After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe by Michael Jones

Moscow’s Red Square.’
    The Vlasov Army had allied itself with the Germans in the desperate hope of forging a future for its people that was different to that of a communist state. However, the power of the Wehrmacht was now collapsing. North of Berlin, makeshift German defence lines buckled as Soviet marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front swung towards the Baltic. Rokossovsky’s offensive had been launched on 26 April, and was advancing rapidly through northern Germany. Major Erich Mende of the Wehrmacht’s 102nd Infantry Division had been awarded the Knight’s Cross in January 1945 for making a stand in East Prussia that allowed more than 10,000 civilians to escape the clutches of the Red Army. Now there were simply not enough troops to hold the enemy.
    ‘Everything came apart on 30 April,’ Mende remembered. ‘A Soviet tank push from the south-east overtook our forces and reached the outskirts of Rostock. The main exit route was now closed to us and a mass of our infantrymen clambered aboard our remaining trucks and jeeps, as we tried to find another way out.’
    Eventually Mende and his exhausted fellow soldiers reached the port of Warnemünde, only to find the remaining ships crammed full of refugees. The men stood on the quayside. And then they were joined by a sudden influx. ‘Some 500 or so emaciated people appeared, all in convict clothes. We realized that they were escapees from a nearby concentration camp.’ The two groups watched each other in uneasy silence.
    In Berlin, the Red Army front line was now a mere 400 metres from the Führer Bunker. Yet early on the evening of 30 April Joseph Goebbels briefly rekindled the flame of National Socialism that had departed with his master. Lieutenant Franz Kuhlmann recalled:
I was with a group of my soldiers defending the northern flank of the Reich Chancellery. We were protecting the main shelter and the Führer Bunker, and the yard in front of it, when a sergeant relayed an order that I was to go immediately to the Green Hall of the Reich Chancellery. I followed him, and came across a farewell ceremony Goebbels had organized for the Hitler Youth defenders. Participating in it were Magda Goebbels and her children, the secretaries from the Führer Bunker and some civilian officials and young cadets. I was immediately invited to join a long table, a dish of pea soup was pushed towards me and I found myself opposite Goebbels himself, in animated conversation with some of the Hitler Youth.
My sergeant sat down next to Frau Goebbels, my cadets in between the Goebbels children. After eating, a naval cadet took to the piano and the Hitler Youth and Goebbels sang together the old National Socialist martial songs. Then Goebbels said some words, with the Hitler Youth drawn up in formation around him. As these boys had come directly from the Chancellery complex they were carrying their Panzerfausts [bazookas], which had already destroyed a number of Russian tanks. Iron Crosses were presented to these young defenders.
I was able to observe Goebbels closely and saw how completely immersed he was in the old rhetoric of defiant resistance. It had now completely taken on a life of its own, a life totally divorced from reality. In the present situation his words were nonsensical, yet they cast a spell from which none of the Hitler Youth seemed able to break free.
Outside, there was a strong, incessant bombardment, one that had left many dead with more soon to follow. Here, inside, was singing and a mass of young faces, all mesmerised by the power of Goebbels’ terrible oratory, the Goebbels children, innocently playing, creating an atmosphere that was utterly unreal.
I got the feeling that a whole world was sinking here, a world for which millions of Germans had fought and died – and their blood sacrifice had been utterly futile.

2
    May Day in Berlin
    1 May 1945
    B ERLIN WAS THE focal point of the Russian war effort. Its capture would show its people and the