The Last Days - Part 2,The Last Days - Part 2
assured him that with this or that strategem, a way would surely be found, out of the defeat that was so obviously coming. They were even able to export this madness. Such was the strength of Goebbel’s propaganda that a figment of his own imagination, an illusory National Redoubt based on Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps, became so real to Eisenhower and his generals that, rather then take Berlin before the Russians, as they could easily have done, the U.S. Ninth Army headed south east after meeting the Russians near Magdeburg, in a wild-goose chase to capture the Redoubt!
It had been Hitler’s intention to retire to Berchtesgarden but he had immured himself for so long in the bunker 50 feet under the Chancellery in Berlin that he was unable to make himself decide to move, and then all routes out became closed as the Americans and Russians gradually encircled Berlin. The madness in the bunker has been preserved in the diaries of Goebbels, and various others who were there and, if it were not for the fact of the thousands upon thousands who were still meeting death in horrifying ways, the whole thing could be played as a farce. The daily strategy meeting became more and more divorced from reality, and yet the generals still there in the bunker and close by still attended and still passed on the orders. On 21st April Hitler ordered a full counter attack in south Berlin, to be led by General Steiner, and he was to be reinforced by transferring men from the north and west. Steiner did actually exist and he did have men under his command, and for two days Hitler was continually seeking news over the telephone, of the progress of the counter attack. There was none simply because none took place – but the withdrawal of men from the north had allowed the Russians to get within the city limits! Earlier in April, Goebbels had been reading to Hitler of Frederick the Great’s salvation, when all seemed lost and the Russian army was about to conquer Germany, by the death of the Czarina, Which immediately changed the whole political picture. They sent for horoscopes that had been drawn up, one on 30th January 1933 and one on 9th November 1918, at the birth of the German Republic. In these, it was predicted that in the second half of April 1945 there
Latest Articles