As of March 1945, Hitler decided to take refuge in his bunker beneath the new Reich Chancellery, in the heart of Berlin. The big final Allied offensive was launched a few weeks earlier. In the East, the Red Army, after a first failed attempt in October 1944 (Operation Gumbinnen), entered Eastern Prussia on 20 January; the Western Allies (in this instance the troops of the 1st American Army) had also entered German territory on 12 September 1944, near Aachen. The city would fall on 21 October. As the threat became more clearly apparent, Hitler left his refuge less and less often. He spent the last days of his life 8.5 metres underground. All of the details of the Führer’s last moments are supplied by the survivors of the bunker. Those men and women were mostly military personnel, as well as a few civilians (particularly secretaries). Their witness statements need to be treated with caution. Let us not forget that they were all members of the Nazi Party and, to varying degrees, admired Hitler.
These statements come from two different sources: the interrogations carried out by the Soviets and/or the Allies after the arrest of the witnesses, and the witnesses’ memoirs which they published after being freed, as well as a number of interviews. In the first instance, the information was taken by fair means or foul, not intended to be published and revealed to the wider public; in the other, it came freely from the individuals themselves. It allowed them to justify their own actions to the whole world and, most often, distance themselves from the Nazi regime.
In either case, the stories are far from neutral. But a comparison of the two sources does allow us to establish a fairly credible picture of the twelve last known days in the life of the German dictator. At least until the afternoon of 30 April 1945.