The noose was tightening. The Adlon had closed its doors; my only diversion was drinking schnapps at the Kurfürstenstrasse, or at Wannsee with Thomas, who, laughing, filled me in on the most recent events. Müller now was looking for a mole: an enemy agent, apparently in the entourage of a high-ranking SS official. Schellenberg saw in this a conspiracy to destabilize Himmler, and so Thomas had to follow the developments of the affair. The situation was degenerating into vaudeville: Speer, who had lost the Führer’s confidence, had returned, dodging Sturmoviks to land his crate on the Ost-West-Achse, to beg for his grace; Göring had been stripped of all his offices and placed under arrest in Bavaria, for having somewhat hastily anticipated the death of his lord and master; the more sober people, von Ribbentrop and the military, were laying low or evacuating toward the Americans; the countless candidates for suicide were putting the finishing touches on their final scene. Our soldiers kept conscientiously getting themselves killed, a French battalion from the Charlemagne Division somehow found a way to enter Berlin on the twenty-fourth to reinforce the Nordland Division, and the administrative center of the Reich was now defended only by Finns, Estonians, Dutchmen, and young Parisian toughs. Elsewhere, people were keeping a cool head: a powerful army, it was said, was on the way to save Berlin and cast the Russians beyond the Oder, but at the Bendlerstrasse my interlocutors remained perfectly vague about the position and progression of the divisions, and the promised Wenck offensive was taking just as long to materialize as the one by Steiner’s Waffen-SS, a few days earlier. As for me, to tell the truth, I wasn’t much tempted by Götterdämmerung, and I would have prefered to be somewhere else, to reflect calmly on my situation. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of dying, believe me, I had few reasons to keep on living, after all, but the idea of being killed in this way, somewhat at the mercy of events, by a shell or a stray bullet, displeased me exceedingly, I would have liked to sit down and contemplate things rather than let myself be carried away by this black current. But such a choice was not offered me, I had to serve, like everyone else, and since it was necessary, I did it loyally, I collected and transmitted this useless information that seemed to serve only one purpose, to keep me in Berlin. As for our enemies, they remained supremely indifferent to all this commotion and kept advancing.

Soon the Kurfürstenstrasse too had to be evacuated. The remaining officers were dispersed; Müller withdrew to his emergency HQ, in the crypt of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche on Mauerstrasse. The Bendlerstrasse was practically on the front line, the liaisons had become very complicated: to reach the building, I had to thread my way through the rubble to the edge of the Tiergarten, then continue on foot, guided through basements and ruins by Kellerkinder, filthy little orphans who knew every nook and crany. The thunder of the bombardments was like a living thing, a multifaceted and tireless assault on hearing; but when the immense silence of the pauses descended, it was worse. Entire sections of the city were burning, giant phosphorous fires that sucked in the air and provoked violent storms that fed the flames even more. Heavy, violent, brief rains sometimes extinguished a few fires, but mostly intensified the smell of burning. A few planes were still trying to land on the Ost-West-Achse; twelve Ju-52s transporting SS cadets were shot down on approach, one after the other. Wenck’s army, according to the information they deigned to pass on to me, seemed to have vanished into the woodworks somewhere to the south of Potsdam. On April 27, it was very cold out, and after a violent Soviet assault on the Potsdamer Platz, driven back by the Leibstandarte AH, there were several hours of quiet. When I returned to the church on Mauerstrasse to report to Müller, I was told he was in one of the annexes of the Ministry of the Interior, and that I should join him there. I found him in a large, almost bare room with water-stained walls, in the company of Thomas and thirty or so officers from the SD and the Staatspolizei. Müller had us wait for half an hour, but only five more men arrived (he had summoned fifty in all). Then we all lined up, at ease, for a brief speech: the day before, after a telephone discussion with Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner, the Führer had decided to honor the RSHA for its services and its staunch loyalty. He had asked that the German Cross in Gold be bestowed on ten officers remaining in Berlin who had particularly distinguished themselves during the war. The list had been drawn up by Kaltenbrunner; the ones who didn’t hear their names called should not be disappointed, since the honor fell upon them too. Then Müller read the list, at the head of which he himself figured; I wasn’t surprised to hear Thomas’s name; but to my astonishment, Müller named me too, second to last. What could I have done to be distinguished in this way? I wasn’t in Kaltenbrunner’s good books, far from it. Thomas, across the room, gave me a quick wink; already we were regrouping to go to the chancellery. In the car, Thomas explained the business to me: among the people they had still been able to find in Berlin, I was one of the few, along with him, who had served at the front, and that’s what had counted. The trip to the chancellery along the Wilhelmstrasse had gotten difficult, the water mains had burst, the street was flooded, corpses were floating in the water and swayed gently as our cars went by; we had to finish our trip on foot, soaking wet up to our knees. Müller led us into the ruins of the Auswärtiges Amt: from there, an underground tunnel led to the Führer’s bunker. In this tunnel too water was flowing, up to our ankles. Some Waffen-SS from the Leibstandarte were guarding the entrance to the bunker: they let us pass, but took our service pistols. We were led through a first bunker and then, via a spiral staircase streaming with water, to a second one, even lower down. We waded through the stream from the AA, at the bottom of the steps it soaked the red carpets of a wide hallway, where they had us sit down along a wall, on wooden school chairs. In front of us, a general from the Wehrmacht was shouting to another, who wore a Generaloberst’s epaulettes: “We’re all going to drown down here!” The Generaloberst was trying to calm him down and assured him a pump was on the way. An abominable stench of urine filled the bunker, mixed with the musty effluvia of mildew, sweat, and wet wool, which they had tried in vain to mask with disinfectant. We were kept waiting for a while; officers came and went, crossing the waterlogged carpets with loud thwacks before disappearing into another room in the back, or climbing the spiral staircase; the room resounded with the continuous throbbing of a diesel generator. Two elegant young officers walked by, talking animatedly; behind them emerged my old friend Dr. Hohenegg. I leaped up and seized his arm, overjoyed at seeing him there. He took me by the hand and led me into a room where several Waffen-SS were playing cards or sleeping on bunk beds. “I was sent here as a backup doctor for the Führer,” he explained gloomily. His bald, sweating head gleamed beneath the yellowish lightbulb.—“And how is he doing?”—“Oh, not very well. But I’m not looking after him, they’ve entrusted me with the children of our dear Propaganda Minister. They’re in the first bunker,” he added, pointing to the ceiling. He looked around and went on in a low voice: “It’s something of a waste of time: as soon as I find their mother alone, she swears to God that she’s going to poison them all and then commit suicide herself. The poor kids don’t suspect a thing, they’re charming, it breaks my heart, let me tell you. But our limping Mephistopheles has his mind firmly made up to form an honor guard to accompany his master to Hell. All the better for him.”—“So that’s where we’re at, then?”—“Certainly. That fat Bormann, who doesn’t much like the idea, has tried to get him to leave, but he refused. In my humble opinion, there’s not much time left.”—“And you, my dear Doktor?” I asked, smiling. I really was happy to see him again. “Me? Carpe diem, as the British public school boys say. We’re having a party tonight. Upstairs, in the chancellery, so as not to disturb him. Come if you can. It’ll be full of lusty young virgins who would rather offer their maidenhood to a German, whatever his appearance, than to a hairy, stinking Kalmyk.” He patted his paunch: “At my age, you don’t turn down offers like that. Afterward,” his eyebrows went up comically on his egg-shaped skull—“afterward we’ll see.”—“Doktor,” I said solemnly, “you are wiser than I am.”—“I never doubted it for an instant, Obersturmbannführer. But I don’t have your mad luck.”—“In any case, believe me, I’m delighted to see you again.”—“Me too, me too!” We were back in the hallway already. “Come if you can!” he said before scurrying away on his squat legs.