Heinz Linge

Linge was one of many soldiers, servants, secretaries, and officers who moved into the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker in Berlin in 1945. There he continued as Hitler's chief valet and protocol officer and was one of those who closely witnessed the last days of Hitler's life during the Battle of Berlin. He was also Hitler's personal military orderly. Linge delivered messages to Hitler and escorted people in to meet with Hitler. In addition, after Hitler's personal physician Theodor Morell left Berlin on 23 April, Linge and Dr. Werner Haase administered to Hitler the prepared medicine which had been left behind.[5][6]

Two days before committing suicide on 30 April with Eva Braun, Hitler confided his suicide plan to Linge. He asked Linge to have their bodies wrapped in blankets and taken up to the garden to be cremated.[7] Following his marriage to Eva Braun, Hitler spent the last night of his life lying awake and fully clothed on his bed.[8]

On 30 April, Hitler had a last midday meal with his secretaries. After the meal, Linge spoke briefly with Eva Braun. He described her as looking pale and of having had little sleep. She thanked him for his service.[9] Hitler then said farewell to each of his servants and subordinates. Thereafter, Hitler retired to his study at 3:15 p.m.[9] There, Linge privately asked Hitler his orders. Hitler said that he was going to shoot himself and Linge knew what he had to do. "You must never allow my corpse to fall into the hands of the Russians", Hitler told Linge, "they would make a spectacle in Moscow out of my body and put it in waxworks".[10] Further, he had given the order to break-out; Linge was to join one of the groups and try to get to the west. Linge asked for what they should now fight and Hitler replied, "For the coming man". Linge then saluted and left.[11] In the 1974 video documentary The Two Deaths of Adolf Hitler, part of The World at War collection, Linge, along with Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, narrates Hitler's very last minutes in the bunker. Linge explains that Hitler and his wife committed suicide in Hitler's private room in the bunker. He tells how he went into Hitler's private study after hearing a sudden bang and found that Hitler and Braun were dead. Hitler had shot himself in the right temple. Braun had taken what Linge concluded must have been cyanide poison.[12]

After the suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun, the two bodies were carried up the stairs to ground level and through the bunker's emergency exit to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were doused with petrol.[13] After the first attempts to ignite the petrol did not work, Linge went back inside the bunker and returned with a thick roll of papers. Martin Bormann lit the papers and threw the torch onto the bodies. As the two corpses caught fire, a small group, including Bormann, Linge, Otto Günsche, Joseph Goebbels, Erich Kempka, Peter Högl, Ewald Lindloff, and Hans Reisser, raised their arms in salute as they stood just inside the bunker doorway.[13][14]

At around 16:15, Linge ordered SS-Untersturmführer Heinz Krüger and SS-Oberscharführer Werner Schwiedel to roll up the rug in Hitler's study to burn it. The two men removed the blood-stained rug, carried it up the stairs and outside to the Chancellery garden. There the rug was placed on the ground and burned.[15] On and off during the afternoon, the Soviets shelled the area in and around the Reich Chancellery. SS guards brought over additional cans of petrol to further burn the corpses. Linge later noted the fire did not completely destroy the remains, as the corpses were being burned in the open, where the distribution of heat varies.[16] The burning of the corpses lasted from 16:00 to 18:30.[17] The remains were covered up in a shallow bomb crater at around 18:30 by Lindloff and Reisser.[18]

Linge was one of the last to leave the Führerbunker in the early morning hours of 1 May 1945. He teamed up with SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Kempka. Linge was later captured near See-Strasse. On 2 May, the badly burned remains of Hitler, Braun, and two dogs (thought to be Blondi and her offspring Wulf) were discovered in a shell crater by a unit of SMERSH. On 5 May, they secretly removed the remains.[19] According to Ian Kershaw the corpses of Braun and Hitler were fully burned when the Red Army found them, and only a lower jaw with dental work could be identified as Hitler's remains.[20]

Several days later, after his identity was revealed, two Soviet officers escorted Linge by train to Moscow where he was thrown into the notorious Lubjanka Prison.[21]

• Hoffmann, Peter (2000) [1979]. Hitler's Personal Security: Protecting the Führer 1921-1945. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-30680-947-7.
• Joachimsthaler, Anton (1999) [1995]. The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, The Evidence, The Truth. Brockhampton Press. ISBN 978-1-86019-902-8.
• Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
• Linge, Heinz (2009). With Hitler to the End. Frontline Books–Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60239-804-7.
• O'Donnell, James P. (2001) [1978]. The Bunker. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80958-3.
• Vinogradov, V. K. (2005). Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB. Chaucer Press. ISBN 978-1-904449-13-3.