Himmler (Peter Padfield's Second World War)

by Peter Padfield

Steiner simply did not obey. Hitler, waiting with rising expectation for news of his attack, sent out repeated requests for information until in the middle of the afternoon situation conference on the 22nd word came that Steiner had not moved. The effect was electric. The blood drained from Hitler’s face and he flopped back in his chair trembling. His appearance and manner suggested a stroke or a heart attack. Moments later he ordered all adjutants and aides out. Only Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, General Burgdorf – Hitler’s chief military adjutant – Bormann and the stenographer, Gerhard Herrgesell, remained with him, and they witnessed an extraordinary scene as, alternately shouting and sobbing, suffused with colour or blanched, he released the pent-up tensions of months: he had been betrayed, the war was lost, the Third Reich a failure; he would give up the supreme command and merely conduct the battle of Berlin to its end; he would not surrender, but shoot himself; anyone who wanted to leave could do so.