Minute by panic-filled minute, as madness and terror engulfed the Fuhrer's bunker

[superbeets]

12.30am, Monday, April 30
In the switchboard room, Rochus Misch is woken from a doze by a message from Hitler. Has there been any news about a German counter-attack, he wants to know. There hasn’t.




1.30am

+7


Hitler and Eva Braun had separate bedrooms in the bunker. In the past, she complained the Fuhrer only loved her when they were in bed together



.About 25 guards and servants have been summoned from the Reich Chancellery to the Fuhrerbunker. Hitler tells them he intends to take his own life rather than be captured by the Russians.‘I don’t want to be put on show like an exhibition in a museum,’ he says. Then he shuffles along the line of people, shaking hands with each of them, thanking them for their service and telling them they’re released from their oath of loyalty.


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[superbeets]

2am
SS doctor Professor Ernst Schenck has never been physically so close to Hitler. Looking at the Fuhrer’s eyes, he notices that they’re expressionless and bloodshot, with dark bags beneath.
Schenck, who previously experimented on prisoners at Dachau concentration camp, is one of four medics who’ve been woken from deep sleep for this meeting. After working in the emergency hospital all week, carrying out operations on an endless stream of wounded people, he’s exhausted.
Hitler, he notes, is a diminished, hunched man with shaking limbs who clearly has Parkinson’s disease. He also has food stains on his jacket. In short, he’s nothing like the inspiring leader that Schenck has admired from afar.
Slowly, the Fuhrer moves along the line of medics, shaking their hands and mumbling thanks for their work. Among them is a nurse, Erna Flegel.
When Hitler takes her hand, she breaks down, sobbing. ‘My Fuhrer! Have faith in the final victory. Lead us and we will follow you!’
Hitler doesn’t respond.



2.30am
The doctors and nurses join a big party of drinkers in the corridor of the upper bunker. Two secretaries now appear with a third woman — Eva Hitler. She sits at one end of the table, knocking back the booze and dominating the conversation with chirpy stories.
Dr Schenck can’t tell whether the tremor in her voice is caused by a lisp or by alcohol.

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[superbeets]

3am
Hitler’s just been told that German troops are either encircled or under attack and cannot reach Berlin. In frustration, he orders a message to be sent to Admiral Donitz, head of the German navy: ‘Immediate ruthless action must be taken against all traitors.’

+7


Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun, whom he finally married after 14 years in his bunker beneath Berlin





Dr Schenck is desperate for a pee. He leaves the drinkers and hurries down to the lower bunker. It’s normally guarded by two armed men, but they seem to have disappeared.
The Fuhrerbunker is ghostly quiet except for the drone of the diesel generator and the distant sounds of a boisterous party, somewhere in the Reich Chancellery.
Through an open doorway, he sees the Fuhrer standing by a table, in deep conversation with another medic — Dr Haase.
Hitler is telling Haase that he wants to die at exactly the same moment as Eva. They agree that he’ll have two pistols, in case one jams, and two cyanide capsules, in case one is a dud. Eva will also have two capsules.
He’ll put one capsule in his mouth and hold the pistol at eyebrow level at a right angle, with the muzzle resting on his temple. Then he’ll fire and bite simultaneously.
Later, Dr Haase talks to Eva. She tells him she’s worried that she’ll lose her resolve if Hitler dies first. Haase tells her to bite the moment she hears a shot. She’ll also have a pistol, he tells her — but she says she doesn’t want to use it.
In the Ministry of the Interior, about 600 yards from the Reich Chancellery, a Soviet kitchen has been set up in the basement. A vat of porridge is being hurriedly cooked as an early breakfast for troops about to launch a dawn assault on the Reichstag — Germany’s former parliament building.
Stalin has ordered that the red flag should be flying from its rooftop in time for Russia’s national May Day holiday tomorrow.





4.30am
In the Fuhrerbunker, Hitler retires to bed. Dr Schenck makes his way back to the Reich Chancellery, where a raucous party is still in full swing. Behind the door of the Chancellery dental surgery, a woman is being strapped into the dentist’s chair.
By day, this room is used for tooth extractions; by night, it’s the most popular place to have sex.

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[superbeets]

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6am
Hitler is sitting in a chair beside his bed, wearing soft leather slippers and a black satin dressing gown over his nightshirt. He’s just summoned General Mohnke to ask: ‘How long can we hold out?’
‘Twenty or 24 hours at most, mein Fuhrer.’
The first company of Russian soldiers charges towards the Reichstag. After less than 200ft, they’re thrown to the ground by a hurricane of German fire. Meanwhile, a premature message of triumph is being radioed to Moscow, telling Stalin that the Reichstag has been taken.




6.30am
For the second day in a row, Hitler’s valet finds his master lying on his bed fully clothed in uniform jacket and black trousers. Hitler puts his finger to his lips, gets up and shuffles quietly down the corridor.
Martin Bormann and Generals Krebs and Burgdorf are asleep on the benches outside his room. Beside them are bottles of schnapps and loaded pistols, safety catches off. Both secretaries are sleeping on camp beds in the conference room.
In the switchboard room, Hitler radios a message to the commandant of Berlin, asking for an update. The reply comes quickly: the Russians are in immediate proximity.





7am
Eva Hitler has barely slept. She hurries up the concrete steps to the Reich Chancellery garden. She has a sudden urge ‘to see the sun once more’.
The garden has been wrecked by shelling and the sky is darkened by smoke from the battle of the Reichstag. She hesitates briefly before returning to her bedroom.
Half an hour later, Adolf Hitler follows his wife’s example and heads up the steps to the garden. As he reaches the top, the sounds of shelling intensifies. Instead of opening the door, he turns around and slowly makes his way back down.
Could he not bear to see the spot where he knows his body will soon be cremated?


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[superbeets]

Monday, April 30, 1945, 8.30am
As the Soviet bombardment of Berlin continues, the six children of propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda are sitting around the table in the upper bunker, eating a breakfast of bread, butter and jam.
One thing they all appreciate is that they’re allowed as much food as they like. Their outfits, however, are getting grubby. When they arrived a week ago, it was without any changes of clothes — as their parents didn’t expect to be staying for long.
While they eat, Magda is lying on her bed. She can hear the chat and clatter of the children from her room, but she can’t face seeing them and has no appetite for breakfast.

+7


Doomed: Joseph Goebbels, wife Magda and three of their six children - Hilde, Helmut and Helga - with Hitler in 1938



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[superbeets]

About 11.30am
Eva Braun — who married her lover Adolf Hitler only yesterday — has just finished applying her make-up. Now at a loose end, she asks Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, to come into her room in the Führerbunker. [Hitler’s bunker is below the older ‘upper bunker’ and connected to it by a staircase. There’s also a passageway to the nearby Reich Chancellery cellar, where staff and doctors are still working.]
‘I can’t bear to be alone with my thoughts,’ Eva tells Junge.
It’s hard to know what to talk about. They try to remember happier times — like the spring in their home town of Munich. Eva suddenly leaps up, opens her wardrobe and pulls out a silver fox fur — one of her favourite coats. ‘Frau Junge,’ she says, holding it out, ‘I’d like to give you this coat as a goodbye present.’

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She fondles the soft fur. ‘I always love seeing well-dressed women. I like the thought of you wearing it — I want you to have it now and enjoy it.’
Junge is very moved, though she can’t imagine where and when she might wear it.




11.45am
Hitler shuffles along the corridor to the telephone switchboard. He pauses in the doorway. Switchboard operator Rochus Misch stands up, awaiting orders, but there are none.Without saying anything, the Führer turns away and shuffles back to his room.


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[superbeets]

Midday
The Führer summons the military staff for the daily situation conference. General Weidling, commandant of Berlin, is very pessimistic.
‘Munitions are running out,’ he says. ‘Air supplies have become impossible. Morale is very low. Fighting only continues in the city centre. The battle of Berlin will be over by evening.’
Hitler is silent for a long time. Then, in a weary voice, he asks General Mohnke for his view. When Mohnke nods heavily, the Führer pushes himself slowly out of his chair.

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About 12.30pm
Eva is in her bathroom with her maid Liesl, choosing her final outfit. The Goebbels children are playing in their bedroom. Magda Goebbels is still lying on her bed.
In his study, Hitler sends for Martin Bormann, his private secretary, who arrives in a sleep-crumpled suit. Hitler tells him: ‘The time has come. Fräulein Braun and I will end our lives this afternoon.’ (No one will ever hear him call her Frau Hitler.)
12.45pm
Now Hitler summons his adjutant Otto Günsche, a quiet six-footer with a long, serious face. ‘It’s time to get the petrol,’ says the Führer. ‘We need it now, urgently. I don’t want to end up in some Moscow waxwork display.’
In the kitchen in the upper bunker, Constanze Manziarly is supervising the cooking of Hitler’s last meal. There’s a big pan of water coming to the boil for spaghetti, and one of the orderlies is making a vinaigrette dressing for a salad.
Like Hitler, Manziarly is an Austrian — and she has been trained in Viennese/Bavarian cuisine. She’s a plump, self-effacing woman who takes great trouble to prepare vegetarian dishes that suit his delicate stomach.




1pm
Eva has no appetite for lunch so she has stayed in her room with her maid, Liesl. She has just chosen the dress she’ll die in: it’s black with white roses around the neck — one of her husband’s favourites. Liesl has pressed it and is now styling Eva’s hair. Meanwhile, Hitler sits down to eat with the cook and the two secretaries, Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge. As they twirl the plain spaghetti around their forks and prod the cabbage and raisin salad, everyone maintains an artificial composure.
No one talks except Hitler, who delivers a monologue on the future of Germany and the difficulties that lie ahead. As he drones on, the secretaries are desperate to get away.
Hitler’s monologues are dreaded by his entourage. Some of his generals have turned to drink to cope with the tedium of his all-night tirades about modern art, philosophy, race, technology. In the bunker, his favoured topics have narrowed further: dog training, diet and the stupidity of the world.




About 1.30pm
In the Führerbunker, switchboard operator Rochus Misch is sick with panic. He has just seen Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller in the corridor, flanked by two high-ranking SS men. What’s he doing here?
Misch can think of only two possible answers —either he has come to shoot all the eyewitnesses to Hitler’s death, or he’s going to blow up the bunker with a time bomb.



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[superbeets]

About 2.45pm

+7



Hitler is pictured celebrating with German soldiers after the occupation of Poland in September 1939


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In the corridor of the upper bunker, Traudl Junge sits in an armchair, smoking a cigarette. Hitler’s SS adjutant, Otto Günsche, comes up the stairs from the Führerbunker to tell her: ‘Come on, the Führer wants to say goodbye.’
She quickly stubs out her cigarette and tries to waft away the smell. Hitler hates cigarettes and he’s always warning his staff that smoking causes cancer — a view that many of them regard as eccentric.
Junge walks down to the Führerbunker corridor, where the cook, the other secretary and a few other staff have gathered, together with Bormann and Magda and Joseph Goebbels.
After a few moments, Hitler emerges from his study with his wife. He walks very slowly, and Junge notices that he’s stooping more than ever. Then he shuffles from person to person, proffering a quivering hand. When it’s Junge’s turn, she feels the warmth of his right hand but realises that he’s looking right through her. He mutters something but she can’t take it in. She is numb, frozen.
Eva approaches Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, and says: ‘Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for the Führer.’ She leans in, lowering her voice. ‘Should you meet my sister Gretl, please don’t tell her how her husband met his death.’ She doesn’t want Gretl to know that Hermann Fegelein, a cavalry officer, was executed yesterday for desertion — on Hitler’s orders.
Then Eva goes over to Junge and hugs her. ‘Do your best to get out,’ Eva says. ‘It may still be possible. And give Bavaria my love.’ She’s smiling, but her voice catches.
Joseph Goebbels suddenly feels desperate. He has sworn loyalty unto death, and demonstrated it by bringing his wife and children into the bunker to die alongside their leader. But now the prospect seems unbearable.
‘Mein Führer, it’s still possible to escape. You can oversee the war from Obersalzberg... Mein Führer, I beg you to consider.’
Hitler replies: ‘You know my decision. I’m not going to change it. You and your family can of course leave Berlin.’

+7


Hitler was found in his bunker sitting side by side with wife Eva after they had both killed themselves





Joseph Goebbels looks Hitler in the eyes. ‘We will stand by you and follow your example, mein Führer.’
The two men shake hands. Then, leaning on Linge, Hitler retreats slowly to his study.
At the study doorway, he turns to look at Linge. ‘I’m going to go now,’ he tells the valet. ‘You know what you have to do. Ensure my body is burned and my remaining possessions are destroyed.’
‘Jawohl, mein Führer.’ Hitler offers his hand. He looks exhausted, grey. Before turning into his study, he raises his right arm in a final salute.
Meanwhile, Traudl Junge is suddenly seized by a wild urge to get as far away as possible. She rushes towards the stairs to the upper bunker. Halfway up, sitting in silence, are the six Goebbels children. No one has remembered to give them lunch.
‘Come along,’ says Junge, trying to keep her voice calm and light. ‘I’ll get you something to eat.’

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[superbeets]

About 3.15pm
Heinz Linge closes the door behind Adolf and Eva Hitler. A few moments later there is a commotion in the corridor.
It’s Magda Goebbels, who is crying and begging to be allowed to see the Führer one last time. Like her husband, she is panicking as the reality of killing the children comes closer.
Her meeting with Hitler is brief. She begs him to leave the capital —because if he goes, then her husband will agree to go, too — and she and the children can leave.
His refusal is brusque. She emerges from the room weeping. Linge closes the heavy iron security door of the study behind Adolf and Eva Hitler for the final time.
In the Reich Chancellery canteen, someone puts on a record and a group of soldiers and nurses start to dance. There is no longer a sense of day or night in this underground world.






3.30pm

+7


A mesmerising new book by Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie gives a minute-by-minute account of Hitler’s last day in his Berlin bunker exactly 70 years ago





Hitler’s adjutant, Otto Günsche, is standing guard outside the study. Goebbels, Bormann and several members of staff are hovering near by, waiting for the sound of a gunshot. There’s a lull in the shelling. The only sound is the loud drone of the diesel generator.
At the table in the upper bunker corridor, the Goebbels children are wolfing down their late lunch. Little Helmut is particularly cheery. He loves hearing all the explosions: ‘The bangs can’t hurt us in the bunker,’ he says.
Then there is the sound of a gunshot. For a moment they all fall silent. Then Helmut shouts: ‘Bullseye!’
Traudl Junge presumes that the Führer has just killed himself, but says nothing. After buttering another slice of bread, she asks the children what games they are planning to play after lunch.





3.40pm
Heinz Linge decides that they have waited long enough. He opens the door and enters the study. Martin Bormann is close behind him.
They find Hitler and his wife sitting side by side on the sofa. There are two pistols by Hitler’s feet, the one he fired and the one he kept as a reserve.
He has shot himself through the right temple and his head is leaning towards the wall. There is blood on the carpet, blood on the blue and white sofa.
Eva is sitting on Hitler’s right. Her legs are drawn up on the sofa; her shoes are on the floor. On the low table in front of them is the little brass box in which she kept her cyanide phial. The poison has contorted her face.




3.45pm
The children go back to their bedroom to read and play. Traudl Junge helps herself to a glass of Steinhäger gin. She knows that it’s all over.


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[superbeets]

3.50pm
With the help of three SS guards, Linge carries Hitler’s body up the steps to the Reich Chancellery garden. The Führer’s head is covered by the blanket but his legs are sticking out. Hitler’s adjutant Otto Günsche lays Eva’s body beside Hitler’s in a spot about three metres from the bunker door.
Soviet shells are falling all around as Günsche and Linge pour petrol over the bodies. Goebbels has brought matches, which Linge uses to light some paper.
Then he hurls the burning paper towards the bodies and races back to the bunker entrance. A fireball engulfs the bodies as he pulls the door shut behind him. The funeral party raise their arms and shout ‘Heil Hitler’ from the safety of the staircase.

+7


Hitler is pictured with Eva Braun, above. The couple kept to their suicide pact with Braun using cyanide to kill herself






4.15pm
Otto Günsche drops on to a bench beside Traudl Junge in the upper bunker. He takes a bottle of schnapps from her and lifts it to his lips. His large hands are shaking and he stinks of petrol.
‘I’ve carried out the Führer’s last order,’ he says softly. ‘His body has been burned.’ Junge doesn’t reply. Günsche leaves to give orders to two SS officers to bury the remains.
Downstairs, Linge is in Hitler’s study, disposing of the bloodstained carpet, medicines, documents and clothes.





6pm
Russian soldiers are charging the front of the Reichstag and blasting through bricked-up doors and windows.
SS officer Ewald Lindloff climbs the steps from the Führerbunker to the Reich Chancellery garden, carrying a spade. The bodies of Hitler and his wife are not only burned, he finds, but ‘torn open’ by recent shelling. He buries their remains in a fresh shell crater.





About 6.30pm
The first Russian soldiers to force their way into the Reichstag are met with a storm of grenades and gunfire. As reinforcements flow into the building, climbing over the dead and injured, the Russians gradually make their way up the stairs, firing from sub-machine guns and lobbing grenades.






7.30pm
In the upper bunker, Magda Goebbels is putting her children to bed. The youngest, Heide, has a sore throat. Her mother finds her a red scarf. This is their last night’s sleep.
The next morning their mother will tell them that they must have a vaccination that all the soldiers are getting to protect them against disease. In fact, it will be morphine.
Once the children are dozing, Ludwig Stumpfegger, one of the Reich Chancellery doctors, will crush a cyanide capsule between each child’s teeth.
Immediately afterwards, Joseph and Magda Goebbels will go up to the Reich Chancellery garden and commit suicide together. It is presumed that they also take cyanide.

+7



The couple are pictured in the teahouse on the 'Eagle's Nest' in Berchtesgaden, southeast Germany







8pm
Hitler’s death is being kept secret from staff in the Reich Chancellery. Even the kitchen orderlies have no idea that the meal Constanze Manziarly is preparing for the Führer — mashed potato and fried eggs — is a charade.
Two Russian soldiers, bearing a red flag and heading for the Reichstag roof, are mown down as they reach the second floor.
10pm
Traudl Junge is sitting with her fellow secretary Gerda Christian in the Führerbunker corridor with other staff, drinking coffee and schnapps. The cook, Constanze Manziarly, is sitting in a corner, her eyes red from weeping.
Otto Günsche and General Mohnke are talking about breaking out of the bunker. Junge’s ears prick up. In one voice, she and Gerda say: ‘Take us, too!’ The two men nod.
Junge doesn’t think she’ll survive, but it seems better to do something active rather than ‘wait for the Russians to come and find my corpse in the mousetrap’.
Next morning she will successfully break out of the bunker, dressed as a male soldier and carrying a pistol. In early July she is captured by the Russians, who interrogate her thoroughly before handing her over to the British. She is released in 1946 and continues to work as a secretary in postwar Germany, not dying until 2002.





Aftermath
Hitler’s death is announced on Hamburg radio at 10.30pm on May 1. Listeners are told that the Führer has ‘fallen at his command post, fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany’.
In Moscow, Stalin’s response is blunt: ‘So — that’s the end of the bastard.’
The first Russian soldiers do not in fact enter the Reich Chancellery complex until the following day, quickly discovering the charred remains of Joseph and Magda Goebbels in the garden, and the bodies of their six children on the bunk beds.
It takes another week for Hitler and Eva’s remains to be found. The Führer is identified from a well-preserved jawbone.
On July 16, 1945, Winston Churchill visits the Reich Chancellery. He stares at the spot where Hitler’s body has been burned, then gives a swift V for victory sign.
‘This is what would have happened to us if they’d won the war,’ he said. ‘We would have been in the bunker.’

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