“Did you know your father?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I did. We were actually close.”
“Did you admire him?”
“I did.”
“You’re lucky.”
Disdain filled the wizened face. “Isabel was a good woman. But she felt a great loyalty to the Third Reich. She met Gerhard Schüb in Chile. They were both young, they fell in love. She also came to know Eva Braun. Schüb was sent to Africa, by Isabel’s father, with Bormann and Braun. As you now know, he never returned to Chile.”
“You wanted me to find those letters?”
“They were left for you.”
“How did you know I would come back?”
Schüb sat silent for a moment, then said, “There’s something you must know.”
And the older man spoke.
His tone hypnotic, funereal.
The words barely audible over the crackle of the flames.
April 30, 1945. The Führer’s mood had progressively worsened since yesterday when the generals informed him that Berlin was lost and a counter-offensive, which he thought would save the Reich, had not been initiated. He became incensed on learning that Himmler was negotiating independently with the Allies for peace. That made him suspect everything related to the SS, including the cyanide capsules they had been supplied for the bunker.
“They are fakes,” he screamed. “The chicken farmer Himmler wants me taken alive so the Russians can display me like a zoo animal.”
He fingered one of the capsules and declared it nothing more than a sedative.
“Malignancy,” he lamented, “is rife.”
To be sure of the poison, he retreated to the surface and watched as a capsule was administered to his favorite Alsatian. The dog’s quick death seemed to satisfy him. The Führer then descended into the bunker and presented his two personal secretaries with capsules, commenting that he wished he could have provided a better parting gift. They thanked him for his kindness and he praised their service, wishing his generals would have been as loyal.
Earlier, everyone had been summoned to the bunker. Hitler appeared with Bormann. His eyes carried the same hazy glaze of late, a lock of hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, and he shuffled in what appeared a painful stoop. Dandruff flecked his shoulders, thick as dust, and the right side of his body trembled uncontrollably. The German people would have been amazed to see the weakened condition of their Supreme Leader. The staff was assembled in a line, and the Führer proceeded to shake each of their hands.
Bormann watched in silence.
Hitler muttered as he departed, “All is in order.”
The end was near. This man, who by sheer personality had so completely dominated a nation, was about to end his life. So much relief spread through the people present that they hurried to ground level and held a dance in the canteen of the Chancellory. Officers, who days before would not have even acknowledged those beneath them, shook hands with their subordinates. Everyone seemed to realize that postwar Germany was going to be greatly different.
By noon the news was not good.
Russian troops occupied the Chancellory. The Tiergarten had been taken. The Potsdamer Platz and Weidendammer Bridge were lost.
Hitler accepted the dismal report without emotion.
At 2:00 PM he took lunch with his secretaries and cook. His wife, Eva, who normally ate with Hitler, was not there. Their marriage was little more than a day old. Such an odd wedding. The din of battle. The concrete walls. A humid moldy aroma that stained everything with a stench of confinement. Both declared that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of hereditary disease. Goebbels and Bormann served as official witnesses. The bride and groom barely smiled.
A queer sort of fulfillment amid overwhelming failure.
After lunch Hitler and his wife appeared together, and all were summoned again. Another farewell occurred with little emotion, then the Führer and Eva Braun returned to their quarters.
Within minutes a single gunshot was heard.
Bormann was the first into the room. A smell of cyanide smarted the eyes and forced a retreat while the air cleared. Hitler lay sprawled on the left side of the couch, a bullet hole the size of a silver mark in his skull.
Eva Braun lay on her right side.
A vase filled with tulips and white narcissi had fallen from an adjacent table, spilling water on her blue dress. There was no sign of blood upon her, but the remains of a glass ampule dotted her lips.
A woolen blanket was produced, and Hitler’s body was wrapped inside. The Führer’s valet, Linge, and Dr. Stumpfegger carried the body to ground level. Bormann wrapped Eva Braun’s remains in a blanket. He shouldered the corpse and carried her from the room. One of the guards called to him, and he halted in the passageway. There was a brief discussion, and Bormann laid the body in an adjacent anteroom. He dealt with the guard, then passed Eva Braun’s corpse to Kempka, who in turn passed her to Guensche, who then gave her to an SS officer who carried the body up to the Chancellery garden.
The two corpses were laid side by side, and petrol was poured over them. Russian guns boomed in the distance and someone mentioned that Ivan was less than two hundred meters away. A bomb exploded and drove the mourners into the shelter of a nearby porch. Bormann, Burgdorf, Goebbels, Guensche, Linge, and Kempka watched as Guensche dipped a rag into petrol, lit it, then tossed the burning fuse onto the bodies.
Sheets of flames erupted.
Everyone stood at attention, saluted, then withdrew.
“All that they destroyed,” Schüb said. “All who died. And it ended just like that.”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters a great deal. For you see, when they laid out Eva Braun’s corpse, something was different. Something no one at the time noticed. But who could blame them. So much was happening so fast.”
He waited.
?
??Her blue dress was no longer wet.”
Within hours of Hitler’s suicide, Bormann donned the uniform of an SS major general, crammed papers into a leather topcoat, and fled the Führerbunker. On the Weidendammer Bridge he encountered bazooka fire, but managed to flee the scene with only minor injuries. He commandeered a stray vehicle and drove to another underground bunker constructed in secret by Adolf Eichmann, equipped with food, water, and a generator. He stayed there a day, then slipped out of Berlin and headed north, dressed as a forest warden.
Across the Danish border he found a rescue group stationed there weeks before. He had prepared himself for the journey months earlier by burying two caches of gold coins, one in the north, the other in the south. He’d also secreted away banknotes and art treasures that could later be converted into cash. His political position gave him access to Lufthansa, cargo ships, and U-boats, and he’d utilized that privilege in the early months of 1945 to transport out of Germany all that he might need in the years ahead.
By the end of 1945 he was in Spain. He stayed there until March 1946. His face remained obscure until October 1946 when, after he was indicted for war crimes, his picture was posted throughout Europe. It was then he decided to leave the Continent, but not before dealing with Eva Braun.
They were in many ways similar. During the war she was intentionally kept in the background, denied the spotlight, forced to remain in the Bavarian Alps. Only those in Hitler’s innermost circle were familiar with her, so it was easy for her to meld into the postwar world.
She’d returned to Berlin against Hitler’s orders on April 15 to inform him she was pregnant. Hitler took the news calmly, but delayed fourteen days before finally marrying her. During that time he arranged, through Bormann, for her escape. By April 22 Hitler knew that he would never leave the bunker alive. Braun objected to surviving. She wanted to die with Hitler.