Hitler's last 24 hours

7am, Sunday, April 29, 1945

The people of Berlin are emerging from their overcrowded underground bunkers in search of food. Armin Lehmann, 16, working as a Hitler Youth courier, is horrified by the desperation of ordinary citizens, many of whom are starving. Recently, he saw two men hacking with a knife at a horse. It had been injured by shrapnel, but was still alive.

Another Hitler Youth runner appears in the upper bunker to report that Russian tanks are now about 500m from the Reich Chancellery. [Both the upper and lower bunkers, where Hitler and a few staff have been living since January, are below the Reich Chancellery. The Fuhrer spends most of his time in the lower one — known as the Fuhrerbunker — which is protected by a 10ft-deep concrete roof.]

10.30am

In his office in the upper bunker, the monocled General Krebs is on the phone to army HQ in Berlin. He’s told the German defence is collapsing on all fronts. Then the line suddenly goes dead: the balloon that supports radio-telephone communications has been shot down.

All telephone contact between Berlin and the outside world has just ended. From now on, the Hitler Youth runners will have to risk their lives several times a day as they dodge across Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin’s central street, taking messages between army HQ and the Fuhrerbunker.

‘It was a nightmare . . . a game of Russian Roulette,’ 16-year-old Armin Lehmann recalled. ‘Those who stepped out from cover were taking their life in their hands.

‘At best, they’d get a mouthful of the constant cloud of phosphorus smoke and poisonous petrol from the incendiaries; at worst, they’d be sliced down by a Russian rocket. Wilhelmstrasse stank with the smell of scorched bodies.’

Boys who refuse to follow orders are strung up as an example to others. Only a couple of days ago, Lehmann was briefly arrested for staring at the body of a boy — ‘he can’t have been more than 13’ — who’d been hanged from a post with a length of clothes-line.

11am

Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet, knocks on the door of his master’s small bedroom. For the past six years, it’s been part of Linge’s job to help him get dressed.

The routine’s always the same. Linge holds a stopwatch to time the process, which begins when Hitler shouts ‘Los!’ (‘on your marks’). In the early days, the faster he got dressed, the better the Fuhrer’s mood.

This morning, however, Hitler is lying on his bed fully clothed. Except for his tie. There’s a special ritual for the tie. Hitler stands in front of the mirror, with his eyes closed, and counts the seconds as Linge does it up. Then he opens his eyes and checks the tie in the mirror.

A few seconds later, Hitler’s barber, August Wollenhaupt, comes into the bedroom to give his hair and moustache their fortnightly trim.

Hitler’s moustache is designed to cover his unusually large nostrils. The style originated in America, where it’s known as the toothbrush moustache and sported by Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney. In Bavaria, it’s known as a Rotzbremse — or ‘snot brake’.

Linge now administers cocaine drops to Hitler’s right eye, which has been causing intense pain for the past few days, and gives him a packet of pastilles to suck through the day. These are the ‘anti-gas pills’ that his master takes for stomach cramps and flatulence.

For the first time in nine years, Hitler has no personal doctor. A week ago, he furiously dismissed Dr Theodor Morell, after accusing the doctor of trying to sedate him in order to whisk him out of Berlin.

Morell has left behind a cabinet full of medicines, including glucose and amphetamine injections, which he used daily to boost the Fuhrer’s energy. At one point, Hitler was having 28 different pills and injections every day.

The Fuhrer has long been a hypochondriac, but he’s now suffering from Parkinson’s disease and a heart problem, as well as from numerous stress-related conditions.

Before dismissing Linge this morning, Hitler asks him to get Wulf, his favourite puppy among those born in the bunker to his Alsatian, Blondi.

The Fuhrer is particularly attached to Blondi, who sometimes provides a whole evening’s entertainment. She barks on command and howls when he orders her to sing.

He’s most proud of the fact that when he tells her to ‘sing like Zarah Leander’ — a Swedish singer famed for her deep voice — Blondi gives a deeper howl.

11.05am

General Burgdorf, a commander in the army, drops round to see if General Krebs fancies a drink. He’s closely followed by Hitler’s private secretary, Martin Bormann, who’s also ready to hit the bottle.

Along with the two generals, he’s been spending most of his time sitting in the bunker corridors, drinking schnapps.

From time to time, all three cruise over to the Reich Chancellery, where a kind of mass hysteria, fuelled by an endless supply of alcohol in the cellars, has led to a relaxing of sexual inhibitions.

Bormann’s philandering has the support of his wife Gerda, the mother of his ten children. Just over a year ago, he wrote to her with the proud news that he’d succeeded in seducing the well-known actress Manja Behrens.

Gerda wrote straight back, congratulating him and offering to welcome Manja into their household. They should arrange a system of motherhood by shifts, she said, ‘so that you always have a wife who is usable’.

11.45am

The six children of Joseph and Magda Goebbels are playing in the corridor of the upper bunker.

Most of them are excited to be here — they call the bunker a ‘cave’ and have made several friends. Rochus Misch, the gentle giant at the switchboard, is a particular favourite. They’ve made up a rhyme about him which the four-year-old, Heide, sings every time they see him: ‘Misch, Misch du bist ein Fisch!’ [Misch, Misch, you’re a fish!]

They’re charming and well brought-up children, according to Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, who’s been helping to look after them, and know nothing of the fate that awaits them

‘Only the oldest, Helga, sometimes had a sad, knowing expression in her big brown eyes,’ Junge will write later. ‘She was the quietest, and sometimes I think, with horror, that in her heart that child saw through the pretence of the grown-ups.’

2pm

Hitler is lunching with Eva Braun — whom he married a few hours ago — and his two remaining secretaries. He’s been sharing his meals with secretaries since autumn 1942, shortly after the start of the Battle of Stalingrad.

(dailymail.co.uk)