Hitler's Last Secretary (22 page)

No one checked up on the medicaments that Hitler took in the course of a day. Linge had a certain amount of supplies in his cupboard, and when Hitler wanted something Linge would take it to him without asking Morell first. Finally the two surgeons wrote a memo and handed it to Hitler. The result was an outbreak of fury on the Führer’s part and Brandt’s dismissal from his post as attendant doctor. He had lost Hitler’s confidence, although he had previously been quite friendly with Eva Braun. But it was a dangerous and almost hopeless undertaking to criticize Morell.

A few days later we were told, ‘The Führer sends apologies but he will eat alone.’ There was no tea-party either. And finally the Führer spent a day in bed. This was a great sensation. No one had ever seen Hitler in bed. Even his valet woke him through the closed door, and put the morning news down on a small table outside. Hitler had never even received any of his colleagues in his dressing-gown. Suddenly he was ill, and no one knew what the trouble was. Had the assassination attempt not left him uninjured after all? The doctors thought it might be the aftereffects of concussion only just showing. Anyway, we didn’t see Hitler for days. The adjutants were in despair. The Führer wouldn’t see anyone. Once Otto Günsche came to me and said, ‘The Führer is completely listless. We don’t know what to do. Even the situation in the East doesn’t interest him, although things are going very badly there.’

Speaking by phone from his sickbed, Morell gave his assistant instructions for treating Hitler. And lo and behold, suddenly Hitler’s spirits revived, he gave orders from his bed, had the situation at the fronts described to him, and after a few days he even began the nightly tea-parties again. I think it was the only time in his life that Hitler received guests in his bedroom, lying in bed. I must say it was very uncomfortable.

The little room in the bunker was very shabbily furnished, just like a soldier’s cubicle in a barracks. In addition Hitler had a huge wooden crate in the room, which was meant for Blondi and her family, so there was really very little room. I couldn’t help thinking of Eva Braun’s worries – she could never think what to give Hitler for his birthday or Christmas. He wore an ordinary grey flannel dressing-gown, no coloured ties, just ugly black socks and not even modern pyjamas. He lay in bed, well shaved and with his hair brushed, in the kind of plain white nightshirt that only the Wehrmacht could design. He hadn’t buttoned up the sleeves, because they chafed him, so we could see the white skin of his arms. Bright white! We could understand why he didn’t like wearing shorts! A small table had been pushed up to his bed, so we drew up a few chairs and with some difficulty formed a group round the bed. If one of the guests wanted to go out – and there weren’t many of us, just two secretaries, Adjutant Bormann and Hewel – we all had to stand up, and serving tea was difficult.

Hitler wasn’t talking much yet. He got us to tell him what we had been doing these last few days. There wasn’t much we could say. Our main activity had been typing out whole reams of reports of losses. It was wretched work, and seemed to us so pointless. Hitler hadn’t even looked at the reports over the last few days. It was a desperate feeling to see how the only man who could have ended all this misery with a single stroke of his pen lying almost apathetically in bed, staring into space with tired eyes, while all hell was let loose around him. It seemed to me as if his body had suddenly understood the pointlessness of all the efforts made by his mind and his strong will and had gone on strike. It had just lain down and said, ‘I don’t want any more.’ Hitler had never known such disobedience before, and he had been taken by surprise.

But it wasn’t long before he overcame this weakness. News that the Russians were about to invade East Prussia got him on his feet and cured him overnight. By now the new bunker was ready too. It was a positive fortress. Hitler moved in. This huge new concrete building contained a maze of passages, rooms and halls. A kitchen for Hitler’s diet food had been installed in the bunker too, and all his close colleagues had their own rooms there. He was expecting a well-targeted air raid on his headquarters any day, and when it came all the important people must be together. All the other bunkers were reinforced at the same time. It’s true that we had air-raid warnings every day now, but there was never more than a single aircraft circling over the forest, and no bombs were dropped. All the same, Hitler took the danger very seriously, and thought all these reconnaissance flights were in preparation for the big raid he was expecting.

The Russians were advancing with uncanny speed. Dreadful reports came from the villages that they had occupied. Hitler was no longer in a good temper. When we came for tea in the evening he looked gloomy and full of cares, and he had to make a great effort to forget, at least for a few hours, the pictures and reports coming in from the East. Raped women, murdered children and mistreated men, death, misery and despair rose up to accuse him.

He swore revenge and fanned the flames of hatred. ‘They’re not human beings any more, they’re animals from the steppes of Asia, and the war I am waging against them is a war for the dignity of European mankind. No price is too high for victory. We have to be hard and fight with all the means at our disposal.’

But it did not look as if victory was coming any closer. The enemy troops, on the contrary, were. In the West too the Allies were gradually approaching the borders of Germany. And we were still here in East Prussia. It couldn’t be long before the Russians drove us out. On many clear autumn days we heard the thunder of the guns. And Hitler was having buildings erected and fortified and made ready for defence. By now a huge apparatus had been constructed. There were barriers and new guard posts everywhere, mines, tangles of barbed wire, watchtowers. The paths along which I had walked my dog one day would suddenly be blocked the next, with a guard wanting to see my pass. If the enemy had known what chaos the air-raid warnings always set off in our camp they would surely have attacked.

The warnings were terrible at night. All the lights were suddenly switched off, everyone had to make haste to the bunkers, but there were trees in your way everywhere and it was difficult to get your bearings. In addition we all had to know the password and the counter-password, for the guards weren’t taking any nonsense and would shoot faster than you could think. But normally no one bothered about that, because your pass was enough by day, and no one went walking outside the restricted area any more by night.

Hitler was trying to pluck new divisions out of thin air and send them to the East. When the front line was shortened and to some extent stabilized, Hitler decided to go to his western headquarters in the Taunus to control the Western Front from there. We moved out of the Wolf’s Lair in early September, taking all our possessions with us, for the Russians were coming close.

We left the Wolf’s Lair with the rather melancholy feeling of saying a final farewell, and one morning in November we boarded the special train, which was to take us to Berlin. I had enjoyed life in the forest, and had taken the landscape of East Prussia to my heart. Now we were leaving it – for ever. Hitler probably knew that himself. And although he went on with the building works there as if he intended to come back some day, he too was in valedictory mood. Hadn’t he himself always said that as long as he personally held a section of the Front he would not give up? He was obsessed by the belief that his personality made the impossible possible.

The special train was full. The rest of the staff had already left in another train an hour earlier. This time we were travelling by day. Hitler wanted to arrive in Berlin after dark so as to keep his presence there a secret. Slowly, the sun came through the mist and gave us yet another bright, clear autumn day.

But the windows of Hitler’s carriage were darkened. He sat in his compartment by artificial light. Lunch in his saloon car was very gloomy! Outside, the sun was shining brightly, but here the twilight of a mausoleum reigned. Morell, Bormann, He wel and Schaub joined the meal. Fräulein Schroeder and Frau Christian were already in Berlin. And Fräulein Manziarly,
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the young dietician from Innsbruck who really wanted to be a teacher and had entered Hitler’s service only temporarily, was still too new to be a part of the inner circle. So Fräulein Wolf and I were the only women there.

I never saw Hitler so depressed and distracted as he was that day. His voice hardly rose above a loud whisper; his eyes were lowered to his plate or stared absently at some point on the white tablecloth. An oppressive atmosphere weighed down on the cramped, rocking cage in which we were gathered together, and an eerie feeling came over us all. Suddenly Hitler said something about an operation. At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. He mentioned his great confidence in Professor Eicken’s skill. ‘He bears a great responsibility, but he’s the only man who can do it. An operation on the vocal cords isn’t exactly life-threatening. But I might lose my voice … ’ He left the sentence unfinished. And we saw the dark cloud of silence hanging over his head. You could almost touch it. He knew very well that his voice was an important instrument of his power; his words intoxicated the people and carried them away. How was he to hold crowds spellbound if he couldn’t address them any more?

His colleagues had been telling him for weeks: ‘My Führer, you must address the German people again. They’ve lost heart. They have doubts about you. There are rumours that you’re not alive any more.’ The adjutants had asked us secretaries to try to get the Führer to dictate a speech to us. But he had always replied, ‘This is no time for making speeches. I have to take decisions and act. And I have nothing to say to the German people. First I must achieve success, then I can give them strength and courage again.’ And now, soon after he had escaped the assassination attempt, a new sword of Damocles was hanging over his head. The fronts were ablaze everywhere; he would have needed to be on both the Western and the Eastern Fronts at the same time. He decided to stay in Berlin for the time being.

We arrived in Berlin that evening without hearing any air-raid warnings. We had to use Grunewald Station; the Silesian Station had come under fire the day before. When we got out of the guest carriage, Hitler had already left. The tail lights of his car were just turning the corner as we drove out of the station. In blackout, the city looked darker and bleaker than the forest by night. As far as possible, the column of cars tried to drive down streets that were still intact. Once again, Hitler had no chance to see Berlin’s wounds as they really were. The dipped headlights of the cars merely touched on mounds of rubble to right and left of the road.

When we reached the Reich Chancellery there was already quite a large company assembled in the Ladies’ Room. It was some time since the Ladies’ Room had had anything to do with ladies. It was a large room with a fireplace, tall mirrors, several comfortable nooks for sitting in, and its title came from the days of brilliant parties when Hitler received a great many artists here. Now the thick carpets had been taken down to the bunkers, and the valuable furniture replaced by comfortable but simple tables and chairs.

Hitler did not sit with us for long. We had already eaten our evening meal in the train. He told Linge to get his bedroom ready and take Blondi out. He himself withdrew very early. There was no mistaking his nervous state. He was to have his operation tomorrow.

I had never been in Berlin for very long with Hitler and his whole staff. For the first time since the beginning of the war, headquarters had now been moved to the heart of Germany, to Berlin itself. The huge complex of the Reich Chancellery, which stood between what had once been Hermann-Göring-Strasse, Voss-Strasse and Wilhelmstrasse, was always a maze to me. I couldn’t get the hang of it. I did know Hitler’s apartment in the old palace looking out on Wilhelmstrasse, but the rooms were dead and empty, like a gentleman’s town house when its owner has gone into the country.

By now several bombs had fallen here too, and the old building had suffered a good deal of damage. It was a very remarkable old structure, and even Hitler’s conversion could never make it really practical and useful. There were any number of flights of front stairs and back stairs, and an astonishing amount of forecourts and halls that had no purpose except to make it more difficult to find important people who were needed urgently.

Hitler’s library and study, his bedroom and Eva Braun’s apartment were on the first floor. There was also a large and very handsome Congress Hall, which Hitler said he had saved from collapsing. ‘The old gentleman’ – that was what he called Hindenburg – ‘received me in this hall when he appointed me Reich Chancellor. “Keep to the walls if you can, Hitler,” he said in his deep voice. “The floor won’t hold up much longer!” I think the building would gradually have fallen into ruin if nothing had been done.’ It was true that Hitler had had new ceilings put in, but a bomb had fallen in this very hall, and now it was empty and abandoned, and no more repairs had been carried out. Three different flights of stairs led to this upper floor.

Directly opposite the door of Hitler’s study, a few steps led to a long passage with the rooms of Hitler’s entourage opening off it. The first room, at the foot of some steps, was called the Staircase Room. It was now our sitting room, the adjutants’ waiting-room, and was sometimes used as a bedroom by some unexpected visitor. Schaub’s room was next to it, then came a room for Dr Otto Dietrich the press chief, then the room really meant for Sepp Dietrich but now occupied by Adjutant Bormann, and finally there was the living room always used by Gruppenführer Albrecht, the permanent Berlin adjutant.