Hitler's peace

Anyone seeing R1 for the first time would have compared the Fuhrer’s Prussian HQ to a small town. Covering an area of 250 hectares and made up of 870 buildings-most of them private concrete bunkers for various party leaders-R1 at the Wolfschanze included a power station, a water supply, and an air-purification installation. The Fuhrer HQ was an impressive-looking redoubt, although to Schellenberg’s more sybaritic sensibilities it was difficult to see why anyone would have wanted to stay more than one night in such a place, let alone the six hundred nights Hitler had spent there since July 1941.

Himmler’s party left their cars parked inside the gate and walked toward the Tea House, a wooden Hansel-and-Gretel sort of building opposite the bunkers of Generals Keitel and Jodl, where the General Staff took their meals, when they were not obliged to dine with the Fuhrer. Inside, the Tea House was plainly furnished with a dull boucle carpet, several leather armchairs, and a few tables. But for the presence of several officers awaiting their arrival, it might have passed for a common room in a Roman Catholic seminary. Among the waiting officers were two of Hitler’s personal adjutants, SS-Gruppenfuhrer Julius Schaub and Gruppenfuhrer Albert Bormann. Schaub, the chief of the adjutants, was a clerkish, mild-mannered man who wore spectacles and managed to look like Himmler’s elder brother; both his feet had been injured in the Great War and he used a pair of crutches to get about the FHQ. Albert Bormann was the younger brother of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and the man who controlled everything that happened at the Wolfschanze. He was also his elder sibling’s bitter rival.

“How are things in Berlin?” Schaub asked.

“There was a bombing raid last night,” Schellenberg answered. “Nothing much. Eight Mosquitoes, I believe.”

Schaub nodded politely. “We tend not to mention bombing raids to the Fuhrer. It only depresses him. Unless of course he asks about them specifically. Which he won’t.”

“I have better news, I think,” said Himmler, who had recovered a bit of his former color since murdering his subordinate. “Last night we shot down a Wellington over Aachen. The five thousandth Bomber Command aircraft shot down since the start of the war. Remarkable, is it not? Five thousand.”

“Please tell the Fuhrer,” said Schaub.

“I intend to.”

“Yes. Five thousand. That will cheer him up.”

“How is he?”

“Concerned about the situation in the Crimea,” said Schaub. “And in Kiev. General Manstein thinks Kiev is more important. But the Fuhrer favors the Crimea.”

“Can we offer you gentlemen any refreshment?” Albert Bormann asked. “A drink, perhaps?”

“No, thank you,” said Himmler, answering for himself and Schellenberg, who had been about to ask for a coffee. “We’re quite all right for now.”

They left the Tea Room and headed further into the FHQ, where all was bustle and activity. There was a lot of construction work under way-to increase the strength of existing bunkers and to construct new ones. Polish workers trudged by with barrow loads of cement; others shouldered planks of wood. Schellenberg reflected that security was being defeated by the very effort being made to increase it. Any one of the hundreds of laborers who were at work in Restricted 1 could have smuggled a bomb into the Wolf’s Lair. Not to mention the General Staff in attendance, who had no great love for Adolf Hitler, not since Stalingrad, anyway. While it was customary to leave hats, belts, and pistols on a rack outside the Fuhrer Bunker, briefcases were permitted, and no one ever searched these. His own briefcase contained a second pistol and the plans for Operation Long Jump, and had not been examined since his arrival in Rastenburg. It might easily have also contained a hand grenade or a bomb.

The Fuhrer Bunker was one hundred meters north of the Tea House. As they neared it, Schellenberg continued to dwell on the security system at Rastenburg. How might one have set an assassination in motion? A bomb would be the best way, there could be no doubt about that. Like every other bunker at the Wolfschanze, the Fuhrer Bunker was aboveground, with no tunnels or secret passages. To offset this, it was covered with at least four or five meters of steel-reinforced concrete. Most important of all, there were no windows. This meant that the blast of any bomb detonating inside Hitler’s bunker would have nowhere to go but inward, actually creating a more lethal effect than had the building been made of wood.

An Alsatian bitch gamboled up to Himmler, its tail wagging amiably, prompting the Reichsfuhrer to stop and greet the animal like an old friend. “It’s Blondi,” he said, patting Hitler’s dog on the head and prompting Schellenberg to glance around for her master.

“We’re looking for a boyfriend for Blondi,” said Albert Bormann. “The Fuhrer wants Blondi to have some puppies.”

“Puppies, eh? I hope I can have one. I should like to have one of Blondi’s puppies,” Himmler said.