Hitler’s bunker ‘pretty normal’

BERLIN (Reuters) — Rochus Misch, the only remaining witness of Adolf Hitler’s last days in the Berlin bunker, recalls a strange silence that filled the underground chamber as the final battles to capture the German capital raged overhead.

In an interview, the 90-year-old said there was less turmoil in the bunker as the Soviet army approached than is depicted in most books and films.

“Life in the bunker was pretty normal,” Mr. Misch said in his modest house in south Berlin, where he has lived since 1938. “Hitler was mostly very calm.”

For five years, Mr. Misch worked as the dictator’s bodyguard, phone operator and courier.

“It was much less dramatic than shown by many historians, filmmakers and journalists,” said the former soldier.

“The worst thing was the silence. … Everybody was whispering, and nobody knew why. That’s why it felt like the bunker of death,” Mr. Misch said.

Recalling the years spent with one of the world’s most notorious dictators, Mr. Misch remained strangely neutral.

“History is history. It was the way it was, and nobody should lie about it,” he says. But he refused to make judgments about the past.

Mr. Misch is the last living survivor of the final days of the bunker. Another survivor, Bernd von Freytag Loringhoven, died in February.

A burly man with silver hair, Mr. Misch has appeared in several documentary films about Hitler and the bunker.

“I am the last living piece of history. It feels a bit strange,” he said.

“No matter who wanted to see Hitler, no matter if it was [propaganda chief Joseph] Goebbels, [Luftwaffe head Hermann] Goering or anyone else, they had to get past me,” Mr. Misch said. “Regardless of who called, I picked up the phone.”

The only soldier allowed to carry a weapon in the bunker, Mr. Misch joined the SS in 1937 at age 20 and was wounded in 1939 in Poland. He recovered and was reassigned to Hitler’s chancellery.

He was captured after the war and spent nine years in Soviet prisons. Back home, he later started a house-painting business.

Mr. Misch rattles off the details of Hitler’s move into the bunker with Eva Braun in January 1945 as the Red Army approached. Later, Hitler’s close associates Martin Bormann and Goebbels, with his doomed wife and children, joined them.

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