I was in Hitler's suicide bunker
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Hitler's former bodyguard Rochus Misch is the last survivor of Hitler's
bunker
By Steven Rosenberg
BBC News, Berlin
At his living room table, 92-year-old Rochus Misch shows me some
of his old photo albums. Private pictures he had taken more than 60
years ago. There are colour images of Mr Misch in an SS uniform at
Adolf Hitler's home in the Alps, snapshots of Hitler staring at
rabbits, and photos of Hitler's mistress and future wife Eva Braun.
For
five years, SS Oberscharfuehrer Rochus Misch had been part of Adolf
Hitler's inner circle, as a bodyguard, a courier and telephone operator
to the Fuehrer.
Rochus Misch spent years as part of Hitler's
inner circle. Photo Rochus Misch
"My first meeting with Hitler was rather strange," Mr Misch recalls.
"I'd been in the job 12 days when Hitler's chief adjutant, a man called
Bruckner, started asking me questions about my grandmother, about my
childhood. "Then he got up and walked towards the door. Being
an obedient soldier, I flung myself forward to open it, and there was
Hitler standing right behind the door. I felt cold. Then I felt hot. I
felt every emotion standing there opposite Hitler. "In the
Fuehrer's entourage, strictly speaking, we were bodyguards," says Mr
Misch. "When Hitler was travelling, between four and six of us would
accompany him in a second car. But when we were at Hitler's apartment
in the Chancellery we also had other duties. Two of us would always
work as telephone operators. With a boss like Hitler, there were always
plenty of phone calls." Last survivorWith the
Allies advancing and Germany on the brink of defeat, Hitler retreated
to his Berlin bunker. Rochus Misch was the telephone operator there. "I worked
in a small room with a telephone and teletype machine with outside lines," he
remembers.
Hitler's HQ in eastern Poland was known as the
Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair). Photo: Rochus Misch
"There was only enough room to shelter one extra person in my room
in the event of an air raid. The bunker really wasn't that big. It
contained small rooms of only 10 to 12 square metres." Rochus
Misch is the last survivor of the Hitler bunker. He is the final
witness of the drama that took place there on 30 April 1945. It was the
day Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. "Suddenly I
heard somebody shouting to Hitler's attendant: 'Linge, Linge, I think
it's happened.' They'd heard a gunshot, but I hadn't. At that moment
Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, ordered everyone to be
silent. Everyone began whispering. I was speaking on the telephone and
I made sure I talked louder on purpose because I wanted to hear
something. I didn't want it to feel like we were in a death bunker. Deaths
Eva Braun at The Berghof, Hitler's Alpine HQ.
Photo Rochus Misch
"Then Bormann ordered Hitler's door to be opened. I saw Hitler
slumped with his head on the table. Eva Braun was lying on the sofa,
with her head towards him. Her knees were drawn tightly up to her
chest. She was wearing a dark blue dress with white frills. I will
never forget it. "I watched as they wrapped Hitler up. His legs
were sticking out as they carried him past me. Someone shouted to me:
'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' I decided not to go because
I had noticed that Mueller from the Gestapo was there - and he was
never usually around. I said to my comrade Hentschel, the mechanic:
'Maybe we will be killed for being the last witnesses.'" The
next day the drama continued. Down in the bunker, the six children of
Germany's new leader - Joseph Goebbels - were drugged and murdered. It
was their own mother Magda who killed them. "Straight after
Hitler's death, Mrs Goebbels came down to the bunker with her
children," Mr Misch recalls. "She started preparing to kill them. She
couldn't have done that above ground - there were other people there
who would have stopped her. That's why she came downstairs - because
no-one else was allowed in the bunker. She came down on purpose to kill
them. "The kids were right next to me and behind me. We all
knew what was going to happen. It was clear. I saw Hitler's doctor, Dr
Stumpfegger give the children something to drink. Some kind of sugary
drink. Then Stumpfegger went and helped to kill them. All of us knew
what was going on. An hour or two later, Mrs Goebbels came out crying.
She sat down at a table and began playing patience." Crimes
Winston Churchill poses outside the Berlin
bunker
Mr Misch fled Hitler's bunker just hours before it was seized by the
Red Army. But he was quickly captured and spent the next nine years in
Soviet labour camps. The captured "Fuehrerbunker" became a symbol of
the Allies' victory in World War II. Two months after the end
of the war, Winston Churchill visited it. He posed for photos outside,
sitting on a chair recovered from the shelter. In later years, the
bunker was blown up to stop it becoming a Nazi shrine. At the
end of our conversation, I ask Rochus Misch whether he knew of the
horrors that Adolf Hitler had unleashed across Europe. Did he know
about the Holocaust? "I knew about Dachau camp and about
concentration camps in general," he tells me. "But I had no idea of the
scale. It wasn't part of our conversations. The Nuremberg Trial dealt
with crimes committed by the Germans. But you must remember there was
never a war when crimes weren't committed, and there never will be."
