S.M.Singru
Pilgrimage
means different things to different people. For me it means reliving events of
the past, “seeing” things which I had read of but never witnessed, and letting
one’s imagination run riot to fancy how persons and happenings must have looked
like many years ago. That is why when our plane circled over Tegel airport of
Berlin, the defiant human drama of the Berlin Airlift appeared before me, and
the thought that I was going to visit places where history had been created
some five decades ago thrilled me. For me, Berlin meant the places and the
events which engulfed them: Hitler’s Bunker which once housed a demon let loose
upon mankind by the devil; The Brandenburg Gate, the mute witness to three
centuries of human misery and joy; Checkpoint Charlie, through which John
LeCarre’s George Smiley assiduously tried to sneak out his spies from East
Berlin; The Potsdamer Plaza, where the first flicker of rebellion against
German communism appeared in June, 1953, and was brutally smothered; and
lastly, The Berlin Wall, which stood between humans and had to come down when
intrinsic human cravings overcame this
artificial monstrosity. Berlin city suffered very extensive damage
during World War II and the reconstruction bears the stamp of functionalism. One can see three interesting kinds of
structures: the pre-war ones, which either survived the ravage, or were
competently renovated; the structures which came up during the phase when the
city was divided; and the real modern ones created during the last decade. It
is really the first two types, which speak history.
Hitler’s Bunker
The
hotel where I stayed is located near the Alexander Plaza, a historic place
located well inside the former East Berlin. The locale has very typical
traditional tram systems, and the buildings bear a distinct stamp of
construction during the communist regime. The fact that I was in the former
East Berlin set me in a spin, and as soon as I could, I tried to locate the
approximate site of Hitler’s Bunker. This was only partly successful, because
humans do not like memories of evil men to get unduly perpetuated, particularly
when the evil genius was one of their own flesh and blood, and in a mesmerising
spell, goaded them on to national destruction. So it is that there are only
conjectures about where exactly Hitler’s Bunker was. Soviets and East Germans
were understandably earnest to obliterate all signs of it, and when German
unification took place, the throbbing pain of the past was to be fast forgotten,
and a new future was keenly looked forward to. “The new history of Germany
started in 1945”, is a popular refrain. Naturally, in the process, the logical,
but cold need to preserve even ugly history is prone to be ignored.
The
Bunker was situated approximately at the crossing of Eberstrasse (German word
for Eber street), and Vossstrasse. It was a huge, underground stone and
concrete structure, sixty feet deep in the soil, and protected on all sides by
three meters of concrete. It occupied an area of two or three football fields.
As allied bombing became regular, the last few months of Hitler’s life were
spent within the Bunker, which had some 30 rooms in two storeys, an elaborate
power supply, and an excellent communication system with the outside world. The
trees, lawns, the mall, the car park, and modern buildings, which have now come
up on the site, really do not give away the horrendous truth of Hitler’s last
days. Could it really be here that Hitler and Eva Braun spent the last few
days, deciding to die together in Berlin, overruling suggestions that they
escape to a safer, and probably, friendly country? Till the last moment, Hitler
received obeisance from the sycophantic officers who assured the fuehrer that
the tide of war was about to turn in his favour, that German nationalism (then
represented by the Nazi ideology) would finally overcome Bolshevik and Jewish
conspiracy. It seemed so unreal that this vibrant, bright, urban conglomerate
today stands at a place which saw the murky and macabre scene of the final
self-inflicted shot in the right temple for Hitler, and a phial of Prussian
poison for Eva Braun, in the afternoon of April 30, 1945. It was here that
their bodies were bundled in blankets by loyal assistants and burnt with petrol
in a crater while Soviet artillery and tank shells burst all around them,
signalling the impending doom, as the funeral witnesses scurried for cover
inside the bunker. Hitler’s last remains were hastily buried by SS guards and,
as destiny was to decide, were exhumed ten days later by Soviet NKVD agents to
establish that he had, in fact, died, for a rumour had started by then that he
had escaped in an aeroplane to General Franco. Having established his death,
the remains were probably dumped in the woods outside Berlin, unaccounted and
forever untraced. In the shopping complex which seemed roughly to be at the
site of the Bunker, the owner of a Chinese restaurant, assured me that this,
indeed, was the right spot, but it could well have been the children’s school
nearby, because someone remarked that a children’s school was located there
considering Eva Braun’s liking for children. To me, that was certainly the
broad location because the escape routes of Hitler’s staff, which emanated from
this spot, and have been researched and described by Hugh Trevor–Roper, Ian
Kershaw, Le Terriar and other historians have researched, do match the
topography.
One cannot escape the feeling that his
countrymen preferred to push this era of national shame into oblivion, for
Hitler’s Bunker is not to be found on any map, there are no signposts, no
marked grave for this most ruthless of all dictators. For all the power that
Hitler enjoyed over men and women, the parody of history is that, even before
his body had started burning, his adulators and henchmen started preparations
for their escape into anonymity. They were quick to realise that, although
their fuehrer had escaped retribution for the millions of unwarranted killings,
his collaborators would only receive unrelenting revenge and justice.
(To be continued)