Last days Of Hitler: Eyewitness Accounts: ERNA FLEGEL: Hitler's Nurse

 Hitler's Nurse, ERNA FLEGEL

Erna Flegel (11 July 1911 – 16 February 2006) was a German nurse. From January 1943 until the end of World War II, Flegel served in that capacity for Hitler's entourage and during the Battle of Berlin. She is believed to have been in Hitler's bunker when he committed suicide.

Flegel was born in Kiel in 1911.

She had originally worked alongside one of Hitler's physicians, Dr. Werner Haase, as a nurse at Humboldt University Hospital and was transferred by the Red Cross to the Reich Chancellory as the war ended.

During her time in the Führerbunker she befriended Magda Goebbels and sometimes acted as a nanny to the Goebbels children until their deaths.

During the Soviet capture of Berlin, Soviet troops advised her to remain in the bunker where it was safer. Later interrogated by the Americans, Flegel then lived a life of anonymity until 1977 when documents including her interrogation were declassified. The media later tracked her down to her residence, a nursing home in Germany.

She was portrayed in the 2004 German film Der Untergang by Liza Boyarskaya.

Flegel died in Mölln in 2006.

The Berlin paper BZ relates 93-year-old Erna Flegel's account of the last days of World War II, under the headline "I was Hitler's nurse".

Mrs Flegel said she stayed in the bunker after Hitler killed himself and was there when Soviet troops arrived.

She said Hitler was so paranoid that he even suspected spies had filled his cyanide capsule with false poison.

From January 1943 until the end of the war, Mrs Flegel's job was to give medical treatment to Hitler and his inner circle, she told the paper.

She was interviewed by US secret service agents in 1945, but otherwise has kept silent about her experiences for the past 60 years, BZ reports.

Now, however, she said she had decided to speak out, telling the paper: "I don't want to take my secret with me to the grave."

Mrs Flegel's story does not challenge what is already known, but does add new details.

She said of Hitler: "By the end, he didn't trust anyone any more - not even the cyanide capsule he swallowed."

She also recalled trying to save the lives of the six children of Josef Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, but said his wife Magda, who poisoned them, was "merciless".

Mrs Flegel said that after Hitler's suicide, Goebbels took over as leader, but no-one paid any attention to him.

"His last subordinates shot themselves in succession," she said. "And those who didn't shoot themselves tried to flee."

She said she remained, however. "I had to look after the wounded."

In the newspaper interview, Mrs Flegel described the atmosphere in the bunker as the noise of approaching Soviet forces grew.

"You could feel that the Third Reich was coming to an end," she said. "The radios stopped working and it was impossible to get information."

Mrs Flegel added that when the Soviet troops arrived, they were well-behaved and advised her to lock her door.

She said she stayed for several days, and was one of the last people to leave the bunker.

Source: BBC

An Interview of Erna Flegel (Guardian)

Guardian: Frau Flegel, you were in Hitler's bunker at the end of the second world war?

Flegel: Yes. I was in the bunker when the war ended in 1945. I was working at the university clinic (in Berlin's Ziegelstrasse) and was transported from the clinic by car to the Reichs Chancellery. Towards the end we were always there. We lived there.

Guardian: How did you get the job?

Flegel: I was working as a nurse on the eastern front. One day an order came through...and the head sister said would I be interested, there was a post free in the Reichs Chancellery. I said yes. We were used, when there was an order, to carry it out. If I did the opposite, well...I thought I could do something in the Reichs Chancellery. I went there and had a look. It was beautiful. And that how I ended up there. Later I had my own apartment. It was very agreeable. But then (as the Russians approached) the circle got increasingly smaller. People were pushed together and lived more unassumingly. I was sharing a room with another nurse.

Guardian: You met Magda Goebbels, the wife of the Nazi propaganda minister, in the bunker. What did you think of her?

Flegel: She was a very clever woman, on a higher level than most people...She was married before and decided one day that it wasn't working, that it had become boring, and so she separated from her first husband. Then came the second marriage. It's hard to say from the outside that it was happier (than the first). Goebbels enjoyed many affairs to the full. I don't know details. That was all gossip and trash.

Guardian: What were the Goebbels children like?

Flegel: The Goebbels children were charming. Each one of them was absolutely delightful. That she (Magda Goebbels) killed them cannot be forgiven.

Guardian: Did you try and persuade Frau Goebbels not to kill her own children?

Flegel: You have to understand that we were living outside normal reality. I wanted her to at least take one or two children out of Berlin. But Frau Goebbels told me: 'The children belong to me. Everything belongs to me.' But I still didn't understand how she could kill six children. Generally, Frau Goebbels looked after the children. But one evening she said to me: 'I have to go to the dentist and can't be with them, and I would like you to say good night to them. I said: 'Of course. I'll do it. Don't worry.' In the room where the Goebbels children were sleeping there were two bunk beds, one on top of another. The children had a piece of string attached to their beds, and if they wanted something they just had to pull it. The kids were so charming. They played with each other. They should have been allowed to live. They had nothing to do with what was going on. It was impossible. But she (Frau Goebbels) didn't want it. She said: 'I belong to my husband and the children belong to me.' Not to spare one or two of the children was madness, dreadful.

Guardian: What did you think of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, who moved with his family into the bunker on April 20 1945?

Flegel: I didn't like him. Nobody liked him. There always people who hung around him, of course, relatives and so on, but they were only there because they wanted to help their careers. There were also lots of women there who were young and pretty. They used to hang round his ministry. They had easier time of it than the rest of us, for whom things were more difficult.


Guardian: And did Frau Goebbels object to his numerous affairs?

Flegel: She didn't say anything.


Guardian: What did you think of Eva Braun? In the interview you gave to US interrogators after the war you dismiss her as a 'completely colourless personality'. You also say that when Hitler agreed to marry Eva Braun it was 'immediately clear to you that this signified the end of the Third Reich'. What was she like?

Flegel: Oh dear God. She didn't have any importance. Nobody expected much of her. She wasn't really Hitler's wife.


Guardian: There were rumours at the time that Eva Braun was pregnant, and that the father of the child wasn't Hitler?

Flegel: I didn't hear anything about this and I don't believe it. It's true that in the Reichs Chancellery next to the room where the Führer slept there was accommodation where Eva Braun also stayed. She was really nothing. She was a young girl back.

Guardian: When did you first meet Hitler, who stayed in Berlin from November 1944? What was your impression of him?

Flegel: I was in the house (the Reichs Chancellery) and then someone said: 'The Führer is here.' Well, please. It didn't particularly affect me then. That was the first time. Then the Führer was away for a long time from Berlin. Suddenly, he was back. Someone said: 'The Führer is in the building.' That was an experience. Everyone was discussing it. Hitler then shook hands with all the people he hadn't greeted before. It was very interesting. Obviously this wasn't a (formal) meeting. After this he talked to us regularly, and not just about the weather. They were very interesting discussions but not in a substantial sense.


Guardian: Can you describe the mood in the Bunker in the days leading up to Hitler's death?

Flegel: In the last few days Hitler sank into himself. Everybody has their own style, either negative or positive.


Guardian: In your interrogation you describe how Hitler said farewell to his medical staff on the evening of April 29 1945, just before his suicide. What happened?

Flegel: He came out of the side-room, shook everyone's hand, and said a few friendly words. And that was it. There were a few people who then heard it (the shot, when Hitler killed himself the next afternoon) and there were others who didn't. The Führer suddenly wasn't there any more. The staff then decided whether to stay or not stay. I knew that the Führer was dead. Suddenly there were more doctors in the bunker, including Professor (Werner) Haase (one of Hitler's doctors). I didn't see Hitler's body. It was taken up to the garden. The Führer had such an authority that when he was there you knew it. It felt so extraordinary. He was so informal. He would talk to you quite normally.

Guardian: What happened next?

Flegel: Word spread that Hitler was dead. That meant that people no longer had to follow the oath of loyalty they had sworn to him.

Guardian: Did you think you would leave the Bunker alive?

Flegel: We simply didn't think about it. We knew, naturally, who had the say, who was in charge, and couldn't talk about it. The soldiers gradually left. Suddenly they were gone. Afterwards many of us went to the U-Bahn in the hope that when they got there they could escape even if they met the Russians. Everybody was trying as bravely as they could to get out of this bedlam intact. And then it was finished.

Guardian: After Hitler's death most of the SS officers tried to break out. You stayed behind. What happened?

Flegel: We knew the Russians were approaching. As we were in the bunker a (nursing) sister phoned up and said: 'The Russians are coming'. Then they turned up in the Reichs Chancellery. It was a huge building complex. The Germans were transported away and we were left. The Russians treated us very humanely. They came to the entrance and we negotiated with them. First of all they sent someone to talk to us and to have a look round. By this stage there were only six or seven of us left, not more. They looked here and there. They (the Russians) were selected personnel and they behaved quite decently. They found everything stored downstairs. Anyone who needed anything went downstairs. The Russians respected this. The Germans were no longer responsible for anything. It worked. I stayed in the bunker for another six to ten days.


Guardian: After the war, in November 1945, US intelligence officers interviewed you about your time in the bunker. Do you remember much about the interview?

Flegel: They invited us to have dinner with them and treated us to six different courses in order to soften us up. It didn't work with me, though. They tried to soften us up with exquisite food. I did have a couple of meals with them.

Guardian: Why did you choose to remain silent for 60 years about your experiences?

Flegel: It was because after 1945 people started pointing fingers at each other and suggested that so and so was infected (ie a Nazi). There were a great many people who didn't say anything. And after that it remained a source of controversy. I didn't discuss it with my family. While I was in the bunker I had no idea whether my parents were alive or dead. In fact, they both survived the war. We were just glad to have survived.


Guardian: You recently saw Downfall, the Oscar-nominated film about the bunker and Hitler's final days. What did you think of it?

Flegel: It was good. They got a few small details wrong but generally it was right. I even recognised myself as a nurse.

Guardian: Do you regret your role in the Third Reich? Or was this an exciting period for you?

Flegel: It's difficult when you have a society (the Nazis) and it's discussed afterwards by the left or the right. Often it's seen wrongly. Everyone has their own opinion.

RELATED

Last days Of Hitler: Eyewitness Accounts: Baron Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven

 Hitler's Last days: Eyewitness: Valet HEINZ LINGE

Read More

Rare Images From Second World War

American B-26 bombers pound German targets

 British soldiers on the beaches of Normandy. After D-day.

Men from the Italian SS division

 British Liberator bomber hit by German ack ack

 An American soldier in action with a flame-thrower

 A German transport plane has landed in the snows of Russia

 The ubiquitous and famous German motorcyclists in France

 These American soldiers won't be fighting anymore

 Finnish soldiers at Petrozavodsk

 The allies meet. May 1945. American and Russian troops meet in Germany

This is what remained of the ambitious German defences.  Atlantic Wall in Normandy

 Another marvel of German engineering. The railway 240 mm gun.

American marines take a breather

The Japanese Ha Go tank has been blown into inaction

Hungarian mini-tanks on the move

A Japanese kamikaze plane is shot before it could plunge onto the American aircraft carrier

Soviet soldiers engaged in bitter street fighting to finish off the remnants of the German resistance in Vienna. April 1945

American soldiers face fierce Japanese fire. Iowa Jima. February 1945

Read More

France Falls: 1940: Rare Pictures

The fall of France was shocking. It reduced France to virtually a non-player in the Second World War. The efforts of Charles de Gualle were more symbolic than material. But the martial instincts of the French must never be doubted. Under Napoleon they were a formidable military power. The French definitely have more iron in their blood then say, the Italians [I do not mean it in a derogatory sense. War never makes sense].

This must have been Hitler's dream. Conquering France, one of the nations who had humiliated Germany at Versailles

THE PLAN TO TAKE FRANCE (BBC)

The attack began on 10 May 1940, with German air raids on Belgium and Holland, followed by parachute drops and attacks by ground forces. The two beleaguered nations were hastily added to the anti-German ad-hoc coalition that included France and Britain, but this only served to further complicate Allied command and control arrangements.

The Germans seized the initiative, capturing the key Belgian fort of Eban Emael with a daring airborne operation. The speed of the German advance and the brutality of the air raids gave them a huge psychological advantage, and on 14 May the Dutch surrendered.

The British and French had responded to the original attack by putting into operation a plan to advance to the River Dyle, in Belgium. The Allies pushed their best forces, including the British, into Belgium. Although the initial stages went reasonably well, a French force advancing towards Breda, in Holland, was pushed back.

It soon became clear that by advancing into the Low Countries the Allies were dancing to Hitler's tune. On 13 May, the first German forces emerged from the Ardennes near Sedan, on the River Meuse. In a two-day battle, the Panzers crossed the river, despite some surprisingly stiff resistance from the second-class French defenders, and near-suicidal attacks by Allied aircraft.

Hitler meets Petain, the head of the French puppet regime installed by the Germans

A potentially decisive counterattack by two high quality French armoured and motorised divisions fizzled out into some fierce, but ultimately inconclusive fighting. Under the dynamic command of General Heinz Guderian, a pioneer of armoured warfare known euphemistically as 'Hurry-up Heinz', the German Panzers broke out of their bridgehead. They began to race towards the Channel coast, aided by the German aircraft that ruled the skies.

With the bulk of the Allied forces fighting in Belgium, there was little to stop the German forces as they sliced across the Allied supply-lines. The German spearheads reached the English Channel on 20 May.

Lacking a centrally placed strategic reserve, the Allies tried to pull their armies out of Belgium to respond to the new threat emerging in their rear. And the Germans did not have it all their own way, as French forces under Charles de Gaulle showed how vulnerable the flanks of the German forces were to bold counterattacks.

Then at Arras on 21 May, a scratch force of British tanks and infantry gave a rough reception to Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division. Yet this was all too little, too late. With German forces pushing through Belgium and the Panzers looping up from the south and west, the Allies were encircled. The Belgian army surrendered on 28 May, leaving a gaping hole on the British flank of the Allied forces.

Allied high command seemed paralysed. General Weygand replaced General Gamelin as French commander-in-chief, but it made no difference. Then General Lord Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), on 23/4 May took the morally courageous decision to abandon his role in a projected Anglo-French counterattack, and fell back on the Channel ports.

The French, not surprisingly, regarded this as a betrayal, but Gort's decision saved the BEF. Between 26 May and 4 June, a hastily organised evacuation by sea, code-named Operation Dynamo, lifted 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk.

That the German forces failed to press their attack on Dunkirk was largely thanks to grim defence of the Dunkirk perimeter by British and French troops, and the efforts of the much-depleted RAF.

Although as Churchill, who had become Prime Minster on 10 May rightly commented, 'wars are not won by evacuation', Dynamo was a victory of incalculable importance for the BEF. The return of the troops, even without much of their equipment, gave Britain a basis on which to rebuild the Army, sheltering behind the Navy and the RAF. It also strengthened the credibility of Churchill's insistence that Britain would fight on, thus influencing the neutral USA at a time when American aid was vital.

Hitler is overjoyed at winning France. He does a little jig as his men smile

PARIS FALLS

The second act of the Battle of France began on 5 June, with the Germans striking southwards from the River Somme. Despite the fact that the French in many areas fought well, the Germans destroyed the Allied forces in the field in short order. The 51st Highland Division, which had not been grouped with the rest of the British army, was surrounded at St Valéry-en-Caux, and was forced to surrender on 12 June.

The Germans launched a major offensive on Paris on 9 June, and on 13 June Paris was declared an open city, as the French government fled to Bordeaux. The first German troops entered the French capital on 14 June, little more than a month after the campaign began.

There were still spasms of fighting. A fresh British force was sent to Normandy, only to be evacuated almost immediately. The Royal Navy carried out evacuations from ports down the French coast almost as far as the Spanish frontier. Meanwhile, the victorious Panzers raced in different directions across France, finishing off pockets of resistance, crossing the River Loire in the west on 17 June, and reaching the Swiss frontier a few days later.

The end came with the surrender of France on 22 June. Hitler insisted on signing the document of capitulation in the same railway carriage used when Germany had surrendered in 1918. The humiliation of France was complete.

This is the underground rail tunnel built by the French at the Maginot Line

FALL OF FRANCE: ITS REPERCUSSIONS

The French collapse was as sudden as it was unexpected. It ripped up the balance of power in Europe, and overnight left the strategic assumptions on which Britain had planned to fight Hitler completely obsolete. With France out of the equation, Britain's war for the next four years was fought in the air, at sea, and in the Mediterranean - but not on the Western Front. Not until D-Day, 6 June 1944, did a major British army return to France.

The legacy for France itself was complex. Resistance groups formed, but risked bringing savage reprisals on the civilian population if they attacked the occupying forces. While de Gaulle formed an army and a government in exile in Britain, he was technically a rebel.

The 'legitimate' French government was that of Marshal Philippe Pétain, an aged World War One veteran, and had its capital at Vichy in central France. The Vichy regime was authoritarian and collaborated with the Germans. Arguably, the wartime divisions within French society that were created by this arrangement are still not fully healed.

Historians have located the seeds of the French defeat in low morale and a divided pre-war society. This may be so, but in purely military terms, the Germans were a vastly superior force (although not in numbers). They used their mechanisation and manoeuvre more effectively, and benefited from domination in the air. German military doctrine was more advanced, and generally their commanders coped much better with high-tempo operations than did their Allied counterparts.

Allied command and control was cumbersome, and the Anglo-French operational plan was deeply flawed. However, the very success of the risky blitzkrieg approach led the Germans to gamble even more heavily on their next major operation - the invasion of Russia. But this time the strategy failed, with consequences for the Nazi regime that were ultimately fatal.

Marshal Petain. Most French people hated him

Hitler has a word with a German officer, who is clearly uneasy. Who wouldn't be?

German soldiers cross a river during the invasion of France

These men are feeling at the top of the world

Hitler pores over plans to invade France

HITLER'S PLAN (BBC)

Hitler was eager to follow up his victory over Poland in 1939 by attacking in the west, but bad weather forced the planned offensive to be postponed. Then, in January 1940, a German plane crashed in neutral Belgium, with a copy of the attack orders on board.

Hitler was forced to rethink, believing the plan compromised he turned for advice to General Erich von Manstein, who argued for a daring campaign. In effect, Manstein recognised that the Maginot Line was too formidable for a direct attack from Germany. Instead, he proposed a subsidiary attack through neutral Holland and Belgium, with the main blow against France to be launched a little later through the Ardennes. This was a hilly and heavily forested area on the German-Belgian-French border, where the Allies would be unlikely to expect an attack. The plan was to rely heavily on surprise blitzkrieg ('lightning war') techniques.

Contrary to a generally held belief, the Germans had fewer tanks than the Allies (2,500 against 3,500) at this point. However, the tanks were concentrated into Panzer (armoured) formations. The French had some equivalent formations that were of good quality, but they were dispersed rather than concentrated in the German fashion.

Manstein's plan envisaged these Panzer divisions in a semi-independent role, striking ahead of the main body of the army, to disrupt and disorientate the Allies. This was a very risky plan - much more ambitious than the strategy used in Poland - and was opposed by the more conservative-minded generals. Hitler, however, although not without some misgivings, gave his approval.

German tanks roll into France

Read More

Russia under German occupation: WW2

The Germans entered Russia on June 21, 1941. The victorious Russians pushed them out sometime in early 1945. So many parts of Russia saw German rule. How was life under occupation? The following pictures give us a fair idea.

This look eerily like the Babi Yar ravines

Life did not come to a stop under German rule

Looks like a scary proclamation about those who are to be bumped off.

Ordinary people the world over are the same. They have food to eat  and a little freedom and they are happy. These Russians seem quite happy with the Germans. May be they found it better than Stalin's rule.

Many were not so pliant and were finished off

This man too. May be he was a communist

The Russian lady thought it best to befriend the Germans

Herding off

These ladies seem to have found  boyfriends in German soldiers

Wonder where they are being sent to?

Read More

Some dramatic images from Second World War

German soldiers do a house-to-house search in Ukraine in the earlier days of the war in Russia

French 370-mm howitzer M1915, manufactured by Schneider and used by the Germans as a coastal artillery, captured by the Americans.

The German soldiers sprang a surprise on the Americans in Ardennes in 1944

American soldiers move with tank support in the German city of Wernberg

Russian people leave their city as Germans begin bombarding it

Soviet soldiers flush out German resistance from the Berlin Underground in April 1945

Read More