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Authors: Joseph Heywood
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his companion was used to, and it looked as if he might have some trouble coping. He was accustomed to having drugs for even the slightest discomfort, and in this situation there could be no drugs. Determination would have to serve as his opiate.
"One task remains," Brumm said.
"Don't do anything else," Hitler said, his voice rattling.
"It may help us later." The colonel pushed up his own sleeve to reveal the underside of his forearm. There was a tattoo, a series of numbers.
Hitler shook his head violently. "No. I forbid it. Absolutely not." Brumm responded softly. "Outside there is chaos. If the need arises, it may be advantageous for us to be Jews from the camps. It could get us through."
"No, not as a Jew."
Brumm ignored him and took Hitler's arm, told him to keep still and began applying the tattoo, using navy blue ink and a thick needle.
12 – May 2, 1945, 12:30 A.M.
Several hundred men and women gathered in the darkness under the low ceiling of the garage that served as a coal-storage area beneath the Chancellery complex. They were soldiers and bureaucrats, drivers and bakers, secretaries and sentries, party officials and clerks, all that remained of the once elite Reich Chancellery Group. They had been trickling into position alone and in small groups since early evening. General Wilhelm Mohnke of the Waffen SS, the bunker troop commander, and Otto Gunsche, Hitler's SS adjutant, took responsibility for organizing them.
The plan was to divide into small groups, which would jump off at twenty-minute intervals. Each escape group would cross the street through an underground tunnel, then climb up and make a run across open ground from the Wilhelmplatz to Stadtmitte Station. Neither Mohnke nor Gunsche had any clear idea of what awaited them. The Russians were all around, mostly on the roofs with rifles, sniping at virtually everything moving below on the streets. Russian artillery was still coming in, but now it exploded in measured salvos, with an interval between barrages. No longer was there a steady, unrelenting rain of explosives, and this offered the Nazis a glimmer of hope. The basic plan was for each group to find its own way across the river Spree, then move northwest through the suburbs, eventually out of the city and northwest to a rendezvous in a forest near Mecklenburg, some hundred and eighty kilometers northwest of Berlin. The hope was not that they could evade capture completely, but that they might avoid being taken by the Russians. Thus, the route they chose would take them quickly through the three Soviet lines that ringed the city and toward the Western Allies, whose hospitality would be far less harsh than what they could expect from the Russians.
For Unterscharfü hrer Gustav Rudolf of the SS, the escape seemed like a hopeless, idiotic effort. The hundred and eighty kilometers to the rendezvous might as well have been eighty thousand or eighty million. There was no way they could get through. He had a premonition of death, which chilled him and made his mouth dry. The thing he had feared most had finally descended upon him and he cursed his bad fortune. He had spent a terrible month cringing in the cellars of the Chancellery, guarding the final stronghold of the Reich. On the thirtieth he'd seen Hitler and had known from that mome nt that the end was near. The Fü hrer did not look like his old self, and he had been subdued. La ter Rudolf had heard that the Fü hrer had killed himself that same afternoon. The whole situation was a nightmare, and the single force that had held together what was left of Germany was gone. Now he was going to be forced to come to grips with an even greater terror. He'd just as soon wait for capture by the Russians. At least he'd be alive; he could cope with whatever came after that. But he kept his opinion to himself, because it was generally believed capture would bring immediate execution, especially for any Ger man who had served so close to
"One task remains," Brumm said.
"Don't do anything else," Hitler said, his voice rattling.
"It may help us later." The colonel pushed up his own sleeve to reveal the underside of his forearm. There was a tattoo, a series of numbers.
Hitler shook his head violently. "No. I forbid it. Absolutely not." Brumm responded softly. "Outside there is chaos. If the need arises, it may be advantageous for us to be Jews from the camps. It could get us through."
"No, not as a Jew."
Brumm ignored him and took Hitler's arm, told him to keep still and began applying the tattoo, using navy blue ink and a thick needle.
12 – May 2, 1945, 12:30 A.M.
Several hundred men and women gathered in the darkness under the low ceiling of the garage that served as a coal-storage area beneath the Chancellery complex. They were soldiers and bureaucrats, drivers and bakers, secretaries and sentries, party officials and clerks, all that remained of the once elite Reich Chancellery Group. They had been trickling into position alone and in small groups since early evening. General Wilhelm Mohnke of the Waffen SS, the bunker troop commander, and Otto Gunsche, Hitler's SS adjutant, took responsibility for organizing them.
The plan was to divide into small groups, which would jump off at twenty-minute intervals. Each escape group would cross the street through an underground tunnel, then climb up and make a run across open ground from the Wilhelmplatz to Stadtmitte Station. Neither Mohnke nor Gunsche had any clear idea of what awaited them. The Russians were all around, mostly on the roofs with rifles, sniping at virtually everything moving below on the streets. Russian artillery was still coming in, but now it exploded in measured salvos, with an interval between barrages. No longer was there a steady, unrelenting rain of explosives, and this offered the Nazis a glimmer of hope. The basic plan was for each group to find its own way across the river Spree, then move northwest through the suburbs, eventually out of the city and northwest to a rendezvous in a forest near Mecklenburg, some hundred and eighty kilometers northwest of Berlin. The hope was not that they could evade capture completely, but that they might avoid being taken by the Russians. Thus, the route they chose would take them quickly through the three Soviet lines that ringed the city and toward the Western Allies, whose hospitality would be far less harsh than what they could expect from the Russians.
For Unterscharfü hrer Gustav Rudolf of the SS, the escape seemed like a hopeless, idiotic effort. The hundred and eighty kilometers to the rendezvous might as well have been eighty thousand or eighty million. There was no way they could get through. He had a premonition of death, which chilled him and made his mouth dry. The thing he had feared most had finally descended upon him and he cursed his bad fortune. He had spent a terrible month cringing in the cellars of the Chancellery, guarding the final stronghold of the Reich. On the thirtieth he'd seen Hitler and had known from that mome nt that the end was near. The Fü hrer did not look like his old self, and he had been subdued. La ter Rudolf had heard that the Fü hrer had killed himself that same afternoon. The whole situation was a nightmare, and the single force that had held together what was left of Germany was gone. Now he was going to be forced to come to grips with an even greater terror. He'd just as soon wait for capture by the Russians. At least he'd be alive; he could cope with whatever came after that. But he kept his opinion to himself, because it was generally believed capture would bring immediate execution, especially for any Ger man who had served so close to
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