# ''I was in Hitler's suicide bunker'' - BBC News



## Yrys (3 Sep 2009)

I was in Hitler's suicide bunker


At his living room table, 92-year-old Rochus Misch shows me some of 
his old photo albums. Private pictures he had taken more than 60 years 
ago. There are colour images of Mr Misch in an SS uniform at Adolf Hitler's 
home in the Alps, snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits, and photos of 
Hitler's mistress and future wife Eva Braun.


For five years, SS Oberscharfuehrer Rochus Misch had been part of Adolf 
Hitler's inner circle, as a bodyguard, a courier and telephone operator to 
the Fuehrer.  "My first meeting with Hitler was rather strange," Mr Misch 
recalls. "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. 

"In the Fuehrer's entourage, strictly speaking, we were bodyguards," says
Mr Misch. "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." 

Last survivor

With the Allies advancing and Germany on the brink of defeat, Hitler 
retreated to his Berlin bunker. Rochus Misch was the telephone operator 
there. 

"I worked in a small room with a telephone and teletype machine with 
outside lines," he remembers. "There was only enough room to shelter 
one extra person in my room in the event of an air raid. The bunker really 
wasn't that big. It contained small rooms of only 10 to 12 square metres." 

Rochus Misch is the last survivor of the Hitler bunker. He is the final 
witness of the drama that took place there on 30 April 1945. It was 
the day Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. 

"Suddenly I heard somebody shouting to Hitler's attendant: 'Linge, Linge,
I think it's happened.' They'd heard a gunshot, but I hadn't. At that 
moment Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, ordered everyone 
to be silent. Everyone began whispering. 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. 

Deaths

"Then 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. 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.'" 

The next day the drama continued. Down in the bunker, the six children 
of Germany's new leader - Joseph Goebbels - were drugged and 
murdered. It was their own mother Magda who killed them. "Straight after
Hitler's death, Mrs Goebbels came down to the bunker with her children," 
Mr Misch recalls. "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." 

Crimes
Mr Misch fled Hitler's bunker just hours before it was seized by the Red 
Army. But he was quickly captured and spent the next nine years in 
Soviet labour camps. The captured "Fuehrerbunker" became a symbol of
the Allies' victory in World War II. 

Two months after the end of the war, Winston Churchill visited it. He 
posed for photos outside, sitting on a chair recovered from the shelter. 
In later years, the bunker was blown up to stop it becoming a Nazi shrine. 

At the end of our conversation, I ask Rochus Misch whether he knew of 
the horrors that Adolf Hitler had unleashed across Europe. Did he know 
about the Holocaust? 


"I knew about Dachau camp and about concentration camps in general," 
he tells me. "But I had no idea of the scale. It wasn't part of our 
conversations. The Nuremberg Trial dealt with crimes committed by the 
Germans. But you must remember there was never a war when crimes 
weren't committed, and there never will be." 


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Britain declared war on Nazi Germany exactly 70 years ago today. What 
are your memories of the day? What did you or your relatives do in the 
war? Do you or your family have any inspirational wartime stories? Are 
you doing anything to mark the anniversary? Tell us your experiences here   .


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## JS_ibanez (7 Sep 2009)

The movie downfall does a good representation of this. shame about having to blow it up, would have liked to see it


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## vonGarvin (7 Sep 2009)

When the wall was up, I visited Berlin.  The location of the bunker was in the Eastern (Soviet) zone.  Now, the wall wasn't so much as a wall as it was a pair of parallel walls.  One was right on the border, the other was back normally 10 metres or so.  The middle ground was the patrolling area for the NVA (Nationalvolksarmee, or National People's Army, the East Germans).  The Bunker was in the Eastern zone, but here, the wall was closer to two hundred metres.  The location of The Bunker was in there, razed to the ground.  All that remained was a small hill.  There were several "left overs" from the war and the Third Reich, but The Bunker wasn't one of them for the very real reason of retaining a "rallying point" for left over Nazis.


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## TechInArms (7 Sep 2009)

I was in Berlin a couple months ago. Where the bunker was is nothing more then a parking lot now for the old, and odd east berlin modular apartment buildings (I have a picture of me standing there) It is very close to the murdered jews of Europe memorial.

However, one tour company (not the government) has put up a diagram detailing hilters bunker (which was actually two bunkers) and the story behind it. There was a controversy over putting up the sign for the same reason you mention Rambler.  

I have some pictures of the diagram if anyone is interested just PM me. The room they believe he and Eva committed suicide in is #2.


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## Nfld Sapper (7 Sep 2009)

Does it look something like that?


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## mariomike (7 Sep 2009)

JS_ibanez said:
			
		

> The movie downfall does a good representation of this. shame about having to blow it up, would have liked to see it



"Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELyTBXzfQJ8&feature=related

Somebody remixed a scene from the movie and titled it "Hitler Finds Out Canucks Sign Sundin":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXxg7msf22U&feature=related

"Hitler Goes off on the Oilers":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1JTK7JUts&feature=related


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## AJFitzpatrick (7 Sep 2009)

mariomike said:
			
		

> Somebody remixed a scene from the movie and titled it "Hitler Finds Out Canucks Sign Sundin":
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXxg7msf22U&feature=related
> 
> "Hitler Goes off on the Oilers":
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1JTK7JUts&feature=related



nice find. At the risk of a further derail, seen any Maple Leaf remixes ?

EDIT: Never mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS3p7XI23hY


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## TechInArms (7 Sep 2009)

That diagram looks more like Hilters first bunker, he built a second one that was significantly more reinforced (3.5m thick ceiling & 4.0meter thick walls)

I resized the picture to post here.


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