Berlin at War (73 page)

Joachim Nettelbeck, played by Heinrich George, and its military

commandant, Colonel Lucadou, played by Paul Wegener. In the face

of the French advance, the two characters disagree about how the

town itself should defended. Lucadou is distrustful of the people and

prefers that the fighting be left to the regular military, while Nettelbeck

advocates the creation of a people’s militia to fight the French. Their

two positions are neatly summed up in the following exchange between

Lucadou and Major von Schill, who is training the citizens of Kolberg

into a viable fighting force:

to unreason and beyond

355

lucadou. People, go home, leave this foolish playing at war – what will

you gain by it? And as Officers do you support it? These good people

perhaps meant well by this gesture but do you expect it to be of

any military significance? On the contrary, as soon as things ‘hot up’

this civilian guard will only add to the confusion. Or do you disagree,

Major?

schill. If I may say so, yes I do. The people want what is right.

lucadou. But just look at them! What do they want?

schill. That everybody should be capable of fighting. They want to

become a people of soldiers; we can use that, Colonel. The salva-

tion of the Fatherland lies with these people. It depends on their

mood and attitude. If a fortification is besieged, then there can be

no difference any more between civilians and soldiers.

lucadou. Ah, but waging war is a craft that has to be learnt.

schill. Learnt, yes, but a
craft
, Colonel, it’s not that. It’s something

that comes from the heart and the citizens of Kolberg have got that.

They love their corner of the earth, and for this reason they’ll be

even better defenders than the soldiers . . .54

The scene, and the wider debate, was one that almost every Berliner

would have recognised at once. But for the brief mention of Kolberg

in the final paragraph, the entire exchange could easily be imagined

in a Berlin street in the final months of the war. In another passage,

particularly resonant with meaning for wartime Berliners, Nettelbeck

discusses the defence of Kolberg with the Prussian general sent to

marshal its forces:

You weren’t born in Kolberg. You were ordered to Kolberg, but we

grew up here. We know every stone, every corner, every house. We’re

not letting it go even if we have to claw into the ground with our

bare hands. In our town we don’t give up. No, they’ll have to cut off

our hands to slay us one by one . . . we would rather be buried under

the rubble than capitulate.55

The film then extols the virtues of selfless sacrifice in defence of the

Fatherland. The lead female character, Maria, loses not only her father,

her home and her two brothers, but also has to bid adieu to her beloved,

Major von Schill. Yet, she is undaunted, believing passionately in the

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berlin at war

rightness of Kolberg’s defence. ‘You have sacrificed everything you had,

Maria’, she is told by Nettelbeck, ‘but not in vain . . . You helped us win,

you are great too.’56

The film’s propaganda value was enormous. Finished reels were

even parachuted into the French port of La Rochelle, where a German

garrison was holding out behind Allied lines. The irony is that the

impending crisis of the war meant that only a tiny minority of Germans

had the time, the opportunity or the inclination to see the film. By

now, legions of workers, young and old, were being conscripted into

labour battalions to dig anti-tank defences; legions more were under-

going training for the
Volkssturm
and countless thousands were living

as refugees in tent villages or in the remains of their damaged homes.

Few had a mind for anything other than surviving the coming storm.

Even those who wanted to see the film would probably have been

frustrated. Across the Reich, countless cinemas had already been

destroyed by the air raids, and those that remained were usually closed

that January, due to a lack of coal for heating. In Berlin, meanwhile,

the flagship UFA cinema, Palast am Zoo, where most previous

premieres had been held – had been destroyed. Of the city’s four

hundred other cinemas, all but around thirty had already been put

out of action.57 Even Goebbels, it seems, did not attend the premiere

of his new ‘masterpiece’. That evening, he too was distracted by the

urgent necessities of war, discussing with subordinates a possible evacu-

ation of the capital.58

Three days later, on 3 February, Berlin was subjected to a daylight

raid of unprecedented ferocity. ‘Today the heaviest raid that there has

ever been on the city centre’, noted Ursula von Kardorff gloomily. ‘I

had not thought that things could get any worse.’59 That evening, she

accompanied a colleague down to Alexanderplatz, where the scene

of the
Kolberg
premiere was now a smouldering mass of ruins.

We wandered amongst a tide of grey, bent figures, who carried their

belongings with them. The bombed-out, heavily-laden creatures, who

appear out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere. One hardly noticed

when the sun went down, as it had been just as dark all day. . . . Why

does no one stand on the street and shout ‘enough! enough!’?, why is

no one going crazy? Why is there no revolution?60

17

Ghost Town

At nine o’clock on the morning of his fifty-sixth birthday, 20 April

1945, Hitler was woken, not with congratulations, but with an urgent

report from the front outside Berlin. Roused by his valet, Heinz Linge,

he ‘received’ General Wilhelm Burgdorf through the closed door of

his apartment in the Reich Chancellery bunker. He was informed that

the Soviets had broken through German defences between Guben

and Forst, to the south-east of Berlin, and that counterattacks had

failed to halt their advance. Furthermore, he was told that the

German commander on the spot had been shot for his failure to

defend his section of the front. Hitler, it seems, was unmoved by

this setback and addressed his reply to his valet rather than the

waiting general: ‘Linge’, he said through the door, ‘I have not slept

yet. Wake me an hour later than usual at 1400 hours.’1

Later that day, after being woken as instructed, Hitler played for a

while with his dogs, before lunching with his secretaries. ‘The mood’,

Christa Schroeder recalled, ‘was very gloomy as we ate.’2 Then Hitler

climbed up to the Reich Chancellery garden – now a mess of shell

holes and the assorted detritus of war – where he received a group

of Hitler Youth who had excelled in the bitter fighting against the

Soviets. Looking hunched and jowly and wrapped up in a heavy field-

grey overcoat, he moved along the line of boys, patting their cheeks,

muttering platitudes and presenting them with Iron Crosses. After a

short speech, he closed with an unusual ‘
Heil euch
!’ – ‘Hail to you’.

There was no response from his wide-eyed child-soldiers.3

Hitler then disappeared back into the bowels of the Chancellery

bunker to receive the birthday congratulations of his entourage.

Admirals Raeder and Dönitz made an appearance, as did more regular

visitors such as Himmler and Goebbels, and Hitler’s doctors, Theodor

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berlin at war

Morell and Ludwig Stumpfegger. A congratulatory telegram also

arrived from Mussolini, now the much-diminished Duce of the so-

called ‘Italian Social Republic’. The mood was dark, however. ‘The

chorus of congratulations’, Christa Schroeder noted, ‘was much more

restrained in comparison to earlier years.’4 As Field Marshal Keitel

recalled, most of those present merely stepped forward to shake Hitler’s

hand, making no specific mention of his birthday.5 Others sought to

persuade the Führer to leave the capital for the comparative safety of

Bavaria. Only that evening was some semblance of a celebration held,

when a few members of Hitler’s inner circle – secretaries, cooks and

adjutants – gathered in his small living room within the bunker for

drinks. According to one of those present, Nicolaus von Below, ‘the

war was not mentioned’.6

It was all a far cry from Hitler’s birthday of six years before. In

1939, Hitler had been at the very pinnacle of his prestige and power,

and his capital had served as the pristine backdrop for military parades,

festivities and grand ceremonial. Now, that capital was a mass of rubble,

preparing itself for the final onslaught, and Hitler was ‘tired, bent . . .

and weak’,7 a man visibly diminished in the previous months, who

now looked much older than his years. Rather than a birthday, there-

fore, the events of that day must have seemed something like a wake.

According to Hitler’s pilot, Hans Baur, it was all very ‘sad and

gloomy’.8 His private secretary Martin Bormann concurred, noting

in his diary: ‘Führer’s Birthday: unfortunately not really a birthday

atmosphere.’9

The mood beyond the bunker was similarly depressed. A few

Berliners sought to commemorate that day, as they had always done.

In the Olympic Stadium complex a parade was held with numerous

groups of Hitler Youth and the girls of the
Bund deutscher Mädel
. ‘Lift our Banners, in the fresh morning breeze’,10 they sang. There was little

‘fresh morning breeze’ to be had: the air outdoors was tainted with

smoke and the event had to be held inside due to the threat of Soviet

air raids. Elsewhere, slogans were daubed on the walls of ruined

houses, proclaiming Berliners’ loyalty: ‘The Fighting City of Berlin

Greets the Führer!’ they read, or ‘We Will Never Surrender!’ Others

were more ambiguous, reading ‘For All This, We Thank The Führer!’11

A few in the city even seem to have used the occasion of Hitler’s

birthday for a bacchanal, probably sensing that the end was nigh. At a

ghost town

359

local Nazi Party office in Kreuzberg, for instance, the event appears

to have got out of hand. ‘Most Party comrades’, said an eyewitness,

‘were sitting or lying in the gutter; they were drunk . . . these “old

fighters” of the Führer could hardly get up and some had vomit on

their uniforms . . . If only [Hitler] could see them for himself.’12 A

similar scene was playing itself out in Wilhelmplatz, in the very heart

of the city, where officials of the Propaganda Ministry were sitting

drunk in a bunker in the converted crypt of a church. ‘Its disgusting’,

Dieter Borkowski wrote in his diary, ‘out there in the streets to the

east and north of Berlin, the battle is already raging, but here in

the remains of an old church . . . these drunken “Golden Pheasants”13

sit and drink French red wine, which the Minister for Propaganda

probably brought in to toast the “final victory”.’14

This anger was no anomaly. According to the Danish correspondent

Jacob Kronika, many Berliners were secretly hoping that this would be

Hitler’s last birthday:

Years ago they shouted ‘Heil!’ Now they hate the man who calls himself

their Führer. They hate him, they fear him; because of him they are

suffering hardship and death. But they have neither the strength nor

the nerve to free themselves from his demonic power. They wait, in

passive desperation, for the final act of the drama.15

Whether from disillusionment or from a sense of self-preservation,

ordinary people were finally beginning to distance themselves from

the regime. One young diarist summed up the attitude in the city.

‘Back in the cellar. Today is the Führer’s birthday. But no one has hung

out a flag . . . Most people have already burnt their flags, also Party

badges and similar have all been thrown away.’16 A confrontation on

a Berlin train that day demonstrated that the sense of resentment was

becoming widespread. When a Party member clashed with an injured

soldier over the former’s high-handed attitude, he was told ‘it’s you

and all the others that wear [the swastika] that we have to thank that

we have wounded soldiers at all!’. The man was not alone in his

protest; other passengers joined in, and when the argument was over

one lady was seen surreptitiously removing her Party badge from her

lapel.17

Although Berliners were certainly glad of the extra rations that

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berlin at war

were disbursed for the Führer’s birthday, most had other things on

their minds. The city was now gearing up for battle against the Soviets,

whose armies were in the process of closing the ring around the

German capital. Troops and materiel were being shunted around in

a bustle of frenzied activity, while the city’s last remaining policemen

and firemen had been stood down and ordered to report to their

nearest military unit. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich recorded conditions in

what was now being referred to as ‘Fortress Berlin’:

No express trains are moving in or out. All transportation is at a stand-

still. Postal and telegraph services have ceased. We are cut off from

the world, for better or for worse, at the mercy of the oncoming catas-