Shocked that the man who considered himself the “Savior of Berlin” in the 1930s should now be determined to destroy it, Albert Speer worked during the last weeks of the Reich to prevent this order from being carried out. He also planned—so he claims in his memoirs—to kill Hitler by feeding poison gas into the ventilation shaft of the bunker, only to give up the attempt upon discovering that the ground-level shaft had been replaced by a high chimney. If this story is true (and with Speer, one can never be sure), Hitler’s death was deferred not only by the ill-luck of his enemies but also by the irresolution of his disillusioned henchmen.
In late April Hitler was joined in the bunker by Goebbels, his main partner in the conquest of Berlin. Like Hitler, Goebbels vowed to fight on to the bitter end, giving orders that anyone who obstructed the defense of the city should be summarily executed. He too insisted that if the Reich could win in Berlin, the rest of the nation would rally to throw out the invaders. It is impossible to know whether he actually believed such nonsense, but very probably he did: the surreal atmosphere in the bunker, where the sound and shock of Russian shells barely penetrated, encouraged the wildest flights of fancy.
The scene aboveground in the last week of April allowed for few illusions among the defenders, but many nonetheless elected to fight on as their Führer commanded. In addition to battling Soviet troops, SS units and so-called “Werewolf bands executed Berliners who opted for surrender. Here and there bodies dangled from lampposts with signs reading: “We were too cowardly to defend Berlin from the Bolsheviks. We raised the white flag and thereby betrayed Greater Germany and the Führer. Thus we must die without honor!”
The German resistance was such that the Russians had to blast their way through the city block by block, house by house. Shells from their tanks and artillery added significantly to the devastation wrought by the years of bombing. After the Soviets had secured a neighborhood, there was often not a single building left intact.
Alas, the Russians left more than physical devastation in their wake. Hungry for revenge against an enemy that had terrorized their own land, Soviet soldiers gave themselves over to an orgy of plunder and rapine. They raped women of all ages, from five to eighty, often dozens of times over. According to the horrified mayor of Charlottenburg, “a woman could not escape being raped unless she kept in hiding.” Such behavior violated an order from Stalin to maintain strict discipline when taking Berlin, so as not to alienate the German people. Zhukov, too, admonished his troops to remember that they were in Berlin to destroy Hitlerism, not to humiliate the people. “Soldiers,” he said, “make sure that in looking at the hemlines of German girls you don’t look past the reasons the homeland sent you here.” But in the heat of the moment such admonitions had little currency. Before entering the capital Soviet soldiers had posted signs saying “
By the end of April the Soviets had fought their way to the center of the city. They were pouring artillery fire on the Neue Reichskanzlei, Albert Speer’s monumental down payment on the future Germania. When he built this structure, Speer could hardly have known that his theory of “ruin value” would be tested so soon—and be found so sorely lacking.
On April 29 Hitler got word that that there would be no rescue of Berlin from the army under General Wenck, which in fact no longer existed. Aware now that there was no hope of victory, he decided to do what he had often threatened to do in the past: commit suicide. Before doing so, however, he married his mistress Eva Braun, who had joined him in the bunker on April 15. That he waited to wed until the eve of his suicide was perhaps a commentary on his views of married life. As required by Nazi law, he and Eva declared that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of hereditary diseases. After the ceremony, which was performed by a Berlin city councilor, Hitler dictated his Last Will and Testament, in which he blamed the Jews for the sorry plight of the Third Reich. He named Admiral Karl Donitz as his successor. In a separate document he ordered that his body be “burnt immediately in the place where I have performed the greater part of my daily work during the course of my twelve years’ service to the German people.”
