Military Headquarters WWII - The End Comes

At 5.00pm on 1 December 1944, Hitler and headquarters staff secretly left the Reich Chancellery in Berlin bound for the Western Front. Eight hours later, under cover of darkness, he switched from the train to a waiting column of cars and drove to 'Adlerhorst,' the bunker headquarters built in 1940 at Bad Nauheim, 800 feet above sea level and overlooking the Western Front.

Within hours of his arrival he returned to work with a resilience that even astonished his war staff. In a conference lasting seven hours, his generals remarked that he was very alert and lively, inspiring and compelling, and applying himself to the Ardennes offensive they hoped would turn around the course of the war.

On 7 December, Hitler finally approved the draft for the new winter offensive through the Ardennes but made it known to his war staff that it must always be kept secret. Just four days later Hitler summoned the troop commanders of the Western Front to confer with him in a secret meeting. No one was allowed to know the exact destination of the meeting. Under heavy SS armed guard, each commander, having been stripped of revolvers and other side arms, was led to an extensive system of bunkers.

After being led through several dimly lit corridors, they entered the conference room, where they were greeted by Hitler, who sat at a narrow table flanked by Keitel and Jodl. In a two-hour lecture, the sixty or so assembled commanders were finally told of Hitler's grand strategy for an all-out offensive in the West. They all listened intently to their Führer, and many were impressed not only by the grandiosity of the plan but also by his dynamism and determination.

On the eve of the historic offensive, Hitler held a final conference and inquired whether all the troops were in place and ready for the attack early next morning. In the Ardennes a substantial number of divisions were assigned to the area, including four crack Waffen-SS divisions. Although these powerful SS divisions had a higher allotment of motor vehicles, they were still below their assigned strength for officers and non-commissioned officers, mostly because of the terrible losses sustained in Normandy. But despite these shortcomings, the equipment used by both the SS and Wehrmacht armored formations in the Ardennes was generally excellent, although by this late period of the war it was still in short supply.

After the conference that evening Hitler dined with his secretaries and retired to bed at five in the morning. By the time he was awakened at 11.30am on the 16th, the American lines had caved in along an eighty-mile front. All along the German front from Monschau in the north to Echternach on the Luxembourg border, the cold dawn of 16 December was broken by a massive artillery barrage. The atmosphere at Adlerhorst was electric.

Many of his closest staff appeared inspired by Hitler's optimism and were certain the battle was already as good as won. This cheerful mood continued for the next several days. Hitler, for the first time in many weeks, was eager to attend the situation conferences and listen to the reports from the front. Within the first twenty-four hours of the offensive, the SS Panzer ace Peiper continued to exploit the American defenses using every means at his disposal to annihilate all enemy resistance. However, after seven days of battle, Hitler began receiving increasing reports that the Allies were now beginning to recover from the initial surprise and resistance was stiffening day by day.

By 22 December, the Americans had begun to stem the German drive. Many German units were brought to a standstill due to the lack of fuel and constant congestion on the narrow roads. The fuel shortages were so bad that on 23 December Peiper’s Kampfgruppe destroyed their vehicles, and his remaining 1,000 men set out on foot for the German lines.

Along the entire front, German soldiers were becoming increasingly exhausted. By day and night, the Allied air force gradually regained control, spelling the end of any hopes for an easy conquest in the West. One crisp winter's morning Hitler was caught outside his blockhouse impassively watching as 2,000 enemy bombers swarmed eastward. Returning to his bunker, one of his adjutants noticed that he seemed to have shut his eyes to the possibility that full success could no longer be achieved. His confidence carried over to Christmas, which he celebrated, to the astonishment of his circle, with a glass of wine. It was the first time Fraulein Schroeder had ever seen him take alcohol with any pleasure.

Three days later, at a special meeting with his senior commanders, he admitted the situation was desperate, but he had never learned the word "capitulation" and would pursue his aim with fanaticism. Even when the New Year arrived, he ardently believed that 1945 would be resumed with fresh triumphs.

On 3 January, the long-awaited news finally reached the snow-covered headquarters that the Allies had gone over to the offensive with massive attacks. A subdued atmosphere suddenly descended upon the headquarters. Over the next few days, the warning signs indicating that Stalin's great offensive was about to begin led to increased anxious activity. When Hitler rose at noon on the 11th, news reached his bunker that the attack had already begun. He immediately made his way over to the map room to discuss the worrying developments.

Two days later the situation became much worse. It was reported the German Army had been immediately engulfed in a storm of fire along the Vistula Front. Across the snow-covered terrain, Red Army troops and massive amounts of armored vehicles flooded the battlefield. By the end of the day on 13 January the offensive had ripped open a breach more than twenty miles wide on the Vistula Front.

What followed were scenes of indescribable confusion sweeping the lines. The Soviets had soon wrenched open the front in Poland and East Prussia. Shocked by the appalling losses and devastation on the front, Hitler once again reiterated his desire to return to ‘Wolfschanze’ and take command of the terrible situation that was spiralling out of control. The Führer was warned that developments in the East were now so rapid that it was more than probable that East Prussia would soon fall into Soviet hands. Despite this worrying prospect, Hitler still had not ordered the detonation of ’Wolfschanze,’ hoping that some miracle would halt the Red Army. Yet, he had already instructed those left at the headquarters to evacuate, including the Todt workers.

With the Eastern Front crumbling, Hitler decided to leave ‘Adlerhorst’ and return to Berlin, where he could confidently prepare fresh military undertakings from the Reich Chancellery. On 15 January at 6.00pm, he drove with his entourage to the nearby station and boarded his special train. When Hitler was awakened at 9.00am on 16 January, his train was approaching the capital. He arrived at the blitzed Reich Chancellery just before noon that day.

Over the coming days and weeks to come, developments on the Eastern Front deteriorated. Hitler had determined that the Reich Chancellery would now be the most effective location for directing the war. There were many appeals from members of staff for him to move to the OKH Zossen headquarters just outside Berlin, but he declined. Many of the generals housed in the concrete bunkers at Zossen were totally aware that the Chancellery lacked any real central command structure. They perceived it as dysfunctional and disorganized.

The increasing scale of devastation, the constant air raids, and the threat of the advancing Red Army regularly endangered those that had to report personally to Berlin. The situation disrupted the fragmented headquarters and made it harder for Keitel and Jodl, who had to commute daily from their small bunkers at Berlin-Dahlem.

Despite the unfeasibility of setting up a permanent post in the bombed Chancellery, the headquarters was still able to function and communicate with other command centers. Even with the city ravaged by war, Hitler was able to undertake all the familiar tasks that he had done previously throughout the war. Here in the old Reich Chancellery building he was determined to direct the war from his desk. His presence in the city would ensure that resistance would be maintained to the utmost. In front of his war staff, he reiterated that the principal objective of the Red Army was to crush the remaining German forces in Poland, East Prussia, and the Baltic states.

As the Red Army ominously edged its way nearer to the Reich, Keitel had been given the job of monitoring the Russian advance through East Prussia. On 23 January he informed Hitler that the Red Army was reported to be within miles of ‘Wolfschanze’ and that the complex would inevitably fall. Grudgingly, after weeks of anticipation, Hitler finally gave the order to blow up his greatest headquarters of the war. Once the site had been completely evacuated and files along with other important data had been burnt, the demolition began over an eighteen-hour period between 25 and 26 January, with General Eduard Hauser's pioneer troops sent in to blow up the impregnable bunkers.

The day after the demolition of 'Wolfschanze,' General Guderain and his aide, Captain Gerhardt, were called to the Chancellery to attend a Führer conference to report on the defense of the East. Once inside the building, they took a long detour to Hitler’s office because the direct entrance had been boarded up. Once they reached the foyer, they were met by guards armed with machine guns. An SS officer politely requested them to hand over their side arms and carefully examined their briefcases. They were led into the room, where they found sandwiches and drinks on a sideboard before the conference.

By four o'clock the room was filled with high-ranking officers, including Keitel, Jodl, and Göring. Moments later the doors to the Führer's office were opened, revealing a sparsely decorated room. In the middle of one wall was a large desk; behind it was a black upholstered chair facing the garden. The group seated themselves in heavy leather chairs, while their aides and lesser dignitaries either stood or found straight chairs.

Twenty minutes later Hitler finally shuffled in, shoulders stooped, left arm hanging loose. He greeted a few with a limp shake from his incapacitated right hand. Captain Bolt had never met Hitler before and was shocked by his appearance. Hitler then sat down on a chair pushed forward by an aide and examined Guderian's reports on the Eastern Front.

Uncharacteristically, Hitler made few suggestions but did show much more interest in developments in the West. Reports from the Eastern Front were as depressing as ever. By the time the conference had ended, the Red Army was no more than a few hours’ drive from Berlin. Ahead lay the River Oder, the last major defense line before the Reich capital. German infantry and Panzer troops were ordered to hold the front against superior Soviet artillery and aviation. Although German troops fought to the death in front of the Oder, a disturbing report was handed to Hitler three days later, on the thirtieth, indicating that advancing Soviet forces had reached the eastern bank of the Oder.

The Russian front was now only fifty miles from the Chancellery. The panic in the Chancellery was heightened three days later when Berlin was subjected to the heaviest bombing of the war. Almost a thousand American bombers unloaded 2,000 bombs into the heart of the capital. The raid left the Chancellery badly damaged. From within the old Reich Chancellery, Hitler and his staff hurriedly made their way down a flight of stairs that led fifty feet to the site of the deep underground bunker, which Albert Speer had built for him in 1942 and 1943 at a cost of 1.4 million Reichsmarks. The bunker stretched beneath the old Chancellery and under the garden, beneath an eight-meter roof of earth, steel, and concrete. The bunker itself was not built specifically to house the headquarters but just for temporary occupancy as an air-raid shelter. The ground measured 19.5 metres by 18.8 metres, the concrete ceiling was 3.5 metres thick, and the outer walls were 3.6 metres thick.

There were two entrances, one from the Reich Chancellery garden and one from the cellar of the old Reich Chancellery and the ante-bunker below. Hitler and staff always used the entrance of the old Reich Chancellery. After an air raid, Hitler would remain in the bunker until the bomb damage to the building was repaired again. Here he would sit among his closest associates, eating, drinking, and conferring with his staff until it was time to go back up again into his quarters.

During the early evening of 13 February, there was another heavy air raid over Berlin. Once more everyone took flight to the shelter. At eight o'clock, he dined with two secretaries and then slept until it was time for the midnight war conference. Here he received reports that since midday British bombers in their masses had set alight the ancient city of Dresden, burning alive thousands of refugees in a terrifying fire storm. Hitler was incensed, and as he began condemning the British, word arrived that a new British attack, heavier than the first, had begun. It was not until 6.15am before Hitler retired to his sleeping quarters in the bunker, worn and drawn.

In the afternoon of 14 February, Hitler and staff re-emerged from the bunker tired and strained and began their normal daily routine in the battered Reich Chancellery. His mood became defiant and aggressive in the days that followed, as he faced almost certain catastrophe.

On 25 February the Gauleiters were summoned to the Chancellery at 2.00pm, where Hitler was determined to implant them with fire and optimism. They were surprised to see their Führer resembling an old man. His voice was low, and he greeted everyone with a limp handshake, trying to disguise his trembling right hand. Shuffling across the room, he took to the podium and addressed the Gauleiters and officials, appealing for one last effort to win the war. Everyone expected a sensational address, but all they got was a now customary oration that was both uninspiring and depressing. In conclusion to the speech, he warned his guests that if the German people gave up now, they would deserve annihilation.

The Gauleiters left the Chancellery not knowing if they would ever see their Führer again. Although infused with courage and determination, many were quite conscious that the war was slipping from their grasp.

As fronts everywhere were collapsing and Germany became increasingly compressed between the Oder and the Rhine, Hitler made the decision to leave the confines of the Chancellery and pay a hasty visit to the receding front line in the East. On 3 March, much to the astonishment of his generals, he drove out to the front unmoved by the incredible risk to his life. Here on the battlefield, between Wriezen and Seelow, he was able to witness for the first time the brave legions of the 9th Army putting up a staunch defense with every available weapon they could muster. At Harnekop, he called into the Army Corps Headquarters and some divisional headquarters. Here he urged the assembled commanders to prepare themselves for the last battle before Berlin.

Never again would Hitler venture beyond the Chancellery grounds. Since late February, he and staff have been spending longer periods entombed beneath the Chancellery. By early March, he had decided that it would be much safer to move inside the bunker and direct the defense of the Reich fifty feet below ground. During the first week of March, a gas filter system for protection against air contamination was fitted in the bunker. Where there had been small air-intake shafts, there were now large concrete chimneys to make the shafts invulnerable to objects that might fall in and obstruct the passage. These chimneys were well guarded, along with the whole Chancellery complex.

Everywhere SS and RSD guards were seen patrolling, in the observation towers, on roofs of the entire Chancellery, and there were even spotlights installed all around. At the bunker entrance there was the largest contingent of well-armed SS guards. Visitors to the bunker had to check in at the Reich Chancellery first before they were even considered a pass; their names and papers were scrutinized against logbook entries. Military and party officials were escorted by a guard to the bunker entrance from the partially destroyed Chancellery, which now required long detours.

At every passage on their way there were SS guards, and every time the visitors had to identify themselves. At the entrance they were escorted down a flight of stairs to a steel-reinforced door guarded by two well-armed sentries. An SS officer took their briefcase or any other belongings and examined them, but they were not frisked for hidden weapons. Passing through the steel door, they were provided access to Hitler’s new command center, a huge bunker installation buried beneath the ruins of the Chancellery.

Here they descended more stairs to a narrow passageway, across some duckboards to another door, and then traversed down another flight of stairs to the upper level of the bunker. From here, there were twelve rooms, none larger than a cupboard, six on each side of a central vestibule. These were lumber rooms and servants' quarters and included the vegetarian kitchen where Hitler's meals were prepared. From the passageway, which was now used as a general dining area, they proceeded down a stairway that was right-angled to a still deeper and slightly larger bunker. This was known as the Führerbunker.

Contracted within the thick concrete walls were eighteen rooms, all of which were small, cramped, and uncomfortable, and separated by an entrance hall, which was partitioned into a waiting and conference room. On the near side of the partition, it provided access to some offices, the guardroom, the lavatories, and the emergency telephone exchange and powerhouse. Beyond this partition, it led to a red-carpeted main passageway, which became the conference room in which Hitler presided over the daily staff conferences.

On the other side of the conference passage were rooms occupied by Hitler's two doctors, Morell and Stumpfegger, and Stumpfegger's well-equipped first aid room. At the end of the passage, a door led into a small foyer, used as a cloakroom, and from here four flights of concrete steps climbed into the garden. This was the emergency exit.

A door on the left of the conference room led to a suite of six rooms, which were the private apartments of Hitler. There was a foyer, a bed-sitting room, a dressing room, Hitler's personal bedroom, a living room, and a study. Inside the living room were a desk, a table, and a firm sofa. A portrait of Frederick the Great prominently hung over the desk. Two other doors on the left led into a small conference room filled with a map table surrounded by a wooden bench. In this room was a narrow space known as the ‘Dog Bunker,' which was now used as a restroom for the Begleit Kommando, who guarded the Führer. At the far end of the dog bunker, a spiral staircase led up to an unfinished concrete observation tower above the gardens. Laborers continued to work in shifts to complete this construction and others like it but were forever forced to abandon the building site because of the air raids.

Apart from the Reich Chancellery bunker and the Führerbunker, there were underground shelters burrowed beneath other government buildings. There was the bunker of the Party Chancellery, where Bormann and his staff lived with the service officers and SS guards, and a third bunker, which housed SS-Brigadefuhrer Mohnke, the commandant of the Chancellery, and his staff, while Goebbels and his staff sheltered in the cellars of the Propaganda Ministry.

The largest bunker of them all within the complex of government buildings was the Vossbunker. The Vossbunker was connected to the Führerbunker and could house up to 2,000 people. In 1939 Hitler had opened it to Berlin's hospital and welfare services. Now, six years later, it had become a refuge for injured and frightened Berliners. Every evening now, a line of fleeing civilians formed in the street to access the Vossbunker.

While Hitler and his immediate staff were well protected inside the bunker, the facility was totally impractical as a military headquarters. The lack of telecommunication equipment was inadequate even for just urgent traffic, and it was in drastic need of improvement. To communicate to the OKH, the lines had to go through junctions, and this method was the only way that the bunker command center could access the secure Wehrmacht communication network.

Despite the communication issues, Hitler was resolute in his desire to retain control over the Wehrmacht as the supreme warlord and to direct the defense of the Reich until the very end. From all the governmental bunkers, officers and officials came daily to the Führerbunker for the continuous conferences that took place in the narrow central passage. Jodl, Keitel, and Guderian came from their headquarters at Zossen or Potsdam.

The air inside the bunker was stuffy, despite a ventilating system humming and penetrating every room in the bunker. The bareness and closeness of the windowless rooms made for a depressing atmosphere. Many visitors complained of this. The isolation was much worse than Hitler's East Prussian headquarters. At least at 'Wolfschanze,' where there was no artificial light, you could stroll through the surrounding woods and quietly content yourself with the daily routine of work without really any threat of being bombed. But here in Berlin, this refuge of concrete, stillness, and electric light, bore the true nature of the Führer's isolation and artificial existence, more than any other headquarters.

In this subterranean world, the throng of the military and party officials were duty-bound to watch the last phases of the war being fought out by a sick Führer. Clumsily and painfully, he shuffled himself about the bunker, and because he had lost his sense of balance, he had to frequently sit down or cling to the person he was talking to. His eyes were bloodshot, and saliva regularly dripped from the corner of his mouth. He was depressed by his own ill health.

With the lack of sleep, his body was drained of energy. The last military conference usually ended toward six o'clock in the morning. Then, he would drag himself away and lie on the sofa trying desperately to relax and forget about the calamitous military situation. When he awoke, after three or four hours, he would once again immerse himself with the gargantuan task of fighting a war on all sides. The daily war conferences brought further disappointments and setbacks.

By mid-March, German forces were now barely holding the wavering Vistula positions that ran some 175 miles from the Baltic coast to the juncture of the Oder and Neisse in Silesia. Most of the front was now held on the western bank of the River Oder. In the north, the ancient city of Stettin, capital of Pomerania, and in the south, the town of Kustrin, were both vital holding points against the main Russian objective of the war—Berlin.

In the last months of the war, German forces continued to recede across a scarred and devastated wasteland. On both the Western and Eastern Fronts, the last agonizing moments of the war were played out. Whilst the British and American troops were poised to cross the River Rhine, the terrifying advance of the Red Army bore down on the River Oder in the East, pushing back the last remnants of Hitler's exhausted units. The resistance of her once mighty armies was now collapsing amid the ruins of the Reich.

Most of the so-called Waffen-SS crack divisions were still withdrawing out of Hungary and were unable to be released to plug the massive gaps on the German front lines in the East.

One line of defense Hitler was insistent on securing was the River Oder. The new commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici, was given this task. Hitler looked upon Heinrici as one of the best defensive tacticians in the German army. Before he left for the Oder Front, he had told Hitler that he had correctly predicted that the main Soviet thrust would be made over the Oder River and along the main east-west autobahn—at Seelow Heights. For this reason, he said, he would turn the Heights into a strong defensive position, order engineers to release water from a reservoir upstream, and turn the Oder's floodplain into a marshy swamp.

Behind this he would construct three formidable defensive positions that would spread back to the Reich capital. The last line of defense, which would appear on Hitler's situation map as the Wotan Line, was ten to fifteen miles behind the front. These lines consisted of anti-tank ditches, anti-tank gun emplacements, and an extensive network of trenches and bunkers.

Now as the Russians reached the Oder at Seelow, the atmosphere in the bunker was charged with tension. During the early hours of 15 April, the latest batch of intelligence reports arrived at the headquarters, and they seemed to indicate an immediate assault. Later that morning, Keitel informed Hitler that Heinrici believed the attack along the Oder would take place within twenty-four hours and that he would prepare to move his troops back and take up positions on the second defense line. It would be here where Heinrici was determined to blunt Zhukov's attack, if only for an appreciable length of time.

Whilst Hitler pondered the defensive measures along the Oder at Seelow, later that day, on 15 April, through the smouldering rubble of Berlin, Eva Braun, Hitler's long-term mistress, unexpectedly arrived in the bunker, having evidently hitched a lift from Munich. She had been ordered out of the capital some weeks earlier to Berlin for her safety. Now, she had decided that she wanted to return and stay by Hitler's side, no matter what happened. For the first time Eva now resided at Supreme Headquarters.

That night, while Eva unpacked her belongings in the room adjoining the Führer's, Hitler held a midnight conference to discuss the developments along the Oder. It was reported that, along the entire front, dispersed among the 3rd and 9th Armies, the Germans had fewer than 700 tanks and self-propelled guns. Heinrici predicted that the main attack would be launched in the early hours of the sixteenth and sent word to OKH that he had ordered General Busse to move his 9th Army back to the second defense line.

By 5.00am the following morning, 16 April, word reached the Führerbunker that the Oder Front was under heavy attack, just as Heinrici had predicted. The German troops had been ready to meet them on the Seelow Heights overlooking the Oder. From the top of the ridge, hundreds of German flak guns hastily transferred from the Western Front poured a hurricane of fire into the enemy troops. In the Führerbunker, Hitler was still sleeping when the Russians attacked the Oder. He had retired to bed about 3.00am, and his adjutant, General Burgdorf, had been given strict instructions not to wake him.

With the Red Army now only less than fifty miles away, the bunker was filled with a tense atmosphere. All morning Hitler's staff paced the bunker and tried to hide their anxiety in grim humor. When the Führer was awakened later that morning, Burgdorf told him that the battle of the Oder had begun. Hitler wasted no time and immediately telephoned Krebs demanding to be given a progress report. Although news from the front was limited, he did receive news that Heinrici had been doing everything possible to hold the line. All day he had been going from headquarters to headquarters, visiting field positions, and talking to commanders, instilling them with determination.

By the next day, the Russians had still not breached the German defenses, but General Zhukov, with total disregard of casualties, was determined to batter the enemy into submission and ruthlessly bulldoze his way through. Slowly and systematically, the Red Army began smashing through its opponents. Within hours, hard-pressed and exhausted German troops were feeling the full brunt of the assault. Confusion soon swept the decimated lines. Soldiers who had fought doggedly from one fixed position to another now felt panic seize them.

In the Chancellery gardens rumbles of artillery from the Oder Front could be distinctly heard. Hitler's anguished staff now realized just how near the front had ominously become. Even Hitler himself began to sleep even more irregularly. His staff would often find him sitting for hours in the machine room or Martin Bormann's office with the main telephone switchboard and teleprinter units. The office was covered with maps of Germany and Berlin, on which a five-man unit marked in blue pencil the progress of the battle.

On 20 April, Hitler's birthday, Berlin awoke to a massive air attack. Late that afternoon, wrapped in a field grey coat with its collar turned up, Hitler climbed the spiral staircase to the Chancellery garden, followed by Göbbels, Himmler, and Göring, along with aides and staff officers, and flanked by well-armed SS guards with machine guns at the ready. The Berlin air was still choked with dust and debris from the earlier raid. He received a small delegation of fresh-faced Hitlerjugend, who were awaiting decoration for bravery, in the cratered garden protected by dugouts and piles of German bazookas (Panzerfaust) at the ready.

Artur Axmann, the one-armed Hitlerjugend commander, presented the young warriors to the Führer. Warmly and individually, he thanked and decorated them for their efforts in the now decisive battle of Berlin and then shuffled over to a small parade of troops from the Kurland battlefield that was awaiting inspection. At 4:00 p.m., he withdrew once more into the bunker, having seen the sky for the last time.

After Hitler had received a flurry of visitors bringing their formal congratulations on his birthday, the main war conference began. The great question answered was the imminent threat of Berlin being surrounded and cut off. General Koller pointed out that the many truckloads of OKW equipment and important documents would have to leave Berlin for the south immediately. Jodl suggested to Keitel that if the Führer did not plan to stay in Berlin, it would be impossible to command from the Reich Chancellery bunker, as they would thereby lose all contact with the various fronts.

On this basis, Keitel authorized Jodl to make the necessary plans for the movement of the OKW and War Office Command and to transfer all the remaining units still in Wunsdorf under the command of Deputy Chief, OKW Operations Staff, Lieutenant General Winter, immediately to Berchtesgaden to protect the operational command in the south, while the Northern Command Staff should be assembled that same evening at Krampnitz barracks, near Potsdam, where both Jodl and Keitel would also transfer with their lieutenants.

For now, it was decided that overall command should remain with Hitler, always keeping contact with the Reich Chancellery and with the usual daily war conferences unaltered. Keitel put this to Hitler, and he agreed, authorizing an immediate splitting of the OKW command.

Admiral Dönitz and some of the OKW staff would go to northern Germany, while others would go south. Hitler, however, had still made no appointment for where he would set up the Führerhauptquartier. He did give the impression that he was thinking of moving it to the south in due course. Göring, Keitel, Himmler, Bormann, Göbbels, Burgdorf, and Krebs all appealed for him to leave the doomed capital.

After the conference, Bormann organized sufficient armored transport for the convoy of lorries that was to lead the exodus from Berlin to the south. Among those to leave that evening were various Luftwaffe commanders, including Göring. The Reichsmarschall left behind two of his senior officers, General Koller, his Chief of Staff, and General Christian.

Throughout the whole night of 20/21 April, more commanders and senior Nazis left Berlin to join the long column of trucks heading north and south. Himmler, Speer, Ribbentrop, and many generals departed. Two of Hitler's trusted and loyal secretaries, Fraulein Schroeder and Johanna Wolf, also left the bunker. At 1.00am, after the evening conference, Hitler dismissed the two stenographers, Kurt Peschel and Hans Jonuschat, so that they could catch the night plane south. In all, about eighty other staff members flew south that night. Only a few officers now stayed behind to help run the headquarters.

The next morning Hitler was awoken by news that Russian artillery had begun pouring shells into the heart of Berlin. It could be heard clearly in the bunker. Immediately Hitler telephoned OKL to identify the artillery battery position and have it attacked. A growing sense of desperation filled the bunker that day.

At the afternoon war conference, there was nothing but a catalogue of grim reports read out. Hitler was seen slumped over a map with a magnifying glass and pencils, trying to deduce the next move of his enemy around Berlin. But as General Krebs started giving the daily situation report, Hitler suddenly and unexpectedly jerked upright and pointed at a new ad hoc battle group under the command of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Felix Steiner—twenty-five miles north of Berlin. In the eyes of Hitler, Steiner was a brilliant commander. His desperate attack from Pomerania slowed down Zhukov's advance in February. Now he wanted the SS commander to stem the might of the Red Army around Berlin by counterattacking. Steiner's 11th Panzer Army was to attack immediately from their positions in Eberswalde and then to drive south, cutting off the Russian assault on Berlin.

On the map, the plan looked brilliant. But it was impossible to gather forces to make Steiner's battle group even remotely operational. Steiner himself wrote that the forces at his disposal amounted to less than a weak corps.

The following day, Steiner was the main topic of conversation. During the early morning until 3.00pm, Hitler had been on the telephone, anxiously trying to find out from various command posts how Steiner's counterattack was going. When the war conference routinely began at about 3.00pm, Hitler finally demanded news about Steiner's counterattack. But within the hour, General Koller telephoned with word that Steiner had not yet begun his attack. The Russians, he nervously exclaimed, had broken through, and their tanks were now within the city limits. Hitler suddenly purpled with rage.

Everyone was ordered out of the room except his generals and Bormann. The rest left immediately. Once the door was closed, Hitler lunged to his feet and embarked on what all surviving witnesses say was his worst rage of his entire life. In fact, his screams were so loud that those living in the bunker crowded into the stairways and hallways to listen, while Hitler, for over an hour, shouted abuse at his generals, telling them that everyone had deserted him. He cursed them and spoke of corruption, treason, lies, and cowardice.

Finally, exhausted, he shouted something about Steiner and then abruptly fell into his chair, a defeated man. Tears ran down his cheeks, and for the first time, he openly declared that he was despaired of his mission. All was over, and he had nothing left to do but die defending the Reich capital.

Anyone else who wished might go, but he was meeting his end at his last command post.

While General Krebs was instructed to stay in the Führerbunker as Hitler's military advisor, Keitel and Jodl left together; Keitel went to visit General Wenck, and Jodl headed to the new OKW headquarters of the combined General Staff at Krampnitz. However, a couple of days later, Jodl ordered the evacuation of the barracks after receiving reports of Soviet troops advancing toward Krampnitz, which was in the western suburbs of Berlin. The operations headquarters was transferred to a forest encampment at Neu-Roofen between Rheinsberg and Furstenberg. The installation had originally been equipped with signals and communications equipment for Himmler. From this post, full wireless and telegraphic communications with the Reich Chancellery were maintained, and Jodl was able to brief Hitler by telephone on the developing situation. Under cover of darkness, still more staff left the bunker headquarters.

Hitler sent the last two stenographers packing as well; their orders were to take the last shorthand records with them. His press officer, Heinz Lorenz, was instructed to scribble down the remaining war conferences. This began at 3.00pm on 23 April, and the patchy notes revealed that the whole military situation revolved around the defense of Berlin.

Just a few days earlier, the conference room was barely able to hold the crowd of high-ranking officials and commanders of various departments of the Army and Waffen-SS, but now most had left the bunker for safer areas outside Berlin. The only ones to stay were General Krebs, Mohnke, and Burgdorf with their adjutants; Admiral Voss, the liaison to the naval command; SS Major General Rattenhuber, head of Führer security, and his deputy, Artur Axmann; Captain Baur, Hitler's personal pilot; Press Chief Heinz Lorenze, Hitler's personal aide; and Gunsche, the military adjutant. Below are Johannmeir, the two surgeons Stumpfegger and Haase; Hitler's chauffeur Kempka; three orderlies, the kitchen personnel; and one telephone operator, Rochus Misch, and with him the chief engineer and electrician, Henschel.

By 25 April, the Soviet troops had completely surrounded Berlin, and the next day, some 500,000 of them bulldozed their way through the city. Beneath the Reich Chancellery building, the Führer was determined to save the crumbling capital and had already ordered remnants of SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner's 11th Panzer Army to attack immediately from their positions in the Eberswalde and then to drive south, cutting off the Russian assault on Berlin. But it was impossible to gather forces to make Steiner's SS Kampfgruppe even remotely operational. Steiner himself reported that the forces at his disposal amounted to less than a weak corps. He knew his attack would receive little support because the 9th Army was surrounded and the 12th Army consisted only of a few battered divisions. As for Hitler's reinforcements, they consisted of fewer than 5,000 Luftwaffe personnel and Hitlerjugend, all armed with hand-held weapons. The city was doomed.

During the morning of 28 April, the Chancellery was under direct and heavy shell fire. The German command system was now chaotic. As the Anglo-Americans advanced ever closer from the west, the OKW, charged with handling the Western Front, became terribly entangled in communiqués from the OKH, which controlled operations on the Eastern Front. Communications from the Führerbunker were also difficult to manage. Orders from Hitler could not be telephoned any longer and were radioed via the communications room to the smaller of the two Zoo flak towers. Luftwaffe Lieutenant Gerda Niedieck, sitting at her teleprinter and deciphering machines in the telecommunications room in L Tower, frequently received frantic teletype messages from the Führer demanding to know the whereabouts of armies and the situation around Berlin.

In the bunker, there was utter confusion. The Russians advanced toward the city's center on April 29. Weidling mustered a few remaining veterans in a desperate attempt to keep open a narrow route from the closing jaws of the enemy. For several hours German soldiers were engaged in a series of bitter and often bloody battles, trying with varying degrees of bravery to repulse the Red Army. But as the Russians isolated the city center, Weidling was compressed more and more. The relief of Berlin now rested upon General Wenck's 12th Army.

For Hitler and his war staff, entombed beneath the Chancellery, Wenck had become their only hope. But over the last few days, remnants of the once-vaunted troops from both Busse's 9th Army and Wenck's 12th Army were not attempting to break through the Russian encirclement around Berlin. Instead, they shuffled westward towards American lines. General Manteuffel's 3rd Panzer Army also abandoned its fixed positions and was making a fighting withdrawal to the west. It too was escaping from the Russians, and its objective was surrendering to the Anglo-Americans. Berlin, it seemed, had deserted its army and left itself to the Russians to conquer.

Inside Berlin, Weidling's communication networks no longer existed. Orders were now issued by word of mouth. On 29 April at 12.50pm, all telephone communication between the bunker and the outside world went dead. The balloon upon which the radio-telephone to the combined general staff had depended had been shot down. The adjutants and ADCs of the generals no longer had any functions to perform. The shelter switchboard attempted unsuccessfully to gather as much information as possible from enemy news bulletins. On that day, the radio monitored Italian broadcasts describing the execution of Mussolini and his mistress, along with other high-ranking fascists, and how their bodies were suspended by their feet in a Milan square.

By the morning of 30 April, virtually every German unit in Berlin was reported to be trapped, captured, overrun, or simply destroyed. Others were now steadily being driven back toward the government quarters of the city. Russian units were reported to have already advanced along Wilhelmstrasse as far as the Air Ministry.

Hitler received the reports without emotion. He had resigned himself to perish in the bunker. Later that morning, he instructed Gunscheto to prepare for a Viking funeral for himself and his new wife, Eva Braun, whom he had married only a day earlier, and to burn both of their bodies to ashes.

After Hitler had finished lunch, and his guests had been dismissed, he emerged from his suite, accompanied by Eva in her favorite black dress. In turn, he shook hands with everyone and then with his wife and withdrew into the little green-and-white tiled study, closing behind him the double doors. Next to Hitler's anteroom inside the conference room, Goebbels, Bormann, Krebs, Burgdorf, and Axmann stood waiting.

After more than five long years, the staff at Hitler's headquarters had no more military duties to perform. Instead, they sat waiting, anxiously watching the huge electric bulbs quiver under the hammer blows of Russian artillery. And then, suddenly, at 3.30pm, between the murmur of the ventilation plant and the echoing explosion of shells, came the sound of a gunshot.

The God-like arbiter of life and death had killed himself. With it, the fortunes of the Führerhauptquartier were taken and buried in the ruined, charred remains of the Reich Chancellery.