In the past Hitler always used to eat lunch in the mess with his closest colleagues and his generals, but as he didn’t want to be tied to fixed mealtimes, and even during a meal could never get away from discussing official business with such people around him, he had been eating alone in his bunker for months now. But if Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, or another high-ranking visitor was present, which wasn’t often, he ate with his guest in the guest’s room. We had a camp chef, who cooked well but didn’t have a great range. He was from Berlin, and had to rely on good advice and his imagination when he was cooking Bavarian specialities. His name was really Günther, but that wasn’t a name familiar to many people, and even Hitler never called him by anything but his nickname ‘Krümel’◦– ‘Crumbs’.[13] There was a big notice up over the kitchen door saying: ‘Wer Krümel nicht ehrt, ist den Kuchen nicht wert!’ (‘If of Crumbs no heed you take, then you don’t deserve the cake!’) Little Crumbs cooked for everyone inside the restricted area, feeding almost two hundred people a day from his huge pans. No wonder someone so used to catering on a large scale, a man who had done nothing but cook for soldiers for years on end, couldn’t pay particular attention to the whims of vegetarians. He heartily hated, or anyway despised, those who turned down meat. But as he now had to cook for the Führer◦– there was no other chef for miles around, and after all Hitler was the most important person here◦– he did his best to devise a vegetarian menu willy-nilly. I must say Hitler put up with a good deal in that respect, as I saw later at meals in the Berghof too. He was a very undemanding and modest eater, and only occasionally complained that his diet was very boring; he got only the side dishes without the meat, so there was definitely something missing. And Crumbs thought people couldn’t live without meat, so he would add at least a little meat stock or lard to all his soups and most other dishes. Usually Hitler noticed the deception, was cross, and then of course said the meal had given him a stomach-ache. In the end he wouldn’t let Crumbs cook him anything but gruel, mashed potato, and dishes guaranteed to have no animal ingredients in them. Not surprisingly, that didn’t make his menu any more appealing and varied.
I gradually picked up all this information in conversations with Linge, during meals in the mess, on walks through the camp, etc.
After four weeks, on 30 January 1943, I was finally summoned to take dictation from Hitler again. I have to admit I was just as nervous as the first time when an orderly came to my table◦– I was eating in the mess◦– and told me to go to the Führer. It was a most unusual time for him to give dictation, in broad daylight! I abandoned my meal and went to the Führer bunker just opposite. Hans Junge, who was on duty that day, told me the Führer wanted to dictate his proclamation for the tenth anniversary of his coming to power. I’d never have thought of that! But the anniversary was one of the regular occasions when Hitler made a speech. This time he wasn’t going to address the people in person but read out his speech over the radio and have it published in the press.
I was escorted into the study only a few minutes later, and for the first time I finally had leisure to take a closer look at the room.
After walking through the other low-ceilinged, artificially lit, cramped rooms in the bunker, it was pleasant to pass through the big double doors into the annexe which was the study. The valet announced me, and I said good day to the Führer.
He was wearing his usual black trousers, double-breasted field-grey coat, white shirt and black tie. I never saw him in anything else. His jacket was always perfectly plain, with silver buttons, but no braid or decorations. He just wore the golden Party badge on the left side of his chest, the Iron Cross and the black decoration for the wounded.
While Hitler gave his valet some instructions for the forthcoming military briefing, I took a rather closer look at the room. Full daylight fell into the whole of it through five big windows with colourfully printed rustic-style curtains. Almost the whole of the window side of the room was taken up by a long, broad table on which there were several telephones, desk lamps and pencils. This was where maps were spread out for the military conferences. Several small wooden stools served as seating. Opposite the door, at the far end of the room, Hitler’s desk stuck right out into the space available. It was an ordinary oak desk, the kind you get in any modern office. There was a clock on it, but Hitler never even glanced at it. He always got one of his companions to tell him the time, even when he was carrying his gold spring-lidded watch in his trouser pocket. A broad fireplace was built into the wall opposite the windows, with a big round table in front of it, and round the table there were about eight comfortable armchairs with woven seats and backs. The furnishings were completed by a cupboard for gramophone records built in at the other narrow end of the room, opposite the desk, and several more unobtrusively built-in oak wall cupboards. While I looked around I got the typewriter ready and fed in the paper. Meanwhile the valet went away.
Hitler came over to me, asking, ‘Aren’t you freezing, child? It’s cold in here.’ I rashly said no, and soon regretted it, because I really did feel bitterly cold as the dictation went on.
Hitler began on his speech, striding up and down the study with his hands clasped behind his back and his head bent. Once again I had to listen very carefully at first, so as to catch everything. As before, Hitler dictated without stopping, almost at the same speed as he delivered a speech, and without any notes. However, he didn’t have much new to say on the subject of his seizure of power. Only at the end, when he began speaking about the present hard struggle that must end with the final victory did he raise his voice, and then I didn’t have any difficulty in understanding him even when he had turned his back to me and was standing at the far end of the room. He finished dictation after about an hour, and I handed him the sheets of paper and confessed that I hadn’t been able to hear him very well. He gave me a friendly smile, shook hands and said that didn’t matter, it would be all right.
I left him with icy feet but a flushed face. Outside I asked the valet why it was so cold in the study. Glancing quickly at the thermometer, I could see that it was only eleven degrees. Surely a head of state could afford to keep his room warm? The whole complex had central heating, and it was warm enough everywhere else. But I was told that Hitler felt most comfortable at that low temperature and never let it rise. Now I realized why the generals and staff officers always came away from the military briefings that often lasted for hours with red noses and hands blue with cold, and immediately poured a warming tot of spirits down their throats in the valets’ room or the mess. General Jodl[14] even claimed to have contracted permanent rheumatism during these conferences with Hitler.
Gradually I came to know the most important people and places in the camp. One of those places was a hut fitted out as a cinema. When so many soldiers were living cut off from the outside world in a forest, they had to be provided with a bit of variety if they were not to get stupid ideas. So a film was screened at eight every evening. They almost all welcomed the entertainment, and so many people went to the cinema that the room soon had to be extended.
Only Hitler himself never went. He had the newsreels shown to him and censored them, but he never watched a feature film, not even the first showing of a German movie.[15] However, it was while watching the films that I got to know a number of gentlemen who were really nothing to do with me, but who were members of Hitler’s closest circle. Above all, I met his doctors, Professor Morell[16] and Professor Brandt,[17] who wasn’t there so often. The former was a specialist in internal medicine and Hitler’s physician, the latter a surgeon and the Führer’s attendant doctor. Later he was Reich Health Commissioner.
13
The cook Otto Günther was originally an employee of Mitropa, and in 1937 was employed in Hitler’s special train and then in Führer headquarters at the Wolf’s Lair.
14
Alfred Jodl,
15
Hitler had originally been an enthusiastic fan of films and the theatre. However, he had given up such entertainments since the beginning of the war.
16
Theodor Morell,
17
Karl Brandt,