In the spring of 1945, Adolf Hitler lived by self-deception. Not wanting to admit that the war was lost, he still considered himself the spokesman for the will of the German people and their protector. However, in reality, the Fuhrer actually abandoned the fight and only looked for an opportunity to die. The commander-in-chief stubbornly remained in Berlin, even when it became clear that the city was squeezed "in a vice" between the fronts of the Allies, and the Russians were about to take the capital of the Millennium Reich.
The Red Army launched a decisive offensive against Berlin on April 16. A little earlier, Hitler's friend Eva Braun flew to Berlin from her residence in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria. The Fuhrer himself had long since moved to a bunker, or rather an underground bomb shelter, located not far from the Reich Chancellery. At first, Hitler said that he went underground, as air raids prevented him from sleeping. However, it was clear to his comrades-in-arms that the Nazi leader was hiding from life.
Anniversary Underground
“He reached the last stop in his escape from the present, from a reality that he had refused to recognize since his youth,” wrote Albert Speer. "At that time I came up with a name for this unreal world of the bunker: I called it the Wreck of the Departed."
On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler celebrated his birthday for the last time - he turned 56. A year ago, on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the Fuhrer, parades and conventions were held throughout Germany, not as magnificent as in previous years. Now the celebration has turned out to be modest. On his birthday, the commander-in-chief admonished the youths from the Hitler Youth who were going to defend Berlin. Then Hitler received congratulations from his inner circle - Goebbels, Goering, Ribbentrop, Himmler.
Hitler did not yet know that he would not live until next month. In the remaining 10 days of his life, tragic news began to pour on him with frightening regularity. And soon the bunker itself began to literally shake from the shelling of the Red Army artillery.
However, the daily routine of life underground did not change outwardly. Hitler worked, read documents, received visitors, handed Iron Crosses to the distinguished defenders of the capital, dined and dined with the same delights. Well-groomed and smart Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels were living decorations of bunker feasts. As the assistant to the head of the General Staff, Gerhard Boldt, recalled, wine from the huge reserves of the Reich Chancellery "poured like a river" in the bunker.
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Hopes for salvation
Losing contact with reality, Hitler believed that Berlin and Germany could still be saved, even if by a miracle. Having learned on April 12 of the death of American President Roosevelt, he hoped that this event would quarrel with the Allies. And on his birthday, speaking in front of fellow party members, he expressed confidence that the Russians would be able to be thrown away from Berlin, and they would "go home." In fact, with his military instructions, the Fuhrer only aggravated the fatal mistake that had been made before. Stubbornly not recognizing the possibility of a Soviet attack on Berlin, in early April he removed SS armored units from the Oder and sent them south, instead of concentrating on the defense of the capital.
When on April 21 the Red Army appeared in the southern suburbs of Berlin, Hitler, regardless of the available forces, ordered a counterattack. With this, he only accelerated the encirclement of the city, since the Russians were able to break through on the sectors of the southern front weakened by the regrouping. On April 22, the generals informed the Fuehrer that Russian tanks in the north had managed to enter Berlin itself. Hitler reacted to this with practically the same words that Emperor Nicholas II did when he abdicated in 1917. The Russian tsar then wrote in his diary: "Around and treason, and cowardice, and deceit." Hitler exclaimed: “Everyone has left me. All around treason, lies, venality, cowardice!"
Meanwhile, he himself could well have left Berlin. The generals strongly suggested that he lead the defense from the Bavarian Obersalzberg. Bohemia, Austria and Northern Italy were still under German control. Another large territorial area of the Reich was located north of Berlin. Here, the Allied troops resisted Hamburg, Schleswig and all of Denmark.
On April 26, a female pilot, Hanna Reitsch, nicknamed the "Valkyrie of the Luftwaffe", offered to take out Hitler. Another alternative was to move out of the city to the southwest under the protection of the Berlin garrison - a plan put forward by the commandant of Berlin, Helmut Weidling. However, Hitler, rejecting all the proposals, chose to continue to sit in the bunker.
“I remain the Fuehrer as long as I can really lead. But I cannot lead, sitting somewhere on a mountain, for this I must have authority in the army, which must obey me, he justified during an operational meeting on April 25.
The Fuehrer ordered to report on the radio that he intends to defend the German capital "to the last drop of blood." Even on April 28, he flattered himself with hopes for the success of General Wenck's 12th Army, which, together with the 9th Army, was to release Berlin from the south. Wenck did manage to reach positions south of Potsdam, but then his forces were defeated. Late in the evening of April 29, the 12th Army announced in an operational report that it was forced to go on the defensive. For Hitler, this meant only one thing - he would either die or be captured by the Russians.
Political testament
Undoubtedly, Hitler long cherished the words that he intended to express before his death. Secretary Traudl Junge, who dictated the Führer's Political Testament, recalled that he spoke in a low voice.
Hitler did not deviate a step from the political course once outlined in Mein Kampf. He declared the cause of the world war to the Jews - a behind-the-scenes force that, in his opinion, brought misfortune to humanity. The Fuhrer foresaw the future Nuremberg trials.
“I will not fall into the hands of an enemy who wants only a new performance under Jewish direction to entertain the historical masses,” he said.
However, on the verge of death, Adolf Hitler could not help but remember about Russia. He saw in the eastern enemy, along with America, one of the two Great Powers remaining in the world. Predicting the events of the Cold War, Hitler said that sooner or later both sides of the conflict would seek German support. But Germany, he said, needs to "avoid becoming a puppet" of one camp or another. The Fuhrer did not rule out the liberation of Russia from Bolshevism, but he also did not welcome Pan-Slavism, which should replace him. Hitler did not manage to get rid of the hatred of the Slavs that had been assimilated in his youth. The Nazi leader compared America to a child suffering from "elephantiasis" and predicted a quick death to American civilization. The Fuehrer still saw the "conquest of territory in the East" as a distant goal of Germany, as he declared in his last word to the army.
Even after the disastrous defeat, it never occurred to Hitler to abolish the Nazi Party. The betrayal of his closest associates - Goering and Himmler - did not shake Hitler's faith in the viability of the organization he created. Moreover, he even hoped for her coming "revival".
Nevertheless, Hitler liquidated the institution of the Fuehrer in Germany. He divided the posts of President and Reich Chancellor, giving them respectively to Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and to the loyal Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. In addition, the Fuehrer painstakingly distributed the ministerial portfolios, regardless of whether the ministers could actually take up their duties or not.
Hitler declared in his will that he was dying "with a joyful heart", knowing about the exploits of soldiers at the front and women in the rear. He thanked the Germans for the struggle and demanded not to stop it in accordance with the "precepts of the great Clausewitz."
Hitler bequeathed his considerable personal property to the party, and in the event of its abolition - to the German state.
Wedding and death
But if there was some kind of joy on Hitler's face in recent days, it could only be a smirk of madness. The head of the Third Reich looked like a seriously ill person.
“Many witnesses describe the poor state of his health in the last days and hours: he turned gray, red spots appeared on his cheeks, his eyes became frozen, his eyes rolled forward a little and seemed dead,” says Anton Joachimstaler's book “The Death of Adolf Hitler. Legends and Documents ". - Even the manner of speaking has changed. He spoke very briefly. The figure hunched over, the gait became dragging, shuffling. The left arm and the entire left half of the body were shaking."
The German historian suggests that Hitler suffered from Parkinson's disease.
The state of mind of the Fuhrer was not the best either. He was subject to outbursts of rage. The chief of staff of the Volkssturm Gottlob Berger, who witnessed one of these seizures, recalled that Hitler's face turned red, so that he even got the impression that he might have had a blow. On another occasion, the rage resulted in a spasm of the body. And hearing on the radio about Himmler's negotiations with the allies, Hitler literally fell into a stupor. In addition, as follows from the testimony of the attending physician of the Fuhrer Theodor Morell, his patient was tormented by the fear that the generals would put him to sleep with morphine and secretly transport him to Bavaria.
But when Hitler learned that the Russians were about to reach the bomb shelter, intense emotions were replaced by a doomed calm. It cannot be ruled out that by marrying Eva Braun, Hitler even received some sadistic pleasure. The woman, who, according to her contemporaries, “waited for him all her life,” achieved her goal only on the brink of the grave. The civil wedding ceremony of Hitler and Eva Braun took place at 2 am on April 29. In order to bond the Fuhrer and his girlfriend with marital ties, an employee of the Berlin municipality, Walter Wagner, was pulled from the barricades.
During the "wedding" feast, while the guests were drinking champagne, Hitler, in a last fit of narcissism, reminded them of the tumultuous events of his life. Many of those present were crying.
On April 30, the newlyweds were still trying to work. But at 10 am it became known that the Russians were advancing along Wilhelmstrasse - the so-called "ministerial street" on which the Imperial Chancellery was located.
Crowned suicides
Adolf Hitler was not the only suicidal ruler in German history. Two similar cases occurred in the family of the Dukes of Mecklenburg. In 1592, due to a dispute with a relative who demanded the transfer of land, the reigning Duke Johann VII committed suicide. And in 1897 Duke Friedrich Franz III of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who was suffering from illness, committed suicide. In southern Germany, after his removal from the throne in 1886, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, known for his unusual lifestyle and the construction of “fairytale castles”, supposedly took his own life.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon, the Fuhrer decided that his time was up and took Eva Braun into her private room. The courtiers and servants remained outside to wait. It took about 10-30 minutes, after which they heard the sound of a shot. Upon entering the Fuehrer's apartment, the witnesses were horrified at the sight. In Soviet historiography, it was traditionally claimed that Hitler took poison. However, his adjutant, SS Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, said that the Fuhrer’s skull was shattered by a shot. Eva Braun did not lose her beauty - she chose to die, having bitten through the ampoule of poison. However, the external difference between the corpses did not last long.
“According to our will, our bodies will be immediately burned in the place where I mainly worked during those twelve years when I served my people,” Hitler ordered before his death.
Gunsche and the Fuhrer's personal chauffeur Erich Kempka went to carry out the last will of the head of state. When the bodies were raised to the surface, they were doused with gasoline right near the entrance to the bunker. A burning rag was thrown from above, and the flames immediately engulfed the corpses. Several witnesses reacted to this spectacle by greeting "Heil Hitler".
The bodies turned into embers, after which they were wrapped in tarpaulins and thrown into a crater from an exploding shell in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. Here on May 5 (according to the book "The Agony and Death of Adolf Hitler"), the remains were found by soldiers of the Smersh special detachment, led by Alexei Panasov. They were instructed to find the leaders of the Third Reich alive or dead. Joseph Stalin, who was asked by the military to personally look at the corpse of the defeated enemy, refused this.
The last documentary act in the name of the "Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor" was issued on December 28, 1956, when the registry office in West Berlin officially registered the death of Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Hitler, née Brown.