Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II Read Online Free PDF Page B

to a short statement about the so-called surrender. “I just got in touch with Admiral Leahy and had him call our headquarters’ commander-in-chief in Europe,” he told the correspondents. “There is no foundation for the rumour. That is all I have to say.” 6
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    IN BERLIN, Adolf Hitler learned of Himmler’s treachery at about nine o’clock that evening. The news was brought to the bunker by Heinz Lorenz, head of the German Information Office, who came hurrying over from the Propaganda Ministry with a radio transcript of the Reuters report, apparently confirming an earlier report by Radio Stockholm. Telephone operator Rochus Misch saw him arrive:
    Hitler was sitting on the bench outside my switchboard room with a puppy in his lap when Lorenz, whom I had heard arrive at a run, handed him the paper on which he had jotted down the radio dispatch. Hitler’s face went completely white, almost ashen. “My God,” I thought, “he’s going to faint.” He slumped forward holding his head with his hands. The puppy plumped to the ground—silly how one remembers such trifles, but I can still hear that soft sound. 7
    By other accounts, Hitler clutched the transcript to his chest and yelled that he had been betrayed again—and by der treue Heinrich this time, the only Nazi he could trust, the one leader whose loyalty had never been in question. Heinrich Himmler was the nearest Hitler had in the party to a friend. If Himmler had betrayed him, then nobody could be trusted anymore, nobody. Rudolph Hess was mad, and Hermann Göring had always been corrupt, but Himmler? Hitler couldn’t believe it.
    He calmed down after a while, turning deathly white in the process, so pale that he looked like a corpse. What remained of his mind was working overtime, swiftly assessing the implications of Himmler’s treachery. Was Himmler planning to assassinate him? Deliver him alive to the enemy? Was there anybody left in the bunker whom he could trust? Or were they all just waiting for a chance to offer him as a hostage in return for their own miserable lives? It was impossible to know.
    But at least there was a scapegoat at hand, someone on whom Hitler could take revenge for Himmler’s disloyalty. SS Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein was Himmler’s liaison officer in the bunker, a widely disliked opportunist whose wartime career had been devoted solely to his own advancement. Himmler might be beyond Hitler’s reach, but Himmler’s creature was still in the bunker. Fegelein was in close arrest after being caught trying to desert.
    Fegelein was an unpleasant man, a corrupt womanizer who bullied people below him and flattered those above if he thought they might be useful to him. He had been Hitler’s unofficial brother-in-law since June 1944, when he had married Eva Braun’s sister Margarete. Since then, he had never been afraid to throw his weight around or butt in on senior generals’ conversations if it suited him. He had made full use of connections that went right to the top.
    But Fegelein’s loyalty had always been to himself rather than anyone else. Seeing no future in the bunker, he had slipped away on April 26, quietly returning to his apartment off the Kurfürstendamm, where he had a suitcase packed with money and jewelry, ready for a quick getaway. Blind drunk, he had rung Eva Braun from his flat, urging her to abandon Hitler and come away with him while she still could. Braun had refused, so Fegelein had planned to escape with a redhead instead. His own wife was already out of Berlin, heavily pregnant with a child that probably wasn’t his.
    Hitler had noticed Fegelein’s absence on April 27. His staff had telephoned the apartment, ordering Fegelein to return to the Chancellery at once. When Fegelein failed to comply, he had been arrested, still drunk, and brought back under guard. He was being interrogated, prior to an impromptu court-martial, when the news of Himmler’s treachery arrived.
    Enraged, Hitler