I am suddenly seized by a wild urge to get as far away from here as possible. I almost race up the stairs leading to the upper part of the bunker. But the Goebbels children are sitting halfway up, looking lost. They felt they’d been forgotten in their room. No one gave them any lunch today. Now they want to go and find their parents, and Auntie Eva and Uncle Hitler. I lead them to the round table. ‘Come along, children, I’ll get you something to eat. The grown-ups have so much to do today that they don’t have any spare time for you,’ I say as lightly and calmly as I can. I find a jar of cherries, butter some bread and feed the little ones. I talk to them to distract them. They say something about being safe in the bunker, and how it’s almost fun to hear the explosions when they know the bangs can’t hurt them. Suddenly there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. ‘That was a direct hit,’ cried Helmut, with no idea how right he is. The Führer is dead now.[111]
I want to be on my own. The children, satisfied, go back to their room. I stay sitting by myself on the narrow bench at the round table on the landing. There is a bottle of Steinhäger standing there, with an empty glass beside it. Automatically, I pour myself a drink and swallow the strong liquor. My watch says a few minutes after three in the afternoon. So now it’s over.
I don’t know how long I sit like that. Men’s boots have passed me by, but I didn’t notice. Then the tall, broad figure of Otto Günsche comes up the stairs, and with him a strong smell of petrol. His face is ashen, his young, fresh features look gaunt. He drops heavily to sit beside me, reaches for the bottle too, and his large, heavy hand is shaking. ‘I’ve carried out the Führer’s last order… his body is burned,’ he says softly. I don’t answer, I don’t ask any questions.
He goes down again to make sure that the bodies are burned without trace. I stay sitting there for a while motionless, trying to imagine what will happen now. Then, after all, I suddenly feel an urge to go down to those two empty rooms. The door to Hitler’s room is still open at the end of the corridor. The men carrying the bodies had no hands free to close it. Eva’s little revolver is lying on the table with a pink chiffon scarf beside it, and I see the brass case of the poison capsule glinting on the floor next to Frau Hitler’s chair. It looks like an empty lipstick. There is blood on the blue-and-white upholstery of the bench where Hitler was sitting: Hitler’s blood. I suddenly feel sick. The heavy smell of bitter almonds is nauseating. I instinctively reach for my own capsule. I’d like to throw it as far away as I can and leave this terrible bunker. One ought to be able to breathe clear, fresh air now, feel the wind and hear the trees rustling. But freedom, peace and calm are out of reach.
Suddenly I feel something like hatred and helpless anger rise in me. I’m angry with the dead Führer. I’m surprised by that myself, because after all, I knew he was going to leave us. But he’s left us in such a state of emptiness and helplessness! He’s simply gone away, and with him the hypnotic compulsion under which we were living has gone too.
Footsteps are approaching the entrance door now. The last men to prop up the Reich have been present at the pyre and are now coming back. Göebbels, Bormann, Axmann, Hewel, Günsche, Kempka. I don’t want to see anyone now, and once again I go over to my bunker room in the New Reich Chancellery, down the damaged corridor. Other women have taken up their quarters here now. Secretaries from the adjutancy office; I know them too. They don’t yet know what has happened over there, they’re talking about holding out and showing courage, they’re laughing and still working. As if there were any point in that! My cases are all there, neatly packed with my possessions, my books and wedding presents. I wanted to keep them safe and have them near me. Now they don’t belong to me any more. I can’t take anything with me.
There’s nowhere to be alone in this terrible, huge building. I throw myself on my camp bed and try to think sensibly. It’s hopeless, and finally I fall asleep.
I wake up late at night. My companions in the bunker room are just going to bed to get a few hours’ sleep. They still don’t know that the Führer is dead. There’s no one to talk to. I go over to the Führer bunker again. All the others who were left behind have assembled there. Suddenly they are human beings thinking and acting independently again. They are all sitting together and talking. Frau Christian and Fräulein Krüger are there too. Young Fräulein Manziarly is sitting in a corner, eyes red with weeping. She had to cook supper for the Führer as usual today, 30 April, so that his death could be kept secret. But no one ate the fried eggs and creamed potatoes.
They are discussing what to do next. General Krebs is to go to Russian headquarters as a peace negotiator and offer our total surrender on condition that everyone in the bunkers can have safe conduct. He sets out with one companion late at night. The rest of us wait over coffee, schnapps, pointless conversation. I would like to get out of this bunker, I don’t want to wait for the Russians to come and find my corpse in this mousetrap! I hear Otto Günsche talking to General Mohnke. They want to lead a group of fighting men and break out of the Reich Chancellery. There’s no hope of surviving such a venture, but it’s better than committing suicide in this trap. Almost without knowing we’re saying, Frau Christian and I say, with one voice, ‘Take us too!’ A brief sympathetic and understanding look is bent on us, then the two men nod. But for the time being we’ll wait and see what news Krebs brings.[112]
It is a long time before he comes back. It’s the First of May now. A great festival! Hitler couldn’t wait for it, he had thought this was the day that the Russians wanted to celebrate by storming the Reich Chancellery. But in fact the gunfire isn’t as fierce today as on the days before.
I take Otto Günsche aside and look for a quiet corner where we can talk undisturbed. I want to know how the Führer died. And Günsche is glad to be able to talk about it. ‘We saluted the Führer once more, then he went into his room with Eva and closed the door. Goebbels, Bormann, Axmann, Hewel, Kempka and I stood out in the corridor waiting. It may have been ten minutes, but it seemed an eternity to us, before the shot broke the silence. After a few seconds Goebbels opened the door and we went in. The Führer had shot himself in the mouth and bitten on a poison capsule too. His skull was shattered and looked dreadful. Eva Braun hadn’t used her pistol, she just took the poison. We wrapped the Führer’s head in a blanket, and Goebbels, Axmann and Kempka carried the corpse up all those stairs and into the park. It was heavier than I’d thought it could possibly be, with his slim figure. Up in the park we put the two bodies down side by side, a few steps from the entrance to the bunker. We couldn’t go far because the firing was so fierce, so we picked a bomb crater quite close. Then Kempka and I poured petrol over the bodies, and I stood in the entrance and threw a burning rag on them. Both bodies went up in flames at once…’ Günsche stops, and I think how quickly human beings pass away. The most powerful man in the Reich a few days ago, and now a little heap of ashes blowing in the wind. I didn’t doubt what Günsche said for a moment. No one can pretend to be as shaken as he was◦– and certainly not Günsche, an uncomplicated, muscular young man. Where else could the Führer be now, anyway? There was no car, no plane, nothing within reach, no secret underground passage leading out of this bunker to freedom. And Hitler couldn’t even walk properly any more, his body didn’t obey him…
111
Traudl Junge thinks she heard the shot. Experts have tried to reconstruct the course of Hitler’s suicide and have come to the following conclusion: ‘[…] At this point Frau Junge was far away, on the stairs from the lower to the upper part of the bunker. What she thinks she heard […] was probably an illusion caused by the running diesel generator and the constant heavy firing on the Reich Chancellery.’
112
Infantry General Hans Krebs, acting on behalf of Joseph Goebbels, negotiated surrender to the Russian general Vassily I. Chuikov on the night of 30 April 1945. For Krebs, see also note 94.