Rochus Misch, now 92, Adolf Hitler’s ex bodyguard is the last living person to have been in the Berlin bunker where the Fuhrer spent his last days.
In other words, he’s the only person left in the world to have actually seen Hitler’s last moments before he committed suicide on 30th April 1945.
Misch at the age of 20+
Misch at the age of 90
His description of his first meeting with Hitler is vivid and chilling:
My first meeting with Hitler was rather strange. I’d been in the job 12 days when Hitler’s chief adjutant, a man called Bruckner, started asking me questions about my grandmother, about my childhood. Then he got up and walked towards the door. Being an obedient soldier, I flung myself forward to open it, and there was Hitler standing right behind the door. I felt cold. Then I felt hot. I felt every emotion standing there opposite Hitler.
He describes what it was like working among Hitler’s inner circle:
In the Fuehrer’s entourage, strictly speaking, we were bodyguards. When Hitler was travelling, between four and six of us would accompany him in a second car. But when we were at Hitler’s apartment in the Chancellery we also had other duties. Two of us would always work as telephone operators. With a boss like Hitler, there were always plenty of phone calls.
When Hitler retreated to the Fuehrerbunker, Misch followed him there and worked as the telephone operator in a small room with one telephone and teletype machine with outside lines.
Of course the next question would be: was the movie Der Untergang (2004) an accurate representation of the goings-on there? He answered emphatically:
This movie is an operatic drama. Everything is exaggerated! The bunker wasn’t like that at all. There weren’t all those people, all those generals and, of course, we weren’t drinking Champagne in those miniscule concrete cells!
He claims that he saw Hitler a few hours before the dictator died:
It was toward 11 am. He passes in front of me, stops, gives me a glance before turning around and disappearing. I went back to work. Down the hall, five or six meters away, I heard Hitler speaking to a group of men, including Goebbels: “And so that what happened to Mussolini, who was hung and stoned (on April 28), doesn’t happen to me, see to it that I am burned after my death.
He describes what happened when Hitler shot himself:
Suddenly I heard somebody shouting: ‘Linge, Linge, I think it’s happened.’ (Heinz Linge was the Führer’s personal assistant). They’d heard a gunshot, but I hadn’t. At that moment Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, ordered everyone to be silent. Linge passed in front of me before stopping in front of Hitler’s door. There was a deathly silence. We waited a half hour before anyone opened the door.
I was speaking on the telephone and I made sure I talked louder on purpose because I wanted to hear something. I didn’t want it to feel like we were in a death bunker.
Then Martin Bormann ordered Hitler’s door to be opened. I saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table. Eva Braun was lying on the sofa, with her head towards him. Her knees were drawn tightly up to her chest. She was wearing a dark blue dress with white frills. I will never forget it.
I watched as they wrapped Hitler up in gray blankets. His legs were sticking out as they carried him past me. Someone shouted to me: ‘Hurry upstairs, they’re burning the boss!’ I decided not to go because I had noticed that Mueller from the Gestapo was there – and he was never usually around. I said to my comrade Hentschel, the mechanic: ‘Maybe we will be killed for being the last witnesses.
Then he describes what happened the next day: the six children of Joseph Goebbels – whom Hitler had appointed Germany’s new leader were drugged and murdered by their own mother:
Straight after Hitler’s death, Mrs Goebbels came down to the bunker with her children. She started preparing to kill them. She couldn’t have done that above ground – there were other people there who would have stopped her. That’s why she came downstairs – because no-one else was allowed in the bunker. She came down on purpose to kill them.
The kids were right next to me and behind me. We all knew what was going to happen. It was clear. I saw Hitler’s doctor, Dr Stumpfegger give the children something to drink. Some kind of sugary drink. Then Stumpfegger went and helped to kill them. All of us knew what was going on. An hour or two later, Mrs Goebbels came out crying. She sat down at a table and began playing patience.
What happened next: Misch managed to leave the bunker a few hours before it the Soviets arrived. However he was quickly captured and spent 9 years in Soviet labour camps.
Two months after the end of the war, Winston Churchill visited it, posing for photos outside, even sitting on a chair recovered from the shelter.
Source
The BBC, 3rd Sept 2009
Le Monde, January 2005
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