I Was Hitler's Chauffeur by Erich Kempka

Author:Erich Kempka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027100; HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781781599723
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2010-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

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* Most likely the 11th SS-Panzergrenadier Division Nordland, which consisted predominantly of Scandinavian volunteers and took part in the battle for Berlin.

Chapter 11

My Escape from Berlin

WHEN I RECOVERED MY senses after an unknown period of time I was still blinded by the stab of flame from the explosion. Immediately I feared that I had lost my sight. I felt around me with my hands. My consciousness began to return. Apparently the explosion threw me into the ruins of the houses along the street. I was still unable to see, so I crawled about forty metres until I reached an impassable obstruction. I felt my way along a towering wall. I was back at the barricade from where the effort to break through had originated.

Gradually I began to see shapes again. I remained crouched at the barricade entrance. After some time I was able to make out my surroundings and saw a blurry figure. I recognized Hitler’s second pilot, Flugkapitän Georg Beetz. To my horror, I saw that a shell splinter had torn open his skull from forehead to the nape of the neck. He told me it must have happened when the panzer blew up, the same explosion that had tossed Bormann, Naumann, Stumpfegger and myself into the air.

Arm in arm for mutual support we headed back at a slow pace to the Admiralty building. Just behind Weidendamm bridge, Beetz felt unable to go on. I placed him on a refugee’s handcart. To my great relief I noticed Dr Häusermann, a female dental surgeon on the staff of Dr Blaschke (Hitler’s personal dentist), at work tending the injured. I asked her to look after Beetz, and then fetched medical supplies from the Admiralty building. Together we bandaged the seriously wounded man. It seemed out of the question to get him away from Berlin in his condition, so Häusermann promised to take Beetz to her flat locally and care for him there. Unfortunately, as I discovered later, he succumbed to his injuries shortly afterwards.

I returned to the Admiralty building convinced by my experience that it would not be possible for a whole group of people to get away. Therefore I dissolved the group, telling each individual to obtain civilian clothing at the first opportunity and then to attempt to filter through the enemy lines. That concluded my last duty as a soldier, and now I was free to seek my own escape route. Leading about seven men I ran to Friedrich-Strasse railway station and followed the tracks in the hope of reaching Lehrter station, but this was not possible because the rail embankment was under heavy enemy fire. Anxiously I reviewed the other possibilities of a route to follow, or somewhere to hide up. There was firing in all directions. We went down the embankment to where the tram tracks curved into sheds of sidings. Cautiously entering one of these sheds I came across some female and male foreign workers. They told us animatedly that we had to get rid of our uniforms immediately or we would be murdered out of hand by the Russians.

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