The long corridor running underground from this part of the Reich Chancellery and over to the Führer bunker had already taken hits in many places, and its thin ceiling had fallen in. Hitler wanted Frau Christian and me to be near him by night too. A couple of mattresses were put on the floor of the little conference room, where we slept in our clothes for an hour or so, and outside the door, which was left ajar, lay the officers Krebs, Burgdorf, Bormann, etc., in armchairs, snoring and waiting for Wenck’s army! Instead, all hell was let loose above us. The firing reached its height on 25 and 26 April. Shots crashed out without a pause, and each one seemed to be aimed directly at our bunker. Suddenly a guard ran in and told us, ‘The Russians have turned their machine-gun fire on the entrance.’ In panic he hurried through the rooms, but the listless people waiting there did not react. Finally it turned out that there had been a mistake. Only a single artillery shot had landed quite close. Another reprieve! I don’t know now how I spent those hours. We smoked a great deal, everywhere, whether the Führer was with us or not. The thick cigarette smoke no longer bothered him, and Eva Braun stopped concealing her ‘vice’. Sometimes a man who had made his way back from the front arrived with a report. The main fighting line was getting closer and closer to Anhalt Station. Now it was the cries of the women and children of Berlin that we thought we heard when we climbed up and looked out at the flames and smoke. We heard that German women were being used as human shields by Russian tanks, and once again we saw death as the only way of escape.
When I remember how we all talked, in depressing detail, of nothing but the best way to die, I can’t understand how it is that I’m still alive. Hitler had heard of Mussolini’s shameful death.[107] I think someone had even shown him the photos of the naked bodies hanging head downwards in the main square of Milan. ‘I will not fall into the enemy’s hands either dead or alive. When I’m dead, my body is to be burned so that no one can ever find it,’ Hitler decreed. And as we mechanically took our meals without noticing what we were eating we discussed ways to make sure of dying. ‘The best way is to shoot yourself in the mouth. Your skull is shattered and you don’t notice anything. Death is instantaneous,’ Hitler told us. But we women were horrified at the idea. ‘I want to be a beautiful corpse,’ said Eva Braun, ‘I shall take poison.’ And she took a little brass capsule containing a phial of cyanide from the pocket of her elegant dress. ‘I wonder if it hurts very much? I’m so frightened of suffering for a long time,’ she confessed. ‘I’m ready to die heroically, but at least I want it to be painless.’ Hitler told us that death by this poison was completely painless. Your nervous and respiratory systems were paralysed, and you died within a few seconds. And this ‘comforting’ thought made Frau Christian and me ask the Führer for poison capsules too. Himmler had given him ten, and when we left him after the meal he personally gave each of us one, saying, ‘I am very sorry that I can’t give you a better farewell present.’
26 April. We are cut off from the outside world, with nothing but a wireless telephone connection to Keitel. Not a sign of Wenck’s army and Steiner’s attack. It’s becoming certain that no army capable of saving us exists any more. The Russians have already reached the Tiergarten. They are meeting with less resistance on their way into the city centre, and are coming close to Anhalt Station. Nothing can stop them now.
The Führer is still leading his shadowy life in the bunker. He wanders restlessly around the rooms. Sometimes I wonder what he’s waiting for, why he doesn’t finally put an end to it all, because there’s nothing to be saved now. But the idea of his suicide disillusions me. To think of the ‘first soldier in the Reich’ committing suicide while children defend the capital! Once I talk to him about it. I ask, ‘My Führer, don’t you think the German people will expect you to fall in battle at the head of your troops?’ You can talk to him about anything now. His answer sounds weary. ‘I’m no longer in any physical shape to fight. My trembling hands can hardly hold a pistol. If I am wounded I won’t find any of my men to shoot me. And I don’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians.’ He is right. His hand shakes as he lifts a spoon or fork to his mouth, he has difficulty getting out of his chair, and when he walks his feet drag over the floor.
Eva Braun is writing farewell letters. All her beloved dresses, her jewellery and anything valuable that she liked has been sent to Munich. She too is waiting and suffering. Outwardly she seems as calm and almost cheerful as ever. But once she comes to me, takes my hands and says in a husky, trembling voice, ‘Frau Junge, I’m so dreadfully frightened. If only it was all over!’ Her eyes show all the torment hidden in her heart. She is surprised that Hermann Fegelein doesn’t seem at all concerned about her. She hasn’t seen him for two days. And even before that he seemed to be avoiding her. She asks me if I have seen him. No, Fegelein wasn’t in the bunker at all today. No one knows where he is. People are looking for him on some kind of SS business, but he can’t be found. Perhaps he’s gone to the front to see what’s going on? The officers who share a room with him in the Reich Chancellery don’t know. On 27 April Hitler wants to see Fegelein too. There’s no trace of him. Now the security service follows up his trail. That night SS General Fegelein is back in the Reich Chancellery but without his orders and decorations, dressed as a civilian and hopelessly drunk. I have never set eyes on him since. But Eva Braun, disappointed and shocked, tells me that last night Hermann called her from his private apartment. ‘Eva, you have to leave the Führer if you can’t persuade him to get out of Berlin. Don’t be stupid◦– it’s a matter of life and death now!’ She replies: ‘Where are you, Hermann? Come here at once, the Führer is asking for you, he wants to speak to you!’ But the connection has been cut.[108]
No more newspapers are being published in Berlin. Only the radio keeps broadcasting information that the Führer is still in the unhappy city, sharing its fate and conducting its defence personally. But the few of us in the Führer bunker know that Hitler withdrew from the battle long ago and is waiting to die. Over in the Reich Chancellery bunker the soldiers of the company on guard are gambling and singing old battle songs, while nurses and women auxiliaries work frantically. Refugees and auxiliaries from all over the city are gathering in the Reich Chancellery. There are living people here who are still hoping, fighting, working. But the Führer bunker is a wax works museum. Yet human nature is still here too. There’s a birthday. Old Rattenhuber is sixty. We sit in the upper corridor of the bunker, where there are tables and benches and the staff of the Führer bunker have their meals, and drink schnapps with the birthday boy. Eva Braun on one side, me on the other. We talk about Munich and Bavaria, and how sad it is to have to die so far from home. ‘Among Prussians, of all things,’ says Rattenhuber, and his merry eyes are damp. We laugh once again, and try to forget everything for a few minutes.
107
Benito Mussolini was shot by Italian resistance fighters, together with his mistress Clara Petacci, on 28 April 1945 in Giulino di Mezzegra near Dongo, in the province of Como. Their bodies were hung from scaffolding in the Piazza Loreto in Milan.
108
Adolf Hitler assumed that as Himmler’s liaison officer, Hermann Fegelein had taken part in Himmler’s negotiations with the Swedish diplomat and head of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, or at least had knowledge of them.