We, the occupants of the second aircraft, knew nothing of the main drama which had played out in the Hotel Hanselbauer, being left only with this scene in the reception lounge. After Rattenhuber had briefly updated Gesche on events, we had to almost do an about-face and get back in our cars. Röhm and other arrested SA leaders were driven at once to Munich in Hitler’s convoy of vehicles.[39] Hitler, in the leading car, stopped all vehicles coming from the opposite direction (mostly containing SA leaders I had told to proceed to Wiessee), had them get out and personally tore the shoulder straps from their uniforms. I saw this perfectly clearly from where I sat in one of the cars to the rear. Those arrested were slotted into Hitler’s column of vehicles in their own car but under guard.
The journey, interrupted by various stops of a similar nature, ended in the courtyard of the Braunes Haus on Brienner Strasse 45, where a Reichswehr company had paraded, and saluted Hitler. Hitler, visibly moved, delivered a brief address from which one phrase has stuck in my mind: ‘I am pleased◦– or I am proud, that I have you!’ Meanwhile alarming news had filtered through, talk being of shootings at Stadelheim[40] amongst other things. The event of that day which remains imprinted indelibly in my memory was my meeting alone with Hitler in the SS-Begleitkommando dining room at the Radziwill Palace. After the return to Berlin I had gone to the dining area at the Reich Chancellery for a snack. I was sitting at a table all alone when the door opened and Hitler came in. He glanced at me, sat himself near me at the oval table and, taking a deep breath, said: ‘So, I have bathed and feel as if newly born.’
I was very surprised at Hitler’s presence in this area, in the kitchen region, where I had never seen him before. This part of the kitchen was not on the way to his private apartment on the first floor of the palace. What had brought him there? What did he mean when he told me he felt ‘as if newly born?’ In his own dining room on the park side Goebbels and the other men of his staff were waiting for him, yet he sat with me, rather like a person who, having gone through some dreadful experience, has to say: ‘Thank God…’ This ‘feeling as if newly born’ was a ‘thank God’, a sigh of relief from Hitler delivered to somebody who knew nothing of the background particulars to the occurrence.
After 30 June 1934 people puzzled a lot over whether Röhm really had been planning a coup. Purely subjectively, in my opinion he had not, but after Himmler had inveigled his SS people into the police, Röhm probably wanted at least the status of a people’s militia for his uneasy and temporarily unemployed SA force. That would have been a breach of the political accord with France. Hitler wished to avoid difficulties in that direction and feared that Röhm had a private political agenda. Judging by the files to which I had access later, and Röhm’s order to the SA of 10 June 1934, it cannot be ruled out however that it was his intention. The last paragraph of his order reads:
I expect that on 1 August the SA will be ready, fully rested and invigorated, to fulfil those honourable and onerous duties which Volk and Fatherland expect of them. If the enemies of the SA are hopeful that the SA will not become involved after their leave, or only partially, then we shall allow them this short, joyful respite. At the time and in the manner which appears necessary afterwards they will receive the appropriate answer. The SA is and remains the destiny of Germany.
This means that chief of staff Röhm had sent his 4.5 million SA men on leave, but as he did so threatened to strike out with a hefty paw. He spoke of ‘enemies of the SA’. According to this order by Röhm, the SA ‘fully rested’ would serve not ‘Führer and Reich’ as it was then the practice to say, but be at the disposal of ‘Volk und Vaterland’. What also struck me in this order was the absence of the usual salute ‘Heil Hitler!’ with which it was customary to conclude all official correspondence.
Chapter 3
Hitler’s Dictation and the Staircase Room
HITLER GAVE DICTATION MAINLY in the late evening or at night because that was when he had the best ideas, he informed me. So that a secretary (or often two) would be available fresh from rest, Schaub would give early notice of the work that had to be done. Often the dictation would be postponed for days, and Schaub would explain by saying that ‘the boss is waiting for a report’. This gave rise to a secretary-on-standby service where one of us would sit in wait in the so-called Staircase Room near Hitler’s study. House manager Kannenberg would ensure that we did not go hungry. When I first arrived in Berlin and was ‘on call’ with the Liaison Staff across the road from the Führer-apartment, the sight of the bowls of fruit alone, with their Williams pears, blue Brussels grapes, apples, oranges and plates with various sandwiches was a delight for the eye.
The Führer’s household was run by house manager Arthur Kannenberg and his wife Freda. As guests were always invited for midday and the evenings, one could compare the Führer household to a well-run restaurant. Kannenberg actually came from an old Berlin family of gourmets. His father had owned a licensed restaurant of renown in the capital, and in the 1920s his son became the proprietor of the popular and well-loved eating house on the outskirts of Berlin known as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. I never went there myself, but Frau Magdalene Haberstock, a Berliner and widow of art-dealer Karl Haberstock, whom Hitler employed to buy antique paintings, told me once. ‘You took tram 76 to Hundekehle and then made a pilgrimage on foot to the beautifully positioned garden restaurant which served not only coffee and pastries but also high-quality meals in the evenings.’ Immediately after this restaurant went into liquidation, Kannenberg opened another near the Berlin Anhalter railway station. Goebbels recommended Hitler to visit the establishment, and from then on whenever Hitler arrived at the Anhalter aboard the express from Munich with his entourage he always liked to go to Kannenberg’s and tuck into the outstanding vegetable and salad dishes which were a speciality of the house. Kannenberg was not only an outstanding gourmet but an excellent humorist blessed with the legendary Berlin wit. Hitler found his clowning and folksy musical renderings on the accordion so much to his taste that at the beginning of 1932 he appointed Kannenberg to manage the officers’ mess at the NSDAP Braunes Haus in Munich.
After taking power in 1933, Hitler brought Kannenberg and his nice, quiet wife Freda, daughter of a German forester, to his apartment in the Radziwill Palace from where the Kannenbergs ran the Führer-household until 1945. Their field of competence included hiring staff, providing uniforms, pay and accommodation, recruiting personnel for house and kitchen, the purchase and control of food and drink, household laundry and preparing the daily menu. Their jurisdiction extended to state receptions and all organisational matters such as the floral decoration of tables, reception and social rooms and the hiring of additional servants and waiters (at major state receptions these were drawn from the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and the president’s Chancellery in livery). The major-domo for the latter would pound the floor with his mace before announcing each guest or couple by name.
Hitler had a great fear of committing a faux pas at receptions. He was always plagued by the idea that his staff might err and so lose him prestige. He threatened Kannenberg with disciplinary action should he be guilty of any slip-up of this kind at a reception. Before his guests arrived, Hitler would always cast his eye over the dining table to ensure nothing had been forgotten. In 1939 in conversation with an officer of the close staff who had accompanied Ribbentrop to Moscow, the officer related to Hitler how Stalin had checked the table before dinner to make certain was all in order. I said: ‘Stalin seems to have the same concerns as yourself that something might go amiss,’ to which Hitler replied: ‘My servants are in order.’
39
Hitler’s driver Erich Kempka stated postwar that Hitler went to Bad Wiessee with his staff and the police commando only. The
40
On 30 June 1934 at Stadelheim prison, Munich, the SA leaders Uhl, von Spretti, Heines, Hayn, Heydebreck, Schneidhuber and Schmidt were shot. Other executions followed next day at Dachau concentration camp and elsewhere. The official list has eighty-three names, but the actual number of victims was greater.