Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II Read online

  INTRODUCTION

  FEW EPISODES IN HISTORY can have shocked the world more than the five days at the end of April 1945 that began with the murder of Mussolini and ended with the news that Hitler had killed himself at his bunker in Berlin. The departure of both dictators had long been expected, but the manner of their going was no less awful for that: Mussolini and his mistress dangling upside down in front of a jeering mob, Hitler’s body reduced to a Wagnerian pile of ashes while Magda Göbbels poisoned her children and demented staff at the Chancellery enjoyed group sex before going to their own deaths. Not even the most operatic of novelists could have made it up.

  Equally horrifying were the atrocities being committed by the Russians at the same time as they stormed across Germany. The atrocities were at their worst in Berlin, where mass rape on an unprecedented scale was taking place as the Russians surrounded the capital. That their own menfolk had behaved just as badly in Russia was no consolation to the German women of all ages who fled in terror, often committing suicide to avoid gang rape by troops from the Soviet republics with little experience of such Western niceties as electricity or indoor plumbing. Horrifying, too, were the revelations from the concentration camps that were beginning to emerge with the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini. Dachau was captured by the Americans on the same day as Il Duce was strung up in Milan. Ravensbrück fell a day later, just as Hitler was taking his own life. The first photographs from Belsen and Buchenwald had been released that week and were being shown to an incredulous public. Most were too awful to be published in newspapers. They were being exhibited in towns and cities instead, so that people across the free world could see the evidence with their own eyes and understand exactly what had been going on in Nazi Germany.

  It was important that people should see the photographs with their own eyes. They had all read the newspapers and heard the rumors about the camps, but they didn’t necessarily believe them. Radio reporter Richard Dimbleby, a man of unimpeachable integrity, had had great difficulty persuading a dubious BBC to broadcast his first eyewitness report from Belsen. Others, too, had been disbelieved when they spelled out what they had seen. During World War I, it had been widely rumored that the Germans on the Western Front were melting down human bodies for fat. The rumors had later turned out to be false, almost certainly the work of British propaganda. Now the rumors had surfaced again, with additional tales of mass gassings, living skeletons, shrunken heads, and lampshades made of tattooed skin. Small wonder that people were skeptical.

  Indeed, the London cinema showing the first film from the camps was picketed that week by an angry crowd, outraged that their own government was lying to them again. Their anger was shared by millions of Germans, well aware that bad things had happened in the camps, yet convinced that the atrocities had been grossly exaggerated by Allied propaganda in order to justify the war.

  But the photographs didn’t lie. “Seeing Is Believing” was the title of the exhibition sponsored by the Daily Express in London that week. People queued in thousands to see the Buchenwald pictures, and came away speechless. Later, they saw the Belsen film in the cinema: skeletons bulldozed into burial pits, and German civilians standing beside the SS at the graveside, all of it filmed in one take, so that there could be no accusations of trick photography. The photos didn’t lie. There were too many of them, from too many different places, supported by too many eyewitness accounts for the stories to be lies. It simply wasn’t possible.

  Is there any need for another book on an already well documented week, no matter how shocking it was? The answer has to be yes if the material is new or pleasingly unfamiliar. Everyone knows, for instance, that Hitler was in Berlin when he died, but how many know that his sister was at Berchtesgaden, living anonymously as Frau Wolff and keeping her own counsel as the other guests in her boarding house discussed her brother’s death? Or that Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s favorite film director, was in an Austrian ski resort, unable to find a bed for the night when people learned who she was? Or that the future Pope Benedict had deserted from the Wehrmacht and was walking home, terrified that he might still be shot or hanged from a tree for dereliction of duty?

  Audrey Hepburn was in Holland, delighted to avoid conscription into a Wehrmacht brothel, but so malnourished that her ambition to become a ballet dancer was looking increasingly unrealistic. Eleven-year-old Roman Polanski was living virtually feral on the streets of Krakow. Bob Dole, badly wounded by a German shell, was lying paralyzed in an Italian hospital, listening to the cheers for the end of the war in Italy and wondering if he would ever be able to move his toes again. All sorts of people, some famous at the time, others to become famous later, remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing as the events of those extraordinary five days unfolded around them.

  As in my previous book, The Greatest Day in History, about the Armistice of 1918, I have set out to tell the story through the eyes of the people who were there, preferably well known or interesting people, but ones not normally associated with the events being described. Using their own words wherever possible, I have covered all the core events of that week as Hitler killed himself and the Nazis scattered, but I have also wondered where Marlene Dietrich was at the time, and Günter Grass, Henry Kissinger, Jack Kennedy, and a host of others. The technique worked well for the Armistice, providing a snapshot of the whole world at the end of one of the most astonishing weeks in history. I hope it works again here.

  A word of warning. The definitive truth has not always been easy to discover. Quite a few eyewitnesses, particularly in Hitler’s bunker, changed their stories in later years and gave differing and often contradictory accounts of the same events. Others kept silent for decades and then had trouble remembering dates and facts correctly. I have always envied authors who feel able to state with certainty that a particular eyewitness was either wrong or lying. For myself, I prefer to report what the witnesses said, putting it in context where necessary, and then leave it to readers to make up their own minds. But I can say with certainty that what follows, or something very like it, definitely happened.

  * * *

  WARM THANKS to Senator Bob Dole and Lord Carrington for their contributions to this book. Also to Peter Devitt, assistant curator of the RAF museum at Hendon, who helped me find out more about Operation Manna; Katharine Thomson of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge; and Alec Holmes, whose surgical knowledge enabled me to make sense of Mussolini’s autopsy. Thanks, too, to Andrew Lownie, my agent, and Rob Kirkpatrick, Nicole Sohl, and Margaret Smith of Thomas Dunne Books in New York. From seventeen floors up, Rob edited a British author with skill and tact, which takes some doing!

  Finally, an apology to President Jimmy Carter for my failure to find an appropriate context for his generous contribution. For the record, he says he was at sea with the U.S. Navy when Hitler died, wishing he could be in Times Square in time to join the celebrations when the war ended. To my great regret, I couldn’t find a suitable place to mention it in the book.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Introduction

  PART ONE: SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1945

  1. The Death of Mussolini

  Mussolini and his mistress dragged from their beds; Rachele Mussolini terrified for her children; Mussolini shot at Lake Como

  2. In Berlin

  Hitler in his bunker; Helmut Altner fights for his life; Hildegard Knef terrified of rape

  3. Himmler Sues for Peace

 
; Himmler offers to surrender; an astrologer summoned to Lübeck; Count Bernadotte dismayed; Jack Winocour betrays Himmler to the press; Hitler orders an execution

  4. Nazis on the Run

  Dönitz prepares for death; Speer hides in the woods; Ribbentrop on the road; Göring imprisoned in his own castle; Rudolf Hess in a Welsh asylum

  PART TWO: SUNDAY, APRIL 29

  5. Chaos in Italy

  Mussolini strung up in Milan; Rachele Mussolini listens to the killing; the German army agrees to surrender; Sophia Loren fears the Moroccans; Harold Macmillan and the spattered brains; Ezra Pound awaits arrest; Joseph Heller just glad to be home

  6. Himmler Looks to the Stars

  Himmler’s fortune read; Hitler gets married; the Russians approach the Reichstag; Altner fights underground; Hildegard Knef runs for her life; mass rape in Berlin

  7. Belsen

  The bodies almost buried; Chaim Herzog and Willie Whitelaw; the Union Jack doesn’t fly; Josef Kramer and Irma Grese; Marlene Dietrich and her sister’s shameful secret; outrage in London and the United States

  8. Operation Manna

  Food drop over Holland; the Dutch see manna from heaven; Queen Wilhelmina pleased; Walter Cronkite witnesses the starvation; Audrey Hepburn escapes a brothel

  9. Dachau

  The Americans reach Dachau; atrocity met with atrocity; ecstatic prisoners; scientific experiments; Pastor Niemöller still a hostage

  PART THREE: MONDAY, APRIL 30

  10. The United Nations

  Winston Churchill at Chequers; Harry Truman in Washington; Jan Smuts in San Francisco; procedural wrangling at the United Nations; Molotov difficult; Jack Kennedy unimpressed; Orson Welles and a stripper; General Franco fears exclusion; Vidkun Quisling resigned to his fate

  11. Assault on the Reichstag

  The Russians attack the Reichstag; Adolf Hitler prepares for death; Altner meets some SS girls; Hildegard Knef waits for a bayonet; Nikolai Masalov rescues a child; Hitler says goodbye

  12. Curtain Call for Lord Haw Haw

  Dönitz takes the reins; William Joyce makes his last broadcast; the Russians liberate Ravensbrück; Odette Sansom in the condemned cell; the Day of Judgment in Neubrandenburg; Micheline Maurel faces a firing squad

  13. The Americans Take Munich

  General Bedell Smith meets Seyss-Inquart; Munich falls to the Americans; Lee Miller at Dachau; Victor Klemperer longs for liberation; Henry Kissinger seeks his family

  14. Italy

  The surrender terms reach Bolzano; chaos at Wehrmacht HQ; Austria’s chancellor almost free; Venice ungrateful to the Allies; Mussolini’s body examined for syphilis; Rachele Mussolini fears execution

  15. Hitler Goes to Valhalla

  Group sex in the bunker; Hitler kills himself; Traudl Junge views the spot; bodies burned in the garden; Göbbels and Bormann contact the Russians

  PART FOUR: TUESDAY, MAY 1

  16. The Germans Want to Talk

  General Krebs meets General Chuikov; Major Bersenev shot under a white flag; the Reichstag falls; Altner learns of Hitler’s death; Hildegard Knef arrested for desertion; Göbbels writes his epitaph

  17. The Nazis Regroup

  Dönitz the new Führer; Field Marshal Keitel strafed by the RAF; Heinrich Himmler can’t keep away; Ribbentrop angles for a job; the SS reluctant to shoot Göring; Albert Speer in tears

  18. May Day in Russia

  Joseph Stalin takes the salute; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Lubianka; Nikita Khrushchev in Kiev; Clementine Churchill in Odessa; Otto Frank longs for his children

  19. Operation Chowhound

  The Americans drop food for the Dutch; General Patton liberates Moosburg; Lee Miller in Hitler’s apartment; von Rundstedt surrenders; Wernher von Braun waits for the Americans; Private Ratzinger deserts; Leni Riefenstahl heads for the hills

  20. Dönitz Speaks to the Nation

  Magda Göbbels kills her children; Traudl Junge flees the bunker; Hildegard Knef avoids execution; Dönitz announces Hitler’s death; Helmut Altner and the naked SS girls; Leni Riefenstahl weeps all night; Emmy Göring hears the news; Willy Brandt announces it in Sweden

  PART FIVE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 2

  21. The News Is Out

  Winston Churchill at dinner; Harold Nicolson listens to German radio; Elsie Brown enjoys a cuppa; Charles Wheeler breaks it to the prisoners; Robert Runcie advances on Lübeck; Lord Carrington relieved; an Englishwoman in Hamburg; Dönitz sues for peace

  22. The Nazis Consider Their Positions

  Albert Speer won’t run; Himmler heads for Denmark; the commandant of Auschwitz; Ribbentrop goes into hiding; Hans Frank watches the Americans arrive; Ernst Kaltenbrunner briefs Adolf Eichmann; Göring presses for his release; Paula Hitler mourns her brother; Rudolf Hess wants to see the atrocities

  23. Surrender in Italy

  Arrests at Wehrmacht HQ; the New Zealanders take Trieste; Field Marshal Alexander announces the surrender; Bob Dole nearly dies; Spike Milligan depressed; Herbert von Karajan in hiding; Rachele Mussolini taken to Milan

  24. Berlin Falls

  General Weidling surrenders; Johannes Hentschel alone in the bunker; the search for Hitler’s body; the Red flag over the Reichstag; Traudl Junge meets the Russians; Martin Bormann kills himself; Hildegard Knef nearly free; Helmut Altner wounded and disillusioned

  25. Now That the Führer Has Gone

  Bormann’s son distraught; Günter Grass couldn’t care less; Odette Sansom couldn’t, either; Simon Wiesenthal’s revenge; Victor Klemperer meets the Americans; a gift for Oskar Schindler; Roman Polanski misses his mother; Karol Wojtyla cleans the latrine; Pierre Laval tries to escape; Eamon de Valera offers his condolences

  26. Germany Surrenders

  Montgomery humiliates Admiral Friedeburg at Lüneberg Heath; General Jodl begs Bedell Smith for mercy

  Epilogue

  The war ends, the characters depart; the Nazis hang at Nuremberg

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Also by Nicholas Best

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1945

  1

  THE DEATH OF MUSSOLINI

  TIME WAS RUNNING OUT FOR MUSSOLINI. Fleeing the Allied advance near Lake Como, he had been captured by Italian partisans on the afternoon of April 27, 1945, and taken to a safe house in the mountains, where his few remaining friends couldn’t find him. He and his mistress, Clara Petacci, had arrived at Azzano in the early hours of April 28, and had spent the rest of the night under guard in a peasant’s house high above the village. They were being watched over by two young partisans who had stayed awake all night outside their door. One of the young men, spying on Clara as she washed in the outhouse before bed, had reported back to the other that Mussolini’s girlfriend had magnificent breasts. He could quite understand why Il Duce kept her for his mistress.

  Now it was morning again, late morning, and Mussolini had just woken from a deep sleep. Clara had cried during the night, her mascara staining the pillow, but Mussolini had slept very heavily. His eyes were bloodshot when he awoke, his face pale and gray beneath the stubble. It was obvious to his captors that Italy’s former dictator was in the depths of despair as he braced himself for whatever the new day would bring.

  He ate little for breakfast, toying with a plate of bread and salami in the bedroom while the partisans stood guard over him. He asked them if the Americans had taken Como during the night, nodding resignedly when they said they had. Afterward, Clara went back to bed, pulling up the covers and trying to catch up on her sleep, while Mussolini sat on the edge of the mattress looking out of the window toward the snow-covered mountains across the lake.

  He was still there when the executioners came for him at four that afternoon. They came upstairs in a hurry, led by a tall man in a fawn raincoat who called himself Colonel Valerio. In reality, the man was Walter Audisio, a Communist veteran of the Spanish Civil War who had rem
ained a committed antifascist ever since.

  Audisio was carrying a Sten gun as he burst into the room.

  “Quick!” he told Mussolini. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

  “Really?” Mussolini didn’t conceal his skepticism. “How very kind of you.”

  “Are you armed?” Audisio asked.

  Mussolini had stolen a knife from the kitchen the night before and hidden it in the bed. But he assured Audisio he wasn’t armed.

  Audisio turned to Clara. She was still in bed, her face against the wall. “You too,” he told her. “Come on. Get up.”

  Mussolini put his coat on while Clara rummaged frantically among the bedclothes. “What are you looking for?” Audisio demanded.

  “My knickers.”

  “Don’t worry about them. Just get a move on.”1

  Clara was forced to leave her handbag behind as well as her underpants. She clattered reluctantly down the stairs and was escorted out of the house while her lover trailed along in the rear. Lia De Maria, whose house it was, watched from a side window and crossed herself nervously as they disappeared. She liked what little she had seen of Clara. She hoped nothing unpleasant was about to happen to her.

  They stumbled down the mountain path, Clara, in her high heels, clinging desperately to Mussolini, who had no strength left to support her. He almost fell at one point, steadying himself against a wall. Clara tried to help him, but was pushed roughly away. Mussolini had nothing to say to her as they continued past a trio of women washing clothes in a stone trough and made their way toward the main road. They were spotted by an old man coming down the hill with a bale of hay on his back and by a woman strolling with a child. Nobody recognized Mussolini, although they all wondered why the smartly dressed woman with him was crying.

  A car was waiting for them on the road, a black Fiat sedan with a Roman license plate. Rosita Barbarita was walking her dogs nearby as the party appeared. Audisio waved his gun and told her to go away. She did so, hastily beating a retreat as Mussolini and his mistress were shoved into the back of the Fiat.