 2 May 1945. Later that same day, Weidling even recorded his surrender order for Red Army sound trucks to broadcast later that same day, and copies of it were distributed to the remaining defenders. Many surrendered, but some others kept right on shooting. It took the Soviets two more days to completely stamp out resistance.  

Escape to the Elbe 
3 May 1945

Following Hitlers death, the decision was taken by the officers and men of Sturmartillerie Brigade 249 to break out of the doomed capital.

Shortly before midnight on the 3rd, what remained of the unit fought to the edge of the city at Spandau. By this time the brigade had been split into two elements, the first under Hauptmann Herbert Jaschke successfully punched their way out to the west.

The second group was not so lucky, and its survivors fell into Soviet captivity.

 

On the same day the officers commanding the two armies of Army Group Vistula north of Berlin, General Kurt von Tippelskirch, commander of the German 21st Army, and General Hasso von Manteuffel, commander of Third Panzer Army, surrendered to the Western Allies.

On the contrary, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and the German people were told that "the Führer has fallen in action, defending the Reich capital".

The corresponding radio announcement on 1 May 1945 was actually made by the late Jochen Piechocki, Vertreter der SS im RmfVuP [Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda - Reich Ministery for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda], later better known as Jochen von Lang, my friend the capable "Stern" researcher who discovered the remains of Martin Bormann and Dr Stumpfegger beneath a Berlin street in the 1970s:

"Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, has fallen in battle while fighting to the last breath [bis zum letzen Atemzug]".

In the media  the question of whether Hitler was really dead was eclipsed by the question of how he had died.

The "New York Times" of 2 May 1945, was at the least skeptical end of the spectrum, asserting in its editorial column that "there seems to be no good reason to doubt that Hitler…died as the [German] announcement says he did".

The editorial made the point that such a death would have helped "perpetuate the legend which formed the core of Nazi propaganda and by which [Hitler] rose to power— the Legend that he and the Nazis were shining knights in armor fighting for European civilization against Bolshevism—'to their last breath'.

IIn his last Will and Testament, dated 29 April 1945, Hitler named Dönitz his successor as Staatsoberhaupt [Head of State], with the titles of Reichspräsident  and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels as Head of Government with the title of Reichskanzler [Chancellor]. Rather than designate one person to succeed him as Führer, Hitler reverted to the old arrangement in the Weimar Constitution.

He believed the leaders of the air force [Luftwaffe] and SS [Schutzstaffel] had betrayed him, and expelled both Göring and Himmler from the party. Since the Kriegsmarine had been too small to affect the war in a major way, its commander, Dönitz, became the only possible successor as far as Hitler was concerned more or less by default.

On 1 May, the day after Hitler's own suicide, Göbbels committed suicide. Dönitz thus became the sole representative of the crumbling German Reich. He appointed Finance Minister Graf Ludwig Schwerin von Krosigk as "Leading Minister" [Krosigk had declined to accept the title of Chancellor], and they attempted to form a government.

Dönitz Takes German Helm
Madera Tribune, Number 54
2 May 1945 

LONDON, May 2—Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said today there was some evidence that Adolf Hitler had died of a brain hemorrhage instead of a hero’s death in battle as the Nazis claimed. The statement by Eisenhower was the first from any Allied official to shed light on the mystery of Hitler’s reported death. Eisenhower said the enemy claim that Hitler died fighting the Russians in Berlin was "in contradiction of facts" given by Heinrich Himmler at a conference with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden at Lübeck eight days ago. Even though this version of Hitler’s death was based on Nazi information, it had the merit of coming to Eisenhower through Bernadotte, a neutral. Observers were inclined to put more credence in the Himmler version than in the melodramatic account broadcast by the Hamburg Radio yesterday. Himmler admitted that Germany was finished, Eisenhower said in the official confirmation of the Lübeck conference Bernadotte said in Stockholm yesterday that he could make no disclosure of his activity as the reported intermediary in Nazi-Allied negotiations. Dönitz was reported already to have ousted Joachim von Ribbentrop as foreign minister in what may be the first move toward trying to save Germany from further battering.

Radio Hamburg said Dönitz had appointed Count Ludwig Schwerin von Krosigk, 58-year-old nephew of the late Kaiser Wilhelm, to the foreign ministership. The move, coming only 24 hours after the same station announced that Adolf Hitler had been killed at his "command post in Berlin" yesterday, broke up the all-Nazi front in the top German ministries. Whether it also was the first step toward setting up a non-Nazi government that would sue for peace was something no authoritative source could say, Schwerin von Krosigk was minister of finance in Hitler’s government, but was not a member of the Nazi party and had been active in German politics long before Hitler’s entrance. He was educated in English, Swiss and Gorman universities and first joined the German government in 1924. He became head of the German budget department in 1929 and served in the von Papen and Schleicher cabinets before Hitler came into power. Radio Hamburg, voice of the new Dönitz government, made no mention of Ribbentrop’s fate, but it was noteworthy that neither he nor Propaganda Minister Paul Josef Göbbels had been mentioned in recent German broadcasts.

On 2 May, the new government of the Reich fled to Flensburg-Mürwik before the approaching British troops.

Dönitz would later write:

"Of his suicide I knew nothing. Nor from the assessment of his character that I had formed did I for a moment think of suicide as a possibility. I assumed that he had met his end seeking death in battle in Berlin. I felt therefore that the announcement of his death should be couched in respectful terms".

-- Karl Dönitz, "Memoirs: A Documentary of the Nazi Twilight" [New York: Belmont Books, 1961]

In a broadcast to the German people on 2 May 1945, Schwerin von Krosigk became one of the first commentators to refer to an "Iron Curtain" across Europe, a phrase he had picked up from an article by Josef Göbbels and which was later made famous by Winston Churchill.

"Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend".

-- Josef Göbbels in the 25 February 1945, issue of  "Das Reich".

The "Oxford English Dictionary" cites another Göbbels example in which the German word "Vorhang" is translated by the "Times of London" as "screen" instead of "curtain". [Two German dictionaries translate it as "curtain"].

In the 23 February 1945, issue of the "Times", Göbbels is quoted as saying:

"If the German people lay down their arms, the whole of eastern and south-eastern Europe, together with the Reich, would come under Russian occupation. Behind an iron screen [ein eiserner Vorhang] mass butcheries of peoples would begin".

Dönitz knew Germany's position was untenable and the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of offering meaningful resistance. During his brief period in office, he devoted most of his effort to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German troops would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Soviets. He feared vengeful Soviet reprisals, and hoped to strike a deal with the western Allies. In the end, Dönitz's tactics were moderately successful, enabling about 1.8 million German soldiers to escape Soviet capture.

The rapidly advancing Allied forces limited the Dönitz government's jurisdiction to an area around Flensburg near the Danish border. Dönitz's headquarters were located in the Naval Academy in Mürwik, a suburb of Flensburg. Accordingly, his administration was referred to as the Flensburg government.

Late on 1 May, Himmler attempted to make a place for himself in the Flensburg government. The following is Dönitz's description of his showdown with Himmler:

"At about midnight he arrived, accompanied by six armed SS officers, and was received by my aide-de-camp, Walter Lüdde-Neurath. I offered Himmler a chair and sat down at my desk, on which lay, hidden by some papers, a pistol with the safety catch off. I had never done anything of this sort in my life before, but I did not know what the outcome of this meeting might be.

"I handed Himmler the telegram containing my appointment. 'Please read this,' I said. I watched him closely. As he read, an expression of astonishment, indeed of consternation, spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. 'Allow me,' he said, 'to become the second man in your state'. I replied that was out of the question and that there was no way I could make any use of his services.

"Thus advised, he left me at about one o'clock in the morning. The showdown had taken place without force, and I felt relieved".

— Karl Dönitz, as quoted in "The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan" by Hans Dollinger

A day later, Dönitz sent Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, his successor as the commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine, to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Rheims, France, to negotiate a surrender to the Allies. The Chief of Staff of OKW, Generaloberst [Colonel-General] Alfred Jodl, arrived a day later. Dönitz had instructed them to draw out the negotiations for as long as possible so that German troops and refugees could surrender to the Western powers, but when Eisenhower let it be known he would not tolerate their stalling, Dönitz authorised Jodl to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender at 1:30 on the morning of 7 May. Just over an hour later, Jodl signed the documents. The surrender documents included the phrase, "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 23:01 hours Central European Time on 8 May 1945". At Stalin's insistence, on 8 May, shortly before midnight, [Generalfeldmarschall] Wilhelm Keitel repeated the signing in Berlin at Marshal Georgiy Zhukov's headquarters, with General Carl Spaatz of the USAAF present as Eisenhower's representative. At the time specified, World War II in Europe ended.

On 23 May, the Dönitz government was dissolved when Großadmiral Dönitz was arrested by an RAF Regiment task force under the command of Squadron Leader Mark Hobden. Generaloberst Jodl, Reichsminister Speer and other members were also handed over to troops of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry at Flensburg.

What is remarkable is that the Adolf Hitler masterfully portrayed in this film is allowed on three or four occasions to deliver compelling National Socialist Propaganda speeches to his audience which, I estimate, will not be without effect on ordinary Germans.

The real National Socialism was not what it had become by 1945. It was something else, purer, infinitely less criminal, and infinitely more idealistic. Hitler's personal adjutant Alwin-Broder Albrecht wrote this in his last letter [his widow showed it to me], before storming out of the Chancellery building after the Chief's death with a blazing sub-machine gun in his hands, and going down in a hail of Russian bullets. Hitler too makes plain his regrets about this deviation from his original National Socialist ideal, in brief monologues in the film.

So my verdict on the film is this: Must Try Harder. "Downfall" is a good attempt, and great entertainment if you like that sort of thing; not a tear-jerker but an innovational film. It has brilliant, indeed intimidating, all-around sound effects of the Battle for Berlin, and wonderful and accurate portrayals of both Hitler and his secretary Traudl Junge; but a jerky, wooden script, which takes liberties with history and the real characters. There are too many helpings of P.C. and of undiluted Schlock; too much "Hitlerjunge Quex" [the prewar non-Göbbels movie, in which the grand music of the Horst Wessel Lied swells from the screen as the film's young hero, mercilessly beaten by communists, dies giving the Hitler salute].

Stephen Spielberg would have done it better.

ThePass the Fault
New Republic
Michael B. Oren
4 July 2005

Ticket lines for movies are rare in Israel, and rarer still for features that have already been showing for five weeks, and unprecedented for a German production centered on the character of Adolf Hitler. Yet Israelis are still lining up to see Oliver Hirschbiegel's tenebrous docudrama about the Third Reich's closing days, "Der Untergang"--The Downfall.

The film, which has won several German awards and has been nominated for an Oscar, triggered nervous debate in Europe over its depiction of Hitler not as a one-dimensional monster but as a flesh-and-blood person, cruel and temperamental at times, but sympathetic and even fatherly at others. In Israel, where it is officially a crime to call a Jew a Nazi, the portrayal of the ultimate Nazi as anything less than demonic is bound to arouse controversy. But Israeli audiences have responded exuberantly, praising actor Bruno Ganz and his nuanced Hitler. Interviewed on Israeli television on Holocaust Memorial Day, Moshe Zimmermann -a historian who was once sued for comparing settler children to Hitler Youth- posited that this new, human Hitler served to demythologize Nazism and show how even normal people might be seduced by evil.

But Zimmermann thoroughly missed the point of the movie--as did most Israelis who saw the film. "The Downfall" is not about Hitler, human or otherwise, not about Nazism and evil. It is about letting Germany off the hook.

The film opens in 1942, when the 22-year-old Traudl Junge is chosen by Hitler to be his personal secretary. The Führer is here seen as an affable man, crinkly-eyed and patient, even when Traudl fails at typing his dictation.

Fast-forward to late April 1945, and Germany is on the brink of collapse. The Russians have penetrated Berlin, and Hitler, his Nazi cronies, and his staff are locked in an underground Bunker. The denizens of this lair are divided between Junker-type generals [such as Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, and Wilhelm Mohnke], who know that the war is lost and want to surrender honorably, and deluded lackeys [such as Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels and Eva Braun, Hitler's paramour], who insist that non-existent German armies can still turn the tide and ultimately save the Reich. Armaments Minister Albert Speer makes an appearance and sides with the generals, while Heinrich Himmler favors allying with the Americans against Russia. A tremulous Hitler wavers between these positions, alternatively despairing and defiant. And beside him throughout stands Traudl, who, though bereft of hope, refuses to abandon her Führer.

While focusing on this subterranean drama, the film veers off into two subplots, both set in the Bosch-scape of Berlin. The first features Ernst-Günter Schenck, a military doctor who ignores orders to abandon the city and remains to attend to its wounded. The second follows Peter Kranz, who, though only a boy, destroys two enemy tanks, while his father, a one-armed veteran, struggles to drag him from the battle.

The wickedness, the senselessness, the horror--all might have combined into soul-wrenching confession about a nation's descent into barbarity. But "The Downfall", based largely on the self-expiating memoirs of Traudl and Speer, is concerned with exoneration, not penance, and realizes it through manipulation and deceit.

Take, for example, Traudl. She is the perfect ingenue: modest, demure, incapable of uttering an unkind or scatological word. Unsullied by ideology, she gapes incredulously every time Hitler makes an anti-Semitic remark. And, though she is played by the irresistible Alexandra Maria Lara, the Traudl character is portrayed as mostly sexless. She elicits not a single lascivious stare, much less a pinch, from any of the Bunker's besotted officers. The real Traudl Junge, however, joined the Nazi League of German Girls at age 15 and was later elected to the elite Faith and Beauty society, whose members often mated with party stalwarts.

When Junge's trial period as a Hitler's secretary was about to end she was summoned in front of Hitler for the confirmation of her new job. She was expecting a loyalty oath, countless background checks, and to be forced to join the Nazi Party. Instead Hitler only wanted one promise from her: Since she would be a young girl working among a lot of male military personnel, she would have to promise to report to Hitler any harassment by them.

In December 1942, she became the youngest of the Nazi dictator's personal secretaries.

"He was a pleasant older man who welcomed us with real friendliness," she said of their first meeting. Among her recollections of the Führer was that he did not like cut flowers because, he said, he did not want to be "surrounded by corpses".

Other Nazis are similarly rehabilitated by the film. Ernst-Günter Schenck was an SS officer accused of performing experiments on prisoners at Mauthausen. Keitel and Jodl were both executed for war crimes--a fact mentioned just once before the closing credits--and Mohnke was charged with massacring Allied POWs.

French judge Henri Donnedieu protested vehemently against Jodl's conviction. Judge de Vabres was of the opinion that it was a miscarriage of justice for Jodl to be convicted because he had never joined the Nazi Party. However, the other three judges were unanimous that he should hang, and de Vabres was overruled.

On 28 February 1953, Jodl was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court,  declaring Jodl not guilty of breaking international law and citing de Vabres' dissenting view as justification, while ignoring the majority view. The major impetus for overturning the ruling seems to have been so that his confiscated property could be returned to his widow.

This "not guilty" declaration was revoked on 3 September 1953 by the Minister of Political Liberation for Bavaria.

According to sources quoted by an ABC television programme broadcast in the United States, Wilhelm Mohnke was debriefed by the CIA on his release. His CIA files show that he provided information on fellow Nazis and SS veterans, in return for money and a guarantee of immunity from prosecution by the Germans or the British.

War crimes trials had ended, and with the advent of the Cold War, the US saw the Soviet Union as the main threat. A former US military Intelligence officer said that by 1955 the Americans were anxious to interview any former senior Nazis leaving Russia, to find which of their colleagues might have become Soviet agents, and to find how much the Russians had learnt about senior ex-Nazis in the West.

In January 1994 year the German government ruled there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution of Mohnke over the killing of 90 British prisoners in a barn at Wormhoudt, near Dunkirk, in 1940, or for the massacres in 1944 of 130 Canadian prisoners in Normandy and 72 Americans in the German Ardennes offensive.

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In the movie,  Mohnke is depicted as a humanitarian pleading with Hitler to evacuate civilians and arguing with Göbbels against the suicidal deployment of poorly armed militia [Volkssturm] against the Red Army.

In one dramatic encounter, Mohnke protests to Göbbels against the pointless sacrifice of aged militia men. Göbbels retorts that they had consented to Nazi rule and "now their little throats are going to be cut". The effect is to engender contempt for the heartless Nazi Propaganda chief and sympathy for his hapless victims who were hoodwinked into giving their mandate to a gang of murderous thugs.

However, the scene is invented. The only source is the postwar memoir of Hans Fritzsche, who served in the Nazi Propaganda ministry. Fritzsche claimed to have heard these words at the last Göbbels press conference, not addressed to Mohnke. . The only source is the postwar memoir of Hans Fritzsche, who served in the Nazi Propaganda ministry. Fritzsche claimed to have heard these words at the last Göbbels press conference, not addressed to Mohnke.

Speer, who is seen boldly ignoring Hitler's orders to destroy Germany's infrastructure, constructed his buildings with slave laborers. And the Wehrmacht, which is painted in such heroic colors that the audience cannot help but root for it, was complicit in countless atrocities.

What, Gott in Himmel, is going on here? Clearly, "The Downfall" is distinguishing between bad Germans [a small band of Nazis] and good [everyone else]. The Bunker's debauchery is contrasted with the suffering of simple Berliners, and Hitler's desire to destroy the German people for failing to win the war is compared with the army's determination to fight even though victory is impossible. The dusky lynch squads who hang Peter's father serve as a counterpoint to the fair-haired children who try to help others escape, and the ghoul-faced Göbbels is the reverse image of Traudl, who remains angelic even as she flees the city wearing an SS helmet.

"The Downfall" wants to demonstrate how the German people, too, were victimized by Nazism. If guilty at all, it is only of overwrought nationalism, of misplaced loyalty, or of just plain naïveté?--anything but evil. Not even the Nazis are truly evil, only sick. They prefer to blow their brains out, or, like Göbbels's sociopathic wife, Magda, to poison their own children rather than let them live in a world without National Socialism. And, of all the Nazis, none is crazier -insane, not satanic- than Adolf Hitler.

Hitler's humanity, in fact, lasts for five minutes in the film's opening scene. Thereafter, he launches into a maelstrom of tirades, tantrums, and incoherent fits that culminate in his suicide. Since he is not a bad person, per se, but merely a lunatic, it follows that those who adored him were also unbalanced--temporarily, in the case of many Germans, terminally for the die-hard Nazis. By reducing the Third Reich to a limited dementia, "The Downfall" absolves the German people of any moral culpability for perpetrating World War II and destroying European Jewry. On the contrary, it casts them as heroic, even martyr-like. The movie closes with Traudl and the orphaned Peter Kranz together, cycling into the sunshine--the virgin and the golden-haired child, the progenitors of an immaculate Germany.

Perhaps to maintain her image as a virginal witness, the film passes over Traudl Junge's marriage to Hans Junge, who joined the SS-Leibstandarte, Hitler's personal guard, in 1933, and served as Hitler's orderly for three years.

In June 1943, Traudl married Hans Junge - just three months after she had stated that she "had no interest in men". The fact that they both worked close to Hitler enabled Hans Junge to - finally, after several pleas - get away from Hitler's entourage for a frontline duty in the ranks of the Waffen SS.  He was killed a year later when a British plane strafed his company in Normandy in August 1944.

Most of the Israelis who lined up for "The Downfall" were too focused on its multi-faceted Führer to see this whitewashing. Others, yearning to be part of the New Europe, welcomed it. But the film is not meant for Israelis, nor even for Americans. Rather, its ideal viewers are twenty-something Germans who have made it the most popular film in their country's history. And understandably so, for they emerge from the theater convinced that their grandparents were valorous, victimized, and naïve, and that Germany can unreservedly take its place in a post-nationalist, post-psychotic Europe. They can enjoy watching the next generation of Germans play hide-and-seek around the abstract black cubes of Berlin's new Holocaust memorial, situated near the site of Hitler's Bunker.

Though some movies open with a disclaimer, "The Downfall" ends with one. Statistics appear on the screen--"Fifty million people were killed in World War II, and six million Jews died in German concentration camps" --couched in soothingly passive verbs.

The overall death and destruction that took place during World War II may well be beyond human comprehension. Historians estimate that military casualties on all sides, in both the European and Pacific theaters, reached up to 25 million, and that civilian casualties ranged from 38 million to as high a figure as 55 million – meaning that somewhere between 3 and 4 percent of the world’s total population died in the conflict. 

"The Jewish Year Book" [London 1956] notes that it is commonly stated that six million Jews were "done to death by Hitler" but that Gerald Reitlinger has suggested a possible lower estimate of 4,194,200 "missing Jews" of whom an estimated one third died of natural causes. This would reduce the number of Jews deliberately exterminated to 2,796,000.

According to Raul Hilberg, as quoted in an article written by himself in the 1998 "Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia" under the heading 'Holocaust', the six camps, their means of killing and their total number of victims was as follows: 
 
"Chelmno had gas vans, and its death toll was 150,000; Belzec had carbon monoxide gas chambers in which 600,000 Jews were killed; Sobibor’s gas chambers accounted for 250,000 dead; Treblinka’s for 700,000 to 800,000; At Majdanek, some 50,000 were gassed or shot; and in Auschwitz, the Jewish dead totaled more than 1 million". 
 
-- Raul Hilberg, 'Holocaust', Microsoft "Encarta 98 Encyclopedia" 
 
This only accounts for 2.8 million dead as the other camps did not have gas chambers.

Hilberg, in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, "The Destruction of the European Jews", estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes "over 800,000" who died from 'Ghettoization and general privation'.

Death Tolls:

Auschwitz 1,100,000 Jews and 200,000 others
Maidanek [Majdanek] 78,000 including 61,000 Jews, 12,000 Poles, 5,000 others including Soviet prisoners of war.
Chelmno 320,000
Treblinka 762,000
Sobibor 167,000
Belzec 434,000 - 500,000

Total fatalities 2,857,000 - 3,139,000

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

In 1993 and 1994, Jean-Claude Pressac, then promoted by the international media as the expert on technical questions surrounding Auschwitz, in his book, "Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz/La Machinerie du meurtre de masse". éditions du CNRS, 1993 stated the total of the deaths in Auschwitz to be 775,000 - 800,000,  of whom 630,000 were gassed Jews. But, in a translation in German of this book: "Die Krematorien von Auschwitz/Die Technik des Massenmordes". Munich, Piper, 1994, Pressac evaluates the number of the victims  at 631,000 - 711,000, of whom from 470,000 to 550,000 were gassed Jews. 

"Not too far away from [Pressac's latest figures] is the result of this study with presumed 510,000 deaths, 356,000 of which were probably murdered in the gas".

-- Fritjof Meyer, "Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkenntnisse durch neue Archivfunde" [Number of Auschwitz Victims: New Insights from Recent Archival Discoveries]"Osteuropa",  May 2002

Meyer is a leading journalist of Germany's biggest news magazine, the left-wing "Der Spiegel". His article appeared in the German geopolitical magazine "Osteuropa", which is published by the German Society for Eastern Europe under the directorship of Prof. Rita  Süssmuth, who was once the president of the German parliament.

In 1995, an article, 'Enquête sur les camps de la mort,' by Jean-Claude Pressac dealing with the "pure extermination camps" Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec appeared in the French magazine "Historama".

In contrast to official historiography, according to which these camps were supposed to have been designed exclusively for exterminating Jews, Pressac believed they were originally established as transit and delousing camps.

Pressac pointed out that "between the end of 1941 until middle of 1942 in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, three steam delousing facilities were constructed".

He went on to explain:

"The Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, established a program for the deportation of Jews to the East, which necessarily included processing the deportees in these three sanitary facilities".

Subsequently, as Pressac wrote in the article, the delousing facilities were converted to extermination facilities, that is to say homicidal gas chambers.

It is unclear whether he actually believed this or simply made a tactical concession in order to have his article published.

At any rate, his revelation that the “eastern extermination camps” had been constructed as transit and delousing facilities shook official 'Holocaust' lore to the core.

In a later interview Pressac estimated the victim figures as 100,000-150,000 for Belzec, 30,000-35,000 for Sobibor, and 200,000-250,000 for Treblinka.

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"It has not yet been possible to determine the exact total number of victims in a way which would stand up to a detailed examination, and this will most probably now never be feasible. For this reason, there has never been an official number of the victims among the Jewish population. Discussing the number of victims is therefore not always an offence. However, this does constitute an offence in each case where it is carried out with the aim of denying or trivialising the muder of millions of Jews".

In such cases, criminal prosecution is a matter for the criminal prosecution authorities and courts in the Federal Länder.

-- Bundesministerium der Justiz
6 January 1995