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Last Witness to 'The Bunker' dies.
Discussion in 'The Third Reich' started by von Poop, Sep 6, 2013.
firsts and lasts
traudl (gertrude) junge
von Poop Adaministrator Admin
Via Gott Mit Uns / [twitter]GERArmyResearch[/twitter]
Original Article:
Der letzte Zeuge aus dem Führerbunker ist tot
Web Translation:
The last witness of the Fuehrer's bunker is dead
Telephone operator Rochus Misch was at his headquarters. Later he became the best-selling author with his stories.
... Now Misch has died at 96 years
von Poop, Sep 6, 2013
Lindele likes this.
Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin
Well picked up. I had not heard anything on the News here in Berlin, but hardly surprising given the G20 Summit.
If I recall correctly, his daughter distanced herself from her father several years ago, due to his comments.
Smudger Jnr, Sep 6, 2013
Twitter & Friendface have their place, particularly if you follow people like Rob on them.
Something quite deep historically about a last witness dying.
From this point onwards, nobody can say "what I saw" about that particular time.
Drew5233 and Combover like this.
Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive
Tom - what were his comments ?
Drew5233, Sep 6, 2013
TTH Senior Member
I guessed it was Misch before I even read the post. Peace to his ashes, he dwelt next to the devil but he survived and God gave him a long life anyhow.
TTH, Sep 6, 2013
Mr Jinks Bit of a Cad
Günther Schwägermann ? Is he still alive, it was reported he was in 2010 when he refused to be interviewed ? Born in 1915 he was in the Bunker.
Mr Jinks, Sep 6, 2013
Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member
Rochus Misch, who has died aged 96, worked for five years as Adolf Hitler's bodyguard, courier, orderly, and latterly Chief of Communications, acquiring an intimate insight into the machinations of the Nazi leadership; his recollection suggested that Hitler and Rudolf Hess considered an armistice with Britain in 1941, and that when Hitler rejected the idea Hess flew to Scotland under his own steam.
Rudolf Misch in 1942
1:50PM BST 06 Sep 2013
Ultimately Misch was in charge of the switchboard in the Berlin "Führerbunker", where Hitler and members of his inner circle met their grisly ends as the Red Army closed in 1945. The bodyguard was the last person to leave the bunker, and was a key witness to the macabre events dramatised in Der Untergang ("Downfall", 2006), Oliver Hirschbiegel's extraordinary film about the end of the Third Reich.
He recalled how, on April 30 1945, Hitler locked himself in his room with his bride-of-a-day Eva Braun: "Everyone was waiting for the shot. We were expecting it. I had just said to the technicians: 'I'm going over [to Hitler's office], can I fetch you anything?' And they said no. Then came the shot. Linge [Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet] took me to one side and we went in. I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I didn't see any blood on his head. And I saw Eva with her knees drawn up lying next to him on the sofa – wearing a white and blue blouse, with a little collar: just a little thing."
Misch was also a witness to the grimmest of bunker stories — the murder by Magda Goebbels of her six children. "The children were prepared for their deaths in my work room," he recalled. "Their mother combed their hair — they were all dressed in white nightshirts — and then she went up with the children. Dr Nauman told me that Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger would give the kids 'candy water'. I realised what was going to happen immediately. I had seen Dr Stumpfegger successfully test poison on Blondi, the Führer's dog." Frau Goebbels returned an hour or two later, and without saying a word went to her husband's room. There, she laid out a game of patience.
Misch then helped to establish a direct line from the Reich Chancellery to Soviet lines, while General Krebs tried to negotiate an armistice. But the Russians demanded unconditional surrender. When the news was brought to the surviving inmates of the bunker, they assembled for a meeting at which Goebbels reminisced about the triumphant early days of Nazism, but made no reference to his family, dead upstairs. "Magda Goebbels just sat there," Misch recalled, "saying little, head high. She was chain-smoking and sipping champagne."
All of them knew what was coming. "Goebbels said to me: 'Well, Misch, we knew how to live. Now we know how to die.' Then he and Frau Goebbels processed arm-in-arm up the stairs to the garden. Soon afterwards somebody called and asked for General Krebs. I connected the line but there was no answer. I went to Krebs's room and found him and Burgdorf [General Burgdorf, Chief Adjutant] sitting motionless. I first thought they were sleeping." Both officers were dead.
Though Misch was probably a reliable witness to the facts, he showed none of the remorse or psychological insight that others exhibited when talking about the Nazi era. To Misch, Hitler remained the kind boss who joked with his staff, loved Charlie Chaplin, children and animals and was so considerate towards others that he married Eva Braun the day before their deaths "solely out of consideration for her parents".
Rochus Misch was born on July 29 1917 in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, in what is now Poland but was then part of Imperial Germany. Orphaned in the First World War, he grew up into a broad-shouldered, though none-too-bright, young man — the ideal recruit for the elite SS Leibstandarte regiment which he joined in 1937.
He served as an Oberscharführer in the Polish campaign of 1939 but was wounded and taken out of active service. While he was recovering Hitler's office rang his regiment looking for "an honest, reliable fellow" to join the Führer's team. Misch was recommended.
Misch's experience sometimes produced tantalising titbits which seemed to run contrary to mainstream historical research. When an interviewer asked him about the sort of thing that upset Hitler, for example, Misch recalled seeing him distressed only once — after his deputy Rudolf Hess flew to England in May 1941: "For three days he was very gloomy."
"Some days before that we were at Berchtesgaden, Hitler's residence in the Bavarian Alps," Misch noted. "He was talking to Hess, when somebody brought in a dispatch. The Führer read it and exclaimed: 'I cannot go there and go down on my knees!' Hess replied: 'I can, my Führer.' At the time a German diplomat was meeting the Swedish emissary, Count Bernadotte, in Portugal. The British were very active in Lisbon, so I think there might have been some peace offer from London." At the time, the Nazi regime claimed Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party, had gone mad. But the true purpose of his mission to England remains unclear, and official British documents relating to the time are still classified.
After the Goebbels met their deaths, Misch was finally free to make a break for home. He managed to make his way to the Friedrichstrasse station, where he ran into Heinz Linge. The two men felt their way through a tunnel under the river Spree: "Through a grating, we saw a group of German soldiers. We couldn't believe it. We decided to go up and join them. That was it. The soldiers were Red Army prisoners."
Bar a short period when he was brought back to Germany in 1946 as a witness in the Nuremberg trials, Misch spent the next three years in the Lubyanka. Stalin refused to believe that Hitler was dead, and survivors from the bunker were tortured for evidence about the Führer's imaginary flight. At one point, Misch wrote to the Soviet secret police chief, Beria, asking to be shot, so unbearable was the torture. Instead, he was sent to the gulags, where he spent six years before being released in 1954 under an amnesty agreed by the new Soviet leader Khrushchev.
He returned to his two-storey home in the east Berlin suburb of Rudow and to his wife, Gerda, whom he had married in 1942. There he set up a wallpaper and paint business, which he ran until 1983.
Misch remained an uncomfortable reminder of attitudes which many Germans like to believe have been consigned to the history books. In 2005 he was accused of tainting the memories of Holocaust victims after calling for a plaque in memory of the Goebbels children to be placed next to a new Jewish memorial.
After the release of Der Untergang, he was rather pleased to find himself the object of worldwide media attention, and took every opportunity to show interviewers his snapshots of Hitler and Eva Braun in happier days at Berchtesgaden. "It was a good time with Hitler," he reminisced. "I enjoyed it and I was proud to work for him."
Misch's wife died in 1998. They had a daughter, but she broke off all contact with her father.
Rochus Misch, July 29 1917, died September 05 2013
Jedburgh22, Sep 6, 2013
kopite likes this.
MLW Senior Member
Am I the only one who thinks was Rochus Misch an unrepentant Nazi?
MLW, Sep 7, 2013
Bernard85 WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran
good day mlw,sm.today.01:26am.no you are not.theres no such things.thanks for posting,regards bernard85
Bernard85, Sep 7, 2013
Owen -- --- -.. MOD
Two threads on same chap merged.
Owen, Sep 7, 2013
dave500 Senior Member
I agree with you, Marc. He deserves no sympathy.
MLW said:
dave500, Sep 7, 2013
mcan Active Member
Another write up on this by AP,
http://news.yahoo.com/hitler-bodyguard-rochus-misch-dies-96-115646740.html
mcan, Sep 7, 2013
Pylon1357 Junior Member
From what I have read, admittedly, quite little. He seemed to be unrepentant to the end. Very interesting reading, to which I shall seek out more.
Pylon1357, Sep 7, 2013
Drew5233 said:
The man would not hear a bad word against his beloved "Boss" as he called AH.
Cheers Tom, Obviously a bit of a fruit cake then.
Misch's attitude was pretty much the rule among the old Bunker crowd. A few of them (Speer, Boldt, Traudl Junge, Dr. Schenck) eventually saw the light and admitted to varying degrees that they had been wrong and that "Der Chef" was evil, but the others frowned on them for it. Admitting the truth was letting the side down.
Whenever there's a media flutter going on, it gets so hard to look individuals up on the web.
Can't find anything on the evidence he gave at Nuremberg, relating to who, in any of the usual online Archives.
Ah - Very interesting 2004 interview from the USHMM:
(Opens into a .doc download - can't find the page it links from.)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&ved=0CGsQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ushmm.org%2Fmedia%2Femu%2Fget%3Firn%3D514881%26mm_irn%3D1933%26file%3Dprimary&ei=EoEuUuLPF9OshQf-soHgAg&usg=AFQjCNEHgHIwQWGGuBDobI_gOPGbTfHG1w&bvm=bv.51773540,d.d2k
Well worth reading the whole thing, and the Nuremberg query is partly answered from the summoned's point of view at least.
Can't quite place the context of the Interview though.
Hmmm, maybe I can - translation of this:
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn514881
A: Yes, then we were with the Flugkapitaen_______, the interrogations. And in 1946, in May, we were brought back to Berlin, for the Nuernberg trial. Right, as principal witnesses. Well, and the person at the Nuernberg trial…he said…the Russians at the interrogation, "I said….I'm not going to speak, I am not a defendant here, I'm been invited here as a witness…in other words brought here…and well, "You can shoot me now, I'm not speaking, I want to see my wife, my daughter, I'm entitled to….the prisoners" and so forth and well, ______my wife came…then my wife came and gave me a shave, nice…"When you wife comes____interrogation." I didn't speak again, but _____took me along to the bunker. But…and such…well, I had_____on the floor I had….I had to lie on the floor and sleep. A kind of water jug,______for everything, eating, the toilet, for washing, for everything. That I would…well, after seven weeks….The Russians said, "principal witness_____, principal witnesses are not needed." And then it was back again, you know, to Moscow. That took some expenditure, that______. My wife______five kilometers. And you didn't know what would happen to you…and then back again.
Q: Did they tell you against whom you were supposed to testify?
Q: Nothing, not at all?
A: Not at all, said totally nothing about it.
Q: And you couldn't see you wife the whole time?
A: No, not, she also didn't come.
Q: And then it was back to Russia?
A: Yes, yes, then it was back toRussia. So on the whole I was there for almost three years, in ______and _____…almost three years long, you know… and then we went..we were loaded aboard and transported to Kazakstan…32 days_____the wooden beds there, from _____, you know, just sitting like that, 32 days long, we were on the road, until Kazakstan, to Siberia, 32 days. Right, we were there for a long time and then…as a work colleague_______considering the camp, we were already…we were able to move around a bit freely and work______renovating things locally…electrical, a little masonry, painting and there were twelve of us there______and then we were sent completely back again…back to, traveling back as far as…in the Urals and then from the Urals to____until St. Petersburg, Leningrad. From Leningrad loaded again aboard to Moscow, after_____, that is an airport_____that was…yes and from there again to the Urals to_____and from ____to Stalingrad and from Stalingrad to home.
von Poop, Sep 10, 2013
NAINOTE MODNAR New Member
MLWilcockson?
NAINOTE MODNAR, Jan 5, 2015
CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery
Random Etonian
M.L.Wilcockson the Divinity lecturer ?
CL1, Jan 5, 2015
Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles
Mr Jinks said: ↑
Idle curiosity, but I was just reading an article about the last people to leave the bunker and nobody seems to have a date of death for Schwagermann. It's just about conceivable that he's still alive, but he'd now be 104-5, so it has to be deemed less than likely.
Charley Fortnum, Jan 27, 2020
Chris C likes this.