The obverse of history in Hitler’s
particular case, therefore, is not at all hard to imagine credibly. Reacting to
precisely the same circumstances, acting upon the very same stew of perception
and delusion, Hitler could have just as easily decided not to kill himself
after all. Change nothing else but this and one changes everything. One might
impose a measure of control over any alternative scenario by asking no more of
inventiveness than one might ask of a prediction. How far ahead might one
justifiably attempt to see in April 1945? Whatever one answers, one should go
no farther than that.
In April 1945, some very real and very
important questions about the future awaited answers. Statesmen, policy makers,
and soldiers the world over had to guess about what would happen in a most
uncertain world. But they did guess. We know, for instance, that there was no
agreement between the Allies over how to treat the leaders of the defeated
Reich, save that they would not be shot out of hand. What that meant was that
for the contingent moment the leading Nazis who were within reach were to be
scooped up and interned. Once the Allies agreed on questions of international
law and jurisprudence, there remained the business of setting the actual
machinery in place, and all of this required some time. Göring spent this
interregnum with his wife and daughter in the safety and relatively comfortable
custody of the Western Allies. Those taken by the Russians were neither so safe
nor comfortable.
So if we may imagine a living Hitler, one
who survived the battle of Berlin, we can see now that a good deal of this
canvas has already been painted for us. We know that at 12:50 in the afternoon
of May 2, General Karl Weidling’s chief of staff and several other official
representatives flew a white flag at the Potsdam Bridge, that they were
escorted promptly to General Chuikov’s headquarters, and that an armistice was
arranged forthwith. We also know that at about the same time Russian troops
took the Reichskanzlerei and, after some confusion, finally discovered the
Führerbunker itself. We can easily envision a resigned, even an indifferent Hitler,
still alive, having ordered General Weidling to seek a ceasefire. Perhaps
Hitler might still have harbored a fantasy of a negotiated peace, but of course
he had nothing left with which to strike any sort of bargain. We can also see
without fear of contradiction that the Russians would not have been in a mood
especially conducive to negotiation, having lost nearly 100,000 casualties in
the Berlin campaign alone. No, Hitler would have been hustled off to see one of
the Russian commanders, Zhukov or Chuikov. Immediately, a signal confirming his
capture would have gone out to Stalin, and then, to the rest of the world. In
all likelihood, the prisoner Hitler would have been on his way to Moscow before
the day was out.
But, we have now reached the outer limits
of a reasonably safe scenario. Before going further, we are forced to consider
a less plausible, certainly a less attractive, alternative. How likely was it
that Hitler chose escape over suicide—precisely what many suspected at the
time? Here, our answers need not be so speculative; we have testimony of just
what was required to make good such an escape at this point in time. Escape was
possible, but only just. In the chaotic final hours of the war, several small
groups took their chances outside, in a wrecked city engulfed by artillery and
small arms fire. The chances of success were minuscule. In the aftermath of
Hitler’s and Goebbels’s suicides, an ill-assorted bunch of soldiers,
secretaries, and party officials, including Hitler’s own secretary Martin
Bormann, tried to get out through the New Chancellery exits and into the city
with the aim of working their way northwest of the city. All were killed or
captured. Bormann’s body was not found till 1972.
But the fortunes of battle favored others.
Major Willi Johannmeier, Hitler’s army adjutant, was chosen to carry a copy of
Hitler’s final testament to Field Marshal Schoerner, the newly appointed
commander in chief of the Wehrmacht. Two other petty functionaries, Wilhelm
Zander and Heinz Lorenz, drew similar missions. This party was rounded out by
the addition of a fortunate corporal named Hummerich, presumably assigned to
assist Major Johannmeier. Johannmeier, an experienced and resourceful soldier,
was detailed to lead the group to the safety of German lines. His skills were
about to be tested. The Russians had established three battle lines in a ring
around the city center, at the Victory column, at the Zoo station, and at
Pichelsdorf. The Pichelsdorf sector was where Johannmeier and his party had to go.
At noon on April 29, the four men left the chancellery through the garage exits
on Hermann Göring Strasse and struck westward, through the Tiergarten toward
Pichelsdorf, at the northernmost reach of the large city lake, the Havel. By
four or five in the afternoon, having spent the last several hours evading
Russians, the party arrived in this sector. The sector was in German hands for
the moment, defended by a battalion of Hitler Youth awaiting reinforcements.
Johannmeier and company rested until dark and
then took small boats out onto the lake, making southward for another pocket of
defense on the western shore, at Wannsee. There, Johannmeier managed to get a
radio signal off to Admiral Dönitz, asking for evacuation by seaplane. After
resting in a bunker for most of the day, the small group set off for a small
island, the Pfaueninsel, where they would await their rescue by Dönitz’s
seaplane.
In the meantime, another group of bunker
refugees arrived. On the morning of April 29, just as Johannmeier and his party
were preparing to leave, Major Baron Freytag von Loringhoven, Rittmeister
Gerhardt Boldt, and a lieutenant colonel named Weiss asked and received
permission to attempt an escape and join General Wenck’s imaginary army of
relief. The next day, April 30, they would follow the same but even more
dangerous route west as Johannmeier’s group. The Russians were as close as a
few blocks now, already at the Air Ministry. And they had nearly closed the
ring on the Pichelsdorf sector at the Havel. Freytag and his group had set out
already when they were joined by Colonel Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe
adjutant. Below seems to have been the last one to leave the bunker before
Hitler killed himself.
All of these fugitives collected for a time
on the lake, awaiting the salvation of the seaplane. A seaplane did materialize
eventually, but owing to the heavy enemy fire, its pilot chose between
discretion and valor and flew away before taking on his passengers. Now all
were left to their own devices. By ones and twos most of the escapees managed
to get away, if only to be taken prisoner later. Johannmeier and his group
worked their way down past Potsdam and Brandenburg and crossed the Elbe near
Magdeburg. Posing as foreign workers, they passed through enemy lines a few
days later. Johannmeier simply continued his journey all the way back to his
family home in Westphalia. There in the garden he buried Hitler’s last
testament in a glass jar. Zander made his escape good all the way to Bavaria,
as did Axmann, the chief of the Hitler Youth. Nicolaus von Below enrolled in
law school at Bonn University. His studies were to be interrupted by the Allied
authorities.
All of these men were considerably younger,
healthier, and more physically resourceful than Hitler. The vision of Hitler
negotiating all these difficulties is an alternative that is defeated by
Hitler’s psychological and physical states, neither of which, singly or in
combination, conduced to the demands of such a choice. By this time, Hitler
simply did not have the physical or mental vigor necessary even to attempt an
escape, much less actually succeed in one.
But, as the eminent British historian Hugh
Trevor-Roper has reason to know, “Myths are not like truths; they are the
triumph of credulity over evidence.” Immediately upon the conclusion of the
war, Trevor-Roper was given access to Allied intelligence and prisoner
interrogation reports for the purpose of disentangling the confusions of
Hitler’s last days, and, by implication, his ultimate fate. Behind
Trevor-Roper’s assignment were the rumors that swept Europe in the summer of
1945: Hitler had escaped after all, the rumors said. He had gone to ground in
Bavaria. Or he was in the Middle East. Or perhaps he had made for the Baltic
coast, there to be rescued by submarine and deposited among sympathizers
somewhere in South America. These rumors did not merely enthuse the gullible.
Stalin startled the American secretary of state at the Potsdam Conference in
July by arguing that Hitler was, in fact, alive and in hiding. Allied
prosecutors drawing up charges against the leading Nazis took due care to see
that Adolf Hitler was indicted, if only in absentia.
