A short while later, around 0230, we struggled through the crowded corridors of the Reich Chancellery bunker on Voss-Strasse. It sounded like a beehive. Everybody stared at us and our two cases with curiosity. I felt strange and passed the anxious bystanders full of shame. In the courtyard of the Radziwill Palace a lorry stood ready. Johanna Wolf and I handed over our cases. Johanna had an unpleasant feeling about her luggage and after it had been stowed she had second thoughts about parting with it. I had not fully realised the chaotic situation, and I told her there would be no problem. As it later transpired, we went to Tempelhof airport and our luggage to Staaken.
In the courtyard of the Radziwill Palace chaos reigned. All vestiges of order for the departures had vanished. Unknown drivers from the SS-Leibstandarte waited with their vehicles for their scheduled passengers. As no light could be shown, it was very difficult to find one’s way around. When we finally located our vehicle, its driver did not know Berlin, and he had no orders to take us to Tempelhof or Staaken. Eventually he got us to Tempelhof, how he managed to get round the red tape I have no idea. It was a macabre drive through the night past burning houses, smouldering heaps of rubble, ruins and smoke, and Volkssturm men hastily erecting street barricades. In the middle distance we could hear the thunder of Soviet artillery.
At Tempelhof airport nobody had knowledge of the Ju 52 of which Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant Oberst von Below had spoken. The airport commander advised us to try to board a Junkers transport bound for Salzburg whose arrival had just been notified from northern Germany. After some negotiations we succeeded in this. Without luggage, only a travel bag and knapsack, packed at the last minute on Schaub’s orders and which contained round tins of ‘Shoko-Dallmann’, [134] the aircraft took off in rain and snow. After an exciting flight over burning villages and towns we touched down at Salzburg in the early morning. One can imagine our fright when through the cotton-wool ear plugs we heard sounds similar to shooting and the machine seemed to lose height quickly. We sat speechless in the aircraft between soldiers seated on green ammunition cases. I do not remember a single word being spoken. We were as if paralysed as we landed. The silence was suddenly oppressive.
While on the bus for Obersalzberg a few hours later I reflected on how lucky we were to have come out of this flight alive. It was actually a double miracle that we had survived. The Ju 52[135] which took off from Staaken, and on which we were booked, crashed at Börnersdorf near Dresden. One of the two female bodies burnt to a crisp was identified as me because my trunk was stored in the cargo hold. The victims were interred by the Wehrmacht. I did not learn of this until several years later. The crew had allocated our two unclaimed seats to two other women, and it was their remains which were wrongly identified after the crash. German soldiers in the Börnersdorf vicarage removed some of the items from my trunk, and left the remainder for the Soviets. This was at any rate what I was told by the priest, who was unable to reveal any details at all about my alleged burial and said I should contact the authorities in East Berlin. The identity of the woman who took my place aboard the aircraft and was buried under my name was researched for many years but remained a mystery.[136]
Chapter 16
The End at the Berghof
UPON OUR ARRIVAL AT the Berghof we found some guests already there. Eva Braun’s sister was very pregnant. Their mother, Frau Franziska Braun, and Herta Schneider, Eva’s long-term friend, were also present. They had no idea of the catastrophic situation in Berlin and asked when the Führer would be coming down. They saw us as the vanguard, for besides Hitler’s naval adjutant Jesko von Puttkamer some of the SS-Begleitkommando had moved into quarters at the Berghof, proof that Hitler had at least given some thought to coming to the alpine redoubt.
There were frequent air raid alarms, when Obersalzberg would be hidden under a smoke screen. The enemy aircraft passed overhead without bombing. Two days later, on 24 April 1945, Hitler’s personal physician Dr Morell arrived. He was very distressed and bitter: the Führer distrusted him, he said, and had sent him packing. It had hit him hard. After a short stay he took his leave saying he was going to Bad Reichenhall. Even Frau Kannenberg turned up in order to join her husband at Thumsee.
Here I must mention something about Dr Morell. Dr Karl Brandt was often incorrectly described as the Führer’s personal physician. Dr Brandt and the deputies he had suggested, Dr Haase and Dr von Hasselbach, were only Begleitärzte, that is, they were available to perform emergency surgery on Hitler if so required during his travels. The personal physician (Leibarzt) was Dr Theodor Morell. Dr Morell had a luxury practice on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, most of his patients being from the artistic world. He originated from Hesse, was of average height, corpulent and wore a good-humoured expression. Hair sprouted from his ears and cuffs. On his thick fingers he wore exotic rings obtained during overseas voyages, on which he had also picked up some foreign eating habits. For example he would not peel an orange but bite into it until the juice squirted out. He was also vain. If a photographer reached for his camera, Morell was suddenly at Hitler’s side. The Foreign Ministry Protocol Section, which was responsible for the award of foreign decorations, rightly feared that Morell was wearing medals to which he was not entitled, and this could compromise Hitler. Moreover, Morell was said to be a profiteer. Another quite special objection to him was the foul-smelling delousing powder he had patented and which he spread in large quantities around his barrack hut at FHQ.
How had he been appointed Hitler’s personal physician? In 1936 when Hitler’s chronic gastro-intestinal disorder would not respond to treatment, Heinrich Hoffmann had recommended a wonderful doctor of his personal knowledge, and he succeeded in overwhelming Hitler’s aversion to having an unknown physician treat him. When Dr Morell brought about a decisive improvement in the complaint with the Mutaflor drug (used nowadays for ulcerative colitis), and which renewed the colonic bacteria, and also rid Hitler of the eczema on his legs, Morell won Hitler’s total confidence. Hitler named him his Leibarzt and later made him a professor.
As soon as Hitler reported any discomfort, Morell would be on the spot with his injections. Any cold, even amongst Hitler’s close staff, was suppressed before it developed. Hitler had ‘no time to be ill’ he repeated over and over, and Morell based his treatment on that dictum. He began with harmless glucose, vitamin and hormone injections. Then he went over to ‘Vitamultin’, a wonder-drug he had produced in his own pharmaceutical laboratory, available in ampoules and gold-wrapped tablet form. Hitler became increasingly dependent on this drug until one day it no longer had the desired effect and Morell had to look for something stronger. My assumption seems confirmed by an article appearing in edition 7/1980 of Spiegel magazine under the title Hitler◦– An der Nadel. This was based on the book by Leonard L. and Renate Heston, The Medical Casebook of Hitler, which concerned itself with the same question. Morell’s files were made available to the US psychiatrists and the drug ‘Vitamultin’, containing the stimulants pervitin and caffeine, was described as ‘an especially effective preparation because caffeine enhances the effect of pervitin’.
In the autumn of 1944 when Dara and I took tea alone with Hitler, we found him in a strikingly relaxed mood. The waiter had placed his painful leg on the sofa for him, and now he was stretched out comfortably. During a murmured conversation he suddenly threw open his arms and spoke ecstatically of ‘how lovely it is when two people find themselves in love’. Dara and I were astonished, for we had never seen this mood before, Hitler given so mysteriously to the joys of love.
134
‘Shoko-Dallmann’ were vitamin tablets with caffeine covered in chocolate and marketed in round tins.
136
Hitler’s favourite manservant Wilhelm Arndt was one of the passengers aboard this flight. The official list of the dead was: Major Gundelfinger, pilot; Basler, radio operator; Arndt; Budka; Becker; Fiebers; Schleef; an unknown male and two women; E. Krüger and Christine Schroeder. ‘The two women were carbonised and identified from their clothing.’ The unknown male may have been a member of the