AS THE PRISON SHIPS in the Baltic were being loaded, another scene of desperation was taking place underground in the heart of Berlin. Adolf Hitler marked his fifty-sixth birthday on April 20, 1945, in the confines of his bunker, receiving devastating reports of German defeats and Allied advances on all fronts. In the South, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was fighting a hopeless battle against the Americans, the Allies were closing in on Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz’s forces in the North, and the eastern and western fronts had completely collapsed. The only good news for the German people still loyal to Hitler was the delusional statement issued to the public by Joseph Goebbels that, on his birthday, “Our Führer has not deserted us. That is our victory.”
Two days later Hitler was dealt another devastating blow. The tide of the war had long since changed and the Red Army was on the march to Berlin, but Hitler had ordered a last-ditch counterattack by the Panzer Corps under General Felix Steiner in hopes of delaying the inevitable. However, General Steiner and other senior German commanders were either unable or unwilling to follow their leader’s frantic and unrealistic orders.
Upon hearing the news, the führer exploded into another one of his meltdowns. For a full thirty minutes, he stormed around the conference room in his bunker, screaming and pounding his fists on the table, accusing everyone in his senior command of disloyalty and betrayal. Finally, he collapsed in exhaustion and muttered the obvious, “It’s all lost, hopelessly lost.” For the first time in a long time, Hitler acted with prudence—he ordered his personal papers be destroyed. Aides burned them in the garden outside the bunker, which was the same fate that awaited Hitler himself.
Berlin was being overrun. One month earlier, on March 13, bombs had destroyed Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda, but he avoided being killed in the attack. The capital city’s defenses were meager, and civil government had ceased to exist. While some older men and young boys in the home guard tried to fight, many soldiers and civilians simply fled or surrendered. The city, like the country itself, was cut in half and unable to communicate effectively or mount a viable defense. Heinrich Himmler’s prediction that the Allies would eventually march through Berlin had come true. For those prisoners gathered at the port at Lübeck Bay and suffering in the crowded holds of the Cap Arcona, hope came in the form of Allied advances combined with crumbling Nazi defenses. The war would soon end.
DESPITE THE GRAVE SITUATION in Germany, Hitler and his loyal propagandist kept up the pretense of victory to the very end. On April 22, the day Goebbels arrived in the bunker, Hitler issued his “Proclamation to the People of Berlin,” warning: “Anyone who proposes or even approves measures detrimental to our power of resistance is a traitor! He is to be shot or hanged immediately!”
In two Mercedes limousines, Goebbels had moved his wife and six children from their private home near the Brandenburg Gate to the bunker and informed Hitler that they would all remain at his side. Before leaving his office, however, Goebbels made one final radio address to the German people. In it he continued the lie he had created about Hitler, claiming, “The Führer is in Berlin and will die fighting with his troops defending the capital city.” Likewise, in the final issue of the Nazi propaganda newsletter Das Reich, Goebbels ordered everyone, including women, children, and the elderly, to fight at all costs to the very end. Inside the bunker, however, it was apparent that the war was lost. Hitler told his senior staff to leave the city, but a few of his loyalists and secretaries refused to abandon their führer. Hitler’s longtime mistress, Eva Braun, was one of those who remained, leading him to complain, “Ah, if only my generals were as brave as my women.”
One of those top commanders who abandoned Hitler was Himmler, who sought to negotiate a separate surrender with the West through Count Folke Bernadotte. Hitler had received news of Himmler’s actions while hunkered down in his bunker and exploded. “He raged like a madman, his face so suffused with blood as to be unrecognizable, beside himself with fury and, strange as it sounds, grief,” according to one witness.
Just before midnight on April 28, Hitler also ordered one of Germany’s most celebrated aces, Ritter von Greim, on a priority mission. He and another pilot were to fly to the combat zone and locate Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of all Nazi forces in the North, where Himmler was last seen. The pilots were to instruct the admiral to have Himmler arrested and shot. The search for Himmler, however, meant that the Gestapo chief could no longer conduct negotiations with Count Folke Bernadotte to free prisoners from the concentration camps or those waiting at the coast or on ships anchored in Lübeck Bay.
Seeking an outlet for his anger, Hitler ordered that Himmler’s top aide, Hermann Fegelein, also be executed. Fegelein was Eva Braun’s brother-in-law by marriage. But not even the pleas of Hitler’s mistress could save Fegelein from the führer’s rage. Members of the secret police were dispatched to arrest him. Himmler’s aide was then taken to the Chancellery garden and shot in the head.
Himmler was not the only top commander attempting to seize power and cover his own tracks at the very end. That winter Hitler’s top general and Luftwaffe commander, Hermann Göring, ordered that his Berlin estate, Carinhall, be blown up. He moved his family south to his villa in Bavaria. The rotund general ordered aides to also move the fortune in art and treasures he had looted from conquered territories. On Hitler’s birthday Göring telegraphed his führer, wishing him well and claiming that he was moving the Luftwaffe command south to continue the fight. It was a boldface lie, and Hitler knew it. The telegraph also boldly indicated that if a reply was not forthcoming from Hitler by ten o’clock in the evening, the Luftwaffe commander would assume power.
Göring had been the heir apparent to the Third Reich but was now simply the latest commander to abandon Hitler. Although many Nazi commanders knew the war was lost and that Hitler was mad, few were willing to openly defy the führer, especially in such direct ways. But as Göring was about to discover, fewer still were willing to back the arrogant, unpopular Luftwaffe commander.
Göring had lived extravagantly, enriching his bank account and ignoring Nazi doctrine. He also failed spectacularly in his pledge to defend German cities from Allied aerial bombing, prompting Goebbels, on hearing the news of Göring’s treasonous actions, to roar, “Medal-jangling asses and vain, perfumed dandies don’t belong in the high command.” The führer, who had long since grown suspicious of the Luftwaffe commander, agreed. “None of this is new to me. I have always known that Hermann Göring was lazy. He let the Luftwaffe fall apart. The man was a monumental crook. . . . He has been a drug addict for years.”
Hitler removed his number two from power and ordered SS agents to arrest him in Bavaria. Göring was to be killed, and the Allies nearly accomplished the task for Hitler. The next day the Royal Air Force’s powerful Lancaster bombers attacked Berghof and the homes of Hitler and Göring. Explosions cratered Göring’s mountain villa, blowing out windows and knocking pots and pans from the shelves. Luckily for him, his security force managed to rush their leader out of the villa and to safety through an underground escape tunnel. Göring was now on the run for his life and unable to command.
In the end, Hitler was unable to lead from either a logistical perspective or an emotional one. He had lost too many of his commanders and withdrew to the bowels of his bunker, saying simply, “Do whatever you want. I’m not giving any more orders.” Surviving documents suggest that Hitler continued his downward descent into madness at the very end. He had trouble sleeping, and his black eyes were described as having a glazed, disconnected appearance. He shook uncontrollably, stopped changing his clothing, and took no concern about his appearance, often sitting hunched over like a much older, defeated man. His hair grayed to the point that he was nearly unrecognizable.
Hitler still had his moments of volcanic rage. One of the final fits occurred when he sent for General Gottlob Berger, who was now functioning as the chief of the SS. When Berger arrived in the bunker, he found Hitler ranting about his commanders. “Everyone has deceived me!” he screamed. “No one has told me the truth! The armed forces have lied to me!” Berger had been summoned to the cavernous bunker to carry out orders regarding prominent political prisoners and disloyal Nazi commanders. The führer issued one of his last orders, demanding that no high-level prisoners or disloyal Nazi commanders fall into enemy hands. The command concluded with the words, “Shoot them all! Shoot them all!”
Nor did Hitler himself want to fall into the hands of Soviet troops or be tortured and paraded about by them as a trophy of war.aa Knowing the end was at hand, Hitler planned his own suicide, describing to those aides remaining in the bunker exactly how his body should be destroyed. The führer explained his reasoning to Joseph Goebbels, saying, “It’s the only chance to restore personal reputation. If we leave the world stage in disgrace, we’ll leave for nothing. . . . Rather end the struggle in honor than continue in shame and dishonor a few months or days longer.”
Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal secretary, chronicled the final hours in the bunker, recalling that the führer first tested the cyanide pills on his German shepherd Blondi. It worked. He then checked to determine that enough fuel remained to burn his body. Satisfied, he sat down to dictate his last will and testament to Junge. His aide Martin Bormann was made executor of his will. Hitler’s personal belongings were to be given to the Nazi Party as well as to a few loyal members of his staff. The former artist made sure to include in the document that his collection of paintings was to be displayed in a gallery in his hometown of Linz.
Hitler also used the opportunity to again justify his actions and place blame for the war on his perceived enemies, including Jews. After his usual hate-filled, delusional diatribe, Hitler claimed that “history would eventually record Germany’s struggle against Jews as one of the most glorious and valiant manifestations of a nation’s will to existence.” He predicted that Nazism would be resurrected and offered a final edict: “Above all I enjoin the government and the people to uphold the race laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, international Jewry.”
The führer named Admiral Dönitz as head of the armed forces and state. The admiral was tall, socially stiff, and neither a politician nor close to Hitler. However, the fifty-four-year-old commander consistently proved to be highly competent. Through Hitler’s many purges of senior commanders, Dönitz, the submarine hero from World War I, remained, and his voice was one of the few that carried weight inside the German Chancellery. When the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe commanders failed time and again, Dönitz’s U-boats continued to be effective, despite being outgunned by the Allied navies.
Other staffing changes were made. Himmler was replaced by Paul Giesler, the provincial governor of Munich, who would be the new minister of the interior. Karl Hanke, a fanatically loyal Nazi, was designated to take over the Gestapo. Hitler also appointed Goebbels as chancellor of Germany.
The final set of orders and drafting of the will lasted well past midnight. In the early hours of April 29, Hitler married Eva Braun, his longtime mistress, whom he met in Munich when she was only seventeen and working as a seamstress and model. Hitler had always dismissed the idea of marriage, explaining to Braun that his country and the Nazi struggle were his spouses. But in the final day of his life, Hitler rationalized that, with Germany gone, he could marry.
The thirty-three-year-old Braun wore an elegant dark silk gown and expensive Ferragamo shoes for the impromptu ceremony. Unlike Hitler, who remained in an exhausted, hunched state throughout the service, the bride was so delusional that she gushed during the mad ceremony. The couple even poured champagne. Goebbels and Martin Bormann were asked to witness the marriage, which was hastily conducted by a local government official named Walter Wagner. The strange wedding party stayed up “celebrating” until nearly five in the morning, yet their wedding “music” consisted of the sounds of Berlin being reduced to rubble. The dreaded Red Army had entered the city and was nearing the final hideout.
A short time later, Hitler awoke, ate a light lunch of spaghetti and salad with his secretaries, and announced that the end was at hand. There were formal and tearful farewells exchanged among the loyalists remaining in the bunker. Adorned in his usual attire of black pants, white shirt, and tan military jacket, Hitler shook hands with everyone in the bunker. His new bride was at his side, still wearing her black dress and carrying a bouquet of roses. The new Mrs. Hitler spoke briefly to Traudl Junge, begging her, “Please do try to get out. You may yet make your way through.” She said her final good-bye: “And give Bavaria my love.”
Hitler and Eva walked slowly to his study. The staff remained outside the door, giving the couple ten minutes alone. The couple consumed cyanide pills, and then a shot rang out. When they opened the door, they found the führer and his bride seated side by side on a small white and blue couch. Eva was bent over sideways, her feet tucked beneath her body; Hitler’s head hung down, a hole visible in the right temple from his Walther pistol. Blood was splattered on his shirt and jacket.
It was three thirty on Monday afternoon, April 30. As per Hitler’s instructions, the bodies were taken to the garden and burned.
Goebbels had finally attained the power he longed for, but the cost was too much for him to bear. Even though the führer had, in his final political testament, just named Goebbels as his heir, the propagandist never accepted the position. Rather, he wrote an amendment to Hitler’s last will and testament, saying, “For the first time in my life I must categorically refuse to comply with an order from the Führer.”
To the end, Goebbels remained fanatically devoted to the Nazi cause. Not long before his final day in the bunker, the Reich minister was even planning additional propaganda films, including a new breakthrough—color films. That very month Goebbels had gathered fifty top aides together at his Berlin office to encourage them not to abandon the city, war, or cause. His delusion was such that he promised them that they would all star in a great film titled “Twilight of the Gods in Berlin in 1945” that would be shown in one hundred years. “I can assure you,” he pleaded, “it will be a fine and elevating picture, and for the sake of this prospect worth standing fast.” Goebbels tried to rally his propagandists, begging them to “hold out now, so that a hundred years hence the audience does not hoot and whistle when you appear on the screen!” After the motivational speech and peculiar promises, most of his aides quickly fled for their lives.
Despite his convictions, or perhaps because of them, the end was difficult for Goebbels. He drafted his last letter from the bunker, writing to his wife’s son from her first marriage, Harald Quandt. In it he reveals to Harald his fate. “We are now confined to the Führer’s bunker in the Reich Chancellery and are fighting for our lives and our honor. God alone knows what the outcome of this battle will be. I know, however, that we shall come out of it, dead or alive, with honor and glory. I hardly think that we shall see each other again. Probably, therefore, these are the last lines you will ever receive from me.” Goebbels closed by telling the young man that he was ready to make the “supreme sacrifice” in order to bring the Nazi regime to its “only possible and honorable conclusion.”
Both Hitler and Goebbels wanted Magda Goebbels to escape and encouraged her to do so. Hitler even awarded Mrs. Goebbels with the Golden Party Badge he had worn for years. However, she echoed her husband’s sentiments: “The world which will succeed the Führer and National-Socialism is not worth living in and for this reason I have brought the children here too.”
From the underground command center where Hitler spent his final hours, Goebbels ordered a Nazi physician to administer to his six children a lethal dose of poison while they slept. He and his wife then went to the garden where Hitler’s body was burned and took cyanide capsules. Goebbels had also arranged to have one of the loyal SS guards remaining at the bunker put a bullet in their heads as assurance that they would not survive. The Little Doctor who had caused so much violence and suffering was dead on May 1.
Goebbels once prophetically predicted that the Nazis would long be remembered, saying, “We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or the greatest criminals.” True to his prediction, his final words were “When we depart, let the Earth tremble!” The propagandist’s perspective that the only options were complete victory or complete destruction proved true.
RUSSIAN UNITS WERE IN control of much of Berlin and were still searching for Hitler and his senior commanders. It would take them until May 2 to discover Hitler’s underground bunker and another two days beyond that before they were able to identify his charred remains in the Chancellery garden. They also found the remains of Eva Braun and the entire Goebbels family; the six children were still in their pajamas tucked into bunk beds in the bunker. Goebbels’s remains and those of the others were identified by Rear Admiral Hans-Erich Voss for the Soviets.
Hitler was dead, but the war was not over. The day after the suicide, Admiral Dönitz announced the führer’s death in a radio broadcast that continued the propaganda. It read: “It is reported from the Führer’s Headquarters that this afternoon Führer Adolf Hitler fell in his command post in the Reich Chancellery, fighting with his last breath for Germany against Bolshevism.”
The night of his radio announcement, Dönitz met with Himmler at the ad hoc headquarters at Plön, about twenty miles from Lübeck in northern Germany and near the port where thousands of prisoners from the concentration camps were being forced onto the Cap Arcona and three other ships. The admiral did not arrest or kill Himmler as he had been ordered. Dönitz desperately needed intelligence and resources, and Himmler offered both. Together, they ordered German forces in Hamburg, Lübeck, and Neustadt in Holstein to continue the fight. The meeting between the admiral and the Gestapo chief also served two other functions. It would soon contribute to the fate of the prisoners aboard the ships in the Baltic, and it seemed to lend credence to the rumor that, with Nazi commanders, troops, and ships concentrated at the coast, they might attempt to evacuate across the Baltic to Norway.
A reporter with the BBC named Chester Wilmot was also in northern Germany and headed toward the Baltic. The day Hitler killed himself, Wilmot was on the radio with a report from northern Germany. “Here in the north, there’s still an army to be reckoned with: an army whose fighting power Himmler may still regard as a bargaining weapon. . . . We have smashed the German Army as a whole and its Air Force; but we haven’t yet broken the power or spirit of the German Navy.”
That report stirred concerns about what might be happening in the Baltic. Indeed, British and Canadian forces had encountered stiff German resistance along the North Sea and Baltic, as well as at the port in Kiel. With Admiral Dönitz in charge, roughly one hundred thousand Kriegsmarine forces had been scrambled to fight on land. Ships had ferried German forces from Denmark back to the fatherland in a desperate attempt to bolster defenses. Wilmot continued his broadcast, indicating that the war was far from over along the Baltic coast. “We can’t afford at this stage of the war to pause in the task. So long as there are pockets of resistance as well organized as this one, the Nazis may be encouraged to fight on elsewhere. And so here in the north, the Second Army is striking at what amounts to Himmler’s last hope.”
Nazi Germany still flashed its fangs, and it appeared that German resistance in Neustadt and Lübeck would be tenacious. American, British, Canadian, and Russian forces were closing in fast on the Baltic coast. The Red Army was only about thirty miles east of the bay. A final terrible battle loomed in northern Germany, and the Cap Arcona and thousands of concentration camp prisoners gathered on the Baltic coast would be smack in the middle of it.
a This had been the fate of Benito Mussolini, the leader of fascist Italy, who was hunted down by his own people, executed, and then strung up by his feet for public display next to the corpse of his mistress.