In Hitler's Bunker by Armin Lehmann

Author:Armin Lehmann [Armin D. Lehmann with Tim Carroll]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2011-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The Last Goodbyes

BERLIN WAS ALIVE WITH COMINGS AND GOINGS that evening and well into the morning of 23 April. Keitel left with Jodl for the south-west to find Wenck. Jodl would separate from him and head for the new headquarters of the general staff at Krampnitz. ‘Any man who wants may go!’ Hitler had told anyone who cared to listen. And all night long buses and cars left the Reich Chancellery and the Party Chancellery for the aerodromes at Gatow and Rechlin 60 miles north-east of Berlin. Christa Schroeder and Johanna Wolf were ordered by the Führer to leave for Bavaria. His erstwhile doctor, Theodor Morell, would not be missed. ‘I don’t need drugs to see me through,’ Hitler had said to him. General Christian was among those to leave – not only his Führer, but his wife Gerda too, who elected to stay by Hitler’s side in the bunker rather than join her husband in flight.

At Rechlin, not everyone was leaving. When he arrived General Christian encountered Albert Speer who had made the decision to return, briefly, to Berlin. Speer had heard of the Führer’s decision to die in Berlin. He still felt guilty about his meeting with Hitler on the previous Friday, the day of his birthday. Speer owed his entire career to Hitler. Yet in the past several months he had been openly treacherous towards the Führer, driving around Germany pleading with local district leaders not to implement Hitler’s ‘scorched earth’ policy. The Führer knew. He had been helpfully kept abreast of Speer’s progress by Martin Bormann. Speer probably knew he knew too.

His actions, for any other Nazi, would have resulted in immediate condemnation and the firing squad at best, a lingering death hanging from a meat hook at worst. But Speer resolved to return again to the lair of the Wolf at whatever cost to his own personal safety. He wanted to explain his actions to Hitler and, if he was allowed to, say his final farewell to the man to whom he owed so much.

That same evening Heinrich Himmler would have his fourth and final meeting with Count Bernadotte. Until 22 April, Himmler had dithered about his next step in his negotiations with the Swedish Red Cross representative. But he had been approaching a resolve not to take things any further out of loyalty to Hitler. Now, however, it was apparent that the Führer’s life was approaching its end – just as Himmler’s favourite clairvoyant had said it would. No time was to be lost. In a darkened room of the Swedish consulate in Lübeck, Himmler met Bernadotte one more time. The electricity had been knocked out and the proceedings were illuminated by candlelight. ‘The Führer’s great life is drawing to a close,’ he told Bernadotte. He gave the Swedish aristocrat permission to forward his offer of surrender to the Western Allies. But he was not alone in his delusion that the victors would want to do business. His rival for power, Göring, also believed there was a role for him in post-war Germany.

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