The Evening Star (December 7, 1945)
Editorial: Revolting ruin
Some weeks ago, in their official report on how he died with Eva Braun, the British drew a picture of Hitler spending his last days and hours in a state of hysteria bordering on madness. That this was no exaggeration is attested now by the story just told to United States Army investigators by Capt. Hanna Reitsch, the well-known German aviatrix who once idolized the Fuehrer and who flew the last Nazi plane out of Berlin.
In the judgment of the Americans who questioned her, Capt. Reitsch’s account is “probably as accurate” a report of what happened as will ever be obtained. Apparently she was in Hitler’s elaborate bunker under the Reich Chancellery for some days and did not leave it until just before the end. Although she doubts that he and Eva were married at the last minute as a prelude to destroying themselves, her version does not differ in any important respect from the one put out by the British. She merely adds fresh details, and they are details constituting an eloquent commentary on how ephemeral are personal power and glory and how swiftly and terribly they can disintegrate into a revolting personal ruin.
Goebbels and his family were there, according to Capt. Reitsch. So, too, were Martin Bormann, the Fuehrer’s deputy, and a special guard of SS troops. Nearly all of them, excepting the Goebbels children, moved nearer and nearer lunacy as the Russians closed in, but Hitler apparently was the worst of the lot. At times he trembled and quivered like a trapped animal. At times, as if he were dealing with a reality and not a phantom, he planned to rescue Berlin with an army that did not exist. Or he sank periodically into a stupor, or he raged and called down wild curses on “traitorous” Goering and Himmler, or he ran about “almost blindly from wall to wall in his last retreat, waving papers that fluttered like leaves in his nervous, twitching hands.”
“Poor, poor Adolf,” cried Eva Braun. “Deserted by everyone, betrayed by all.” And he himself, at one point in his final ravings, shouted out a self-pitying tirade: “Nothing has been spared me. No allegiances are kept, no honor lived up to, no disappointments that I have not had, no betrayals that I have not experienced, and now this above all else. Nothing remains. Every wrong has already been done me.” Thus, in his last hours, the man who spared nobody, the man who thrived on lies and double dealing – as is being proved now so fully at Nuernberg – wept for himself.
If he had died without that, one might have despised him less, or might have merely marveled at how this tyrant, who only a few short years ago could make half the world tremble, fell so fast, completely broken, a physical, mental and moral wreck.