hours15.) Lieut-Gen. Duchanov: I will give the order.

K: I
do not have unlimited authority. We shall have to
resume fighting and all will end horrendously. The
surrender of Berlinis equally impossible. Goebbels cannot
authorise it without Dönitz’s agreement.(The telephone
rings. It is reported that the colonel sent by the
general could not cross the frontlines and was killed in
a skirmish.) K: That is a great misfortune. Can I
talk with the interpreter? I had asked for a
temporary ceasefire. Ch: We are not shooting, the
Germans are shooting. Sokolovski: We will not discuss
an armistice or separate negotiations.61
Goebbels told me that Krebs was to attempt to
obtain agreement for the new German government
to withdraw freely from Berlin. This was strongly urged
particularly by Bormann. He was hoping this would be
possible and had started preparing. Personally I did
not think they would allow it; Hitler’s assessment
of theRussians had encouraged no such possibility. Thus
we awaited the return of Krebs and passed the
time making plans and searching for a clue as to
how things would proceed without the Führer. I
surprised myself with thoughts that had not been
possible previously. Probably others did too. Whilewe
were convinced as long as Hitler lived that we would
die with him voluntarily if it came to it, now we
no longer thought in that way. Suddenly we
seemed to have been released. With Hitler’s death
everything died, fell away, everything that had constituted
our lives for years. We saw ourselves on the
threshold of a future even before the past had
opened the door to it, for everywhere the bitter
fighting went on, and soldiers, old men, women and
children still died. After Krebs returned to the Reich
Chancellery from the Russians at 1400 hours and
reported that Bormann’s hopes were illusory, there
 occurred a ‘trial of strength’ that would have been
impossible during Hitler’s lifetime. Bormann accused
Krebs of not presenting his requirements to the
Russians with sufficient skill. He even boasted that he
could get a betterresult than Krebs had obtained simply
by telephoning. Sincethe telephone lines were all
down, he could not prove his point. Thus,as if Hitler
were still alive, he demanded that the ‘Citadel commandant’,
SS-Brigadeführer Mohnke, restore them at once, which
Mohnke was not prepared to do, the reason
being, as he told Bormann with great self- confidence,
was that he was not going to send his men to their
deaths unnecessarily. At last Bormann seemed to
understand that without Hitler he was nothing. For Dr
Joseph Goebbels, the new ReichChancellor,it was not
apparent until
now that he and his wife Magda would commit
suicide in Berlinthis same day. After the experiences
of recent days and weeks hardly anything could
shock us men any more,but the women, the
female secretaries and chambermaids were ‘programmed’
differently. They were fearful that the six beautiful
Goebbels children would be killed beforehand. The
parents had decided upon this course of action.
Hitler’s physician Dr Stumpfegger was to see to
it. The imploring pleas of the women and some of
the staff, who suggested to Frau Goebbels that they
would bring the children - Helga, Holde, Hilde,
Heide, Hedda and Helmut - out of the bunker
and care for them,went unheard. I was thinking about
my own wife and children who were in relative
safety when Frau Goebbels came at 1800 hours and
asked me in a dry, emotional voice to go up
with her to the former Führer-bunker where a room
had been set up for her children. Once there she sank
down in an armchair. She did not enter the children’s
 room,but waited nervously until the door opened and Dr
Stumpfegger came out. Their eyes met, Magda Goebbels
stood up, silent and trembling. When the SS doctor
nodded emotionally without speaking, she collapsed. It
was done.The children lay dead in their beds, poisoned
with cyanide. Two men of the SS bodyguard standing
near the entrance led Frau Goebbels to her room in the
Führer-bunker. Two and a half hourslater both she and her
husband were dead.The last act had begun.