Hitler With His Generals
Photo Source: Cllipart.com

As Germany was going down the tubes as they say, in 1945 things were happening that were even stranger than what had gone on before. There are all sort of stories out there about how everyone just cut loose and abandoned what was left of their morals. I am not talking about Hitler himself, or his closest cronies. I am talking about those people that were around these people and even the soldiers guarding the city of Berlin in the last days. You have to remember that food was scarce and what some of the soldiers would do, was promise young German girls that there were parties going on at headquarters and that there was unlimited food and drink there and entice them to go with them. These parties never existed and the girls would be raped and then left in the street. These were Germans doing this to Germans. It is said that even in Hitler's bunker people were acting with abandon, both men and women. One source says that some young SS officers who were found dead in the bunker while engaging in sex. These were the same people that had gone out the night before and were hanging all those that they suspected were deserters or disloyal. It is a funny thing, but just before Hitler's last days, he notice that his brother-in-law was missing from the bunker. He sent out part of his own bodyguard to find him and he turned up drunk in an apartment with a woman and his bags were packed and full of money, jewelry and contained counterfeit passports. He was brought back to the bunker. He was then stripped of all rank, taken out to the garden and executed.

After Hitler retreated down into his bunker, he never saw the outside again. Can you imagine this? I am talking about a period of time of about 5 months. Hitler had put himself into a prison. Sure he was still treated like a king by those around him, but it was a prison never the less. He ate there, slept there, held meetings there and even got married there. Apparently there was an above ground office complex, but the Soviets had blown that up. The bunker was about 55 feet below ground and was composed of heavily reinforced concrete and the explosions above seemed to have little or no effect on it. After the Soviets found the bunker they decided to declare it's location top secret and kept it from the East Germans. I guess they were afraid that it would become some sort of shrine. An Apartment was built and the engineer found the bunker and had to route the building around it. A hither to unknown part of the bunker had been discovered years later that was about 1,500 square feet. It was built for the elite SS drivers. Inside this bunker there were various different things reported. Helmets were reported as being scattered around, engraved silverware and even a dagger. Incredibly, there was a belt buckle found that was engraved with the phrase, "God is with us". The doorway had the following inscription," There are plenty of people, few really good chaps.". When the city found out that this part of the bunker had been found, it was sealed immediately.

It turns out that munitions may have been planted near the bunker to protect it. Several workmen were killed in later years when they unknowingly set off some devices during construction projects. In 1992 another section of the bunker was discovered. Did we ever really find out the scope and size of Hitler's bunker? We may not have gotten the entire story. The bunker could have been a lot larger than first imagined, or there could have been auxiliary bunkers next to it, such as the bunker mentioned in the paragraph above. One of the striking things about Hitler is that he didn't spend much time in Berlin during the war and yet he was to end his days there. It is said that construction of the Fuhrerbunker began in 1936 and was completed in 1943. I have no way of knowing if these dates are entirely accurate. Many people don't realize it, but the bunker Hitler died in was not the only bunker that was built for him, but it was probably the biggest and grandest. He even had bunkers built in the Ukraine for his eastern front headquarters. More were built throughout Europe. The one in the Ukraine is interesting because it's name comes from the word werwold, the German name for werewolf. Hitler had ordered that it be spelled Wehrwolf. Wehr is German for defense. Many people believe that the Fuhrerbunker, the bunker Hitler died in, was covered over and is under a parking lot. There is some information out there that indicated that it was first demolished in the 1980s and was reduced to rubble, before being covered over. The most reliable information points to the fact that the Fuhrerbunker had actually been located deep beneath the gardens.of the Reichskanzlei, which was at 77 Wilhelmstraße. This is an area where there are a lot of government buildings.

Hitler had become a trembling drug addict. Not so much because he purchased illegal drugs, but because his doctor was giving him injections of designer drugs. Most people believe that he didn't realize what was in the injections. It is also said that he was in the last phases of Syphilis, which he had gotten as a young man. He had symptoms that could have been attributed to several different causes, such as Parkinson's disease, drug abuse or Syphilis, but his doctor has signed an affidavit and given it to Goebbels and it stated that he was indeed in the last stages of Syphilis. This was only days before his death. Could this have been the reason that he had waited so long before marrying Eva Braun, could it have been that Hitler cared for her so much that he didn't want to give her the disease. This seems to be out of character, but it is reported that before they were married, they both slept in separate rooms at Hitler's mansion. Is it possible for a monster like Hitler to have ever cared for someone this much? Hitler had waited until the Soviet Army was almost into his bunker before he married her. It may have been that he felt that both he and she were going to be killed by the Soviets and that is why he finally married her and then convinced her to commit suicide.

Near the end, Hitler's hand began to tremble and everyone in the bunker must have been aware of this. The trembling actually started way before that, but most NAZI film makers were careful not to show that side of his body, so this trembling may have come as a surprise to some in the bunker. I am not talking about his inner circle, who had to be aware of it. I am talking about drivers, cooks, lower ranking officers, enlisted men and such. This must have presented a picture of a weak Hitler to them all. It was obvious that Hitler was not the same man that had started the war. Another thing that was not obvious at the time was that the drugs he was being given probably affected his judgment. Here was the supreme commander of the German forces, all drugged up and giving orders on how to proceed in battle. It might just have been a very lucky thing for us that this was the case, because he made several irrational decisions that effected the outcome of the war. One was opening up the Russian Front and refusing to let his over one million man army in Russia retreat when they began to lose. Another decision was not to throw all his reserve forces at the allied invasion or Normandy. There were other irrational decisions, but these two stand out. Were these drug induced decisions, or bad judgment by Hitler. I guess we will never know for sure how much the drugs affected his decisions, but it looks like his capability to make reasoned decisions was lost and replaced by some sort of grandiose ideas.

As Berlin was attacked, everyone was after Hitler to leave. He replied that if he did this, he couldn't expect his troops to fight a decisive battle for Berlin. Hermann Goering had decided near the end, that he was going to depose Hitler and become the new German ruler and then surrender to the Americans. Goering had sent his wife and children away to safety months earlier and transferred a large sum of money to his account. He went up to Hitler at their last meeting, shook hands with him in private, or so the story goes and left, never to see Hitler again. Hitler had admitted in front of some of his junior staff that he no longer believed he could be victorious, shocking them. As the Soviets started pounding the city square above, Hitler found out that a Panzer commander had launched a counter attack and he regained his confidence, but that was not to last very long. One witness claimed that Hitler sunk into a chair declaring that the war was now lost. Himmler had offered to surrender to the west, but his offer was declined. Hitler felt that this was the final straw. He had believed that Himmler was the most loyal of his followers, after all the motto of the SS was "my honor is loyalty". I guess Himmler didn't think that this applied to him.

Picture this. The Soviets are now pounding everything above the bunker with artillery fire and are getting ready to move in. As this is going on, Hitler and Eva are getting married and Goebbels and Bormann are the witnesses. There was a champagne party afterwards and then Hitler was said to dictate his last will and testament. So what were his last words to the people of the world. They are said to have been, "the most glorious and valiant manifestation of a nation's will to existence", he was talking about Germany and the war. It is said that everyone who was left in the bunker expected Hitler to kill himself in the next few hours. About 3:30 pm Hitler and Eva returned to Hitler's room, never to be seen alive again. Hitler left all of his possessions to the NAZI party and if it no longer existed, to the State and stated that if the State no longer existed then no further decision was necessary. As we all know, it was said that the faithful took Hitler's and Eva's body outside and covered them with gasoline and set them on fire. This started a controversy that lasted for many years. Could Hitler have had a double killed that had extensive dental work to make it appear that he was Hitler? This has been said quite a few times. Could Hitler have killed Eva and had her body put in with a double to convince the Soviets that he was really dead? Was he that big of a monster? maybe.

The last words in a letter to Eva's sister were, "Shed no tears nor be regretful over our deaths. It is the perfect and proper ending. None of us would change it now. It is the right end for a German woman." To see home movies of Eva go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjLg3GWzS3A You can copy and paste this address into your browser*

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