On the next day, April 30, Hitler took leave of those remaining in the bunker, including Goebbels, and disappeared with Eva Braun into their private quarters. The time was about 3:00 P.M. Although different accounts have been given as to what happened next, the most likely scenario is that Hitler and his bride took cyanide capsules—previously tested on Hitler’s dog, Blondi—following which Hitler also shot himself in the head. The bodies were carried by SS men out of the bunker through an emergency exit to the Chancellery garden. They were placed in a shallow crater, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Because of the steady Russian artillery barrage, however, the SS officers did not stand around and attend the flames, much less stir the ashes to break up any identifiable clumps. Rather, they quickly gave the Nazi salute and ran back in the bunker, returning to the garden only once to pour more gas on the fire. About seven hours later, after nightfall, they emerged a third time to wrap the partially charred corpses in tarps and cover them with a thin layer of dirt. Hitler’s instructions regarding the treatment of his remains were therefore not carried out to the letter. The Führer was buried in Berlin after all, if only for a brief time.
Goebbels disobeyed another of Hitler’s final orders by remaining in the bunker instead of joining Admiral Donitz in his rump government northwest of the capital. He sent a telegram to the admiral informing him of the Führer’s death, which news the admiral broadcast to the German people on May 1, telling them however that Hitler had died leading his troops in battle. Then, after failing through General Hans Krebs to negotiate a conditional surrender to the Soviets, Goebbels decided that he, too, must die in Berlin, the city of his destiny. He insisted, moreover, that his family, which had recently moved into the bunker, must die along with him. Accordingly, on the day after Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels and his wife Magda arranged for the murder of their six children—Helga, Hilda, Helmut, Holde, Hedda, and Heide—with cyanide-laced bedtime chocolates. They then went up to the garden and committed suicide themselves. Their bodies were set on fire, but no one made an effort to bury them. This was not a time to stand on ceremony.
Back in the bunker the atmosphere lightened appreciably now that the master and his chief minion were gone for good. Most of the remaining inhabitants gave little thought to the destruction going on above their heads or even to the macabre barbecue in the Chancellery garden. In the words of Hugh Trevor-Roper, the first serious student of Hitler’s last days, “a great cloud seemed to have lifted from their spirits. The nightmare of ideological repression was over, and if the prospect before them remained dark and dubious, at least they were now free to consider it in a businesslike manner.” They were also free to indulge in previously forbidden pleasures, such as smoking and listening to jazz. It is safe to say that the Führerbunker was the only place in Berlin at that moment where people were listening to jazz.
The moment of relief did not last long, however, for on the night of May 1 most of the remaining residents decided to abandon the bunker complex and make a desperate flight through the burning streets of Berlin in hopes of escaping the city. All were killed or captured in the break-out attempt, or run to ground shortly thereafter. For a time it was thought that Martin Bormann might have made it to safety, but he too died in the confines of the capital. Some thirty years later, a skull was found that was identified by pathologists as Bormann’s.
On May 2 General Karl Weidling, the city commandant of Berlin, sought out Marshal Zhukov to formally surrender the German capital. To Zhukov’s query regarding the whereabouts of Hitler, Weidling told him about the final fate of the Führer and Goebbels. “In my opinion,” Weidling then said to Zhukov, “it would be senseless and criminal if [the fighting in Berlin] claimed any more victims.” As the orders to end all the firing went out, Russian soldiers climbed to the roof of the ruined Reichstag and hoisted the Soviet flag. There is a famous photograph of this moment, and it might be taken as a fitting pictorial bookend to the photographs of Hitler’s SA marching through the Brandenburg Gate on January 30, 1933.
