Read Online Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute: The hidden story of an SS family in wartime Germany by Emma Craigie, Jonathan Mayo - Free Book Online
Authors: Emma Craigie, Jonathan Mayo
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set off for Lübeck. They are now focused on the second part of the mission: to capture Heinrich Himmler. They have decided to head to Admiral Dönitz’s headquarters in the hope that he will have information on Himmler’s whereabouts.
In the Führerbunker the wedding celebrations continue. Adolf Hitler sits quietly while Eva knocks back the champagne. Generals Krebs and Burgdorf are on cognac.
General Krebs is the Army Chief of Staff, recently appointed on the grounds of his readiness to comply with the Führer’s will. Hispredecessor, General Guderian, was sacked for disagreeing with what he regarded as Hitler’s suicidal military decisions. Krebs is a much decorated, monocle-wearing infantry general, who joined the military in 1914 and never left. He is a fluent Russian speaker, the only Russian speaker in the bunker, having served as the military attaché in Moscow from 1936 to 1939
.
General Burgdorf is more junior, a large and florid character, who is serving as Hitler’s chief army adjutant. Following the attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944, it was General Burgdorf who undertook the murder of Field Marshal Rommel. Rommel was believed to have had a peripheral involvement but Hitler knew that he could not put the country’s favourite general on trial for treason. Burgdorf was sent to Rommel’s family home on 14th October 1944 with instructions to give Rommel a choice: he would either be tried and executed for treason, or he would commit suicide and his family would be guaranteed immunity from prosecution. Burgdorf told Rommel that he had the poison on him. It would only take three seconds. The man known as the Desert Fox said goodbye to his wife Lucie and their 15-year-old son Manfred (‘I shall be dead in half an hour...’) and left the house with Burgdorf. They drove to a quiet country road, where Rommel took the poison. Hitler sent a message of condolence to Lucie
.
Poor Neville Chamberlain believed that he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong with Stalin
.
Winston Churchill
About 3.00am
In Milan, two bodies are being dumped from a removal van onto the cobbles of the Piazzale Loreto. They are the mud-spattered remains of Italy’s deposed dictator Benito Mussoliniand his mistress Clara Petacci. He’s wearing a grey-brown jacket, grey trousers with red and black stripes down the sides and black boots. A crowd swiftly gathers and people start pelting them with vegetables, spitting, kicking and urinating on the bodies; shots are fired into Mussolini’s head. His eyes are still open. A woman fires five bullets into Mussolini’s body shouting, ‘Five shots for my five assassinated sons!’ Piazzale Loreto has been chosen as the site to dump the bodies, as it was here that 15 executed partisans had been publicly displayed in August 1944.
On Friday 27th, Mussolini had been captured by Italian partisans. He had tried to disguise himself in the helmet and greatcoat of a German soldier and pretended to be asleep in the back of an army truck. He and Clara were taken to a partisan safe house in the hills. At four o’clock the following afternoon a man named Walter Audisio arrived, claiming to have come to rescue them. He was in fact a member of the Italian resistance. He drove them to a villa near the village of Giulino di Mezzagra above Lake Como. There Audisio read out a death sentence in the name of the Italian people and shot them both. One report claimed that Mussolini cowered in terror, another that he pulled open his coat and shouted, ‘Aim for the heart!’
One hundred and fifty miles away, Allied trucks and jeeps of the 2nd New Zealand Division, part of the British Eighth Army, are driving through the dark streets of the northern Italian city of Padua. Men and women are running alongside shouting, ‘
Viva! Viva!
’ Some are clapping, some are crying. The troops stop their vehicles in a small square in front of a church. Thirty-five-year-old Major Geoffrey
In the Führerbunker the wedding celebrations continue. Adolf Hitler sits quietly while Eva knocks back the champagne. Generals Krebs and Burgdorf are on cognac.
General Krebs is the Army Chief of Staff, recently appointed on the grounds of his readiness to comply with the Führer’s will. Hispredecessor, General Guderian, was sacked for disagreeing with what he regarded as Hitler’s suicidal military decisions. Krebs is a much decorated, monocle-wearing infantry general, who joined the military in 1914 and never left. He is a fluent Russian speaker, the only Russian speaker in the bunker, having served as the military attaché in Moscow from 1936 to 1939
.
General Burgdorf is more junior, a large and florid character, who is serving as Hitler’s chief army adjutant. Following the attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944, it was General Burgdorf who undertook the murder of Field Marshal Rommel. Rommel was believed to have had a peripheral involvement but Hitler knew that he could not put the country’s favourite general on trial for treason. Burgdorf was sent to Rommel’s family home on 14th October 1944 with instructions to give Rommel a choice: he would either be tried and executed for treason, or he would commit suicide and his family would be guaranteed immunity from prosecution. Burgdorf told Rommel that he had the poison on him. It would only take three seconds. The man known as the Desert Fox said goodbye to his wife Lucie and their 15-year-old son Manfred (‘I shall be dead in half an hour...’) and left the house with Burgdorf. They drove to a quiet country road, where Rommel took the poison. Hitler sent a message of condolence to Lucie
.
Poor Neville Chamberlain believed that he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong with Stalin
.
Winston Churchill
About 3.00am
In Milan, two bodies are being dumped from a removal van onto the cobbles of the Piazzale Loreto. They are the mud-spattered remains of Italy’s deposed dictator Benito Mussoliniand his mistress Clara Petacci. He’s wearing a grey-brown jacket, grey trousers with red and black stripes down the sides and black boots. A crowd swiftly gathers and people start pelting them with vegetables, spitting, kicking and urinating on the bodies; shots are fired into Mussolini’s head. His eyes are still open. A woman fires five bullets into Mussolini’s body shouting, ‘Five shots for my five assassinated sons!’ Piazzale Loreto has been chosen as the site to dump the bodies, as it was here that 15 executed partisans had been publicly displayed in August 1944.
On Friday 27th, Mussolini had been captured by Italian partisans. He had tried to disguise himself in the helmet and greatcoat of a German soldier and pretended to be asleep in the back of an army truck. He and Clara were taken to a partisan safe house in the hills. At four o’clock the following afternoon a man named Walter Audisio arrived, claiming to have come to rescue them. He was in fact a member of the Italian resistance. He drove them to a villa near the village of Giulino di Mezzagra above Lake Como. There Audisio read out a death sentence in the name of the Italian people and shot them both. One report claimed that Mussolini cowered in terror, another that he pulled open his coat and shouted, ‘Aim for the heart!’
One hundred and fifty miles away, Allied trucks and jeeps of the 2nd New Zealand Division, part of the British Eighth Army, are driving through the dark streets of the northern Italian city of Padua. Men and women are running alongside shouting, ‘
Viva! Viva!
’ Some are clapping, some are crying. The troops stop their vehicles in a small square in front of a church. Thirty-five-year-old Major Geoffrey
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