INSIDE HITLERS BUNKER - BERLIN APRIL 1945

    

              
                                                     In meiner Heimat da blühen die Rosen
                                                     und jedes Häuslein ist umrankt von wildem Wein.
                                                     Wie gerne möcht ich mein Mädelein kosen                                                                                          und nur ein Stündchen mit ihr glücklich sein.
                                                      Mich rief die Sehnsucht fort an jenen stillen Ort,
                                                      wo ich zum erstenmal das Licht der Welt geseh'n.
                                                                               Part 1/

                                                                INSIDE HITLERS BUNKER- BERLIN 1945-

Background
On 1st August 1914 Hitler was photographed in a crowd which had gathered to celebrate the outbreak of the first World War at the Odeonsplatz, Munich. He later wrote in Mein Kampf that he 'thanked heaven from the fullness of his heart for the favor of having been permitted to live at such a time'.
The war deliverance from the stress that had weighed upon me during the days of my youth'.

                                              

                           Hitler in the Odeonsplatz Munich 2 August 1914. declaration of war


That distress began in early childhood. Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in the town of Braunau am Inn in Austria. His father Alois was bad tempered, authoritarian and an unpredictable ma, frequently drunk and employed as a Austrian Customs employee. According to Adolf's younger sister Paula, he mother received daily thrashings. Their mother was much younger than their father, and closely related to him. She addressed him as 'Uncle'. Hitler later told people that she sat outside the room. waiting for the beatings to finish so that she could comfort her son. She was, in Paula's words, a very soft and tender person and Adolf adored her. His father died when Adolf was 14 and his mother when he was 18. Her doctor who had attended many clashes, later recalled, 'I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler'.

                                            

                                                           Hitler's mother



Hitler had already faced disappointment when he failed to get a place to study architecture at the Vienna Academy of fine Arts shortly before his mother's death. After her funeral in 1907 he returned to the Austrian capital. He lived in cheap lodgings and then after a period of sleeping in park benches moved into a men's hostel. He suddenly claimed financial support - pretending to be a student - and supplemented his by selling small paintings and sketches, but lived an indolent life. He rose at noon and stayed up late at night working on grandiose architectural projects, designing castles, theaters and concert halls. He wrote operas and plays. Each project began with maniac euphoria, but none were finished. His ambitious dreams alternated with periods of depression.

Hitler frequently got into furious arguments at the night kitchens whee he went for bread and soup. According to one of his flatmates in Vienna, Jewish-Czech August Kubizek the 19-year old Hitler quarreled with anyone and had frenzies of hatred. The antisemitism of Vienna, crudely expressed in enless cheap pamphlets, gave Hitler the relief of a focus for his feelings of fury and resentment.

Writing Mein Kampf 15 years later, he claims that this was the period when when his view of life rook shape: (Wien war die Schule meines Lebens,sic)
'since then I have extended that foundation very little, and I have changed nothing in it'. This festering of aggression found a new outlet in the First World War. Hitler was accepted into a Bavarian Unit (although he was an Austrian National,sic) as a regimental staff runner and suddenly his aimless life had a structure and purpose. In the next four years he was twice wounded and twice decorated but he never rose above corporal. (In fact he was only a Private First Class -one stripe on his sleeve [Pfc US Army] and was often mocked behind his back by his Generals in the Second WW that they had received orders from the Gefreter (Pfc) of the First World War,sic)
According to one of his fellow soldiers he sat in a corner with his helmet on his head lost in thought and none of us could coax him out of his apathaty. He was seen as a loner, a dreamer. His only friend was a dog, a white terrier he called Foxi which had wandered over from the English trenches.
According his military chief, Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler was brave but cold, and wouldn't be promoted further because it was clear that he couldn't command respect.

                                         
                                             Hitler as soldier during WW I

On the 19th November 1918, the day before Armistice Day, Hitler was in hospital in Pasewalk, in the north-east Germany convalescing after his second injury. As he recalled in Mein Kampf a pastor came in to address the patients. With regret he told them that Germany had become a Republic. the Monarchy had fallen, the war was lost. To Hitler the news was unbearable: 'I could stand it no longer. It became impossible for me to sit still one minute more. Again everything went black before my eyes, (he was gassed and most likely sufferd from partial blindness,sic) I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself onto the bunk and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow. 'Since when I had stood on my mother's grave I had not wept... But now I could not help it...'And so it had all been in vain...Did all this happen only that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the Fatherland...I, for my part, decided to go into politics'.( Und ich bescloss Politiker zu werden,sic)

After leaving hospital he went to live in Munich and started attending political meetings. He made his first public speech on16 October 1919 in a beer cellar in the Munich suburb to an audience of 111 people. He spoke till he was sweating and exhausted, unblocking a dam of hatred towards the political establishment, frustration at the humiliation of the defeat of the 1914-18 war and determination to overturn the traitors who, in June had signed the Versailles Treaty. Hitler was thrilled to discover what I had always felt deep down in my heart... proud to be true. I could make a good speech'. The audience was electrified by his raw intensity. He was voicing the pain of people who had felt powerless and offering hope of a glorious future to people who felt battered by defeat. Within weeks he was attracting audiences of 400, the following February he addressed 2,000 people crammed into a huge hall in the center of the city. People stood on the tables and roared as he shrieked abuse at the Jews. There was tumultuous applause as he declared 'Our motto is only struggle! We go forward unshakable to our goal!'


                                
                                     Hitler after addressing enthusiastic crowd


Hitler had assummed leadership of the Nationalsozialistische Deutscha Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP. later known as the Nazis. (Which is an obscene expression,sic) By the autumn of1923 he had gathered more than 55,000 followers, a thousandfold increase from when he joined as the 55th member.
Intoxicated by his success, and inspired by Mussolini's successful March on Rome the previous October, Hitler decided to attempt a coup - later known as the Beer Hall Putsch - and assert his position as the leader of all the anti-Republican protest groups in Munich. The putsch was planned one day and executed the next November, Hitler burst into a Munich beer cellar (the Bürgerbräukeller) where 3,000 people were listening to speeches by Bavarian politicians. He was accompanied by one of his most glamorous supporters - the war hero and ace fighter pilot Hermann Göring - and a team of hemeted storm troopers pushing a heavy machine gun. Hitler leapt onto a cjair, waving a dog whip and brandishing a pistol. In order to make himself heard he fired  a shot at the ceiling and then shouted across the vast room, 'The national revolution has broken out in Munich! The The whole city at this moment is occupied by our troops! The hall surrounded by 600 men.Nobody is allowed to leave'!

Hitler had assummed leadership of the Nationalsozialistische Deutscha Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP. later known as the Nazis. (Which is an obscene expression,sic) By the autumn of1923 he had gathered more than 55,000 followers, a thousandfold increase from when he joined as the 55th member.
Intoxicated by his success, and inspired by Mussolini's successful March on Rome the previous October, Hitler decided to attempt a coup - later known as the Beer Hall Putsch - and assert his position as the leader of all the anti-Republican protest groups in Munich. The putsch was planned one day and executed the next November, Hitler burst into a Munich beer cellar (the Bürgerbräukeller) where 3,000 people were listening to speeches by Bavarian politicians. He was accompanied by one of his most glamorous supporters - the war hero and ace fighter pilot Hermann Göring - and a team of hemeted storm troopers pushing a heavy machine gun. Hitler leapt onto a cjair, waving a dog whip and brandishing a pistol. In order to make himself heard he fired  a shot at the ceiling and then shouted across the vast room, 'The national revolution has broken out in Munich! The The whole city at this moment is occupied by our troops! The hall surrounded by 600 men.Nobody is allowed to leave'!

                                             
                                                       The Bürgerbräukeller


The city was not occupied by Nazi troops and the Putsch fizzled out after a 30-second exchange of gunfire in which four policemen and 14 Nazis were killed. One of the activists was a young chicken farmer with a soft pudgy face and glasses. He held his hand high and carried a standard bearing a swastika. His name was Heinrich Himmler.
Hermann Göring was shot in the leg. Adolf Hitler tripped and dislocated his shoulder. Both men fled the scene. Göring managed to escape to Ausria where he was treated for his injuries and given morphine for his pain. It was the beginning of a lifelong addiction. (In fact Göring was wounded during the first World War which remained painful and he was given and used morphine to ease the pain,sic.)
Hitler only managed to get as far as a friend's house outside Munich and was arrested two days later. Together with several other organizers of the march towards the Feldhernhalle, he was tried for treason. Hitler was given the minimum sentence of five years and in April 1924 was sent to Landsberg Prison.


                                    


                                                          Prison Landsberg am Lech

In Landsberg Hitler had a large room with windows looking out over beautiful countryside. Many of the prison guards were Nazi Party members and secretly showed their respect with greetings of 'Heil Hitler'. He was allowed to receive flowers and gifts and had so many visitors that once numbers topped 5000 he decided to restrict them. He spent most of his time writing, or rather dictating, Mein Kampf, setting out a political ideology which he never revised. He argued that the future success of the German nation required triumph over the evil conspiracies of the Jews and communists and territorial expansion in the east.
After the shambles of the 1923 Putsch, Hitler spent ten years building up the Nazi Party with the support of the former chicken farmer Heinrich Himmler, developed the SS as an effective military elite. The focus of his ambition turned from Bavarian politics to national leadership.

Hitler;s appoinmtment as Chancellor of Germany on January 30th 1933 was greeted by huge, orchestrated torchlight processions. The reality was that the Nazi Party had come to power with minority support on election that failed to deliver a majority government. Germany was suffering catastrophic inflation and high unemployment, which Hitler tackled with a massive programed of road building, construction and military rearmament. The expansion was funded by huge borrowing, the seizure of assets and printing money. At the same time Hitler introduced policies designed to destroy opposition. Trade Unions and all other political parties were banned. Opponents were murdered or sent to newly created concentration camps. In pursuit of racial perfection, laws of 'Racial Hygiene' were b brought in. Sex was forbidden between so-called Aryans and Jews or Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring'. A eugenics programme for the the medical murder of people with disabilities was secret;y established.
The changes were enforced by violence, delivered by the SS and the newly formed Gestapo, and by extravagant propaganda. A young journalist with a PhD in Romantic Literate, Joseph Goebbels, was put in charge of controlling the media. A young architect, Albert Speer, was brought in to design the visual inpact of mass rallies and marches.
In 1939 Hitler reflected on the achievements of the first six years of his leadership in a speech to the German parliament, the Reichstag: 'I have restored to the Reich the provinces grabbed from us in 1919, I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans,who have been snatched away from us, back to the Fatherland: I have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space, and I have attempted to accomplish all that without shedding blood and without inflicting the sufferings of war on my people or any other. I have accomplished all this, as one who 21 years ago was still an unknown worker and soldier of my people, by my own efforts...'
By the end of 1938 Rhineland, Austria and Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia had all been pulled into a greater Germany without any international opposition. But the Invasion of Poland triggered the British and French declarations of war on Germany on 3rd September 1939.
Undeterred in April 1940, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway, again without encountering significant opposition. Then in the spring of 1941 German troops were sent into the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Greece, North Africa and the Middle East, and later into Iraq and Crete. The beginning of the end of this massive expansion came in June 1941 when, in contravention of a non-aggression pact of 1939, Hitler launched a massive attack on Soviet Russia. Six months later he declared war on the United States. (He always that the USA would be an enemy,sic). By Christmas 1944 Germany was pincered between these two advancing Superpowers.
On the 5th January 1945, Hitler retreated from the hideous reality of defeat. He rushed back to Berlin, and buried himself in his Führerbunker, giving orders to Albert Speer that all German infrastructure and industry be destroyed. There would be no surrender. Victory or destruction were the only options.


                                 
                                                         

                                                   Continued under Part 2/