HITLER'S LAST 24 HOURS: Minute by panic-filled minute, as madness and terror ... trends now
12.01am, Sunday, April 29, 1945
Nearly 30ft underground, Eva Braun is preparing for her wedding. Right now, she’s in her bedroom in the Fuhrerbunker, having her peroxided hair styled by her maid.
Soon, her long fringe has been carefully pinned up on the right, just the way she likes it. In deference to her fiance, Adolf Hitler, who dislikes make-up, she has carefully made herself up to look natural.
She has already chosen what she’s going to wear: a long black silk taffeta dress, black suede Ferragamo shoes, a gold bracelet set with pink tourmaline gems, a topaz necklace and her favourite diamond watch. Tonight, 14 years after the start of their secret affair, she will at last be marrying the man she loves.
Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun, whom he finally married after 14 years in his bunker beneath Berlin
Of course, she never imagined her wedding would take place in the Fuhrerbunker, which lies under the garden of the old Reich Chancellery in Berlin. But Russian army tanks are now pouring into the centre, so it’s no longer safe to be above ground.
The Fuhrerbunker, which is protected by a 10ft-thick concrete roof, is linked by a staircase to an older bunker higher up, and also by a passageway to the Chancellery cellar, where there is an emergency hospital, garages and a network of rooms for secretaries and officers. At least there’s a little room for Eva to move around.
She has been here since January and has the most comfortable room, furnished with pieces designed specially for her by the bunker’s architect, Albert Speer. As well as her dressing table and chair, there is a wardrobe, a single bed and a straight-backed sofa upholstered in a floral fabric.
All the furniture, as well as her clothes, jewellery and silver-backed brushes, is marked with her monogram, also designed by Speer — a four-leaf clover created from a curved E facing a curved B.
As she completes her late-night toilette, Eva can hear explosions from the heavy Russian artillery bombardment.
The entrance to Hitler's bunker in the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. The Fuhrer spent his final hours cowering underground beneath a 10ft-thick concrete roof as the Russian army swept through the city
Twenty-eight feet above her head, gravediggers have braved the firestorms currently illuminating the sky. At this very moment, they are heaving the body of her brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein, into a shallow grave. He was executed just half an hour ago, under the orders of Eva’s fiance.
For the sake of her younger sister Gretl, who is expecting Fegelein’s child, Eva had pleaded for his life. But Hitler was furious at her intervention. Fegelein, a cavalry officer attached to the bunker, was picked up last week after making a run for it; on top of that, he was caught with money, jewellery and a woman who wasn’t his wife.
In the end, Eva had bowed to the inevitable, saying: ‘You are the Fuhrer.’
In the Fuhrerbunker switchboard office, the telephonist, Rochus Misch, is listening to Hans Hofbeck of the Reich Security Service describing Fegelein’s execution.
Hofbeck acts out what he has just witnessed: raising an imaginary machine gun, he takes aim at shoulder height and shouts: ‘Ratatatata!’
12.10am
Adolf Hitler is standing in the conference room of the Fuhrerbunker, leaning on the empty map table. He is dictating his ‘political testament’ to Traudl Junge, one of his two remaining secretaries, who is taking his words down in shorthand.
At first, Junge is excited. Is she going to be the first to hear why the Germans are losing the war? But as Hitler drones on in a flat monotone, she feels increasingly disappointed.
There are no revelations, no justifications nor expressions of guilt — just the same old accusations against the Jews that she has heard so many times before.
Hitler then launches into a long list of new Nazi appointments. Even Junge can see that this is pointless. Then, after a brief pause, he starts dictating his will.
Hitler (right) jokes with his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as they share a meal in the Führerbunker
When he gets to the part about marrying Eva, Junge is shocked. Until now, her boss has always insisted he’ll never marry — because women have a destructive influence on great men.
He continues: ‘I and my wife choose death in order to escape the shame of deposal and surrender. It is our will that our bodies be burned immediately.’
After a pause, Hitler moves away from the table. ‘Type that out for me in triplicate, then bring it in to me.’
The conference room is being prepared for the ceremony. Five chairs are positioned at the large map table. Walther Wagner, a magistrate, arrives in the bunker clutching the required paperwork. Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, reckons that Wagner is as excited as the bride.
About 12.15am
Robert Ritter von Greim has just had a meeting with Hitler. Right now, hampered by unfamiliar crutches, he is struggling to negotiate the steps out of the bunker.
Just a few hours ago, the plane that flew him into Berlin was raked by Russian gunfire and he was seriously wounded. Still, there’s a consolation: Hitler has just made him the new head of the Luftwaffe.
The decision to elevate Von Greim was taken four days ago. That’s when Hitler learnt the Luftwaffe had done nothing to stop the Russians reaching the Berlin suburbs.
A diagram of Hitler's underground lair bunker. For the final few weeks of his life he seldom left the stuffy confines of his concrete tomb with its inadequate communications and cramped quarters
For half an hour he ranted without pause, screaming about failure, lies, corruption and betrayal.
Then he collapsed sobbing into an armchair, sacked the then head of the Luftwaffe — and declared that the war was lost. It was the first time he had actually admitted it.
Hitler has now ordered Von Greim to launch a counter-attack by the German air force. The new Luftwaffe chief has also been entrusted with Eva’s final letter to her pregnant sister Gretl, who is staying with their parents in Hitler’s mountain home in Obersalzberg.
The letter makes no mention of the death of Gretl’s husband. (Gretl will give birth on May 5, and name her baby after her sister. In 1971, Eva’s namesake will commit suicide at the age of 27, following the death of her boyfriend in a car crash.)
Magda, the wife of propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, is dressing in her bedroom in the upper bunker. The room is small, with concrete walls and minimal furnishings: a single bed, a chest of drawers and only a bare bulb for light.
Proudly, she pins the golden party badge that Hitler gave her two days ago to the front of her dress. It’s his personal badge, marked with the number 1, which he has worn on his uniform for the past 12 years.
This gift, Magda feels, not only represents the greatest honour of her life but also confirms her status. After all, she has often stood in as an unofficial first lady, accompanying the Fuhrer on formal occasions while Eva Braun remained hidden away.
For a fervent Nazi, Magda has an unconventional past.
A soldier of the US Occupation Forces photographed in Hitler's bedroom in the tyrant's bunker. While the Fuhrer lay in the early hours of April 29, 1945, the Russian bombardment of Berlin intensified
Her mother was an unmarried chambermaid who went on to have a long-term relationship with a Jewish hotel manager, Richard Friedlander.
So the future Mrs Goebbels attended a Jewish school and celebrated Jewish festivals.
Friedlander, who later died at Buchenwald concentration camp, was not invited to her wedding to Joseph Goebbels in 1931.
Later, Magda’s husband — a very short, thin man with a deformed foot — spearheaded the exclusion of all Jews from Berlin.
The couple now have six children — Helga, Hilde, Helmut, Holde, Hedda and Heide, aged between four and 12 — all asleep in the three bunk beds in the room next door. Goebbels has his own bedroom in the Fuhrerbunker.
When the children arrived here a week ago, they were told that Germany was on the verge of winning the war and they would soon be joining in the victory celebrations.
They have no inkling that their parents have brought them here because defeat is imminent. Or that they plan to kill them all and end their own lives.
Magda, who suffers from angina, has spent much of the past week in bed. She can bear to see the children only for brief periods, so the secretaries and orderlies have been looking after them. To other women in the bunker, she has confided that she is terrified that she will be too weak to bring herself to kill her beloved offspring.
Hitler is in his study — where he spends most of his time — with his valet Heinz Linge. It is a small room with a very low ceiling, containing a desk, a side
