Tuesday, May 03, 2005

60 Years Ago, This Week

Also on the BBC, 'Hitler's nurse' breaks silence on the last days of the Third Reich:

Mrs Flegel said that after Hitler's suicide, Goebbels took over as leader, but no-one paid any attention to him.

'His last subordinates shot themselves in succession,' she said. 'And those who didn't shoot themselves tried to flee.'

She said she remained, however. 'I had to look after the wounded.'

In the newspaper interview, Mrs Flegel described the atmosphere in the bunker as the noise of approaching Soviet forces grew.

'You could feel that the Third Reich was coming to an end,' she said. 'The radios stopped working and it was impossible to get information.'

Mrs Flegel added that when the Soviet troops arrived, they were well-behaved and advised her to lock her door.

She said she stayed for several days, and was one of the last people to leave the bunker.


There's a fuller version of the story in The Guardian:
On the morning of May 2, 60 years ago today, Russians soldiers poked their head round the bunker's entrance.

"By this stage there were only six or seven of us left in the bunker," Ms Flegel said. "We knew the Russians were approaching. A [nursing] sister phoned up and said, 'The Russians are coming.'

"Then they turned up in the Reichschancellery. It was a huge building complex. The Germans were transported away."

Ms Flegel insists that the Russians she had encountered treated her "very humanely", despite the mass rape of German women by Russian soldiers elsewhere in the city. They had a "look round", discovered the bunker's underground supplies, and then left, she said, advising her to lock her front door.

The Red Army allowed her to continue work as a nurse for the next few months, treating wounded Russians, until she ended up in the hands of the US Strategic Services Unit, one of the precursors of the CIA.

Ms Flegel said her "interrogation" by the Americans in November 1945 was little more than an informal chat over dinner. "They invited us to have dinner with them and treated us to six different courses in order to soften us up. It didn't work with me, though."

Ms Flegel's testimony - including her conviction that Hitler was dead, an important statement for the victorious allies - was deemed sufficiently important that it remained classified.
You can read the full transcript here.