Last 24 Hours of Hitler's Life

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It’s late in April 1945. Adolf Hitler  is in the throes of a nervous breakdown.   It’s the end for him and he knows it.  He calls for one of his secretaries,   Gertrud “Traudl” Junge, and tells her to take  down his last will and testament. Tearfully,   she listens and writes down his  insane words. His take on things:   all this bloodshed is not my fault. The four other witnesses in that room,   as well as Hitler, will be dead within 24  hours. We’ll talk in-depth later about that   deranged will and testament, which  encapsulates just how insane he was.  Hitler had known for a long time  before that, maybe since 1943,   that the war was lost, but he still clung on to  the hope that there might be peace negotiations.  Then at the beginning of 1945, his enemies  encroached farther and farther towards   Berlin. The Soviet Red Army was intent  on crushing Germany. The Soviet leader,   Joseph Stalin, whom Hitler had the nerve to  call a barbarian, knew victory was close.  In January alone, 450,000 Germans died, and  in the three months that followed, 280,000   died. This was more German casualties than from  1942-1943, which just shows you how stubborn   the Nazis were in not accepting defeat. In February, Hitler’s commander in Hungary   watched as his men fell into a state of utter  gloom. In his report, he wrote, “Amid all these   stresses and strains, no improvement in morale or  performance is visible. The numerical superiority   of the enemy, combined with the knowledge that  the battle is now being fought on German soil,   has proved very demoralizing for the men.” German people ran from their homes as the   Soviets moved in. One woman wrote, “The world  is a very lonely place without family, friends,   or even the familiarity of a home.” In April, a  Russian soldier wrote to his beloved back home,   saying, “At first the fascists fought  back fiercely, but they could not endure   this hell…Everything is bound to finish soon.” On April 16th, Soviet forces had finally invaded   Berlin. Inhabitants heard the gunfire not too  far off in the distance. Some people ran to the   shops to get what remained of the food. One of  them, Ruth-Andreas Friedrich, poetically wrote,   “Before us lies the endless city, black  in the black of night, cowering as if to   creep back into the earth. And we are afraid.” The Nazis still relentlessly kept on killing.   They emptied jails and shot those who’d  resided there. German firing squads killed   scores of people deemed not a supporter  of the regime. POWs and concentration camp   prisoners were lined up and massacred. The  order, given by Hitler, was to keep going.  But Berlin was doomed, with now even the Hitler  Youth fighting toe-to-toe with the enemy. One   woman explained what she saw, saying there were  “young babyfaces peeping out beneath oversized   steel helmets” and that it was “frightening to  hear their high-pitched voices.” She said this   went against human nature, and nothing could  be better accredited to the madness of war.  You might wonder why so many people fought on  in Germany. The historian Max Hastings wrote   in his book “Inferno” that the Germans  were well aware of the fact they would   be given no mercy from the Red Army. It was  a matter of fighting back or being murdered.  The Russians had been on the wrong end of so much  savagery themselves. They weren’t in the mood for   sparing the enemy, which as they saw it, was  all of Germany. Still, the atrocities committed   on German civilians can’t be ignored. One woman  starkly summed it up, saying, “It can’t be me this   is happening to, so I’m expelling it all from me.” It was during these last few days of barbarity   that Hitler sat in his bunker under the Reich  Chancellery. After hearing of the death of US   President Roosevelt on April 12, he’d actually  held out some hope that the new president,   Harry Truman, would sign a peace treaty. That didn’t happen, of course. Hitler suffered   a breakdown on April 22 when he heard that his  orders for a counterattack hadn’t been followed   through. He screamed and cursed the people he said  had betrayed him. It was on this day that Hitler   finally admitted to himself that all was lost. This was two days after his birthday,   which you can understand didn’t involve much  celebration. He did, however, make his last   public appearance to congratulate some of the  Hitler Youths who were ready to die for him. He was in such a state, he had to keep one  of his shaking hands clasped behind his back.   He then went back into the bunker,  knowing his life would soon be over.  It was there that he would be  married to his mistress Eva Braun. We know that in the last day or two one of the  many things that occupied her mind was hiding   her precious jewelry. In her last letter  to her friend Herta Ostermayr, she wrote,   “On no account must Heise’s bills be found…What  should I say to you. I cannot understand how it   should have all come to this, but it is  impossible anymore to believe in God.”  Many of Hitler’s inner circle made their  plans to escape Berlin. Second in command,   Hermann Goering, was one of them. Goering had told Hitler on his birthday that he  had business to take care of and he needed to go   over to Southern Germany. That much was true.  He was trying to ship his stolen art treasures   out of Berlin, so like Braun, he was worried about  losing things of monetary value. Not long after it   would get back to Hitler that Goering had spoken  to the enemy. This infuriated Hitler, and it would   make Goering a prominent feature in his will. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and   the Nazi Party Chancellery, was one of the  inner circle to stay behind in the bunker.   He’d later flee after seeing the end of his  leader, but he’d be dead soon enough, too. Then there was the propaganda  minister, Joseph Goebbels,   who was also there those last few days.  He would be made Chancellor of Germany,   but in the end, he, his wife and six  kids would all be lost in that bunker.  As Berliners were suffering unimaginable  torments that late April, Goebbels made one final   announcement. He said, “I call on you to fight  for your city. Fight with everything you have got,   for the sake of your wives and your children,  your mothers and your parents. Your arms are   defending everything we have ever held dear, and  all the generations that will come after us. Be   proud and courageous! Be inventive and cunning!” How both he and Hitler could still ask people   to fight in the face of certain loss was  testament to their egoism and insanity.  Then on April 27, Hitler got word that another  of his closest had betrayed him. He heard through   a BBC report that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich  Himmler had tried to negotiate a surrender   with the enemy. Hitler raged like he’d never raged  before. To him, that meant one thing: treason. Hitler ordered the arrest of Himmler, after  which Himmler went into hiding. He too,   didn’t survive many more days. It was  true, though, what Hitler had heard.   Himmler had attempted to negotiate peace. Hitler’s world was falling apart, but he   still decided there was still time to get married. At the stroke of midnight on April 28, Hitler and   Eva Braun tied the knot. Both Goebbels  and Bormann were there at the ceremony,   but as you can imagine, with the  Red Army just around the corner,   it wasn’t the merriest of affairs. If there was any kind of event,   it only involved having a wedding breakfast  with booze, lots of booze. At some point,   Braun signed off on the marriage certificate.  She wrote Eva B, only to cross out the B and then   write Hitler. She was now proudly Eva Hitler, but  she wouldn’t get much time to enjoy her marriage.  Hitler’s barber, August Wollenhaupt, would  usually trim his mustache at around 11 am.   This was also usually the time that his valet  Heinz Linge would visit him each morning. Linge would act as a kind of referee, saying  the German for, “On your marks” while holding   a stopwatch. After that, Hitler would get  ready as quickly as possible as if playing   a child’s game. Then Linge would pass Hitler  his spectacles and the morning newspapers.  On one of the days close to his death, Hitler  wasn’t exactly in a great mood. He looked at   Linge seriously and said, “You must never  allow my corpse to fall into the hands of   the Russians. They would make a spectacle in  Moscow out of my body and put it in waxworks.”  Linge also gave Hitler some cocaine drops  for his painful right eye. He also handed him   some pills for a flatulence problem. Hitler  had many health problems close to the end,   for which he took something like 28 different  medications. In fact, he was starting to look like   a man on the verge of dying from natural causes. A Hitler Youth who later escaped the bunker,   described what the Fuhrer looked like  during those final days. He said:  “He was like a ghost - he didn't seem to  see me or anyone. He just stared ahead,   lost in thought. At that moment, the bunker was  shaken by a strong tremor as a bomb hit. Dirt and   mortar trickled down on us, but he made no attempt  to brush it off. He looked so much more unhealthy   than 10 days earlier at his birthday reception  when I had first met him. It looked like he was   suffering from jaundice. His face was sallow.” It was around this time that Hitler heard the   news about the death of the Italian  fascist leader Benito Mussolini. He’d been summarily executed, which could  only mean one thing to Hitler. He too,   he knew, would very likely suffer a similar  fate. Even worse, he heard that Mussolini,   along with his dead mistress, had been dumped like  dead cattle in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. There,   crowds spat at the bodies before  hanging them up by meat hooks.  Hitler then heard that the Dachau Concentration  Camp had fallen into the hands of the Americans. He very likely heard what had happened  there. The US soldiers had been so appalled   at what they saw, that they gave no  quarter to the German soldiers they   captured. Lieutenant Colonel Felix  L. Sparks later said the smell of   death was “overpowering.” What those soldiers  witnessed was human cruelty on another level. It may never be known what happened on that  day. Some reports say US soldiers massacred   520 Germans, but other reports say the number was  as low as 50. After an investigation, it was ruled   that while international law had been breached,  “in the light of the conditions which greeted   the eyes of the first combat troops, it is not  believed that justice or equity demand that the   difficult and perhaps impossible task of fixing  individual responsibility now be undertaken.”  Hitler, on hearing the news in his bunker,  likely thought about this violent retribution   while the image of the dead Mussolini and  his mistress was still in his mind. Also,   in the distance, he knew the Soviet  army was laying waste to his city.  It was around this time that Hitler  called on that secretary, Traudl Junge. She would die an old woman in 2002, and  always said she wasn’t aware of the depth   of Nazi atrocities. She also admitted she  loved her dear leader, something in later   life that gave her cause to feel guilty. She once said, “I admit, I was fascinated   by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and  a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all   the warning voices inside me and enjoyed  the time by his side, almost until the   bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the  way he said things and how he did things.”  She said Hitler had made it clear to  everyone in that bunker that the one   thing that he could not allow was his body to  fall into the hands of the encroaching Soviets.  As for the writing of his will, Junge had woken  up from her usual nap around 11 pm. After that,   she went to see Hitler as she  would usually drink tea with him   at that time. Hitler’s vegetarian  cook, Fraulein Constanze Manzialy,   also attended the tea drinking sessions. But that night when she knocked on his door,   something was different. Hitler said to her,  “Have you had a nice little rest, child?”  She replied, “Yes, I have slept a little.” Hitler  said, “Come along, I want to dictate something.”  One thing he told her was that his body was to be  cremated. He said he wanted his art collection to   go to a gallery in the town of Linz, which he  called his hometown. As for the little things,   of perhaps mere sentimental value, or what  he called items “for the maintenance of a   modest simple life”, they should go to  relatives and his “faithful workers.”   Anything else of value he said should go to  the National Socialist German Workers Party.  Here’s a snippet from his  testament, word for word:  “Since I did not think I should take the  responsibility of entering into marriage during   the years of combat, I have decided now before  termination of life on this Earth, to marry the   woman who, after many years of true friendship,  entered voluntarily into this already almost   besieged city, to share my fate. She goes to death  with me as my wife, according to her own desire.”  He then went for a bit, talking about how he’d  given his life to the service of his country,   saying he had not intended to go to war in  1939. He said of the reason for the war,   “It was desired and provoked entirely by those  international statesmen who were either of   Jewish origin or worked in the Jewish interest.” He had the gall to add, “The responsibility of   the outbreak of this war cannot rest on me.”  He even said history won’t blame him for the   bloodbath of the war but will blame “international  Jewry and its assistants.” The British, he said,   were offered a solution to what he called  the Polish-German problem, but “responsible   circles in English politics wanted war.” He then called out Himmler and Goering   as traitors and wrote down a list of names who  should fulfill certain positions. His final words:  “Above all, I obligate the leadership of the  nation and its followers to the most minute   observation of the racial laws and to pitiless  resistance against the universal poisoner   of all people, international Judaism. Given at Berlin, 29 April, 1945, 4 am.  Adolf Hitler” There were four witness names:   Goebbels, Bormann, Burgdorf and Krebs. All four would soon be dead.  Sometime later, while Hitler's SS bodyguards  were destroying all the documents around the   bunker, doctors followed orders and  poisoned his much loved Alsatian dog,   Blondi. Braun's spaniel was also forced  into the afterlife. It was around this time,   someone heard Braun say, “I would rather  die here. I do not want to escape.”  A lot of silent hand-shaking took place as  Hitler looked for the last time in the eyes   of the people that had supported him. It seems  that Braun’s last words were to the secretary,   Junge, who accepted the gift of a coat. With  it, she heard the words, “Take my fur coat as   a memory. I always like well-dressed women.” It was Goebbels that announced the death of   Hitler, stating in a message that the time  of death was 3:30 p.m., April 30. Hitler   and Braun were subsequently cremated in the  garden of the Reich Chancellery as Soviet   artillery could be heard close by. Goebbels and  Bormann soaked the bodies in petrol and lit them,   after which they gave the Nazi salute. The fighting didn’t just stop after that.   As an observer of this extra bloodshed,  a British Lieutenant named David Fraser,   remarked, “There is still too much vile  cruelty in the world for us to be able to   say with true satisfaction, ‘Good is victorious.” Let’s hope nothing like it ever happens again.  Now you need to watch “What Actually Happened  to Nazi Leaders After World War 2?” Or,   see what happened in those camps with “The  Sea Water Torture - Nazi Camp Experiments.”
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Channel: The Infographics Show
Views: 1,169,658
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Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)
Published: Wed Aug 09 2023
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