Hitler's Last Secretary (19 page)

A few weeks later, however, there was another plane crash near Salzburg, and another commander was killed, General Hube.
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This time Walther Hewel had been in the crash too, and was taken to the Berchtesgaden hospital badly injured. I never found out how the accident happened.

I quite forgot to say that meanwhile a new face had appeared in Hitler’s circle, that of Gruppenführer Fegelein.
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He acted as liaison officer between Himmler and Hitler and was on Hitler’s staff. At first you only saw him arriving for the military briefings, but soon he made friends with Reichsleiter Bormann, and before long he was setting the tone at the Berghof.

Hermann Fegelein was the daring cavalryman type. He had a very large nose, and wore the Knight’s Cross with oakleaves and swords. No wonder he was used to women flocking around him. In addition he had a refreshing, sometimes very dry wit, and never minced his words. You felt he was a naturally frank and honest person. That helped him to forge a remarkable career quickly and unexpectedly. No sooner had he appeared than he was sitting with us at table in the Berghof. He went to Bormann’s nocturnal parties, drank to the health of all the important men there, and all the women were at his feet. Those who were not his friends were his enemies until he was firmly in the saddle. He was clever but ruthless, and had some very attractive qualities, such as the honesty with which he admitted that at heart he was a terrible coward, and had won his decorations doing heroic deeds out of pure fear. He also frankly admitted that nothing was as important to him as his career and a good life.

Unfortunately differences of opinion and intrigues surfaced in Hitler’s entourage soon after he had joined us. Fegelein, who was an entertaining, sociable person, soon attracted the attention of Eva Braun and her sister Gretl. The latter in particular was the object of handsome Hermann’s attentions. It’s true that before he knew she was Eva’s sister he had said, ‘What a silly goose!’ But he was quick to change his mind in view of her family connections. Everyone was surprised when Fegelein’s engagement to Gretl Braun was announced. It reinforced Fegelein’s position personally too. Hewel the liaison officer, who had married now himself and was at present in hospital, injured, after his plane accident, was the only man to have a good enough personal relationship with Hitler to be an obstacle in Fegelein’s way. So Fegelein used Hewel’s absence to slander him to Hitler, and he succeeded. Hewel, who couldn’t defend himself, fell into disfavour, and Hitler refused even to meet his wife.

But all these personal human experiences became unimportant in view of the American invasion in the West. It came suddenly, although it had long been expected and was supposed to be doomed to failure from the start. My husband, who was just enjoying a short leave with me in Berchtesgaden, had to return to the front immediately. The war conferences went on and on. We saw Hitler’s grave and rather careworn face. His hopes that the enemy would be decisively defeated when they attacked in the West didn’t seem to be being realized very quickly. Guests came and went at the Berghof, the sun shone down over the peaceful landscape, we chatted, laughed, made love and drank, yet the tension still grew from day to day. Julius Schaub’s lower lip was hanging right down to his chin: it was his job to go through the Luftwaffe reports. The reports of losses and injuries were coming in so thick and fast that we could type out only brief notes of them in the reports for the Führer Göring and the Luftwaffe officers were angrily reproached at every military briefing. Large quantities of photographs came in from Gauleiters all over the Reich showing the destruction of their cities. Hitler looked at them all and snorted with rage. But he never saw the extent of the devastation with his own eyes.

One day, when I came back from Munich, which I had left just after a bad air raid, I told him, ‘My Führer, all those photographs you’re looking at are nothing to the misery of the real thing. You ought to see the people standing outside the burning buildings, weeping and warming their hands on the glowing, charred beams, watching their homes collapse and bury everything they have.’ He replied, ‘I know what it’s like, but I shall change things. We’ve built new planes now, and soon all these horrors will be over!’

Hitler never saw what the war looked like in his own country, never realized the full extent of the destruction and devastation. He spoke of nothing but retaliation and the success to come, the certainty of the final victory. I couldn’t help it, I thought he really did have some certain method, some last reserves in the background that would free the people from all their suffering one day.

Life would have been good but for the feeling that we were sitting on a powder keg, while our secret nervousness kept spreading. Among his guests, Hitler was still trying to show his confidence and certainty of victory by making light conversation to the ladies, walking to the tea-house, and playing records and telling stories by the fire in the evening. But I thought he sometimes sat there […] looking old and tired, his mind elsewhere. He, the gallant cavalier who never wanted to look old, asked the ladies whether they minded if he put his feet up on the sofa. And Eva Braun’s eyes looked anxious and sad. She was trying harder than ever to keep Hitler’s guests in a good mood, desperately and with touching efforts doing her best to provide cheerfulness and relaxation. She was never absent from meals or the hearth in the Great Hall these days.

By now it was July. Hitler was not planning to stay on the Obersalzberg any longer. His bunker at headquarters wasn’t ready yet, but all the same he gave orders for a return to the Wolf’s Lair. For the time being he would live in the former adjutants’ and guest bunkers, which we secretaries had once occupied. So in the first week of July, like migratory birds, we returned to East Prussia.

The place was barely recognizable. Instead of the low-built little bunkers, heavy, colossal structures of concrete and iron rose above the trees. There was nothing to be seen from above. Grass had been planted on the flat rooftops, trees grew from the concrete, some of them real and some artificial, and from the plane you would have thought the forest stretched on unbroken. The rooms in the new bunker were small and their furnishings makeshift. Hitler set aside the hut next to it for conferences; the place had been intended for guest accommodation and had a large sitting room. Several large tables were set up here so that the huge maps could be spread out, and now the place was ready for use as a conference room. All four secretaries were together again here at the Wolf’s Lair. We had more social duties now and plenty of work to do as well.

It was a hot summer. The sun blazed down from the sky and each day was finer than the last. The huts gave no cool shelter, and once again the bunkers became our favourite places to work. Swarms of midges and mosquitoes hovered over the marshy meadows, making our lives a misery. The guards had to wear mosquito netting over their faces, and the windows were fitted with mesh to keep flies out. Hitler hated this kind of weather. Blondi was exercised almost exclusively by Sergeant Tornow the dog-walker, while Hitler stayed in the cool of the concrete rooms. He was bad-tempered and complained of insomnia and headaches. He needed distraction and relaxing company more than ever, and the worse the war was going the less anyone talked about it. We depended on the reports of Wehrmacht High Command, which were hung up in the anteroom of the mess next to the day’s menu and the cinema programme. The news was not cheering.

But Hitler went on with the war, and with his nocturnal tea-parties too. He even invited guests who were not part of his usual entourage. ‘I’m so tired of being surrounded by soldiers,’ he said. The adjutants racked their brains, wondering who might provide the Führer with suitable entertainment. Heinrich Hoffmann was always available as a last resort, but he had become so senile and was so addicted to the bottle that Hitler didn’t really enjoy talking to him any more. However, the builder and architect Professor Hermann Giesler was just the man Hitler needed. He was not only an artist in his profession, but he also had a talent that made him something of a court jester: he could imitate the voice and almost the appearance of Reich Organization Leader Robert Ley. Ley had a speech impediment that meant he could form words only with difficulty, and in addition he talked such sheer nonsense that you could hardly take him seriously.

Since Ley, as leader of the German Labour Front, had given Professor Giesler many commissions for buildings, Giesler knew all his weaknesses quite well, and he had noted Ley’s howlers with special relish. ‘I have become more beautiful, and Germany is pleased to see it,’ the Reich Organization leader had once announced to a meeting of workers in the fervent tones of conviction, meaning exactly the opposite: ‘Germany has become more beautiful, and I am pleased to see it.’ When Giesler laboriously uttered such comments in Ley’s own manner Hitler roared with laughter. […] Giesler put on a wonderful comic act. But Hitler must have felt rather awkward, in view of the fact that his Reich Organization Leader had uttered these howlers publicly and as a leading personality, and there was always the chance that other people too might laugh at Hitler’s colleague. ‘Ley is a faithful old Party comrade, and a real idealist. He has created a unique organization. And above all I can rely on him one hundred per cent.’ Such were the excuses Hitler made for him. He showed similar tolerance to other old comrades from the Party’s early days, but failed to show any to the clever folk who ventured to contradict him.

The Reich Stage Designer Professor Benno von Arent
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from Berlin was often invited to headquarters too. Today it strikes me as really comic that all these gentlemen were called Reich something-or-other and were professors. No wonder we gave the sergeant who exercised the dog the title of Reich Dog-Walker, christened Professor Morell the Reich Injections Impresario, and Heinrich Hoffmann the Reich Drunk. As I was saying, the Reich Stage Designer was one of our party at night, although he really had no business at headquarters while the war was in the middle of its worst phase. All the same, he helped to keep up the strength of the Supreme Commander, which was important war work. Even in the Third Reich, theatre people didn’t wear uniform, but secretly, backstage, leading artists did have some kind of Party or military rank so that they could appear in ‘full dress German uniform’ if necessary. So it wasn’t surprising that Benno von Arent went around in an elegant field-grey uniform with quite a lot of silver braid on it. I must say he was a really charming, amusing, witty man, not a very strong character but fun. Whether he was any good as a stage designer I don’t know, but he was excellent company, and when he and Giesler were together there was so much laughter, relaxation and amusement that I really sometimes forgot Hitler had to wage a merciless war, and the fate of Europe was embodied in him.

Then came 20 July 1944.

I can still feel the oppressive, sultry heat of that day. It made the air quiver slightly, and wouldn’t let us sleep in the hot huts although we hadn’t gone to bed until sunrise. Frau Christian and I cycled to the Moysee, the little lake outside the camp. Lying in the water, we dreamed of peace and quiet. We were half asleep, trying to get some more rest. I had such lovely, soothing thoughts in all that silence. There wasn’t another human soul anywhere, and we didn’t speak to each other until the sun began blazing down right overhead, telling us it was midday. We didn’t know when the conference was to be held, and thought we might be needed before it. So we tore ourselves away from our other world and went back to the busy complex in the forest, at the heart of the war. Apparently the conference had already begun. The cars of officers who had come from other staff bases were in the car park, but otherwise all was noonday peace. All the secretaries were in their rooms. Then, suddenly, a terrible bang broke through the quiet. It was unexpected and alarming, but we often heard bangs near by when deer stepped on landmines, or some kind of weapon was being tried out.

I was writing a letter and didn’t let the bang disturb me. But then I heard someone outside shouting for a doctor in urgent, agitated tones. Professor Brandt wasn’t at headquarters. The voice calling for Professor von Hasselbach sounded distraught and full of panic.

So it wasn’t the bang that suddenly made my heart stand still. As I said, we were used to hearing sudden shots or explosions echoing through the forest. People tested weapons in the forest, there were buildings going up everywhere, the anti-aircraft guns practised firing, and we accepted these sounds as natural. But what had just happened made me terribly anxious. I ran out. My colleagues came rushing out of the other rooms with pale, frightened faces. Outside we saw the two orderlies coming from the Führer bunker with distraught expressions, looking for the doctor. ‘A bomb has exploded, it was probably in the Führer bunker,’ they stammered.

We didn’t know if Hitler was in his bunker or if the conference was still in progress. We stood there like sheep in a thunderstorm, paralysed by terror. Was the terror for our own lives or for Hitler? ‘What will become of us if Hitler’s dead?’ Fräulein Schroeder suddenly asked in the oppressive silence, and that set us all moving. The spell was broken. We scattered wildly in different directions. Fräulein Wolf wanted to help look for the doctor, Fräulein Schroeder went in search of someone who could give precise information. Frau Christian and I ran towards the Führer’s bunker and the hut next to it.

The dense trees still hid the site of the incident from view. On the narrow footpath that wound through them I saw General Jodl and Lieutenant Colonel Waizenegger
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coming towards me. There was blood all over Jodl’s face and his uniform was torn. Waizenegger’s white uniform tunic showed spots of red too. They were swaying.