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elite Leibstandarte SS Guard Battalion. These formed the last bulwark against the Russians. Kuhlmann continued:
Mohnke inquired carefully about the number of men I had brought, their weaponry and combat experience – quickly grasping that most were cadets, and neither properly equipped or trained for this kind of fighting. His manner was well-disposed and friendly, until I perhaps unwisely told him that I was under orders to announce myself to Hitler personally. Then his tone changed. He told me bluntly that it was hardly practicable for every junior officer to request an audience with the Führer.
    Kuhlmann accommodated his men in the cellars of the nearby Foreign Office and awaited further orders. The artillery fire raining down on the Reich Chancellery became ever more violent, as groups of Red Army soldiers began to approach Citadelle’s defences.
    Despite the command to stay put, Kuhlmann was summoned into the labyrinth of the Führer Bunker. Dönitz, keen to curry favour with his master, asked – through his representative in the bunker, Admiral Hans-Erich Voss – that the marine battalion’s commander formally present himself. The Führer assented – and Kuhlmann descended into this subterranean world. A shock awaited him. He arrived at the lower section of the bunker as Hitler was holding a situation conference. Voss was presiding, with General Hans Krebs, Joseph Goebbels and Artur Axmann (the head of the Hitler Youth) also present.
    Kuhlmann recalled:
Hitler’s body had completely shrunk in on itself. His left arm and leg shook uncontrollably. Much of what he said was incomprehensible to me – it was as if, in a state of delirium, he had discovered a completely made-up language. Odd fragments of it lodged in my mind. An oft-repeated refrain: ‘Oh those citizens of Berlin! Those citizens of Berlin!’ or ‘One can never do without a Hanna Reitsch!’ [the woman pilot who had just then audaciously landed a plane on the Unter der Linden, Berlin’s main throughfare]. Knowing nothing of what had happened to him in this vault, I was unable to make any coherent sense of such disjointed outpourings.
    The reference to a ‘made-up language’ is striking. It may have been partly the result of extreme stress and disorientation, but it strongly suggests that the Führer had never fully recovered from his breakdown of 22 April. ‘Hitler then dismissed me,’ Kuhlmann continued, ‘by offering his steadier right hand, and I climbed with Voss back up the bunker stairs. Although I was deeply shaken, I said nothing of my impression to Voss – and he also avoided saying any word about the state Hitler was in. But I noticed that he was aware of my embarrassment, and probably guessing the reason for it, talked about plans to bring more naval troops into Berlin instead.’
    When General Weidling found that much of the last defence line was ‘manned’ by the Hitler Youth (teenage boys aged between fourteen and eighteen), he ordered Axmann to disband such combat formations within the city. The order was never carried out. On 29 April Hitler Youth courier Armin Lehmann and three of his comrades tried to carry an urgent message to a command post across the Wilhemstrasse – now being pulverised by Russian shells. Lehmann was the only survivor. Later, he sat in the Führer Bunker in a state of shock. A woman came out of one of the rooms and poured him a glass of water. ‘It’s terrible out there,’ she said. It was Eva Braun – Hitler’s long-term mistress, whom he had married only hours earlier.
    Within the bunker, fatalistic despair reigned. Hearing that his deputy Hermann Göring, in Obersalzberg in Bavaria, was attempting to take control of the leadership, Hitler had him arrested. On 28 April Hitler also learnt that Heinrich Himmler was putting out peace feelers to the Western Allies. Himmler’s representative in Berlin, Hermann Fegelein, was rounded up and shot. The Führer then began putting his own affairs in