Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (22 page)

For the moment, however, no one knew the fate in store for them (except for Hitler). As von Greim was helped into the bunker, Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s secretaries, came to catch a glimpse of the famous man and saw Hanna. She made a brief entry in her diary:

Hanna Reitsch lands in a Fiesler Storch on the East-West axis just outside the Brandenburg Gate, bringing General Greim, an excellent Luftwaffe officer. Today is the first time I’ve seen either of them. Hanna Reitsch is a small, delicate, very feminine person, you’d never have thought she had such masculine courage. She wears the Iron Cross on her smooth black rollneck sweater. Greim limps into the bunker on one leg, leaning on her shoulder. He was wounded on their adventurous flight here, shot in the leg by Russian fighter pilots. Now he has come to succeed Göring and take over command of the Luftwaffe. But first he disappears into the operating theatre to be treated by Dr Stumpfegger, the silent, pale, reserved doctor. Hanna Reitsch hurries to see the Führer. She must have been one of those women who adored Hitler unconditionally, without reservations. Today that seems to me amazing, because she was the only woman who knew Hitler not just privately, as a man, but as a soldier and a military commander too. She sparkled with her fanatical, obsessive readiness to die for the Führer and his ideals …

In the evening she put the Goebbels children to bed. Eva Braun kept her company. Their mother hardly had the strength to face her children with composure now. Every meeting with them made her feel so terrible that she burst into tears afterwards. She and her husband were nothing but shadows, already doomed to die.

[First written down as memoirs in 1947–48]

As we shall see, Hanna’s memories of her arrival in the bunker were slightly different.

Hanna was not prepared in any way for the madness of the bunker. As she walked down the steps to the Führerbunker Magda Goebbels appeared in the entranceway, stared at Hanna, then burst into hysterical tears and clasped her in her arms. What was Hanna to make of such a spectacle? Her astonishment had barely passed when Hitler appeared. Hanna trembled to seem him, a shadow of the man she had once spoken to about flying: ‘His head drooped heavily on his shoulders and a continual twitching affected both his arms. The eyes were glassy and remote. He greeted us in an expressionless voice.’

What Hanna could not know was that Hitler was being fuelled by a heady and dangerous concoction of drugs mixed by his personal doctor. One compound was heavily laced with strychnine, but Hitler would hear no word said against his doctor. Stress, lack of sleep and a deadly mix of various poisons and drugs had all taken their toll on the Führer and had utterly addled his thinking. Always behind Hitler was the pretty Eva Braun, his mistress. What was Hanna to make of Eva Braun? She was not a woman Hanna could come to like deeply, a complete opposite to the woman Hanna herself was. Some found Eva simple and charming. Hans Baur remarked that he both liked and respected her. Hanna found it harder to come to the same conclusion. Eva was naïve, or perhaps just stupid, she had no interest in Third Reich politics despite her association with its leader. Instead she attached herself like a devoted dog to Hitler and followed him unswervingly. Hanna found her rather silly, an opinion shared by von Greim. It says a good deal about Hanna’s views on the Führer’s lover that when she was entrusted with Eva’s last letter from the bunker she opened and read it. Considering it unsuitable and pathetic, she destroyed it. For a woman normally dominated by her own sense of honour, this was a remarkable thing to do.

Von Greim limped from the operating theatre to greet the Führer and give his report on his flight to Berlin. When he relayed the part Hanna had played, Hitler turned to her and flashed a smile, ‘Brave woman! So there is still some loyalty and courage left in the world!’ Hitler went on to explain the betrayal of Göring and his reason for summoning von Greim: ‘Nothing is spared me, nothing! Every disillusion, every betrayal, dishonour, treason has been heaped upon me. I have had Göring put under immediate arrest, stripped him of all his offices, expelled him from all Party Organisations.’ He ranted to the room, shouting and pacing, waving his arms and working himself into a fury, before he paused and stood before von Greim again. ‘From now on you shall be Chief of the Luftwaffe in place of Göring, with immediate promotion to the rank of Field Marshal.’ The award was bittersweet, as Hanna well knew:

Commander-in-chief of an Air Force that no longer existed! In the circumstances and for [von Greim], whose conception of honour was entirely immutable and selfless, it could have only one meaning – to stay here, in the Bunker, with Hitler, to the end. And if Greim stayed, then I would stay with him.

Why did Hanna choose to stay? Well, partly there was very little choice. There seemed little chance of getting another plane into Berlin. The Fieseler Storch they had flown in was damaged beyond repair and without fuel. A pilot might risk flying in to rescue von Greim or one of the other officers, but Hanna Reitsch? She was not worth the risk, not when her propaganda value was nil now that the war was drawing its last breath in favour of the Allies. If she couldn’t fly out, her options were limited. Cars were few and far between and the roads had been badly damaged. Besides, a vehicle would be spotted by the Russians. An escape on foot was possible, but it was a slim chance and would involve running roadblocks and large parties of Russian soldiers. If captured, Hanna would face an unhappy fate: as a woman she was likely to be violated. In recent times it has been common to play down the atrocities the Russians inflicted on the inhabitants of Berlin, but they were very real and very widespread. Russian soldiers raped and killed as they raced through Berlin: figures for these crimes are shockingly high. If Hanna was captured she would have been treated brutally; if she was lucky she might be recognised, in which case she would find herself in Russia facing interrogators every bit as unpleasant and cruel as the Gestapo. If she survived she would be sent to a concentration camp to starve to death or die from disease. Faced with such grim choices, was it any wonder Hanna considered the best option staying with von Greim and the other officers, enjoying at least some limited protection from the SS men who stood on guard?

Hanna can hardly be blamed for thinking it safer to stay. Talk of honour aside, Hanna had witnessed entry into Berlin and was afraid to try to escape alone. Even if she could get hold of a plane, she had just seen what had happened to von Greim. There is no need to talk of Hanna’s patriotism, loyalty or even Nazi beliefs (which were few) to explain the decision – it was simply the most obvious and most sensible one to make! Hanna never voiced this logic, preferring to suggest her decision was based on her sense of duty. If she had, she might have been spared some of the criticism she later endured.

Hanna became familiar with the interior of the dank, smelly bunker, its corridors smelling of stale food and human sweat. Frau Goebbels befriended her as the only woman in the bunker (aside from Eva Braun) who was on a similar social standing to her. There were other women in the bunker, but they were secretaries and it was not appropriate for Magda to associate with them. Besides, they were young girls who knew so little. Hanna was closer to her in age and had seen the world. Frau Goebbels took Hanna up to her small suite of rooms for a much-needed wash. As Hanna entered the rooms six small faces peered over the top of double-decker beds. These were the Goebbels children, soon to be some of the last innocent victims of Hitler’s tyranny. Trapped in the bunker themselves, when not frightened by the shelling, they were bored, so a new face was a good surprise. They quickly rose and, as Hanna washed, asked her question after question about her flying.

Though Hanna had no children of her own she was fond of young people and had been a good aunt to her various nieces and nephews. She liked the Goebbels children and in a world gone mad there was something refreshing about their openness, good-humour and playfulness. From then on she was invited to spend every mealtime with the children and to regale them with tales of her adventures:

Each of them was a delight with its [
sic
] open-hearted naturalness and bright intelligence. Their concern for each other was touching. One little girl was isolated for a time in the next room with tonsillitis and when telling a story to the others, I had to pause every so often, so that one of them could tell the patient next door ‘what happened next’. I taught them part-songs and how to yodel in real Tyrolean style. The crash and thunder of the shells bursting above failed to disturb them. It was their ‘Uncle Führer’, as they had been told, busy conquering his enemies, and when the youngest got frightened and began to cry, he was quickly pacified with this explanation.

Hanna was fearful for the children’s future. She wanted to fly them all away, but it was simply impossible. She consoled herself by thinking that separating the family at such a time would be a greater cruelty. Perhaps her mind was straying back to her own family; her mother and father worn into premature old age, Heidi a young widow with three small children, Kurt lost somewhere …

Then there was her own fate to consider. On the night of her arrival the Russians finally found the correct range for the Reich Chancellery and began a steady programme of intense artillery fire. Even in the Führerbunker, the deepest portion of the underground labyrinth, every explosion produced a rain of plaster from the ceiling and walls. Cocooned in this strange isolated world, the bunker inhabitants became divorced from reality. Hanna noted how they clung to the most fanciful of hopes, not least the Führer himself, who was constantly talking about rescue from one source or another. There were thousands of troops waiting for just the right moment to strike, just when the Allies thought they had won, he would say – or he would talk of new wonder weapons and masses of planes awaiting delivery to the Luftwaffe. For Hanna, who knew all this to be lies and misinformation sold to Hitler by his cronies, his talk of a sudden victory for Germany was pitiful. Unlike the grovelling creature portrayed in
Downfall
, Hanna knew all too well how pathetic were Hitler’s plans. ‘… their self-deception was particularly noticeable,’ Hanna later wrote, referring to the bunker inhabitants. Hanna was in the bunker on the 27 and 28 April, living in a strange atmosphere of suspense and false hope. Rumours of triumphs or disasters spread through the bunker like wildfire and kept the inmates alive with dreams of rescue for a little longer. Caught in this world, Hanna felt her beliefs in the German Reich shaken. News of the murder of SS Group Leader Fegelein was whispered. The rumour made Hanna ‘feel that the very ground beneath my feet was beginning to give way’.

Fegelein had disappeared without permission from the bunker. No one seemed to know where he had gone, not even his sister-in-law Eva Braun. He was finally discovered in his own flat, but he refused to appear before Hitler, claiming he was too drunk. Hitler, by now paranoid about betrayal, sent a group of SS men to fetch Fegelein. The SS group leader still refused to come, promising he would arrive at the bunker when he was sober. He did not. Another party was sent for him, this time Wehrmacht, and once again he promised he would come when he was ready. Around midnight he appeared at the bunker, by which point Hitler had decided his fate. Tired of Fegelein, Hitler ordered him investigated for desertion. If Fegelein expected any sympathy for being brother-in-law to the Führer’s mistress he was gravely mistaken. Despite Eva Braun’s pleas on behalf of her sister (who was heavily pregnant) and her brother-in-law, Fegelein was found guilty, stripped of his rank and executed in the deserted, ruined streets of Berlin. The execution brought a new thought to Hanna’s mind: what would be her fate if the Führer decided she was a traitor? If she was to request to leave now, without von Greim, would she be viewed as another turncoat? Perhaps shot? Fegelein had only gone to his flat for some temporary respite from the misery of the bunker, but he had been shot for betrayal.

Around 27 April a Ju 52 managed to make the dangerous flight into Berlin to collect von Greim. Hanna later claimed that it had come to take her as well. Bearing in mind she was a last-minute addition to the original flight in, this was optimistic thinking. The Luftwaffe had come for its new chief, but von Greim refused to go and the plane was sent back. Hanna was stuck. Though she might have made the dangerous run to the aircraft which would have, necessarily, landed some distance away, she would have had to ask special permission and overridden von Greim’s orders to do so.

Hanna’s belief in her own self-importance does her a disservice in this part of her story. She writes in her autobiography as if the plane was sent for her as much as for von Greim, making it seem that she chose to ignore it due to a misguided sense of loyalty to Hitler. In reality the plane were not for her at all, and she had very little say in the matter. She was stuck with von Greim and had to abide by his decisions, since he was probably her only means of escape. At the return of the Ju 52, Hanna was summoned to Hitler’s study:

His face was now even paler, and had become flaccid and putty-coloured, like that of a dotard. He gave me two phials of poison so that, as he said, Greim and I should have at all times ‘freedom of choice.’ Then he said that if the hope of the relief of Berlin by General Wenk was not realized, he and Eva Braun had freely decided that they would depart out of this life.

Hanna had come to the conclusion that even if Hitler’s vain hopes of victory, which he pinned solely on General Wenk, were realised, ‘his vital energies were by now too depleted to sustain him alive.’ Hitler had turned down options for escape. ‘He believed his presence in Berlin would make a decisive difference to the defenders’ morale: indeed, this thought alone was keeping him alive.’