VE Day: Madness In The Führer Bunker (Part 6)

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Decrepid, scuffy, and often completely exhausted German soldiers and officers are laying their guns down everywhere in the streets and squares and giving themselves up in droves as prisoners to our troops.

The Germans are flying white flags on many houses.

Right at this minute I see two Hitler officers walking with lowered banners and no guns from the Tiergarten park towards the Brandenburg Gate, near which there lies a pile of guns and crowds of German soldiers and officers are standing.

And that was Peter Zvelyov, who's a Red Army soldier, writing home to his parents on the 30th of April, 1945.

Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland and our sixth episode of Victory 45, Victory in Europe.

The end of the war in Europe, Jim.

Yes, yes, it is.

And this chapter is called The Death of Hitler.

Subtitle, A Single Bullet to the Head.

Yes, we just want to make it clear right at the start of this episode that that Hitler killed himself in the Firabunker.

Indisputably.

Indisputably, his brains are on the sofa, which would have meant moving to Argentina something of a challenge.

It would have done.

It would have done.

I may have been in a TV series once upon a time called Hunting Hitler.

Yes.

But I was young and I needed the money.

And they offered a very generous clothing allowance.

Fair enough.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Those sound like entirely reasonable grounds.

Now, the other thing was the other condition was I said, I'll only do it if I never have to say on screen that I think Hitler didn't kill himself in the bunker.

And they went, okay.

We'll work around it.

We'll work around it.

Anyway, so what we're going to do in this episode, we're going to follow the mayhem in the Führer bunker, you know, while the battle for Berlin is raging in the kind of last 10 days of Hitler's life.

Yeah.

But we're going to start, I think, going forward.

So we'll go forward to 10 p.m.

on Monday, the 30th of April.

And that is the moment when a lone Red Red Army soldier unfurls the Soviet hammer and sickle on the northwest corner of the Reichstag.

It's a famous picture that was recreated a couple of days later.

Yes.

Recreated a couple of days later.

They have to airbrush the watches.

Yes, because he's got like seven watches up his arm.

Take the watches off his arm.

Well, you know, why not?

If you're from, you know, Bumblefart, Soviet Union, and you come to...

I mean, this is one of the things that the Soviet soldiers all say as they get into Germany proper.

Why have these people invaded us?

They're rich.

What was it Germany could possibly have wanted from us?

Very, very good question

you know we're peasant poor in the soviet union and they've got fridges and they've got yeah i mean what they didn't realize was that rural germany was also peasant poor and didn't have enough tractors and wasn't producing enough food and had too many pigs yeah it was their problem but you know sort it out

you don't need to invade the soviet union to get that one solved you just build some more tractors and start going vegetarian like the furrow problem solved well do some boring agrarian reform which isn't half as much fun as invading actually that's an essay isn't it how the second world war could have been avoided get some tractors and have enforce some agrarian reform don't build tanks build tractors i mean it there we are the city has been sort of shattered as the two soviet armies have burrowed into it haven't they basically yes i mean we left the action in the last one and it kind of you know with koniev sort of approaching zosen the russian artillery of zukov starting to kind of rain down on the city it's also been completely pulverized of course by rf bombers yeah but the street battle is about to start but on the 30th of April you know it's kind of almost over yeah it's all over bother shouting you know then the Reichstag is you know as the crow flies you know a matter of a few hundred yards from the Reichschancellery you know it's easy walking distance yeah I mean basically now if you go from there you've got the Jewish memorial then you've got unter den Linden then you've got the gate yeah and then you've got the Reichstag yeah it's no distance at all it's a hop and a skip the Brandenburg gate rather so fighting continues after the flag has been raised because it's one of those ones where there's sort of you know, Red Army on one level, Germans on another level, people in the cellars, you know, etc.

And it's not until 1 a.m.

on Tuesday, the 1st of May, that the Red Army finally gets rid of the last pocket of SS troops that have been fighting fanatically around the Reichschancery, a little way away, and also in the area around the Reichstag.

And then there's a kind of sort of eerie silence, followed by a single rifle shot in the air, and then silence again.

So there's a kind of weird ceasefire of sorts.

And the single shot and the ceasefire of sorts is to allow General Hans Krebs, who's the latest chief of the Army General Staff, so the OKH,

to drive carefully south through the shattered streets towards a command post of General Vasily Chukhov.

Remember him when he was in Stalingrad?

Yeah, he arriving in his Jeep.

And then, of course, he's been the guy who's in charge of the main launch attack against the Zelo Heights with all the carnage that follows.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The 8th Guards Army now holds much of the southern half of Berlin, which tells you all you need to know about the Koniev-Zukhov fight, because the southern half is the direction from which Konyev was going to arrive.

Yeah.

And obviously, if 8th Guards Army's there, he can't.

And Krebs is looking for an end, isn't he?

He wants to call it off now.

Yes.

I mean, you know, two years too late, there we are.

And Chikov's up in his command post, which is a house in the Schulenbergering on the western side of the Tempelhof airfield.

You know, they're properly in urban Berlin with their headquarters, the Soviets.

So it's over if you're the Germans.

And Krebs is, I mean, he's a career soldier, isn't he?

And as the Germans do so often in this very, very last phase of the war, they make sure they're immaculately turned out for the embarrassing bit, don't they?

Yes.

He's in his leather great coat.

He has a monocle, of course.

But if you wear a monocle, does that mean you favor one eye over the other?

How do you pick the shoes?

I don't know.

It's just this affectation, isn't it?

And it just looks ridiculous.

But they kind of think it gives them a certain urbanity.

Yeah.

An authority.

And authority.

And, of course, you know, he's been leading an army that's made up of kids and old people in whatever they're wearing.

You know, armbands at best for way of uniform.

We talked about this yesterday, didn't we?

There's sort of obscenity of it all.

pressing children and old men.

And then he gets to Trikhov's command post in the early hours of the morning.

Yeah, I just love this.

You know, Trikov with his silver teeth.

That's right, exactly.

Looking like the peasant he is, couldn't be any more of a contrast, could he?

No, and he keeps him waiting till 4 a.m., which of course is going to.

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

And Krebs has been practicing his Russian, but he's brought a Latvian SS translator.

Because that's what, I mean, what's interesting that it's a Latvian SS guy.

Good luck to him in the future.

Well, exactly.

I mean, absolutely.

I mean, a lot of the SS at this stage, in the Rice Chancellor, for instance, you know, in this part of town, they're Norwegian, aren't they?

And French, and there's all the sort of European SS in the mix here, aren't there?

Yeah.

Because basically, even the Germans have have buggered off, thrown in the towel.

And Krebs has been practicing his Russian.

And he says, you're the first person to know that Hitler is dead.

Yeah.

Outside the Führerbunker.

Yeah.

Incredible.

And Chukhov, outbatting and I just goes, yeah, we already knew that.

Which he doesn't.

Of course not.

Yeah.

I mean, it's brilliant.

I mean, obviously in the last episode, all the stuff about Stalin lying about going to Berlin, lying about his intentions, lying to his officers about his intentions, lying about what he knows the Americans are doing.

Sounds like the chapter titles on the Ian Forster novel.

Very good.

Just lying to George, yeah.

Lying to George.

So then Krebs, obviously, because everything has to go up vertically in the Soviet Union, he has no autonomy.

So he calls Zhukov.

Zhukov immediately sends for his deputy, who's Vasily Sokolovsky, to go to Chukov's command post because he doesn't want Chukov taking any of the glory.

They're just all so appalling, aren't they?

And then, of course, he he has to ring stalin and stalin's asleep and they say we you know we can't possibly leave you know wake him up and he goes no no no you've got to wake him up you've got to wake him up when he does wake him up stalin goes pier we couldn't take him alive yeah where's itler's corpse yeah according to krebs zikov tells him his body were burned yeah sticking with the armando younucci yeah yeah yeah tell sokolovsky no negotiations except for unconditional capitulation with either krebs or any of others of itler's lot and don't ring me until the morning if there's nothing urgent.

It's absolutely ridiculous, isn't it?

I mean, it's absurd, isn't it?

Like, don't call me until the morning if there's nothing urgent.

Like, it's the end of the war, mate.

I think, you know, if the city actually surrenders.

It's all about who's in charge.

That's just how the Soviet Union operates, isn't it?

It's painful.

It is painful.

It is excruciating.

And, you know, there will be a contrast with how the Allies deal with things, where they just crack on and they have initiative and all that sort of thing, which is very interesting.

Go on, Jim.

So, first Chukhov, then Sokolovsky, when he finally reaches 8th Guards Army CP, tries to to pressure Krebs into surrendering the city.

Krebs is a committed Nazi and, you know, takes his ridiculous oath of loyalty to a ludicrous degree, refuses to agree anything until the Soviets recognize the new government, which is now under the command of Gross Admiral Karl Dernitz, he of, you know, the Ubert arm fame earlier on in the war.

And so Krebs is just arguing for a truce ahead of a formal surrender by Dernitz.

Yeah.

But the Russians go, absolutely no way.

You know, they know perfectly well they're just playing for time.

And what they're trying to do is get as many German troops west as possible while they can.

And Zukov's just having absolutely none of it.

Tell him, he told Topolovsky, that if Goebbels and Bormann don't agree to unconditional surrender, we'll blast Berlin into ruins.

So Krebs is allowed back to the Vürebunker with a warning that the ceasefire is going to be over by 10.15.

that same morning, 1st of May 1945.

And to reiterate, this is not the the point at which Hitler is boarding a submarine for Argentina.

We just want to make that absolutely clear.

He's not being airlifted out by Hannah Reich.

No, because his body has been burned with petrol and he would find it very, very difficult to get in the limousine.

Such a spoiler alert.

I mean, then, of course, because they haven't heard from the German leadership, the massed guns of the first Belarusian front.

And as we recorded in the previous episode, there's quite a lot of them.

Yeah, I mean, it's not like the masked band of the Grenadier Guards in the modern era, where that's like sort of 45 people.

What we're looking at is...

16,000 guns.

Exactly.

Start shelling the city.

And there's 2 million civilians in Berlin still.

So it's the 1st of May, and the battle for Berlin is still going on.

Still going.

Yeah.

But

with that beautiful drop colour intro, as they say in journalistic terms, let's return.

And I'm always struck by the lofty plans that had been for...

Back in 1937, when Albert Speer is commissioned to create Germania with a Volkshallek to hold 180,000 people and this kind of complete sort of urban re-planning that's going to sort of outdo Houseman and Paris by to the tune of kind of you know 25 times bigger and you know it's going to be the greatest thing ever and blah blah blah blah blah you know and of course it's all absolutely nonsense the only bits they make is an underpass which one can still go and see if you go down a manhole just into the edge of the tier garden.

You go down and there is this huge, massive concrete underpass with no ends.

So it's just a huge, massive concrete cavity with a sort of slightly sloping down to the bottom where there is sort of inevitably a sort of a pool of water that's collected over the last 80 years.

And then there is a proving ground, which is a sort of great big sort of concrete heavy thing to see whether the sand of Berlin can take it, which it looked like it might do, but it could take that.

Whether it could take a Volkshuller of 160,000 people is another matter.

Well, in a building a kilometre tall or whatever, I mean, it's completely mad.

It's absolutely bonkers.

And, you know, of course, the war gets in the way and it never really happens.

But there is another moment, I think, which is probably the zenith of Hitler's power, actually.

I mean, the zenith of his glory, I would say.

Yeah.

Glory years of Hitler, which is the 6th of July 1940 when he's defeated France.

You know, he's defeated the Low Countries, defeated Denmark and Norway and Europe, you know, and obviously Czechoslovakia and Austria and, you know, all the rest of it.

And it seems like Europe is prostrate at his feet and he returns back.

And it's like a sort of old Caesarean kind of Roman triumph with him parading through in his six-wheeled Mercedes and swastikas everywhere, and you know, a quarter of a million people out on the streets cheering and waving and all the rest of it.

Well, and a sense of relief in Germany.

A sense of relief, yes.

And it's a beautiful sunny day, and everything's shining, and the red of the swastikas is sort of the blood red of the swastikas is particularly vivid.

And it is a Berlin of that's gleaming and glinting, and the modern city of culture and arts and shininess and excitement and relief, and all those things you've just said.

And yet, you know, at the heart of it is total kind of malevolence and corruption and all the rest of it.

And, you know, five years on,

you know, all of that is gone.

And this is a monochrome place of destruction and darkness and all the rest of it.

Yeah.

So by the 20th of April, which is his 56th birthday, a Fuhrer birthday.

Fuhrer Gebertag, I think you find is the official title

everyone knows that it's all over yeah except the Fuhrer he's refusing to give it up and that day the plan is to fly the Fuhrer out of the capital and to continue the fight is what's been known as the Alpine Redeit so basically what he's going to do is he's going to go back to Birkesgarden, go back to the Berkhof and continue it there because after all they've got a Reichschancery and you know you still can go and see it.

It's still there in Birkesgarden.

The Alpine Redeit is a sort of triangular area between Bad Reichenhole, which is a little bit to the northwest of Berkesgarden, Birkesgarden Berkesgaden and Salzburg in Austria.

And as you can imagine, most of the people in the Führerbank are absolutely overwhelmed with happiness about this.

There's still about 50 people down there.

And they've basically been permanently housed in this concrete, ghastly mausoleum since Hitler moves back there in March.

Yeah.

And no one knows it's there beyond the people in there.

It's an unknown place, isn't it?

No, exactly.

It is a complete secret.

Germans don't know where Hitler is.

He's disappeared from making public announcements, hasn't he, since January and is essentially invisible now.

I mean, this is one of the things, isn't it?

Goebbels spends most of the previous year urging Hitler to address the public more often and engage with them more often, and Hitler won't, will he?

It's as though he knows he can't look them in the eye, is the thing.

Yeah, and I don't think he can summon up the inspiration himself to kind of...

No, you know, his traditional rhetoric is to kind of start somber

with a bad point and end with a kind of point of hope.

That's his shtick when it comes to oratory.

But how do you follow that, those rules in the current climbs you know if he's been saying anything it's been about wonder weapons to try and offer hope and the soviets are in berlin now forget about it this bunker is part of the rice chancellery complex isn't it yes this enormous kind of huge building built by speer yeah it's in the garden behind so the reichs chancellery fronts out onto voststrasse as it is now and it's this big like you know basically sort of dominates the whole week and it's just off wilhelmstrasse which is where the kind of main ministries are and then behind it is in the gardens with these walled gardens behind the Reichschamps with lots of wire and all the rest of it is the bunker and it's built in two parts so there's a four bunker which has been constructed in 1936 and covers about 300 square meters

and it's got 14 rooms of 10 square meters each but then the second part which is a little bit lower so you go down steps into second part this is strictly speaking the führer bunker yeah and this is built on hitler's orders back in 1943 after the RAF bomber command sort of make several raids on the capital you know in the autumn of 1943 and this is yes, it's 2.5 meters deeper and 8.5 meters below ground.

And it's connected by a single staircase.

Well, what's interesting about it, isn't it, is that Hitler in public likes show, doesn't he?

So he wants, you know, we were talking about the plans for Germania.

They're all about great big buildings and great big rooms and corridors and sort of like Putin's long tables and all that sort of stuff.

All that stuff, yeah.

Privately, and the Führerbunker really is kind of a private space for him, isn't it?

It's actually quite Puritan, isn't it?

It's sparse.

Yes, there is definitely a touch of the Puritan about him.

Yeah, he hasn't got gold gold taps in the bathroom and all that sort of thing.

No, it is not Trump.

No.

It's not that kind of sort of, you know, or Gaddafi.

It's not that approach to grandeur.

It's really Spartan.

I think he's feeling beleaguered and besieged, and I think there's a touch of the kind of the First World War trench bunker about it.

And I think that's going on in his head a little bit.

But I think there's also in it him going, does no one know how hard this is for me?

As part of his psychology, isn't it?

I bear the burden.

So look, I need to live underground somewhere that's bare walls and no frills.

You know, I'm suffering too, is I think what he's trying to sort of tell himself isn't he i think so and he is suffering because he's not very well and you know and it's all going all me wrong but compared to his people as it were you know that he's bearing the burden too because he's having to hide underground yes he's not koniev in his schloss at kottbus put it that way exactly and there's always self-pity in hitler's psychology of makeup and i think this is a way of sort of underlining it for himself yeah so there's no parquet flooring there's no wood panels there's no grim it's concrete it's grey you know there's ventilators pumping air in and out and you know you and i have been to enough bunkers

you know, not at least those ones in Guernsey, where you can see those old ventilators.

You know, the form, we know what they look like.

There's a room where the, you know, the motors in and the pumping air.

And yeah, it's just horrible.

And, you know, it's a bit damp.

It's just a bit miserable, you know, a bit fetid.

You know, it's grim.

Yeah.

So he's got four rooms for his personal use and that of his mistress.

Well, it's no love nest, is it?

Because he's in there with love nest.

Oh, my Fiora, you're so romantic.

You're putting me to the nicest places.

I have to look after some people.

Yeah, exactly.

Poor old Eva Brown.

Although, I don't know.

I mean, I...

Really?

She's not getting as much sympathy for me.

Well, you see, this is the thing.

I'm sure when she got in, in a way, she's a bit like Germany, isn't she?

I'm sure when she got into it, it was lots of fun.

I think she remains devoted to the end.

She does, yeah.

It's like someone who's a, you know, she's like a moonie.

You know, she's like someone in a cult.

You know, she's just absolutely,

you know, all she needed to be was to be denazified.

She could have a really good life.

Anyway, so there's room for Martin Bormann, his secretary.

For Theodore Morel, his doctor, Otto Guncher, his ADC,

and Stern Banfield Heinz Linger, his valet.

Everybody else, you know, the secretaries, bodyguards, officers, generals, they're in the foreboard.

They're next door, yeah.

Yes.

But even though they're in this sort of subterranean concrete crypt, they can hear the guns getting closer.

And on the afternoon of the 19th of April, Krebs informs Hitler that the Russian tanks have broken through to the north of Berlin.

And this prompts one of his eruptions of rage.

You know, we've all seen Downfall and Bruno Gantz doing his bit shaky hand, taking the spectacles off and all the rest of it.

Although that scene is still to come.

And he explodes at the competence of his generals and so on.

And clearly, he says there's only one thing for it.

He would have to take direct command himself.

And you can just imagine everyone in the bunker just going, oh, no.

Oh, crap.

This is absolutely awful.

I mean, the thing about that is also the idea that he isn't in direct command, actually, anyway.

They aren't running everything past him anyway.

And the thing is, I mean, his birthday, it's a special day, isn't it, in the Nazi calendar?

It's a day for street parties.

Well, yes, but the key thing is not only does he say that he's, all right, then I'll have to take command myself.

He also says, and by the way, no thought of flying to Burkesgarden.

Yeah.

And everyone's just, what?

Yeah.

You know, I thought we were going.

Yeah.

No, no, no, we've got to stay here.

So rather than celebrating in the beauty and the early, you you know, of spring of the Bavarian Alps,

instead they're staying in the kind of fetid tomb of the Führer bunker.

Which leads Martin Bormann to write in his diary on the 20th of April 1945, sadly, not exactly a birthday mood.

Which I have to say, you know, I've never been a fan of Martin Bormann, but he went up just a sort of micro-notch.

Exactly.

A grim and sad affair, says Hitler's personal pilot, Hans Bauer.

But, But you know, despite this, because he's a Fuhrer, you know, senior Nazis are trooping through

a kind of funereal atmosphere rather to sort of say happy birthday, Fuhrer.

So Himmler, Goering, Keitel, Dernitz, Ribbentrop, they all make appearances, don't they?

They all pop up, say happy birthday.

He probably says thanks very much, you know.

Rather, we weren't in the I mean, it's just the strangest thing to be bothered about someone's birthday in this situation.

Yeah, I know it's actually extraordinary.

And, you know, he's 56, but he looks 10 years older.

He's shuffling like an old man his back's bent his left arm afflicted with the shakes he can't control

vivid pale eyes that you know once burned so bright etc and now sunken deep inside his forehead and but you know in his head and all the rest of it you know the fur is absolutely knackered and he's as has been much written about theodore morrell is his doctor is giving him a kind of daily concoction of all sorts of unspeakable drugs so

yeah exactly and none of them who come in stay no no that's interesting Oh, is that the time?

I really must be getting ex-phones, Ferguson.

Yeah, happy birthday, see ya.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bye.

It's quite interesting, isn't it, that the Soviets don't control the airspace that much because people are flying in and out as much as anything else, aren't they?

Driving in and out.

Yeah, they're going out from Gattau, which is the airfield to the west.

And, you know, you take off to the west, and you're kind of pretty much safe.

Well, not safe, but I mean, you know, it's comparatively risk-free at this stage.

So, despite this, Martin Borman's still taking upon himself to send much of the Fuhrer headquarters to Reichschancellor in Birkesgarten.

So a number of them have gone.

Staff, paperwork, and all the rest of it is being flown out.

And he's still hoping to persuade Pitler to leave.

But he's not to be swayed.

I mean, it's amazing the idea that paperwork.

We must send the paperwork over.

Yeah, on a plane.

On a plane.

You know, why?

I mean, the thing is, though, I mean, for all this, there's two and a half million civilians stuck in Berlin.

They aren't being flown out with their paperwork to some redoubt.

There's only one way to save them.

Exactly.

All this sort sort of Hitlerian stuff about will and wonder weapons and hanging on and something will turn up and Frederick the Great was saved by a turn of fate and all that, you know, it's just bollocks, isn't it?

And if you're a German civilian in Berlin, the one thing these people who are responsible for this situation ought to do is simply throw in the towel and they won't.

It's bananas, isn't it?

He counter-argues to Burma and he says, you know, counter-attack might prevail.

And then he goes, no, you know, counter-attack will prevail.

And this will then buy them time and, you know, and then something with the west and something else might happen and wonder weapons and you know but the truth is that you know for hitler it's always been all or nothing it's always been thousand year armageddon there's never been any grey errors or completely black and white it always always has been yeah

so you know overnight and into the morning of the 21st of april

his birthday being the 20th of april chaos reigns of course as it becomes increasingly clear that the Red Army is out of the gate.

So Joseph Goebbels, the Reich propaganda minister and also the Reich Commissioner for Berlin, then announces that no man capable of bearing arms was permitted to leave the city.

RF bomber command is over that night, the 20th, 21st.

76 mosquitoes bringing yet more destruction.

Red Army troops of Konyev's 4th Ukrainian Front, as we said yesterday in the previous episode, have crossed the River Spree.

They're closing in on Zossen.

Knife Army is effectively surrounded.

9.30 a.m.

on the 21st of April.

That is when the massive Red Army artillery barrage begins its assault on the city.

This wakes up Hitler, who doesn't like an early start.

You know, you know, it's getting up late in the morning and going on into the night.

And of course, you know, down in a bunker, sort of 24 hours, you know, it's sort of lost its sort of normal sense of day and night.

It's just one long continuous day of which at some point you're going to do some sleeping.

So this wakes him up, unshaven and bleary-eyed.

What is going on?

It's like, duh, what do you think is going on?

Okay, one guess, Meinfuhrer.

They're guns, they're coming towards us.

Well, you know, you're that deep underground and the guns that far away are waking you up.

Surely it's time to face the music.

The thing is, although the Red Army are like completely unstoppable, this doesn't stop him plotting counter-attacks and looking at maps.

Oh, and also, you know, and Krebs says to him, you know, we need to pull back from Zossen at this point.

You know, Konyev's troops are almost upon them.

Can I do that?

And he goes, no.

Yeah.

You can't.

Yeah.

He finally relents just in the nick of time at 1 p.m.

And literally the Russians over here, Konyev's forces overrun Zossen that afternoon, the 21st of May.

I mean, it must have been a pretty short straw, isn't it, becoming the new chief of staff at this point?

I mean, what's Krebs thinking?

I know he's in the loyal nazi, but is he thinking the pension's great if I just hang on in there long enough?

I mean,

what's the incentive at this point?

It's very strange.

Well, you know, and you know, everyone's sort of suggesting pulling back.

So General Wilhelm Bergdorf, who's Hitler's chief adjutant in the Führerbach, suggests withdrawing Ninth Army to Berlin to help directly defend the city and reinforcing it with General Helmut Weidling's 56th Panzer Corps.

Hitler's having none of it.

He goes, no, 9th Army is going to restore the front on the Oda at all costs.

He looks at his map and he realizes that Hein Ricci had three SS Gemanisch Corps in reserve.

So this force, he decides, could be flung into the defense of Berlin against the northern flank of Zygog's first Belorussian.

But unbeknown to Hitler, most of the Gemanisch has already been sent to reinforce the 9th Army three days earlier.

So amongst the units hurried to the Oder was the 11 SS Nordland, made up mostly of Swedes, Finns, Danes, and Norwegians from Scandinavia.

And the Nordland has already suffered 15,000 casualties in 1945, you know, which obviously is about 100% of its strength.

Yeah.

So it's further reduced getting to the front when it gets hammered by Russian Sturmovic ground attack aircraft.

So basically, it is the third SS Gemanisch Corps into a name only.

But Hitler now rings SS General Steiner in person, who's a commander of the third SS Gemanisch Corps.

And Hitler tells him to counter-attack without delay.

You will see.

He told Steiner, the Russians will suffer the greatest defeat in history before the gates of Berlin.

And, you know, he's expressly forbidden to allow any of his troops to fall back west.

So Steiner is so dumbfounded by this.

He can barely reply, you know, because he's he's only got half-strength battalions of several hundred men each in his corps.

I mean, literally, he's got less than a thousand men.

And Hitler's now telling him to, you know, relabeling it an army group and telling him to plunge them into the first Belarusian front.

So minutes later, Steiner, when he sort of gathered his composure, calls back and speaks to Krebs, explaining that what Hitler's demanding is completely impossible.

And Krebs just repeats the orders.

Doesn't happen, though.

Yeah.

Well, because of course he's...

It can't.

Yeah.

I mean, as these attacks are going on, Bormann's trying to get hitler to leave isn't he yeah he's saying you and your senior officers you need to evacuate berlin immediately and then hitler it's quite interesting because he does start to sort of buckle doesn't he and he says i'm not going anywhere but anyone who wants to leave now is free to do so you know leave me to it but the problem is is there that's easier said than done isn't it yeah there's only four fokkerwolf condors available for the evacuation to birches garden and of course how safe is that as an option how many flights will they be able to make before berlin closes down yeah And although there are people who are also not allowed to leave, so Borman and Krebs and Goebbels and all that, they're going to stay with the Fuhrer.

And this then goes on.

The shelling continues.

On the 22nd, he's woken again early at 10 o'clock in the morning.

They hold a situation conference at four in the afternoon.

He asks for Steiner's update.

Steiner, the generals have to go, you know, Steiner, his counter-attack has not taken place.

That is the scene from Downfall, isn't it?

Yeah, that is the scene where there's silence and he kind of shaky hand takes off his round glasses.

Steiner, Steiner, which all too often is you know the playstation 3 or

but tariffs steiner never realized that so many years later he would be so famous yes and used as a meme in all sorts of extraordinary ways

we've all seen that scene but the conclusion of it is

you know hitler's saying even the ss goes behind my back and deceives me wherever they can

Now I shall remain in Berlin and die here.

Yes, the die has been cast.

Yeah, exactly.

And we'll take a quick break while Hitler polishes his pistol and prepares his cyanide.

And we'll be back shortly.

If you can't laugh, what can you do?

Well, it does feel a little like that.

Yeah.

See you in a moment.

Welcome back to We Have Ways to Make You Talk, a victory in Europe 1945.

And we left you with the tantalising possibility that Hitler was about to kill himself.

And we're not going to fail to deliver on that, are we, Jim?

We're not, but he's still got a week to go.

He's still got a week to go.

So there's a week of this nonsense.

I mean, it is extraordinary that his personality, the power of his personality, is able to get people this deep into the brink, isn't it?

It is, because it is a week of mounting despair and then flashes of ridiculous optimism and then anger and calm resignation and then totally surreal conversations and even more surreal events and of betrayals which are, you know, completely in his head and actual betrayals so yeah you know and i think this is a point you know the third right has always been built on the very flimsiest of foundations from economy to ideology and they have created a fancy world we've talked about this a bit haven't we in the past this sort of fancy world where they're just making it all up and making up these new rules and all the rest of it but the malevolence the dodgy ideology the system but it annihilation of Jews, you know, accelerating as they go towards total defeat.

You know, these all conspire against the thousand-year Reich.

I mean, it's just not going to happen because the foundations, the plan, the total nonsense just mitigates against that.

And they all reflect the man at the core of it, don't they?

I mean, the fish has rotted completely from the head, isn't it?

In this sense.

And, you know, the sort of how hard can it be?

attitude of Nazism.

How hard can it be to change the world?

Well, we need to do is have the necessary will.

Well, it's extremely difficult.

And will is nothing in the face of the opponents they've taken on, after all.

You take on three Imperiums, each larger than your own, you're going to end up in trouble, aren't you?

Well, the bottom line, you know, Third Reich's rotten at its core because it has rotten at its core.

He surrounded himself with men equally corrupted and equally full of hate, anger, and jealousies.

You know, all sounding rather familiar.

Yeah.

You know, they all loathe one another.

Of course they do because they're all jockeying for the attention of the leader.

Yeah.

You know, and jockeying for power.

Yeah.

So Goering has been asked by Joe, who is the chief of operations at the OKW, the OKW being the overcommanded Wehrmacht, which is the combined general staff, of which Keitel is head of the Wehrmacht.

So Goering has been asked by Jodel to take over the decision-making from Berkesgarden, because Goering's headed down there.

But Goering then anxiously asks for clarification and confirmation.

And he gives a time limit for a response.

But in the meantime, Berman, who absolutely loathes Goering and always has done, takes the opportunity to both poison Hitler's mind against the Reichsmarschall and also give the Führer a glimmer of hope.

Because he points Bermann points out that General Walter Wenck's 12th Army is fighting the Allies at the Elbe, but could be urgently brought to Berlin instead.

Well, no, he can't.

That's absolute nonsense.

So combined with the retreating Ninth Army, Berlin might yet be saved.

This is just absolutely ridiculous because at this point, the Ninth Army is completely surrounded and has no hope of being saved.

And we ended the previous episode with a quote from Simonov about the destruction of the Ninth Army.

So that's not going to happen.

And Wenck can't disengage himself from the Elbe.

And how is he going to to move there?

Because there's any petrol vehicles left.

But what Bormann doesn't know about military matters, he knows about pushing the Fuhrer's buttons, doesn't he?

Yes.

Because even now, what he's trying to do is deal with his rivalry with Goering rather than anything else.

And he's using this phantom strategic move to curry favour with Hitler.

I mean, these people's priorities, Jim.

That's all I'm going to say.

Yeah, yeah, it's just very odd, isn't it?

Beggar belief.

So Goering doesn't get his confirmation.

So he, as planned and as agreed with Jodel and announced he's taking over, Bormann then tells Hitler this is a terrible betrayal, which is a lie that Hitler swallows, and immediately issues orders for Goering's arrest.

Crazy.

People come and go, you know, so planes flying from Gattau to the Wester City.

Keitel and Jodel headed north to join Dernitz.

On the evening of the 23rd of April, General Helmut Weidling appears in the bunker.

So he's the commander of the 56th Panzer Corps, part of the dissicated and spattered Ninth Army.

And he's been out of communication since the 20th.

And so Hitler orders his arrest.

And actually, you know, hats off to Weidling.

He makes his way to the Führerbunker to protest his innocence.

And for once, you know, he's got Hitler in a good mood.

Hitler's kind of quite impressed by this, rescinds the arrest, and promptly puts him in charge.

You know, I think which would you rather have be arrested or take command of Berlin's defense?

But anyway, I mean, has that gone according to plan for Weidling?

That's the question.

No, not really.

But anyway, to fulfil this task, he's now got less than 100,000 Waffen-SS and Vermont troops yeah you know old men teenagers

against two and a half million red army troops flush with fuel fire and yeah obviously an immense arsenal of weaponry as we've already discussed yeah and then on the 24th spear turns up albert spear turns up and this is a very interesting encounter this because we only really have spear's word for what happened don't we yeah which after all spear from the moment the war's you know clearly lost he gets working very very hard on preserving saving his own skin and presenting a version of himself that will be digestible.

There are other accounts of him being there.

Yeah, but the conversation they have only comes from Speer, obviously, because Hitler didn't dictate his version of events without his brain from Argentina.

Let's just make that clear.

And basically, Bormann says to Speer, can you please persuade Hitler to leave?

And Speer says...

And Bormann and Speer hate each other as well.

No, they loathe each other.

Of course they do.

I mean, all of that's priced in.

And basically, Speer says that he says to Hitler, you should stay here and end it in Berlin.

And Hitler supposedly says, you know, I mean, it's very hard to know any of the one-on-one conversations anyone has with Hitler.

And Speer is a very unreliable witness.

But anyway, Hitler says, believe me, Speer, it will be easy to end my life, a brief moment, I am freed from everything, released from this miserable existence.

I don't know.

I think that bit rings true, actually.

That does sound about right, doesn't it?

And then Speer then spends the evening drinking champagne with Eva Brown, and they've drawn the Moet from the Reich Chancellery's cellars.

And she's in a sort of end-of-term mood, isn't she?

Basically, very much so.

She says, Yeah, I've devoted my life to the Fuhrer.

I'll stay.

I've returned to stay with him, and I'll end my life with him too.

I mean, let's make no mistake, Speer at one point, is without a doubt Hitler's heir, isn't he?

I think you can say that firmly.

It's certainly a big favourite of his.

Big favourite, definitely, yeah.

You know, Hitler says they say goodbye, gets a limp handshake.

You're going then, good goodbye.

Speer thinks, brilliant, I'm out of here.

Fab.

Bye.

Thank God for that.

Yeah, you're laters yeah completely and then i mean the bitter business of the goebbels family they've decided joseph goebbels and his wife magda and their four children they move in they move into the voor bunker and they're determined she's basically saying life without hitler third reich i don't want my children growing up in that world but she's terrified of death as well yeah extraordinary and the prospect of what they do about it is absolutely eating her up i mean she's just in a total twitter about the whole thing yeah yeah yeah.

Then General Obers, Robert von Grim, arrives, who's the new commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, and the test pilot, Hannah Reich, who's, you know, a big fan of Leführer.

Von Grim's been needlessly summoned by Hitler from, I think he's up in Peenemunder, isn't he?

At the time.

And Hitler wants to tell him face-to-face that he's in charge of the Luftwaffe, although there isn't really a Luftwaffe anymore.

So they only reach the bunker by landing a Faisler stalk on the wrecked gun runway at Gatto, which is now kind of basically overrun.

Yeah.

Because it's not sort of big sweep across the city.

It's they're surrounding it.

They are coming from the west, but they're surrounding it and then infiltrating.

So it's kind of like closing in on it.

Like if you think of Berlin as a center, the German defense is getting smaller and smaller into the kind of sort of central to western side of it.

Anyway, Gattau has gone.

Von Grim is wounded in the foot by a bullet fired at them as they'd headshopped him to the city.

And they eventually reached the bunker around 6 p.m.

on the 26th of April.

So later that evening, Hitler tells Wright that she should die along him and gives her a file of silence.

She's like,

she bursts into tears and pleads him to leave.

I'll fly you out.

I'll fly you out.

She says, you know, which has got conspiracy theorists going ever since.

But he says this isn't possible.

He said, by staying, I thought all the troops of the country would follow my example and come to the aid of the city.

I hope they would make superhuman efforts to save me and thus save my three million compatriots.

I mean, you know, it's grand delusion bonkers.

Well, and also what's beginning to enter into that is the idea that Germany isn't up to the task he set it that their will isn't good enough i thought they'd follow my brilliant example i mean what of hiding i mean it's the other thing it's that what example is he setting here none no one knows he's there no one knows where he is it's the purest fantasy and then the next betrayal of course is a true one is someone who actually does do something that well he does what okay so this is over gruppenfjord herman figerlein who is hitler's ss liaison officer and he has married essentially his brother-in-law essentially his brother-in-law yeah yeah yeah he's married eva brown's sister gretel and the truth of the the matter is is that hitler said anyone he wants to leave can leave so he thinks great i'll leave then but he doesn't tell anyone he just does it on the sly that's the big the big difference and hitler says anyone can leave apart from those who i might change my mind about the following day and he's noticed on the 27th of april that he's not there and so hitler goes where's fagelein i want him back so erich kempke who's hitler's chauffeur knows Fegeline has gone to this flat in Schlottenburg and so hurries to fetch him and when he gets there he finds him with another woman some sort of you know auburn-haired woman who's wearing civvy clothes bags packed and a stash of money he's also pissed and so before heading back with chempke rings eva braun and pleas her to intercede but she says no yeah so fagelein is brought back under arrest and put in a guarded room until he's sobered up then comes the news via reuters radio report that himmler's offered to surrender to the allies which he has again an act of grand delusion because as though the Allies are going to deal with him, Himmler, the head of the SS, you know, forget it.

So initially, Hitler takes this quite calmly, but then, you know, as is his way, he kind of broods on it and works himself up into a kind of increased lava.

Yeah.

You know, the refusal of Steiner to counter-attack, the flight of Fagelin, the news of Himmler, you know, as far as he's concerned, it's all added up.

The SS have betrayed him.

This is treason, you know.

So Himmler's out of reach, but Fagelin isn't.

He's in a cell in the bunker and has now sobered up.

So he's given a perfunctory court-martial by Bergdorf and taken out a shot.

And that's that.

Yeah.

Good luck, Charlie.

Complete summary justice.

I mean, the thing is, is the Red Army are now in Potsdamer Platz.

Literally just across the way.

You know a few hundred yards away.

Yeah exactly.

So I mean the other side of Piccadilly Circus.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Leicester square to Piccadilly Circus type distance.

I mean really no distance apart and after Fegeline's been bumped off Hitler gets his valet and Schoenbanfuhr Heinz Linger and he says I want you to have two blankets ready and enough petrol to cremate two bodies.

We're going to do it.

We're going to kill ourselves.

He says to Linger and I want you what I want you to do is once we've done it, take the bodies up into the Rice Chancellor garden and burn them.

Set fire to them.

And burn them and make sure you burn them good.

Yeah,

and Linger says, Jarvalmeinführer.

Yeah, okay.

The problem is, he's got to find the fuel.

That's kind of easier said than done at this stage of the war.

You know, when you're completely surrounded by the Red Army, you haven't got any fuel anyway.

Well, and also, given that

if you've listened to this podcast for as long as we've been doing it, the one thing the Germans are always short of is fuel.

And here it is, right?

This is the moment where they really do need it.

They do need it and they haven't got it as ever.

Yeah.

Well, you know, they have to go and pilfer the garages under the Reich Chancery and, you know, siphon it out of tanks and stuff.

Siphon it out, yeah.

Anyway, obviously, the only people who actually want to die in the bunker are Hitler, Eva Brown, and the Goebbels, or rather, Magda and Joseph Goebbels, not their kids, you know, and everyone else wants to get out and survive.

But there's a sort of terrible surreal atmosphere in the bunker.

And so there's a sort of afternoon tea in the bunker on the 28th of April where, you know, everyone was sort of talking about what's the best way to commit suicide.

And, you know, it boils down to two, you know, bullet to the head or cyanide yeah and then it's agreed that it should just be individual preference

but before death there's going to be a wedding yeah and hitler's always been very clear with eva brown that you know he just can't marry her because he's already married to the german people the lucky volk i mean that's boy band logic isn't it i can't have a girlfriend because it'll upset the fans i mean that's like being in westlife yeah i mean it's very strange horrendous but anyway you know it's the end of his life and he feels he's now free to do so after all and he knows that she wants this and he is grateful to her for her loyalty and all the rest of it.

She's come back to Berlin to be with him.

So they get married and Goebbels and Bormann are witnesses.

Champagne and sandwiches are served for the bride and groom and guests.

Can you imagine?

And everyone who sees Eva agrees she's been absolutely radiant.

And afterwards, Heinz Linger makes a great play of calling her Frau Hitler.

Her eyes lit up.

She gave me a happy smile and for a moment laid her hand on my forearm.

Moment of intimacy.

So it's now Sunday the 29th of April.

And Hitler and his new wife are going to be married for barely 36 hours.

Yeah, they're going on a honeymoon in hell is the truth.

That's what it comes down to.

I mean, you know, let's be clear.

He doesn't go to South America.

Hannah Reich doesn't fly him out, although she does leave.

Von Grim managed to escape in an Arado 96 on the 28th of April.

So this is a Luftwaffe trainer plane that's been kept on a tarpaulin near the Brandenburg gate.

And amazingly, they managed to go down the Schlottenberger-Chussy, which is that long road that goes down with the Reichstag on the right as you're looking west and goes from the Brandenburg gate and they managed to sweep out you know without being shot I mean that is a miracle yeah but anyway Hitler's still there and you know he doesn't shave off his moustache and all the rest of it and it's worth pointing out here that those rumors about him being seen in South America they are spread by the post-war Soviet KGB Secret Service purely to wind up the British and Americans and to test the response.

It's the whole point of of it.

So we all go, yeah, but you know, there are these reports, these CIA reports of it.

They're just responding to the disinformation campaign that the KGB are posting.

There's nothing more to it than that.

Well, and they're duly investigated in order to show.

Yes, and that is what they all conclude.

But they're investigated for due diligence reasons, not because.

Yes, and the conclusions of their due diligence are that there's nothing in it.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So what the conspiracy theorists always say is, oh, look, there's this note from the CIA.

It's like, yeah, but look what they were writing, you know, next Tuesday.

Yeah.

And then you've you got the complete picture, but there it is.

Conspiracy theorist.

Obviously, doesn't want his theory to be deconspired.

Disrupted by the truth.

So he then dictates his last will and testament on the 29th.

And that's, you know, the Jews started it.

I did what I could.

The German people have failed to deliver.

Turns out maybe they're not the master race after all, because they've failed when I put them to the test.

It's an absolutely obscene document.

It's a really, really horrible thing.

Who it's for, posterity will judge me, all that sort of crap.

But he, you know, he gets that out of his system.

I mean, the other thing is, everyone's armed in case the Soviets burst in.

That's how close they know, you know, and Borman, Krebs, and Bugdoff.

They're all in the Führerbunker.

They're in Hitler's rooms.

Yeah.

So he sleeps fully dressed on his bed.

And then he speaks to there's a telephone conversation with Weidling, which confirms that Berlin is lost, although the fighting continues.

And then Hitler decides that he needs to test the cyanide capsules.

He's worried that they won't work.

So he tests them on his dog, Blondie.

You know, so so that's that dealt with.

Blondie dies in convulsions soon after.

Yeah.

They eat a last meal, in which Hitler gives a monologue that's along the same lines as his political will and testament, which is kind of like, you know, the post-war world will in the end come round to realizing I was doing the right thing.

History eventually, blah, blah, blah.

You know, in the long term, he thinks he'll be treated justly.

I mean, it's, you know.

It's just cock, isn't it?

Yeah, more cock, yeah.

Then what happens is Hitler and Eva, they retire to kill themselves.

Yes, there's a bit of debate about the precise time.

Yeah.

It seems likely it's around 3.15.

Because there's different reports from the various people that survived the bunker and there are a lot on them.

Yeah.

They get captured by the Soviets, so they get interrogated over and over and over again.

That all gets written up.

Then they eventually get released from gulags ten years later.

They kind of write their memoirs.

So there are a lot of accounts of these days, which is why we have such precise details of what's going on.

And the bottom line is, though, what time he kills himself?

Who cares?

I mean, you know, it it doesn't really matter.

The point is, he does.

Yeah.

I mean, the Soviets make them reenact it after the war, don't they?

They make them reenact the entire thing to watch their reactions and, you know, to try and divine if they're lying and all this sort of thing.

Heinz Linger, who's his valet, is generally considered to be a pretty reliable witness.

And Hitler says to him, Linger, I'm going to shoot myself now.

You know what you have to do.

I've given the order for the breakout.

Attach yourself to one of the groups and try and get through to the West.

And then Linger asks him what he should now fight for.

And Hitler goes, for the coming man linger salutes shakes his hand closes the door to him yeah none of them hear the shots but they do smell the cordite and so he then calls on bormann and the two men with gunsholling who's his adc isn't he yeah they go into the rooms where they find both eva and hitler dead on the sofa blood spattered on the carpet so eva's contorted face shows that she's died by cyanide while Hitler has put a single bullet through his right temple.

Yeah.

So personal preferences discussed at the table.

So Bormann goes to get help.

Linger lays out the blankets and places each body onto them and wraps the cloth around them.

It's Bormann who carries Eva out of the room before Kempke, who's the chauffeur, insists on taking her himself because he knows how much Eva Brown hated Bormann and didn't like the idea of him carrying her to be cremated.

So Linger takes Hitler's head and shoulders.

Two SS bodyguards lift his body.

Both corpses are then taken out of the bunker and they are laid in a shallow depression where there has been a shell crater.

They douse them with the plenty of fuel that the Linger does manage to have ready.

There's a strong wind that whips it up and their first attempts to throw a light on the bodies fails.

Russian artillery is thundering, shells are falling nearby and so they're all getting a bit panicky about this.

So Linger hurries back into the bunker and makes a thick wick from fuel soap paper and back outside he then lights it and throws it onto Hitler's body.

And Linger reckoned that both bodies were still smoldering at 7:30 that evening.

The problem is that fuel doesn't burn at a very high temperature.

No, no, petrol doesn't.

Which is why you need coal-fired ovens and you know, or now electricity for crematorium.

Yeah.

And later, the carbonized remains are buried at the bottom of a shell hole crater

the following morning and sort of lightly covered with soil.

So it is now Tuesday, the 1st of May.

And Magda and Joseph Goebbels have planned to kill themselves the previous day, but then they they lose their nerves.

And Magda is just beside herself at this point, but both still determined they should die.

And their six children should be spared the world that would surely follow.

So the secretary still in the bunker plead with them to save the kids and, you know, and offer to look after them.

But the parents, you know, are having none of it.

They just think they've all got to go.

And so 6 p.m.

on the 1st of May, Hitler's physician, his other physician, Dr.

Ludwig Stumpfegger, administers a sleeping draught and cyanide to each of them.

And having murdered the six children, Joseph and Magda then take cyanide.

They don't shoot themselves, they take cyanide.

Yeah.

So that bit is wrong in the downfall.

Yes, where they go out and shoot one another, don't they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that doesn't happen.

They take cyanide.

Their bodies are also taken out and burned with the remaining petrol that's left, but there isn't enough, really.

So they do a pretty poor job of it.

And it makes the discovery of their bodies subsequently much easier to do.

Anyway, around 11 o'clock that night, the breakout of the bunker begins.

The survivors split themselves up into groups and leave at different times linger teams up with kempke and they escape the right chancery area by tunnels under the government district some make it most don't most get picked up by red army troops yeah so borman is killed while scampering along the railway tracks near the leter station in the early hours of 2nd of may and his body's discovered in sort of renovation work isn't it yeah exactly where witness saw it yeah yeah so no he didn't go to south america there was someone claiming to be martin borman in south america but it wasn't him and then wedling finally surrenders the city unconditionally at half past eight in the morning on Tuesday, May the 2nd.

I mean,

should have done that a fortnight sooner, but there we are, 18 months sooner.

I mean, anyway, it's not quite the end of the Third Reich, though, because after all.

No, it absolutely isn't.

And actually, in the next episode, we're going to stick largely with the German perspective, the ongoing battle for Berlin, because although the Battle of Berlin is sort of slightly over on the 2nd of May, it kind of sort of isn't.

And there's all the shenanigans about what's going on with the surviving German government and Dernitz and Wilhelm Keitel.

And you've also got what's going on in Berlin as the Red Army swarms over it and the discovery of the bodies and or not discovery of the bodies or all the rest of it, all of which is quite thrilling.

So that is what we'll be doing in episode seven in our next episode.

Yeah.

And if you want to listen to all these in one delicious slab, I mean, if you've got a long drive, you're laughing or a long train journey, or maybe you want to be alone and listen to the story of the end of the Third Reich, then you can subscribe on our Apple channel which you'll get everything ad-free or better still go to our Patreon we have ways to make you talk patreon where you'll get this you'll get ticket offers on we have ways fest the people who are our patrons they jumped the queue they were offered the tickets first yeah you'll get tidbits bits and pieces from us a newsletter what's going on with the podcast and there's audio books on there and a whole host of stuff as we've gone over the years so if you could subscribe to the patreon that'd be fantastic or if you just want ad-free go to our apple channel and i mentioned the festival We will see you, we hope, at We Have Ways Fest, V for Victory, putting the fun into fun

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We would love to see you there.

Tanks, Talks, and like-minded, afflicted Second World War idiots.

Thanks very much for listening.

We will see you soon.

Cheerio, Cheerio.