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In 1918, after the last defeat, the Kaiser had

fled, the monarchy had tumbled, but the other


traditional institutions supporting the State had
remained,a government chosen by the people had
continued to function, as did the nucleus of a
German Army and a General Staff. But in
the spring of 1945the Third Reich simply
ceased to exist. There was no longer any
German authority on any level. The millions of
soldiers, airmen and sailors wereprisoners of war
in their own land.The millions of civilians were
governed,down to the villages, by the conquering
enemy troops, on whom they dependednot only
for law and order but throughout that summer and
bitterwinter of 1945for food and fuel to keep
themalive. Such was the stateto which the
follies of Adolf Hitler—and their own folly in
following him so blindly and with so much
enthusiasm—had brought them, though I
found little bitterness toward him when I
returned to Germany that fall.
The people werethere, and the land—the first dazed
and bleeding and hungry, and, when winter
came, shivering in their rags in the hovels
which the bombings had made of their homes;
the second a vast wasteland of rubble. The
German people had not beendestroyed, as
Hitler, who had tried to destroy so many
other peoples and, in the end, when the war was
lost, themselves, had wished. But the Third
Reich had passed into history. * “For all
writers of history,” Speer told Trevor-Roper, “Eva
Braun is going to be a disappointment,” to
which the historian adds: “—and for readers
of history too.” (Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of
Hitler, p. 92.) * Who these relatives were
Hitler did not say, but from what he told his
secretaries he had in mindhis sister, Paula, and
his mother-in-law. * Trevor-Roper, in The Last
Days of Hitler, has given a graphic
account of their adventures. But for an
indiscretion of Heinz Lorenz, the farewell
messages of Hitler and Goebbels might never
havebecome known. Major Johannmeier eventually
buried his copy of the documents in the
garden of his home at Iserlohn in
Westphalia. Zander hid his copy in a trunk
which he left in the Bavarian village of
Tegernsee. Changing his name and assuming a
disguise, he attemptedto begin a new life
under the name of Wilhelm Paustin. But
Lorenz, a journalist by profession, was too
garrulous to keep his secret very well and a
chance indiscretion led to the discovery of his
copy and to the exposure of the other two
messengers.
* Colonel Below destroyed the message when
he learned of Hitler’s death while he was still
making his way toward the Allied Western
armies. He has reconstructed it from memory. See
Trevor-Roper, op. cit., pp. 194– 95. * The children
and their ageswere: Hela, 12; Hilda, 11;
Helmut, 9; Holde, 7; Hedda, 5; Heide, 3. *
The bones werenever found, and this gaverise
to rumors after the war that Hitler had survived.
But the separate interrogation of several
eyewitnesses by British and American intelligence
officers leaves no doubt about the matter.
Kempka has given a plausible explanation as
to why the charred bones werenever found.
“The traces werewiped out,” he told his
interrogators, “by the uninterrupted Russian artillery fire.”
* Not Marshal Zhukov, as mostaccounts havehad
it. † May I was the traditional Labor Day in
Europe.

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