Read After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe for Free Online Page B

order. He married Eva Braun early on the morning of 29 April – less an occasion of celebration, more of a suicide pact – and drew up his private and public wills. Göring and Himmler were both expelled from the party for their treachery. Impressed by the loyalty of Admiral Dönitz, and recently reminded of it by Kuhlmann’s visit, Hitler designated him as his successor. He hoped that Dönitz’s government – to be set up in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany – would also be joined by Bormann and Goebbels.
    Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, typed out the copies of Hitler’s will. ‘I worked as fast as I could,’ Junge recalled. ‘My fingers moved mechanically and I was amazed to see I made hardly any typing errors. Bormann, Goebbels and the Führer himself kept coming in to see if I’d finished yet. They made me nervous and only delayed matters. Finally they almost tore the last sheet out of the typewriter, went back into the conference room, signed the three copies and sent them out by courier.’ One was sent to Dönitz in northern Germany. Another went to Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner in Czechoslovakia. Impressed by his fanatical loyalty to the Nazi cause, the Führer had appointed Schörner as the new head of the German armed forces. ‘With that, Hitler’s life was really over,’ Junge continued. ‘Now he was hoping for confirmation that at least one of these documents had reached its intended destination. At any moment now, we expected the Russians to storm our bunker, so close the sounds of war seemed to be … We were trapped there and just sat waiting.’
    Early on 30 April news came through that General Wenck’s 12th Army was unable to make further progress and no relief of Berlin was possible. Hitler and Eva Braun both decided to commit suicide. The Führer’s preoccupation that morning was that enough gasoline be found to completely burn his corpse. The previous day he had learnt of the death of his ally, Benito Mussolini, who had been executed by Italian partisans. Mussolini’s body – and that of his mistress, Clara Petrucci – was then strung up by its heels. Hitler resolved that his own corpse would not be made a spectacle of.
    ‘The 30th April began like the days before it,’ Junge recalled. ‘The hours dragged slowly by … We ate lunch with Hitler. The same conversation as yesterday, the day before yesterday, for many days past: a banquet of death under the mask of cheerful composure.’ After lunch, Junge went to smoke a cigarette in the servants’ room. She was told the Führer wanted to say goodbye.
I went out into the corridor. I vaguely realized there were other people there too. But all I saw was the figure of Hitler. He came very slowly out of his room, stooping more than ever and stood at the open doorway shaking hands with everyone. I felt his right hand in mine. He was looking at me, but not seeing me. He seemed to be very far away. He said something to me but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t take in his last words. The moment we had been waiting for had come – but I was frozen and scarcely knew what was going on around me.
    Eva Braun came over to Junge and embraced her. ‘Try to get out,’ she said. ‘You may get through.’ Shortly before 3.00 p.m. they both retired to Hitler’s living room and its heavy door closed behind them. Eva Braun took cyanide. Hitler either took cyanide or shot himself. Fifteen minutes later the two bodies were carried up the bunker stairs, laid in a bomb crater in the Reich Chancellery garden and doused in patrol. The flames rose quickly and a last Nazi salute was delivered by the small group of onlookers. Hitler’s rule over the German people had ended.
    The Führer’s legacy was one of death, destruction and terrible suffering. It was a legacy brought to Europe as a whole, and increasingly visited on his own people. Allied bombing had killed more than 400,000 German civilians and injured another 800,000. Nearly 2 million homes