As one of the few people to have survived the events
of April 1945, both within and without the Reich Chancellery, I would like to
relate some of my recollections, beginning with those of 20th April- Hitler's
last birthday. Berlin and the city's eastern suburbs were already under
sporadic long-range gunfire from small-calibre Russian artillery. A few
enemy bombers and spotter planes had been wheeling over the eastern end of the
city, particularly at and shortly after dusk, but they kept a respectful
distance between themselves and our anti-aircraft batteries on the flak towers,
which in addition to acting as anti-aircraft defences were engaging the Russian
long-range batteries with accurate gunfire and repeatedly silencing them.
Fighting had already reached the outermost suburbs of east Berlin, as General
Busse's Ninth Army had been routed near Frankfurt-on-Oder and Küstrin, and our
defence of the Oder had collapsed.
The chief of the High Command [i.e., Keitel
himself] and his chief of operations staff [Jodl] and their immediate
lieutenants were still working in the command post which had been built in
Dahlem's Föhrenweg by War Minister von Blomberg back in 1936, while the OKW
operations staff, which had relinquished its nearby quarters at the
Air Zone Command building in Kronprinzallee, had moved [with the Army
General Staff] to the War Office.s bunker at Wunsdorf (in Zossen). It was there
too that Jodl and I had our emergency billets, I myself being billeted at
Number 16 Föhrenweg, the former home of the champion boxer Schmeling.(230)
Toward midday of 20th April, the British and American
air forces executed their last massive air raid on the centre of Berlin, the
governmental quarter. Together with my wife, Grand-Admiral Dönitz and his
wife, and our adjutants, we watched this violent and horrible spectacle from a
small mound in the garden of the Grand-Admiral's service quarters. He had
returned to Berlin the night before from Coral, his operational headquarters
near Eberswalde, as it was now threatened by the Russians. advance.
During this final heavy bombardment in perfect and
sunny weather, the already badly-afflicted Reich Chancellery building escaped
further damage. Our own fighter squadrons did nothing to beat off the
attack on Berlin, and the anti-aircraft defences were powerless against an
enemy attacking from such a height. The raid lasted almost two hours, the
bombers parading overhead in tight formation as though it were a peacetime air
display, dropping the bombs in perfect unison.
A war conference had been laid on from four o.clock
onward that afternoon in the Führer's bunker at the Reich Chancellery. As Jodl
and I entered the bunker, we saw the Führer accompanied by Goebbels and Himmler
going up to the Reich Chancellery's day-rooms. I rejected an adjutant.s
suggestion that I should tag along with them, as I had not yet had the
opportunity of greeting the Führer. I learned that a number of boys of the
Hitler Youth had been paraded upstairs in the Reich Chancellery to receive
decorations for gallantry, including several Iron Crosses, for their superb
work in ARP and anti-aircraft units during the enemy air raids.
After the Führer had returned to the bunker, Göring,
Dönitz, Keitel and Jodl were individually summoned to his small sitting room
next to the conference chamber to congratulate him on the occasion of his
birthday. All the other people taking part in the conference were greeted by
the Führer with just a handshake as he entered the chamber, and no further
attention was paid to its being his birthday.
When I found myself alone face-to-face with the
Führer, I found myself unable to congratulate him: I said (231) something to
the effect that both his merciful escape from assassination on 20th July
and his continued survival until today, his birthday, to maintain in his hands
the supreme command at this grave moment when the very existence of the Reich
he had created was threatened as never before, inspired in us the confidence
that he would draw what seemed the inevitable conclusion now: I said that I
believed he should begin surrender negotiations before the Reich capital itself
became a battlefield.
I was about to continue in this vein when he stopped
me with the words: Keitel, I know what I want. I am going to go down fighting,
either in or outside Berlin.. To me that sounded like an empty slogan, and he
could see I was trying to dissuade him from the idea. He held out his hand to
me, and said, .Thank you . call in Jodl, will you. We will speak later about
it.. I was dismissed from his room. What he discussed with Jodl I never
learned.
The war conference took its usual course in the
oppressive confines of the bunker chamber. The War Office's General Krebs
described the situation on the Eastern Front, and Jodl the remaining theatres.
In the meantime, Göring and I withdrew to the private rooms and discussed his
intention to evacuate his operational headquarters to Berchtesgaden, as
Karinhall was already in grave danger and Kurfürst, the air force operations
staff.s headquarters, was already being cut off from time to time from the
signals networks. Göring was planning to go by car, in which case it was high
time for him to leave, as between Halle and Leipzig there was only one main
road south known to be clear of enemy spearheads. I advised Göring to go, and
he asked me if I would suggest to Hitler that the air force operational
headquarters be transferred to Berchtesgaden.
Despite the critical situation . in the Italian
theatre .the war conference passed calmly and without the otherwise frequent
unbalanced outbursts. The Führer made a number of clear and objective
decisions; his excitability was well in rein. When I put forward the proposal
that Göring should be despatched to the south before the communications were
severed altogether, he agreed and went (232) so far as to suggest this himself
to Göring.
My motive in doing this centred admittedly on my own
absolutely firm belief at that time that the Führer and the OKW operations
staff would . as had been provided for in
our orders - also be transferring their supreme
command to Berchtesgaden, even if not until the situation in the fighting
around Berlin was consolidated; if necessary they would have to flee by air and
at night. The aircraft for this were already standing by, and everybody not
absolutely vital to the Führer.s headquarters in Berlin had already been sent
off to Berchtesgaden by special trains and convoys of lorries.
The same went for the OKW and the War Office, which
had both been split up and resolved into a joint Northern Command Staff (for
Dönitz) and a Southern one, at Berchtesgaden. Dönitz was to assume command of
all branches of the armed forces in northern Germany as soon as central and
southern Germany were cut off from the north by the linking-up of the American
and Russian troops to the south of Berlin. Hitler himself had signed the orders
for this, as he himself planned to take over in the south while remaining in
radio communication with Dönitz.
On our return to Dahlem on 20th April, I informed Jodl
of my decision to fly out to Berchtesgaden everybody with whose services we
could possibly dispense. My own special train had already moved there two days
earlier. With my adjutant Szymonski in command, my private aircraft made a
perfect daylight take-off in the hands of Air-Staff Engineer Funk [Keitel.s
pilot] and a full crew, taking General Winter, Dr. Lehmann, Frau Jodl and my
wife to Prague, where a service car was waiting to take them on to
Berchtesgaden. The plane was back at Berlin-Tempelhof and at my disposal again
that evening. All this was done to ease the pressure and prepare the way for
the imminent migration of the Führer.s headquarters to Berchtesgaden . a move
which at that time was beyond any question.
On 21st April, General Schörner, commander of the
largest and strongest army group on the Eastern Front [Army Group Centre],
operating from down in the Carpathians to (233) almost as far as just south of
Frankfurt-on-Oder, arrived to make a personal report on the situation to the
Führer. They met in complete privacy and, as Jodl and I entered the Führer .s
bunker that afternoon, Schörner was just taking leave of him. It was obvious
that the Führer had been greatly encouraged by their talk, for he uttered a few
optimistic remarks which Schörner echoed and then invited us to congratulate
Germany.s latest .field-marshal.. As the war conference progressed, it became
very obvious that Schörner had imbued the Führer with an exaggerated confidence
in his own front and leadership, and that Hitler was now clutching at this like
a drowning man at a straw, despite the fact that in the final synthesis it was
only a limited section of the front that was putting up any show of resistance.
Things were becoming hopeless in the west and in Italy, the Russians were at
the gates of Berlin. . . . The Führer.s mood brightened still further as,
unexpectedly for us, General Wenck, commanding the newly-formed Twelfth Army,
put in an appearance during the conference to brief Hitler on the position of
his divisions, and on his operational intentions and the timetable for his
surprise attack on the American formations operating in the Harz region and
advancing on the Elbe. As General Wenck has survived and is in American
captivity, I will leave it to him to describe what were his aims, intentions
and prospects at some date in the future. I myself have no charts or papers to
refer to. The Führer particularly valued Wenck as the energetic but cautious
staff officer for which he had come to know him. He had been the closest
colleague of the chief of General Staff, Guderian, and his right-hand man and
permanent representative, and he had been hand-picked by the Führer for the
command of the newly-raised Twelfth Army.
This latter would, it was hoped, bring about a change
in the position between the mountains of central Germany and the Elbe by
mopping up the enemy forces . believed to be only weak . in the
Magdeburg-Lüneberg-Brunswick area and joining up with the armoured group which
had crossed the Elbe south of Lauenburg and was fighting in the vicinity of
Uelzen.(234)
In view of the improvised nature of his formation, the
complexity of the situation, which was tying down our forces on every hand, and
the numerical weakness of the army
in question, I was unable to comprehend either the Führer.s optimism or that of
General Wenck. I am convinced that Wenck did not honestly hope to gain more
than a local success, and
certainly not a strategic victory. But in this case, too, the Führer.s manifest
self-deception was only increased by the generals in whom he had trusted, and
this in turn inspired hopes in him which were to prove fateful to us. Only
people who . like me . have seen and heard the hundreds of cases where even
senior commanders did not dare to stand up to the Führer at times like this and
tell him what they thought and what they considered feasible, have any right to
reject the accusation of .feebleness.among the Führer.s closest advisers.
As Jodl and I drove back together in my car that
evening after the war conference, as was our custom, we both expressed our
amazement that the Führer had seemed so optimistic,
or at least had been able to talk so confidently.
Schörner and Wenck must have infused him with this new
spirit. Could it really be that he did not see how hopeless our position was?
No, he must have seen it, but he refused to admit it could be true.
At our usual time on the afternoon of 22nd April, we
went to the war conference. I saw at once that leaden clouds lay heavily over
the atmosphere; the Führer.s face was yellowish-grey and he was of stony
countenance. He was extremely nervous, his mind kept wandering, and twice he
left the conference chamber for his private room next door.
In our absence the situation on the Eastern Front and
the acute worsening of the position around Berlin had been outlined at midday
by General Krebs, who had taken General Wenck.s place as representative of
Guderian, chief of the General Staff, who had been sent on permanent leave some
weeks before.
Not only was there street-fighting in the eastern
suburbs of Berlin now, but as a result of the rout of the Ninth Army (235) to
the south the Russians had already reached the Jüterbog area, and the army.s
largest and most important central unitions dump was thus in grave and
immediate danger; we had to be prepared to write it off. There was also
increasing enemy pressure on the northern outskirts of Berlin, although on both
flanks of Eberswalde Colonel-General Heinrici.s Oder front still stood fast.
Jodl and I learned of this worsening of our position in the battle of Berlin
only at the Reich Chancellery. The commandant of Berlin had received personal
orders from the Führer that midday for the safeguarding of the city center and
the government quarter.
Jodl kept the war conference as short as possible.
Army Group West [i.e., the formations under the C-in-C West,
Field-Marshal Kesselring] had in southern Germany already been pushed back into
the Harz from Thüringia, there was fighting in Weimar, Gotha, Schweinfurt,
and so on. In northern Germany they had been pushed back to the Elbe and the
region south of Hamburg.
At the end of the conference, I asked for an interview
with the Führer accompanied only by Jodl. A decision could not be postponed any
longer: before Berlin became a battleground of house-to-house
street-fighting, we had either to offer to surrender or to escape by flying out
to Berchtesgaden at night to commence surrender negotiations
from there. I had the conference chamber cleared and
found myself alone with Hitler, just as Jodl had been summoned to the
telephone. As so often in my life, Hitler cut me short after my very first few
words and broke in to say: .I know already what you.re going to tell me: .The
decision has got to be made now!. I have already made a decision: I will never
leave Berlin again; I will defend the city with my dying breath. Either I
direct the battle for the Reich capital . if Wenck can keep the Americans off
my back and throw them back over the Elbe - or I will go down with my troops in
Berlin, fighting for the symbol of the Reich!.
I told him bluntly that that was madness,
and that in the present situation I was obliged to demand that he fly that very
night to Berchtesgaden to ensure the continuity of command over the Reich and
the armed forces - something (236) that could not be guaranteed in
Berlin, where communications might be severed at any moment.
The Führer explained: “There
is nothing to stop you flying to Berchtesgaden at once. In fact I order
you to do so. But I myself am going to stay in Berlin. I have
already announced that to the German people and the Reich capital on
the radio an hour ago. I am not in the position to retract.
At that moment, Jodl came in. In his presence, I explained
that I had no intention whatsoever of flying to Berchtesgaden without him –
Hitler – that was quite out of the question. It was not just a matter of
the defence or loss of Berlin but of the command of all the armed forces
on every front, which could not be guaranteed from the
Reich Chancellery if the situation in the capital worsened further.
Jodl fervently agreed, and explained that if their signals communications
with the south were to break down altogether –
and the big cable had already been cut in the Thüringian Forest –
then there would be no further possibility of directing the operations of
the army groups of Schörner [Centre], Rendulic [South], the Balkans [northwest
Croatia], Italy [Southwest (C), under Colonel General
von Vietinghoff-Scheel] or West [Field-Marshal Kesselring];radio
communication alone would not suffice. The splitcommand organisation would have
to be put into effect at once and the Führer would have to fly, as
planned, to Berchtesgaden to remain in command.
The Führer called in Bormann and repeated
to the three of us the order to fly to Berchtesgaden that night, where
I was to take command, with Göring as his personal representative.All three
of us announced that we refused to do so. I said: “In
seven years I have never refused to execute an order from you, but this is
one order I shall never carry out. You cannot and should not leave the
armed forces in the lurch, still less at a time like this.”
He replied: “I am stopping here, and that is that. I have deliberately
announced this without your knowledge so as to commit myself.
If there has to be any negotiating with the enemy –
as there has now – then Göring is better at that than I am.
Either I (237) fight and win the battle of Berlin - or I am killed in
Berlin. That is my final and irrevocable decision."
I saw it was useless to continue this argument with Hitler in his present
mood, and I announced I would drive at once from the Reich Chancellery to the
front to see General Wenck, cancel all the orders covering his operations, and
direct him to march on Berlin and join up with the Ninth Army units fighting to
the south of the city. I would report to him, the Fiihrer, at noon the next day
on the new position and on Wenck's movements, and then we should be able to
look ahead from there. The Fiihrer at once agreed to my proposal. Obviously, it
brought him a degree of deliverance from the frankly horrifying position in
which he had put both himself and us.
On his orders I was provided with ample victuals. As I partook of a bowl of pea
soup before my departure, I went over the other measures to be taken with Jodl.
He suggested to me that the supreme command should be safeguarded against the
event that the Fiihrer really did adhere to his plan as outlined to us in the
emotional scene shortly before. We both at once agreed that in that case it
would be impossible to command from the Fiihrer's Reich Chancellery bunker,
but on the other hand we would not go to Berchtesgaden and thereby give up both
the Fiihrer and contact with him; but we would under no circumstances remain at
the Reich Chancellery or even in Berlin ourselves, as we would thereby lose
all contact with the various fronts.
On this basis, I authorised Jodl to make the necessary dispositions for the
combined OKW and War Office command staff foreseen for Berchtesgaden to
transfer all the remaining units still in Wunsdorf under the command of
Lieutenant-General Winter (deputy-chief, OKW operations staff) immediately to
Berchtesgaden, to safeguard the operational command in the south, while the
northern command staff should that same evening be assembled at Krampnitz
barracks, near Potsdam, to which locality we two would also transfer with our
immediate lieutenants. Overall command should remain for the time being with
the Fiihrer,(238) keeping in contact with the Reich Chancellery at all
times and with the daily war conferences continuing as before.
This left the way still open for the
solution we had originally planned, for we were both firmly resolved to
dissuade the Führer, come what may, from his mania for succumbing in
Berlin. Jodl undertook to apprise General Wenck, possibly by radio, of my
advent and of the order I intended to issue to him; then we separated.
I drove straight from the Reich Chancellery, accompanied by my staff officer
Major Schlottmann, and with my ever-cheerful driver Mönch at the wheel. We
wandered all around Nauen and Brandenburg with the greatest
difficulty as they had recently been ploughed up by an air raid
and only a desert of ruins remained. The street leading
directly south to Wenck’s headquarters had been hopelessly
blocked.
I finally found Wenck shortly before midnight at a lonely forester’s
house. Our finding the place at all was pure chance: I first met a
despatch-rider who guided me to General Koehler’s
headquarters, and General Koehler provided me with a driver who knew the
forest lanes leading to Twelfth Army headquarters. In a tête-à-tête
with General Wenck, I outlined the situation that had developed during the
previous afternoon in the Reich Chancellery, and made it clear to him that
my last hope of fetching the Führer out of Berlin rested solely on
the success of his breaking through to the capital and linking up with the
Ninth Army. I was thinking in terms of nothing less than abducting the
Führer – if necessary by force – from the Reich Chancellery if we were
unable to bring him to his senses – something I hardly dared to
hope after his calamitous performance during the previous afternoon.
Everything depended, I told him, on the success of our operation, whatever
the cost. Wenck called in his chief of staff. With a map, I
sketched in the situation around Berlin as best I knew it from
the previous day. Then I left the men alone and set about my supper
in the hall of the forester’s house, while Wenck dictated the new
order to his army I had asked him for, to take back to the Führer. About
an hour later I drove off (239) again with the army order in my pocket, having
offered to hand Wenck’s order to General Koehler on the way
back, and to brief him personally and visit his divisional
commanders during the night as well. I wanted to bring my
own personal influence to bear on all these troop commanders and
bring home to them both the rough significance of the task lying ahead of
them and the assurance that, if things went wrong, it would augur ill for
Germany. Wenck was –and remained –
the only one to know my innermost thoughts and of my intention to abduct
the Führer from Berlin before the capital’s fate was sealed.
At dawn, after a tiresome search, I reached the command post of the
division closest to the front. It had already issued orders to attack in
line with the changed situation and our intentions. I found the divisional
commander some way back in a village, while there were sounds of
battle some way off in the distance. I demanded that he accompany me
immediately to his most advanced regiment, so he could exert some personal
influence on his troops and because I wanted to speak to the regiment’s
commanding officer myself.It was a division that had recently been raised
in the capital from units and unit leaders of the Reich
Labour Service. Naturally, it was not a battle-hardened troop,
but its officers and men were fired by a magnificent spirit.
But their commanding officers, obviously energetic and
warhardened soldiers, belonged more than normally at the head of
their troops and not at rearward command posts, for only their personal
example could compensate for the lack of training and self-confidence of
their subordinate officers. After I had brought home the importance of
their task to the attacking officers, both by my own presence and by
a speech to them, I called in briefly on General Holste’s headquarters
on the way back to Krampnitz. He was responsible for safeguarding the line
of the river Elbe against a crossing by the Americans from the west. I
discussed the position in detail with Holste –
an old regimental comrade from the 6th Artillery Regiment, whose
enthusiasm and vitality I could vouch for – and stressed to him
the importance (240) of his rôle, which was the prerequisite for the
success of the Twelfth Army’s operations (to which formation
I forthwith subordinated him). Holste was absolutely convinced by the
burden of reports from the troops and
enemy intelligence that the Americans were making no preparations to
attack eastward over the Elbe.
Toward eleven o'’clock
that morning [23rd April, 1945], I checked back into Krampnitz –
dead tired, of course – and after consulting with Jodl
called at the Reich Chancellery to report to the Führer. As we were
ordered to report to him at two o’clock, I was able to get in a good hour’s
sleep first. In contrast to the previous afternoon, I found
the Führer very calm, and this kindled new hopes in me of
bringing him to reason and persuading him to forget his
unfortunate plan. After General Krebs had described the position on
the Eastern Front, where things had not noticeably worsened, and Jodl
on the other fronts, I confidentially reported to him –
with only Jodl and Krebs in attendance – on my visit to the
front. First, I handed to him the Twelfth Army order issued by Wenck.
The Führer scrutinised it carefully and retained it.
Although he passed no comment on it, I had the impression
he was completely satisfied. I outlined in detail the outcome of my talks
with the troop commanders and gave him my own impression gained on the
spot. In the meantime, news had arrived of the progress of the attack
being mounted by General Koehler’s Army Corps toward Potsdam to their
northeast. The Führer enquired whether contact had already been
established between them and the Ninth Army, which I was unable to answer.
Nor did General Krebs have any reports to that effect from the
Ninth Army, whose radio traffic was being monitored by the Reich
Chancellery’s signals office. Krebs was again ordered to direct the Ninth Army
to establish contact with the Twelfth Army and mop up the enemy forces
between them.
Finally, I again requested a private interview. The Führer said he wanted
Jodl and Krebs to be present too. Στο τέλος , ζήτησα για μια ακόμη φορά να του μιλήσω
ιδιαιτέρως. Ο Führer είπε ότι επιθυμία του ήταν να
παρευρίσκονται σ΄αυτή τη συνομιλία ο Jodl και
ο Krebs (241) .(Συνέχεια)
