The Berkut by Joseph Heywood Page B

uniform jacket. One of the bearers wiped blood from one of his black shoes.
    Bormann easily hefted Eva Braun's small body. Her blond hair was in disarray, but she looked more asleep than dead. Linge and Ludwig Stumplegger, the SS colonel and surgeon, carried Hitler's corpse, with the doctor doing most of the work.
    At the foot of the concrete stairs, the tiny Kempka stepped into Bormann's path, blocking his way upward. "I'll take her," he said. Kempka knew that Eva had loathed and feared the Reichsleiter; remembering this, he couldn't stand seeing the man touch her. But she was too heavy for him, and when he stumbled on the stairs, almost dropping her, Günsche and another 55 man came to his aid.
    The two bodies were taken into the Chancellery garden and placed in a shell hole three meters from the bunker entrance. Günsche folded Eva's arms across her chest and helped douse the bodies with petrol. Kempka moved Hitler's left arm closer to his body. Artillery shells suddenly began to zero in on the area and forced the spectators to withdraw quickly to the protection afforded by the bunker's superstructure. They smoked and fidgeted nervously as they waited for a pause in the shelling. When it came, they continued dumping fuel on the bodies, trying to soak them thoroughly. Eventually the job was completed; the shell hole containing the corpses was afloat in flammable liquid.
    They discussed the best way to ignite the funeral pyre. "A grenade," Günsche suggested. But Kempka objected loudly; it would be too bruta l and disrespectful of their Fü hrer. As he finished his argument Kempka noticed a rag near an unfolded fire hose. He fetched it for Günsche, who soaked it with petrol. Goebbels, the chain-smoker, produced a book of matches, which he gave to Kempka, who then used them to ignite the rag for Günsche; they all stood back as he lofted it toward the shell hole with a flick of his wrist.
    For a moment, time was suspended. They were transfixed by the sight of the burning rag floating slowly up, then fluttering downward. Then the trench ignited with a quiet thump and a plume of black smoke rolled upward like a snake uncoiling.
    They watched in silence until Günsche called them to attention.
    He raised his right arm stiffly and the others followed his lead. "Heil Hitler," they said in unison for the final time.
    It was done. Adolf Hitler was dead. Ten days after his fifty-sixth birthday, the Führer of the thousand-year Reich smoldered in a makeshift funeral pyre in the war's final battleground.
    Well into the evening, Rattenhuber and his men continued to add petrol to the fire. At approximately ten o'clock, the head of the Reich Security Police told his aide, Captain Schedle, to pick three men he could trust and to bury what remained of the two blackened corpses.
    Russian shells were still dropping on the Chancellery area. Schedle and his small detail wrapped the remains in canvas shelter halves and buried them in a nearby shell hole. After they had filled the grave with dirt and mud, the men pounded the earth flat with shovels. Throughout the process they and their officer, like those below in the bunker, had only one thought: escape .
     
     
    11 – April 30, 1945, 4:50 P.M.
    They stayed in place fo r a full hour before moving. Br u mm wanted to be sure the sounds had ceased in the bunker below them. When he was satisfied that it was safe, he led his charge slowly through the metal tube to where their equipment waited for them. Hitler looked tired.
"From here we hav e to make a bit of a climb," Br u mm said. "I designed it," Hitler reminded
him.
    Br u mm pushed a pair of scuffed black boots toward the older man. "Put them on." Quickly and succinctly, he explained how they would make the vertical ascent ahead. "I'll lead," he added, and moved into the darkness, his flashlight carving a jiggling path ahead of them.
    The climb required a great deal of effort. Though Hitler's condition had been in large part a well-planned