Page 36 - All About History - Issue 186-19

There wasn’t a single
building left intact
after weeks of shelling
and heavy fighting

The death of Hitler was followed

by murders, suicides and escape
attempts that have spawned
endless conspiracy theories

With the war lost and their beloved dictator
dead the two generals, Wilhelm Burgdorf
and Hans Krebs, followed their leader’s
example and blew their brains out. Hitler’s
valet Heinz Linge and the Führer’s SS adjutant
Otto Günsche fled the bunker and were
captured by the Red Army, as was Rochus
Misch, who covered Krebs and Burgdorf’s
heads with handkerchiefs after their suicides.
Stumpfegger, Bormann, Hitler’s pilot Hans
Baur and the one-armed Hitler Youth leader
Artur Axmann managed to get across the
Weidendammer Bridge as part of the mass
break-out, only for Axmann to be captured
and Stumpfegger and Bormann to be killed.
Lack of evidence led to decades of stories
that Bormann had somehow survived and
escaped to South America. Traudl Junge
got out of the bunker and the city and lived.
However, it was the fate of the Goebbels A homeless German
family that plumbed the depths of tragedy. refugee consoles her
He and his wife Magda had six children: five son amidst the ruins
girls and one boy. The eldest, Helga, was 12, of Berlin in June 1945
the youngest, Heidrun, was just four. Their
mother and father persuaded the SS doctor In Berlin itself, Weidling found himself in charge On 27 April, Hitler noticed that Himmler’s
Stumpfegger to inject them with morphine of around 80,000 men; half being the remnants SS representative, SS-Gruppenfuhrer Hermann
to knock them out. Once unconscious, of four or five Army and Waffen-SS divisions Fegelein, was missing and a search was launched
their parents crushed cyanide capsules in trapped in the city, and the other half being elderly for the man married to Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl.
each of their young mouths – killing all of Volkssturm (People’s Storm – the Nazi version of Found in his Berlin apartment in civilian clothes
them. Joseph and Magda then committed Britain’s Home Guard) militiamen and teenaged and preparing to flee the city, he was arrested and
suicide in the Chancellery garden. Günther Hitler Youth members. Perhaps strangest of all in dragged back to the bunker. Almost paralytically
Schwägermann, Goebbels’s SS adjutant, had this hotchpotch of defenders was the presence of drunk, he was court-martialled, taken out into
a guard fire several shots into the bodies to significant numbers of non-Germans; among the the Chancellery garden and shot. That night the
make sure they were dead. Petrol was then ranks of the 11th SS-Freiwilligen Panzergrenadier- BBC broadcast reported that his boss Himmler,
poured onto the corpses and they were Division “Nordland” were many hundreds of Hitler’s der treue Heinrich (faithful Heinrich) had
torched, although the lack of fuel by this Norwegians and Danes, and even a small number been engaged in secret peace feelers with the
point meant they were only partly burnt. of Swedes. They were joined on 24 April by over Allies. Hitler flew into another one of his by-now
300 Frenchmen from SS-Brigadeführer Gustav trademark rages and ordered Himmler’s arrest on
Krukenberg’s 33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division der charges of treason.
SS ‘Charlemagne’ (Französische Nr. 1). Motivated to As a pleading Fegelein was executed, Henri
volunteer for the Waffen-SS by a range of factors, Fenet, a French Waffen-SS officer defending the
including anti-communism and pro-Nazi feeling, city, was brought to his divisional command
these volunteers would prove to be some of the post for treatment to a serious leg wound. As
city’s staunchest defenders. Fenet attempted to leave to return to his men,
Life in the bunker now became even more his commander Gustav Krukenberg demanded:
surreal as its occupants became little more than “Where are you going?” Fenet replied: “Back to
bystanders to the calamity above them as the city the battalion.”
was fought over and further reduced to rubble. “Do not move from here, you can’t stand up.
Space was now at a premium, with Goebbels Get your orders carried by messenger and stay

© Alamy moving in with his wife Magda and six children. here at headquarters.”
The bespectacled Fenet protested, to no avail.
They joined a woman who – despite being Hitler’s
The half-burnt body of Joseph Goebbels. After lover for over a decade – had been hidden away As the bitter fighting raged street-to-street, the
murdering their six children, he and his wife Magda from the German public and prying eyes: the part- French SS in particular were successful in holding
committed suicide in the Chancellery garden.
time photography model Eva Braun. up Soviet attacks with panzerfausts. Two of their

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