That was one moodof Hitler that evening; he still had hope

in General Wenck’s relieving Berlin. But a few

moments later, as the Russian bombardment of the
Chancellery reached great intensity, he was in despair
again. He handed Reitsch a vial of poison for
herself and one for Greim. “Hanna,” he said, “you
belong to those who will die with me … I do
not wish that one of us falls to the Russians alive,
nor do I wish our bodies to be foundby them
… Eva and I will have our bodies burned. You
will devise your own method.” Hanna took the vial
of poison to Greim and they decided that
“should the end really come” they would swallow
the poison and then, to make sure, pull a pin from
a heavy grenade and hold it tightly to their
bodies.
A day and a half later, on the twenty-eighth, Hitler’s
hopes seem to have risen again—or at least his
delusions. He radioed Keitel: “I expect the relief
of Berlin. What is Heinrici’s army doing? Where
is Wenck? What is happening to the Ninth Army?
When will Wenck and Ninth Army join?”19 Reitsch
describes the Supreme Warlord that day, striding about
the shelter, waving a road map that was fast
disintegrating from the sweat of his hands and
planning Wenck’s campaign with anyone who happened
to be listening. But Wenck’s “campaign,” like
the Steiner “attack” of a week before, existed
only in the Fuehrer’s imagination. Wenck’s army had
already been liquidated, as had the Ninth Army.
Heinrici’s army,to the north of Berlin, was beating
a hasty retreat westward so that it might be
captured by the Western Allies instead of by the
Russians.
All through April 28 the desperate men in the bunker
waited for news of the counterattacks of these three
 armies, especially that of Wenck. Russian spearheads
were now but a few blocks from the Chancellery
and advancing slowly toward it up several streets
from the east and north and through the nearby Tiergarten
from the west. When no news of the relieving
forces came, Hitler, prompted by Bormann, began
to expect new treacheries. At 8 P.M. Bormann
got out a radiogram to Doenitz.

Instead of urging the troops forward to our

rescue, the men in authority are silent. Treachery
seems to have replaced loyalty! We remain here. The
Chancellery is already in ruins. Later that night
Bormann sent another message to Doenitz. Schoerner,
Wenck and others must provetheir loyalty to the
Fuehrer by coming to the Fuehrer’s aid as soon as
possible.20 Bormann was now speaking for himself.
Hitler had madeup his mind to die in a day or two,
but Bormann wanted to live. He might not succeed
the Fuehrer but he wanted to continue to pull
the strings behind the scenes for whoever did.
Finally, that night Admiral Voss got out a message to
Doenitz saying that all radio connection with the Army
had broken down and urgently requesting the Navy to
send over the naval wave length some news of what was
happening in the outside world. Very shortly some news
came, not from the Navy but from the listening post
in the Propaganda Ministry, and it was shattering
for Adolf Hitler. Besides Bormann there was another
Nazi official in the bunker who wanted to live.
This was Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s representative at
court and typical of the type of German who rose to
prominence underHitler’s rule. A former groom and
then a jockey and quite illiterate, he was a
protégé of the notorious Christian Weber, one of
Hitler’s oldest party cronies and himself a horse
 fancier, who by fraudulence had amassed a
fortune and a great racing stable after 1933.
Fegelein, with Weber’s help, had climbed quite high in the
Third Reich. He was a general in the Waffen
S.S. and in 1944,shortly after being appointed Himmler’s
liaison officer at Fuehrer headquarters, he had
further advanced his position at court by marrying Eva
Braun’s sister, Gretl. All the surviving S.S. chiefs agree
that, in alliance with Bormann, Fegelein lost no time
in betraying his own S.S. chief, Himmler, to Hitler.
But disreputable, illiterate and ignorant though he was,
Fegelein seems to have been possessed of a
simon-pure instinct for survival. He knew a sinking ship
when he saw one.
On April 26 he quietly left the bunker. By the next
afternoon Hitler had noticed his disappearance. The Fuehrer’s
easilyaroused suspicions were kindled and he sent out
an armed S.S. search party to try to find the
man. He was found, in