Hitler's Last Witness by Rochus Misch Read Free Book Online Page B

– Hitler’s bunker telephonist. Our commanding officer Franz Schädle – he had relieved Bruno Gesche in January – let me know that he had selected me for the switchboard in the now technically fully equipped deep bunker: ‘Make yourself familiar with the installation and make sure everything works.’ I must have looked at him in surprise a little, for he added: ‘You have always done a good job, Misch.’ However, I was not really surprised. I was not really thinking anything at that moment. If I had asked why I had been selected for this undoubtedly responsible position, then he would have told me. I had been there already for years, had always taken an interest in my work and taught it to a large number of people. Recently, I was the only one to attend a two-week advanced telex training and scrambler course.
    That the new job was a special distinction for me, that I would be closer to Hitler in those days than any other person, that I had got myself a cosy number in the best protected place in Berlin – I had no time for such ideas. I was to man the bunker telephone switchboard, that was an order like any other. Therefore, I had to familiarise myself with it as quickly as possible. After Schädle had made me bunker telephonist, I rang Hermann Gretz at once, the Reichspost technician. He was ready to show me everything straight away. With him, I descended into the catacomb for the first time.
    Not far from my room on the ground floor of the adjutants’ wing, we descended some red-carpeted steps into the cellars of the Old Reich Chancellery. Gretz hurried past the staff kitchen, the festival hall cloakroom and the toilets, and indicated the door to a narrow corridor leading into the New Reich Chancellery. This narrow tunnel was about 80 metres long, and we called it Kannenberg-Allee after the house administrator. Its actual purpose was for bringing food from the supply rooms in the New Reich Chancellery to the dining hall in the Old Reich Chancellery. We did not go along it on this occasion, although often enough in the future I would use it to reach the cellars of the New Reich Chancellery. Gretz took me back a little, and after leaving a gas-proof steel door behind us we entered a sluice room equipped with two similar doors. Both were open. The door straight ahead led into the ministerial gardens. The Reichspost technician went through the other one, however, and stepped up the pace, which told me we still had far to go. Then we found ourselves in the ante-bunker before the deep bunker.
    This ante-bunker lay below the festival hall of the Old Reich Chancellery. Because of the explosive force of British and American bombs, the sounding boards of the festival hall had been reinforced with concrete between 1943 and 1944, during building work on the deep bunker. The garden of the neighbouring Foreign Ministry could be reached through an emergency exit. The large cellar below the festival hall and the winter garden, only separated from the bunker walls by about three metres, led to the area in the west where the ante-bunker adjoined the deep bunker around a concrete block. The ante-bunker had its own 40kW generator, which provided lighting and heating and also operated the water pumps and fresh air supply. Several WCs and washrooms were available there, as well as a kitchen with a pantry and storage room. There were also two more storage rooms, in one of which bedframes and mattresses were stacked; shortly afterwards, the other storage room was filled to just under the ceiling with provisions. There were also restrooms. Later, one side of the corridor was the lived-in side; the other, the unoccupied side. In all, not counting the central corridor and technical rooms, there were sixteen small rooms in the ante-bunker, none larger than four by four metres.
    The first time I went down there with Gretz I didn’t take in all the detail. Hurriedly, we cut through the ante-bunker by the