The Nazi Titanic by Robert P. Watson

Author:Robert P. Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306824906
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2016-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

IN THE BUNKER

AS THE PRISON SHIPS in the Baltic were being loaded, another scene of desperation was taking place underground in the heart of Berlin. Adolf Hitler marked his fifty-sixth birthday on April 20, 1945, in the confines of his bunker, receiving devastating reports of German defeats and Allied advances on all fronts. In the South, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was fighting a hopeless battle against the Americans, the Allies were closing in on Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz’s forces in the North, and the eastern and western fronts had completely collapsed. The only good news for the German people still loyal to Hitler was the delusional statement issued to the public by Joseph Goebbels that, on his birthday, “Our Führer has not deserted us. That is our victory.”

Two days later Hitler was dealt another devastating blow. The tide of the war had long since changed and the Red Army was on the march to Berlin, but Hitler had ordered a last-ditch counterattack by the Panzer Corps under General Felix Steiner in hopes of delaying the inevitable. However, General Steiner and other senior German commanders were either unable or unwilling to follow their leader’s frantic and unrealistic orders.

Upon hearing the news, the führer exploded into another one of his meltdowns. For a full thirty minutes, he stormed around the conference room in his bunker, screaming and pounding his fists on the table, accusing everyone in his senior command of disloyalty and betrayal. Finally, he collapsed in exhaustion and muttered the obvious, “It’s all lost, hopelessly lost.” For the first time in a long time, Hitler acted with prudence—he ordered his personal papers be destroyed. Aides burned them in the garden outside the bunker, which was the same fate that awaited Hitler himself.

Berlin was being overrun. One month earlier, on March 13, bombs had destroyed Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda, but he avoided being killed in the attack. The capital city’s defenses were meager, and civil government had ceased to exist. While some older men and young boys in the home guard tried to fight, many soldiers and civilians simply fled or surrendered. The city, like the country itself, was cut in half and unable to communicate effectively or mount a viable defense. Heinrich Himmler’s prediction that the Allies would eventually march through Berlin had come true. For those prisoners gathered at the port at Lübeck Bay and suffering in the crowded holds of the Cap Arcona, hope came in the form of Allied advances combined with crumbling Nazi defenses. The war would soon end.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.