“Soldiers, wounded men, all of you to arms!”
(Goebbels’ appeal to the Berlin press)
Berlin was almost entirely encircled. Schönefeld Airport on the city outskirts had fallen. Zhukov and Konev were making rapid progress. The two Soviet marshals were staking their careers on this battle. Whoever caused the fall of Berlin and caught Hitler would emerge victorious.
Every hour, thousands of Germans were perishing under the Russian bombs. Most of them were civilians, women and children, all trapped in the capital. In the German army, the legal age limits for bearing arms had been considerably enlarged. Teenagers and pensioners were being requisitioned and thrown onto this apocalyptic battlefield.
Refusal to fight, trying to surrender to the Russians to bring an end to a war that was lost in advance, would lead to an equally tragic end. Groups of Nazi fanatics scoured the streets of Berlin day and night in search of “traitors,” who they publicly shot or hanged.
Hidden away in his little room in the Führerbunker, Goebbels was bursting with energy. The Reich capital was about to fall, while the Propaganda Minister sent out more and more delirious and threatening communiqués. He called on all Berliners, healthy or wounded, to come and swell the groups of Nazi fighters. Vacillators were “sons of bitches.” At the same time, German radio unstintingly broadcast messages like: “The Führer is thinking for you, you have only to carry out orders!” or “The Führer is Germany.”
The Nazi daily Panzerbär (“The Armoured Bear,” in reference to the historically emblematic bear of Berlin), published on its front page on 24 April 1945 what would be Hitler’s last declaration:
Remember:
Anyone who supports or merely approves of the instructions that weaken our perseverance is a traitor! He must immediately be condemned to be shot or hanged.
Nearly ten metres underground, Hitler and his last faithful followers could not imagine the hell that Berliners were living through above ground. And for good reason–they didn’t dare to emerge into the open air. Only the SS men responsible for the safety of the air-raid shelter and its occupants went in and out of the building. But their opinion concerning the situation was never sought and, besides, they didn’t think for a moment of giving an account of events to the Führer. As for the idea of trying to leave the shelter, even battle-hardened soldiers shivered at the very idea. Martial law had been imposed on the whole of Berlin since 20 April. Rochus Misch, the bunker’s telephone operator, did not escape that anxiety: “Wandering through the ruins, the Gestapo would soon pick me up. […] Hentschel [his colleague on the bunker telephone switchboard] and I were convinced that the secret police would kill us if they ever caught us.”*
With every passing hour the Führerbunker was turning into a tomb for its occupants.
Still, life was becoming gradually more organised between the thick concrete walls. The daily reports of bad news were flooding in monotonously. The final act of Hitler’s tragedy was playing itself out most dramatically. There were barely a few dozen players, but they played their part with absurd perfection. In this microcosm of a Third Reich in its death throes, a small group of animals were desperately trying to survive. There were military men convinced that blind obedience to their boss would absolve them of all responsibility, politicians united in mutual hatred, and a young generation of Germans Nazified from their school days onwards and devoted unto death. Hitler alone was still able to unite men and women whose nerves were in shreds, and keep them from killing each other.
If some people were beginning to doubt, most were still totally devoted to the cult of the Führer. He had calculated, predicted, organised everything, they thought. All those repeated defeats could only be a trap that would inevitably close on the Russians. The proof was that Hitler seemed so relaxed. He played with his Alsatian Blondi, who had just had puppies. They ran yapping around the corridors filled with boots and helmets. Besides, the whole bunker had become a nursery since Goebbels had asked his wife, the proud blonde Magda, to come and join him with their six children. Room was found for them in the Vorbunker. Four rooms were requisitioned just for them and their mother. Joseph Goebbels himself lived in the holy of holies, the Hauptbunker. He was only a few metres away from his beloved little ones. There was Helga, twelve, Hildegard, eleven, Helmut, nine, Holdine, eight, Hedwig, seven, and Heidrun, who was only four. They all had names beginning with the letter H, H for Hitler. That was the least the Goebbels could do for their Führer.
How could children aged between four and twelve spend their time in a bunker under heavy bombing day and night? They played. They squabbled. They ran shouting from one room to another. Sometimes the soldiers were obliged to tell them off and chase them out of the military operation rooms. Others took the time to teach them a song, inevitably a song to the glory of the one they affectionately called “Uncle Führer.” The children didn’t seem worried. They very quickly got accustomed to the din of the bombs, the trembling concrete foundations. Even more than adults like Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Morell. This obese charlatan with questionable hygiene and a grim expression was literally dying of fear. Unable to go on, he begged for and was granted the right to leave, since his heart, he claimed, could no longer bear the constant hammering of the Russian artillery. The little Goebbels children were almost amused by the severe and worried expressions of the SS men around them. Naively, they couldn’t imagine their “Uncle Führer” lying to them. Hadn’t he said that nice soldiers would turn up soon and send the wicked Russians packing back home? And that tomorrow they would have permission to go and play in the garden, in the fresh air?
Magda Goebbels tried to keep herself occupied too. That almost Wagnerian figure of the Nazi wife used every means she could think of not to crack. She was forty-three, and had long ago ceased to believe in the fantastical tales that her husband told her. By now she was only pretending to believe in certain victory and the prescience of the Führer. She had understood perfectly well that the bunker would be her and her children’s grave. She quickly found an activity to keep herself from losing her mind, an obsession with housekeeping that might have seemed absurd in such dramatic moments, but which brought her back towards the world of the living: keeping her children’s clothes clean and tidy. Like the Valkyries so dear to the Nazi imagination, she accepted the tragic end that was about to engulf her family. She was convinced that if the Third Reich had to perish, then she preferred to perish with it and preserve her children from life in a world without Nazism. Only one fear paralysed her–that of being killed too soon. Too soon to be able to take her beloved children’s lives herself. Or worse, to lack the courage at the last moment, and not find the strength for the six-fold infanticide that she had to commit. Then, regularly, with an almost crazed look in her eye, she asked around in the bunker for help, for support. Help to kill her children when the moment came.
* Rochus Misch, Hitler’s Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Bodyguard, pp. 158–9.