him, had cheated him of victory.

So his only possible

choice of successor had to be the leader of the
Navy,whichhad been too small to play a majorrole in
Hitler’s war of conquest. This was a final jibe at the
Army, whichhad done most of the fighting and lost
most of the men killed in the war. There was also
a last parting denunciation of the two men who had
been,with Goebbels, his most intimate collaborators since
the early days of the party.Apart altogether from their
disloyalty to me, Goering and Himmler have brought
irreparable shame on the whole nation by
secretly negotiating with the enemy without my
knowledge and against my will, and also by illegally
attempting to seize control of the State.
Having expelled the traitors and named his
successor, Hitler then proceeded to tell Doenitz whom he
must have in his new government. They were all
“honorable men,”he said, “who will fulfill the task of continuing
the war with all means.” Goebbels was to be the
Chancellor and Bormann the “Party Minister”—a new post.
Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian quisling and, most recently,
the butcher governor of Holland, was to be Foreign
Minister. Speer, like Ribbentrop, was dropped. But
Count Schwerin von Krosigk, who had been Minister
of Finance continuously since his appointment by
Papen in 1932,was to retainthat post. This man was
a fool, but it must be admitted that he had a
genius for survival.
Hitler not only named his successor’s government. He
imparted one last typical directive to it. Above all,
I enjoin the government and the people to
uphold the racial laws to the limit and to resist
mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, international
Jewry.21 With that the Supreme German Warlord
was finished. The time was now 4 A.M. on Sunday,
April 29. Hitler called in Goebbels, Bormann and
 Generals Krebs and Burgdorf to witness his signing
of the document, and to affix their own signatures. He
then quickly dictated his personal will. In this the
Man of Destiny reverted to his lower-middle-class
origins in Austria, explaining why he had married
and why he and his bride were killingthemselves, and
disposing of his property, whichhe hoped would
be enough to support his surviving relatives in
a modest way. At least Hitler had not used his power
to amass a vast private fortune, as had Goering.

Although during the years of struggle I believed that

I could not undertake the responsibility of marriage,
now, before the end of my life, I have decided
to take as my wife the woman who, after many
years of true friendship, came to this city, already almost
besieged, of herown free will in order to sharemy fate.
She will go to her deathwith me at her own wish
as my wife. This will compensate us both for what
we lost through my work in the service of my
people. My possessions, insofar as they are worth
anything, belong to the party, or, if this no
longer exists, to the State. If the State too
is destroyed, there is no need for any further
instructionson my part. The paintings in the collections
bought by me during the years were never assembled
for private purposes but solelyfor the establishment
of a picture gallery in my hometown of Linz on
the Danube. Bormann, as executor, was asked
to hand over to my relatives everything that is of
value as a personal memento or is necessary for
maintaininga petty-bourgeois [kleinen bürgerlichen] standard
of living …* My wife and I choose to die in
order to escape the shame of overthrow or
capitulation. It is our wish that our bodies be
burned immediately in the place where I have
 performed the greater part of my daily work during the
twelve years of service to my people.
Exhausted by the dictation of his farewell messages,
Hitler went to bed as dawn was breaking over Berlinon
this last Sabbath of his life. A pall of smoke
hung over the city. Buildings crashed in flames as
the Russians fired their artillery at point-blank range.
They were now not far from the Wilhelmstrasse and the
Chancellery.
WhileHitler slept, Goebbels and Bormann madehaste. In his
Political Testament, whichthey had signed as witnesses,
the Fuehrer had specifically ordered them to leave the
capital and join the new government. Bormann was
more than willing to obey. For all his devotion to the
Leader, he did not intend to share his death,
if he could avoid it. The only thing in life he
wanted was power behind the scenes, and Doenitz
might still offer him this. That is, if Goering, on