In the Bunker with Hitler: The Last Witness Speaks

Published in France in March as "Dans Le Bunker De Hitler", this is the story of a young German officer who not only survived Stalingrad and another year on the Russian Front, but also made it out of Hitler's bunker to surrender to the British. He was ADC to the Hitler's last two commanders-in-chief, and the link between Hitler's Berlin bunker and the army's headquarters. He briefed Hitler on the deteriorating military situation, and the same time trying to help his friends arrested in the wake of the assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. He spent the last weeks of the war underground with Hitler after Berlin was surrounded, but escaped with two other officers to avoid falling into Russian hands.The last survivor of Hitler's bunker speaks for the first time.

'The Fuhrer would accept advice from nobody, convinced he was infallible, both in political and military matters. He was an immense egoist, obsessed by the quest and then the retention of power that he had yearned for all his life. The destiny of Germany only interested him insofar as he confused it with his own. Despite all his fine words, the German people were simply a means to an end. I never heard him utter a word of compassion for the soldiers at the front, the prisoners, the wounded, the bomb victims or the refugees. Human suffering was of no consequence to him, perceived as negligible within the splendid isolation of his headquarters, and what was worse, he had no wish to see it'.

Bernd Freytag Von Loringhoven was aide-de-camp to Hitler's last two chiefs of staff, for the last nine months of the Third Reich he was present at the daily military briefings between Hitler and his staff.

He was witness to the ever-growing gap between the reality of reports from outside the bunker and Hitler's misunderstanding of the calamity that was encircling the regime. As the Third Reich spiralled downwards, he watched and recorded Hitler's catastrophic strategic mistakes and the paralysis in which he held his generals. Hitler's reason was twisted by his need for vengeance after the assassination attempt; he was searching for an impossible theatrical victory from an empire in total ruin.

The final week of the regime saw Loringhoven living wholly in the bunker, watching the deteriorating relations among the inmates, military and civilian, as the atmosphere poisoned to an inevitable end. When radio-telephone communications finally broke down on 29 April 1945 he escaped the bunker, crossed the Russian lines and was picked up and taken prisoner by the Americans.

Bernd Freytag Von Loringhoven
Hardcover 208 pages 2006