Just days before their suicide on April 30th, 1945, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun completed the destruction of all their archives. Hitler wanted to leave nothing behind. Historians thought they had consulted all the existing accessible archives.
Seventy years on, thanks to Commandant Raymond Rose, a French officer, now deceased, and a private collector, new political and personal archives of historic significance have been revealed for the first time. These unique documents now bring into much clearer focus certain crucial moments in Hitler's last days. What was the atmosphere in the bunker?
Did the Führer still hold out hope of a military reversal? Is there any physical evidence of the affair between Hitler and Eva Braun? When exactly did he and his companion decide to commit suicide?
Did Göring really intend to seize power in the final days of the Reich? The Third Reich has just been destroyed. Berlin, the nerve center of Nazi Germany, is but a heap of ruins.
There is nothing left of this capital city that for a few years made the world tremble. The Westerners would arrive and take possession of their occupation zone in Berlin in June. Then they had to visit the bunker.
Thousands of people visited, eager for a glimpse of what the Soviets called: the beast slayer. Everyone wanted to see where Hitler died. First, a procession of personalities.
Then came the members of the American, British, French, and Soviet occupation forces, all coming to visit the bunker. Among the military personnel who visited the bunker was a group of French officers. In the afternoon of November 25th, 1945, Commandant Raymond Rose entered what remained of Hitler's Chancellery, through the main entrance on Voss-Strasse.
They had prepared for this expedition. Like their comrades before them, they hoped to make a few discoveries. Commandant Rose described his foray into the basement of Hitler's last headquarters.
He sketched three maps of his itinerary and the place where he found the Führer's documents. All that remains of the Führer's Chancellery are the walls and empty rooms cluttered with overturned furniture, still bearing the traces of looting. The house is open to all comers.
In the main hole lit by electric torches, you look for a small hidden door, which leads to an eight step staircase, leading to a second wider staircase, that leads to a vast room with square columns. Though underground, this room is decorated with as much care as any ceremonial hall. Then at the far end of this already dark room, you must find an iron door with wall flowers.
Open it and go deeper underground, down a narrow straight staircase with exactly 26 steps. There you can see a horrible mess of upturned chairs and tables. Candle wax, traces of a fire whose ambition was stifled.
The floor is covered by an incredible mass of papers of all kinds: administrative letters, ledgers, notebooks leafed through by hands that for seven months had been searching frantically for the secret that good fortune had turned over to me. In the most remote room, I found the documents that establish that Hitler wanted to remain, whatever happened, Master, against all odds, even despite the events. The small French group made a major historical discovery without realizing it.
However, more than 70 years later, a French collector, an enthusiast for this dark page of history, acquired Commandant Raymond Rose's documents. At one point he picked up the documents which were on a wardrobe and brought them back. I'd say it was just after that that we realized the historical significance of these documents.
So he asked for permission to keep them, which was granted, and he kept these documents all his life. I don't think he had the benefit of historical hindsight. To him, it was a much more emotional act because, in a way, he was an actor in history.
To understand the incalculable significance of the historic documents, we must revisit the story of the final days of Adolf Hitler. Mid April, with the Red Army no more than 100 kilometers from Berlin. The remnants of the German division's, around half a million men and 900 tanks were retreating before the Russian steamroller.
Across 200 kilometers, the front was yielding. The Reich was on its knees, and the Allied bombers were battering Berlin. Every ten days brought a daytime raid by the Americans, but every night, harassment raids by the British mosquitoes.
This meant people were constantly under staircases and in cellars, busy taking refuge in the shelters, Hitler, like the other 3 million Berliners. So everyone was exhausted. In fact, that's why the British stepped up the raids.
At one point, the bombing became so great that he decided to move out. So he moved into the bunker for good. For the desperate Germans, the wait for the final act of the tragedy seemed interminable.
The radio aired the last live broadcast of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the finale of Richard Wagner's The Twilight of the Gods. Hitler locked himself away in his shelter, a few hundred meters from the Brandenburg Gate under the gardens of the Chancellery in the central government district. From this bunker, he directed the final military operations.
For a better visualization of the plans to the Chancellery, and Hitler's bunker, they have been reconstructed in 3D. What's known as the Führer bunker was built on two levels. The first in 1936 under part of the Chancellery of the Reich.
The second level was built in 1943 and 44, when it became clear that the ceiling thickness of 1. 6 meters was not enough to resist the most powerful American and British bombs. The bunker was a construction of relatively small dimensions.
Living space had been sacrificed to robustness. It was an absolutely massive, concrete formwork. Hitler wanted to be sure that he could stay in Berlin and control events from there.
He was always afraid of being away from Berlin, probably ever since the attempt of July 1944 to overthrow the Nazi government as well as assassinate him, and Berlin was going to be the central power. Hitler and Albert Speer, his architect and minister of armaments, thought of everything for the bunker. The Führer had to be able to live there for some time with his guards, safe from any air attack.
[German spoken audio] In this part of the bunker, Hitler had planned or ordered a space, separate from the rest. A private apartment of four small rooms. In the other part of the bunker there were more rooms, but no privacy.
Hitler had reserved three absolutely tiny rooms for himself, and an adjoining room for his mistress, Eva Braun, with both sharing a small bathroom. There was also a small meeting room, where twice a day Hitler would attend meetings to review the military situation with his senior advisers. The bunker was a cellar buried seven meters underground.
Special adjustments were made for the comfort of Hitler and his entourage. There's obviously a gloomy atmosphere. The place itself is absolutely dismal.
The concrete formwork bunker was situated on the water table of the River Spree, which flowed nearby. So it's a place that constantly oozes down. The ground is pumped continuously, and it is cold.
There is a mechanical ventilation system, and you can hear the fan all the time and it gives you a headache. It is really a sordid place. In this setting, Hitler was not at his best.
He issued contradictory orders. Dr Morell, his physician, gave him a daily injection of glucose and vitamins, and he was taking a number of drugs. Any of the officers who saw Hitler at that particular time, and I've interviewed a number of them, were shaken when he returned to see what a state he was in.
His hands were shaking, he looked absolutely white. He looked as if he was at least 10 to 15 years older than he really was. They were appalled, and also worried about his mental stability.
You can see he was very rundown, and actually in the advanced stages of Parkinson's disease. He was bent over, dragging his feet, he couldn't control his left arm. So he has to hold it with his right hand because of the spasmodic shaking.
Hitler had a staff of around 30 to keep the bunker ticking over. He was served by his personal guards, the bunker technicians, and the communications personnel. What you have here is the final gathering of the Reich.
In other words, Goebbels, who moved his family into the bunker, Bormann, the indispensable personal secretary, and the secretaries. Against Hitler's will, his secret companion joined him in the bunker. In the private collection we found were two extremely important letters from Eva Braun.
Here are the originals. This is the first time they've been shown, her last two letters. The first is dated April 19th, 1945, addressed to her best friend, Herta Schneider, who stayed in Bavaria.
The secretaries and Ishoot every day with handguns, and we're already so proficient that no man dare compete with us. I spent virtually my entire life within that air raid shelter. You can imagine how hard it is to sleep.
However, I'm very glad to be close to him just now. Finally, she says, I shall stay with him. That's the tragedy of Eva Braun, being an extremely romantic little girl who was much younger than him and who throughout the affair with Hitler, was scared of one thing only, losing him.
In fact, she attempted suicide at the start of their relationship. Hitler got scared and kept her. So for her, this, in a way, formalizes the relationship, the fact of showing that she will remain by his side till the end.
This letter also gives us key information on Hitler's mood on the eve of his 56th birthday. This letter's interesting, as it shows the atmosphere in the bunker. We can still see a glimmer of hope.
Not a day goes by when I'm not begged to take refuge at the Berghof in Bavaria, but up to now, I've always won. Today, all communication is impossible, but I'm deeply convinced that everything will come right again, and he is more hopeful than ever. Yet at 3:00 on the morning of April 20th, a mournful siren rang out, a siren that Berliners had not heard before, a signal to all that a new ordeal was about to begin.
Red Army tanks have been sighted in the suburbs. April 20th was indeed a key moment symbolically as it was Hitler's birthday, and as the Soviets began to invade Berlin. So the problem for Hitler was whether to remain in the city or flee.
From the 20th, it became a pressing problem as the threat of being surrounded increased, and the last wall of troops collapsed. What to do? Run, or fight?
At 3:00 in the afternoon that day, Hitler made his last trip outdoors. Atop the bunker steps in the Chancellery gardens, he received the birthday wishes of an SS delegation. Hitler received in particular, a delegation of the Hitler Youth, the youngest reserves in his Army.
These were the children who were being sent into the front line to die defending Berlin. He wanted to honor and reward the bravest amongst them. Hitler's left arm was seized by the shakes.
He shook everyone's hand, patting the cheek of the young people he was sending to their death in the anti-tank units. The youngest was 11, the age that children changed schools from junior to secondary. He's really small, around 1.
4 meters, and he's in a Hitler Youth uniform. At 4:00 PM, just before the military briefing, the Führer received birthday wishes from the senior officials of his party. Himmler, Ribbentrop, Bormann, Dönitz, Keitel, Jodl, Speer, and Göring.
All his faithful were there, offering congratulations, but Hitler accepted it all very grudgingly, as he was quite obviously not in the mood to celebrate his birthday. I think that the 20th of April, in 1945 was probably one of the most grotesque birthday parties one could ever imagine. Here you had Göring that morning who had blown up his famous chateau of Carinhall to make sure that the Russians could never have it, and then all of his looted treasures, the pictures an all, were taken in a convoy of Luftwaffe lorries down to the south.
Then he turns up, and he arrives along with Keitel, and all the other Nazi leaders. Most of them, of course, were desperate to have permission to leave Berlin because they knew the city was doomed. Many of them tried to persuade Hitler to leave, not so necessarily to save him, but purely so as to give them the permission to leave themselves.
That day, his mistress, Eva Braun gave him a gift, a signed photograph. We found her present. It's an exceptional piece, never revealed to the public, with a remarkable story attached.
For years after the war, the photograph and its frame remained with Eva's sister, Gretl. Only when the Braun family disposed of it, did a sharp-eyed amateur make the discovery. This dedication is the unique physical evidence of Eva Braun's love for Hitler.
All other documents, like their personal correspondence, were destroyed in the final days of the war. She gives him a dedicated photograph of herself in a silver frame that in fact, bears her monogram, a club that was designed by Albert Speer. The photo bears the following inscription "To my Führer, from your faithful, Eva.
" This is very revealing of Eva Braun's mentality and of what she's looking for, as she doesn't use his name, but rather to "my Führer," which implies a political importance, and more especially, she uses the word faithful. It's a time when everyone is beginning to go on their own way, and she wants to mark her faithfulness to Adolf Hitler and the fact that she has returned. Hitler accepted the gift from she who had joined him in his darkest hours.
He had turned Eva Braun into a state secret for the simple reason that he thought he, the leader of the German people, could under no circumstances take a wife, as it would drive all the other women who wanted to be with him to despair. At the same time, he owed it to his country, to what he considered the notion of his country not to take a wife, and that's why it had become an absolute secret. He refused to seek refuge in the Alps, where the elite troops were posted.
Everyone urged him to go to Bavaria, to the so called Alpine Fortress, where major fortifications and bunkers had been built, in the Obersalzberg region. The German propaganda tried to convince the Allies they were setting up an alpine hideaway, where fanatical elements of the SS could hold out on the Allies for a long time yet. None of it existed, it was just a bluff.
But it was propaganda that Eisenhower evidently believed, and it had a major military impact as a large part of the American forces were sent south towards Munich and the Alps instead of heading east. Hitler knew there was no Alpine hideaway. He knew he was putting off the evil day and decided it was better to die in a staged Wagnerian apocalyptic scene in Berlin surrounded by his last few troops.
Speer had given him the idea, a very cinematic idea that the Götterdämmerung in Berlin, would be dramatic, while in Berchtesgaden, it wouldn't have any of the same dramatic quality. Against the advice of all his staff and those close to him, Hitler decided to stay in Berlin. Victory or death.
His last battle would take place in his capital. The birthday ended that night with the final Allied air raid on Berlin. Early in the morning of April the 21st, for the first time since the start of the war, Soviet artillery shells rained down on the stunned city.
This was the scenario that nobody had planned, a battle for Berlin. It was obvious that Hitler wanted to make a kind of sequel to Stalingrad. He remembered, as did Goebbels, who he saw every night, and who constantly reminded him of this precedent, that eventually, a major urban battle may cause a turning point in the war.
Stalin, in agreement with Hitler, decided that symbolically, taking Berlin did make sense. He who took Berlin for posterity and for eternity would be the real victor over the Reich. After the shelling, the various Soviet army units began to surround Berlin.
They were ten kilometers from the city center. The first Soviet soldiers entered the center of the German capital. Stalin named the Reichstag as a symbolic target.
At this stage of the Russian advance, Hitler was not yet his priority. Moreover, Soviet intelligence services did not know where Hitler was. He might have already fled.
In fact, he was there, a few meters underground in the bunker, trying to plan a counter-offensive. Everything was changing from one moment to the other, and of course, the briefings themselves dealing with the forces lacked no connection with reality. I mean, Hitler once again was looking at the maps, was saying that's an army, that's a division, or whatever, when, in fact, they just consisted, often, of very few men.
Holed up in his bunker. Hitler still had three army corps around Berlin, General Busse's Ninth Army in the Southeast, the Steiner unit to the north and the 12th Army to the southwest of the city. They had no armored vehicles, and no anti-tank guns.
There were mainly young soldiers, very enthusiastic, who were prepared to fight to the end, but simply didn't have the weaponry. The idea that somehow the 12th Army could join up with the Ninth Army coming from the East, and make a combined counterattack against the Russians was, again, typical of Hitler's fantasy. Hitler continued giving orders, as if these three forces could engineer some kind of concentric movement that allowed them to counter-surround the Soviet armies.
No counter-offensive worked. The Germans were retreating in all areas. Hitler didn't understand why troops he was moving on a map weren't breaking through.
That day, for the first time in ages, Hitler lost his composure in front of everyone. He threw a tantrum shouting, "I give up, everything is lost, this is the end! " That was when everyone around him realized he had no solution, no plan, no hope, and that everything really was lost.
Eva Braun shared her despair with Hitler. She described it in this exceptional document. Also revealed for the first time.
her last letter, written April the 22nd, was addressed to her best friend, Herta Schneider. These will probably be my last lines, and my last sign of life. I don't dare write to Gretl, so break it to her gently.
They both decided to commit suicide. That was already very important, as Hitler didn't announce it to his entourage on April the 22nd. They'd announce it later.
In any case, she fully explained in the letter why both of them were set on suicide. "I shall send you my jewelry and ask you to distribute it according to my will. " "I can't describe to you what I feel" "and what I suffer personally for the Führer.
" "I cannot understand how everything can just end in this way," "but we cannot believe in any God. " "I fear that the end is nigh, I shall die as I have lived. " "Keep this letter to yourself until you hear of our fate.
" "I know I'm asking a lot of you, but you are courageous. " She says she will send her jewelry at the same time and asks her to ensure that her will… She had made a very clear, and very detailed will. She asked her to ensure that her will was executed down to the very last detail.
This letter, the Will, and Eva Braun's jewels left for Bavaria that same day. Meanwhile, on the evening of the 22nd, Hitler made a declaration to the members of his staff, which included Göring's Representative. I'm handing over the reins now, it's over.
My successor can see to it. Göring can do it. In 1939 and 1941, Marshal Göring had been appointed the potential successor by decree, but in order to be applied, the decrees required the Führer's signature to make them official.
Hitler's words were reported to Göring, installed in Bavaria, where he had taken refuge with part of his staff and one of his advisers, Hans Lammers. Cautious, Göring, the heir apparent, was at first dubious. Is the Fuhrer's decree naming me his successor in 1939, and again in 1941, is it still valid?
Has he issued another since? Lammers said, "No, if there had been one, I'd have known. " "So, it's still valid.
" They examine it. He thinks about it and he says, "If the Führer did say that and I'm the next in line," "what do we do? " Hermann Göring took time to think about it.
He was torn between his delusions of grandeur and the prospect of committing a huge political mistake. He decided to sleep on it. In Berlin, the bombing continued.
At dawn on April the 23rd, taking all kinds of risks, Albert Speer, architect and Hitler's minister of armaments, returned to the capital and was admitted to the bunker. Eva Braun was happy, thinking that now she'd managed to persuade the Führer to leave. She was sadly mistaken.
Hitler made his fortune as an architect, gave him access to the highest offices of the state, but it took courage to come and bid farewell. Hitler gave him a fairly cool reception, but understood. Hitler wasn't stupid.
He could see everyone around him was bailing out. Albert Speer bade farewell to the man he admired, but also had a confession to make, of his own disobedience. Speer had not applied Hitler's terrible order, requiring the total destruction of the Reich infrastructures before the Red Army and the Allies arrived.
Speer was deeply hurt that Hitler didn't, at least, show him a little bit more affection or interest and didn't even show any interest when he confessed to virtually an order, an act of treason. Here we find, in this final moment, an echo of the special relationship between the two men. Speer wanted to tell him.
At the same time, he wanted to see one last time, the man about whom he felt very strongly. Hitler saw perhaps, in Speer, a kind of son he never had, which explains this lack of reaction, his passivity to what Speer had said. Others had been executed for much less.
Hitler let him go. In the afternoon of April the 23rd, 1945, Hermann Göring finally reached his decision. He wrote to Hitler at 5:43 PM.
"Fuhrer, do you agree, following your decision" "to remain at your combat post in the fortress of Berlin," "that I should assume the leadership of the Reich with full powers," "both internally and externally? " Göring was thinking… In fact, he'd already made quite a few contacts to try and kickstart peace talks. Göring wanted to be seen as the man who brought peace to Germany, and he sent a telegram to Hitler in the bunker, in which he said, that if Hitler hadn't shown any sign of life before 10:00 PM on April 23rd, Göring would take that to mean he was the new chancellor and Hitler was no longer in a position to issue commands.
This telegram and all the following correspondence, were taken from documents discovered in Hitler's bunker by Commandant Rose. In all, 13 original letters and telegrams of historical significance that now allow us to precisely reconstruct the final, extremely tense exchange between Hitler and Göring. Then he sent a second telegram, this time to Ribbentrop, and probably Keitel too, saying, "If the Führer doesn't answer," "come and join me in Berchtesgaden," "which means, I'm taking over.
" He has absolutely no sense of being disloyal to Hitler. He is reacting to a situation where Hitler is no longer in a position to govern Germany. Were he to replace him, it would to him be only temporary.
Whatever Göring's intentions, this second message would cost him dearly. When it was handed to Hitler, he was with Goebbels and Bormann, Göring's sworn enemies. He had underestimated, of course, the way that this would play immediately into the hands of his deadly enemy Bormann who immediately presented it in such a way to Hitler, that Hitler could only see it as outright treason.
Hitler was, by that stage of the war, absolutely convinced that the only reason why they were losing was because he'd been betrayed all around. The same evening, Hitler sent a scathing reply to Hermann Göring. "The decree only comes into force when I ratify it.
" "There can be no question of my being stripped of freedom of action. " "I, therefore, forbid you to take any action of any kind. " Signed, Adolf Hitler.
On the recommendation of Bormann, his personal chief of staff, Hitler had Göring arrested. At 56 minutes past midnight, on April the 24th, Göring replied in a long telegram in which he denied any ulterior motives. "I've done nothing while awaiting your reply," "and stand ready to serve you.
" "May God protect you. Your faithful, Hermann Göring. " "I beg you not to order Frank to arrest me.
" "I give you my word of honor that I strictly obeyed your orders. " Late in the morning of the 24th, Hitler dictated another telegram to Göring. "This personally signed telegram was unequivocal.
" "Your actions constitute betrayal of a national cause," "and such conduct, high treason, deserves the death penalty. " "Taking into consideration your great services in the past," "I offer you a chance to resign, citing a serious illness as a reason. " "I command you to answer immediately, yes, or no.
" In the minutes that followed, Göring answered yes, to the Führer's demand. He resigned all his offices for health reasons. This marked the succession to power, of a shadowy character called Martin Bormann, his secretary since Rudolf Hess had flown to Britain in 1941.
Bormann gave free reign to the hatred he felt for certain personalities, in effect, flexing his newfound muscles. Göring was devastated, but that wasn't enough for Bormann. Bormann, who had his own communications center in the bunker, took advantage of Göring's disgrace to advance his pawns.
Without informing Hitler, he gave a final order to the officer charged with watching him. Bormann ordered him to execute them all once Berlin had fallen. This scenario wasn't enacted because the SS major, who had been handed the mission, when Berlin did fall, thought that the killing would be pointless.
So he didn't carry out the order. Why did he say after the fall of Berlin? He knew Hitler wouldn't be alive, so he could settle his scores.
Knowing that Goebbels would follow Hitler, he thought, "If I can get rid of Göring too, that'll just leave me. " Hitler was unaware of what was going on behind his back, and to humiliate Göring even more, he stripped him of his last powers. On April the 25th, he dictated his last message to Göring, to his assistant.
"In light of your unfaithful attitude to the German people, to myself," "and to the measures envisaged, I cast you out of the party. " Personally signed by Adolf Hitler. That day, he also ordered the destruction of all his personal archives.
These documents should have been destroyed, but in the panic of the final days, they were miraculously forgotten. Hitler had burned all of his personal archives, which would include some very important correspondence with heads of state. He also burned all the military memos, and he asked his adjutant, Julius Schaub, to leave the bunker, go to Munich, and burn the archives in his apartment and in Berchtesgaden, which Schaub duly did.
There's a concern, rather like Goebbels, a concern for his posterity. The fighting drew nearer. Hour by hour, the Soviet troops advanced.
At this stage, shells were raining down constantly on the chancellery gardens, just above the bunker. A series of typewritten notes transcribing discussions between Hitler and Goebbels sheds light on the Führer's last military hopes. These documents were conserved by Heinz Lorenz, who headed the bunker's press corps and only published them recently.
"I can carry off a victory here in Berlin. " "If I obtain that, even just a moral victory," "we'll at least have a chance to save face and gain time. " "In Berlin, our success would have been a global reach.
" "Such success could only be obtained here, where the eyes of the world are trained. " "A reversal is only possible if I managed to impede the Bolshevik Colossus. " "Then others might conclude that" "the only one capable of stopping the Colossus is me," "the party, and the German state.
" All these Soviet armies were concentrically advancing towards the Reichstag, and the Chancellery, not very far away. For civilians, the ordeal was never ending. You can imagine the cellars, totally packed, no water, no telephone.
Food was becoming a dramatic problem. When a horse was killed in the street, people risked their lives rushing over to cut off a piece of meat. In the midst of this deluge of fire, a woman, a German Air Force ace, managed to land her aircraft alongside Hitler's bunker.
It was April the 27th, and confirmed Nazi Hanna Reitsch, and her lover, General Ritter von Greim wanted to see Hitler urgently. They came down into the bunker, Ritter von Greim lying on a stretcher. He had been shot in the foot as they landed.
Why did she come? To try to persuade Hitler to leave the bunker, and go perhaps, to Berchtesgaden. But nothing was to be done, of course.
Naturally, he refused. [German spoken audio] In recent days, Hitler had distributed cyanide pills to his entourage, he also gave a capsule to Hanna Reitsch, so that they could end their lives. This was also symbolic, a sign of honor to her.
He was rewarding her for her exploit. Cyanide capsule for Hanna Reitsch, and a promotion for Ritter von Greim, who was appointed commander of the Luftwaffe in place of Göring. They then left as they arrived, taking off under a hail of Soviet fire.
They escaped unharmed. Meanwhile, another Nazi dignitary was busy behind the scenes, Heinrich Himmler. He had left Berlin just after Hitler's birthday.
The minister of the interior and head of the SS offered the Allies the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Sure of himself, Himmler attempted a take over. On April the 28th, the Allies mocked him in the press.
Eisenhower refused, totally. His communique was published in the Western press. Hitler was hysterical.
The man who had orchestrated the final solution for him, was stripped of all offices. This latest betrayal by one of his closest acolytes threw him into a furious rage. Still in Berlin, but outside the bunker, SS General Hermann Fegelein was Himmler's liaison officer with Hitler.
Hitler was in a mood for vengeance, and the whole idea that Fegelein was ready to leave Berlin, that he was somehow associated with Himmler in what Hitler saw as treachery, meant that he was determined to have him shot. General Fegelein was also Eva Braun's brother in law. He was married to her sister Gretl, and Hitler had personally attended their wedding.
Eva Braun was not even prepared to beg for the life of Fegelein. She was actually horrified that he was attempting to desert, to abandon the Führer, and she wasn't going to abandon the Führer. She felt it was an act of cowardice of him to attempt to escape with his mistress.
A fact also that he was betraying her sister by being unfaithful meant that she had no pity for him. Psychologically, Hitler reeled under the blow. In a final conversation, typed and conserved by press officer Heinz Lorenz, Hitler and Goebbels half-heartedly discussed the military situation.
If only Wenck would come. I shall try to lie down for a while. I only want to be awoken if a Russian tank pulls up to the bunker.
Then I might have time to make my arrangements. Now it is my turn to obey the orders of fate. Even if I could save myself, I wouldn't, a captain does not leave a sinking ship.
Hitler and Goebbels thought that General Wenck's 12th Army was about to break through the Russian troops surrounding Berlin. The opposite happened. Barely had it arrived, than the 12th army retreated in chaos.
Rumor and false report were the people's exhaust valves. For instance, on April 28th, leaflets rained down on Berlin, announcing the arrival of the Wenck army from the Southwest. A German army coming to break the Soviets vice-like grip?
That was obviously a lie. The Wenck army was already being kicked out of Potsdam. It would never make it to Berlin itself, but people believed in anything.
After a time came apathy, fear, the desire to live one, two, three hours more. April the 29th, 1945, at 1:00 in the morning, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun, his mistress for 13 years. The only witnesses to this union were Goebbels, Bormann, and a registrar.
A marriage certificate was signed by the married couple and their witnesses. Hitler pointed out that the ceremony took place at Eva Braun's behest. Surreal, given the circumstances.
I think Hitler decided to marry Eva Braun because of all of the treason which he saw taking place around him, that her decision to come and die by his side, he felt needed to be repaid, and he knew that she wanted, above all, to be Frau Hitler. We can also see another meaning, confirmation that Hitler had understood that the game was up. Why?
Because in happier times, his view was, I have only one wife, Germany. In the name of this great principle, he refused to marry. After a glass of sparkling wine with Eva Braun, and the last handful of faithful followers, Hitler withdrew to the meeting room, and called his secretary Traudl Junge.
He quickly dictated his political will and testament without hesitation or correction. He'd learned nothing and forgotten nothing. There's still exactly the same obsessions with the Jews, exactly the same obsessions that he'd never done anything wrong.
He never made any mistakes. It had purely been the question of betrayal. We know that he was a thoroughgoing pathological anti-Semite.
I fell victim to the two faces of international Jewry. His Judeo-Bolshevik face to the East and the face of the international Jewish financiers in the West. While the final act of the Hitlerian tragedy was being played out in the bunker, the Red Army launched its last great offensive.
The Soviets stopped 500 meters from Hitler's bunker, unaware of its existence. They didn't even know whether the Führer was still in Berlin. They thought that all the high-ranking Nazis were in the parliament building, the Reichstag.
Their target was the Reichstag. In other words, he could've stayed in his bunker for another couple of days, and nobody would've been the wiser. Once the Soviets had seized the Reichstag, they expected to find the whole government there.
They didn't find it, but that was their aim. On April the 30th, in his personal will, dictated at 3:00 in the morning, Hitler announced, "My wife and I choose death to escape the shame of deposition or surrender. " "It is our wish to be cremated immediately where we lie.
" Hitler did not want to have his corpse shown as a symbol or as a trophy captured by the Russians. That's why he wanted to have his body and Eva Braun's body burnt together. I have found in the Russian archives, the paper, and one could see it was typed with the special Führer type for Hitler, describing the death of Mussolini.
Hitler was determined not to have his body strung up like Mussolini's in Italy, and wanted to have his body destroyed completely. Early in the afternoon of April 30th, 1945, after poisoning his dog, Blondi, Hitler said farewell to all his staff. He advised his assistants to head West, and urged his officers to continue the fight.
Hitler and Eva Braun withdrew to their rooms at 3:00 PM. The bodies of Eva Braun and Hitler were immediately burned in the Chancellery gardens close to one of the bunkers exits. The next day, May the 1st, Magda and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide by gunshot after poisoning their six children.
The Second World War ended as it had begun, at the behest of Adolf Hitler. For his posthumous posterity, he chose the grandiose mass finale of the Battle of Berlin. He only resigned himself to his own death at the last moment, 48 hours before Soviet soldiers entered the bunker on May 2nd, 1945, at 3:00 PM.
Military operations continued, until the signature of the German surrender on May the 7th and 8th, in Reims and Berlin. The Nazi regime lasted until May the 23rd. With the Führer departed, the pressure was off, and everything quickly ground to a halt.
Still, what became of Hitler's body? Who found it first? Smash agents found the spot covered in soil, and underneath the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.
They took them out of the ground, put them in wooden boxes because the bodies were burned, but not completely destroyed, and sent them for autopsies, and to check their teeth. Hitler had a very distinctive bridge. He hated going to the dentist.
He had a totally unique bridge, especially made for him in gold. Once the remains have been formally identified by the Soviet secret services, the mythmaking could begin. Stalin did not inform Marshal Zhukov, victor of the Battle of Berlin, of the discovery of Hitler's body.
He knew that Hitler was dead, but didn't tell Zhukov, which meant that when Zhukov, who took the Reichstag and was designated, even though Kornilov had played a part, as the victor of Berlin. When Zhukov gave the famous press conference before the world's assembled journalists, he told them, "We did not identify the body of Hitler. " "He could have flown away from Berlin at the very last moment.
" It didn't make sense because Stalin knew very well he hadn't flown away. However, the whole world retained that incredible phrase. What if Hitler wasn't dead?
What if he got away? That was the starting point for all the fantasies about Hitler's fate. For at least 30 years, Stalin's omission fueled a delusional pseudo-historical literature.
Hundreds of books, articles and testimonies, recorded sightings all over the world, particularly in Latin America. Why did Stalin fail to mention the information about Adolf Hitler's body? It was Stalin being duplicitous.
He possessed a piece of information that he wouldn't divulge because he'd use it periodically in his propaganda to leave a doubt hanging over Hitler's flight to the West. It supported his Cold War line which went, there is only one antifascist power in the world, and that is the Soviet Union. The proof is that perhaps, Hitler survived, and is being hidden by the Americans or their cronies.
It was a propaganda weapon and nothing more. What became of the bunker? Was it destroyed?
The spot where Hitler ended his days did not become a memorial for those nostalgic for the Reich. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the West found out that the former gardens of the Chancellery under which the bunker was built had become a parking lot for the residents of these apartment blocks. It wasn't until 70 years later, that a Berlin association installed these signs that provide a precise account of Hitler's last days in the bunker.
To date, Soviet authorities have still given no explanation of what was done with the remains. As for the historical documents, discovered by Commandant Rose and Bruno Ledoux, they have now been made public. They enable us to round out some fundamental aspects of the political and personal story of the 20th century's greatest criminal.
