“I’ve sent for you to clear up some Luftwaffe problems,” Himmler said, as recalled by Baumbach after the war. “The war has entered the final stage and there are some very important decisions I shall have to take.” Baumbach listened. “In the very near future I expect to be negotiating with our enemies probably through some neutral country,” Himmler said. “I’ve heard that all aircraft suitable for this purpose are under your command.” Baumbach looked out the windows and across the carefully pruned gardens outside, considering his response. Yes, Baumbach told Himmler, he had aircraft at his disposal, ready at any time. Himmler assumed an even friendlier tone, Baumbach recalled, and asked where he could get hold of Baumbach in the coming days. At the Travemünde airfield, Baumbach said. An aide interrupted to announce the arrival of Field Marshal Keitel. Baumbach was dismissed.
Baumbach made his way back to the sitting room, where Knemeyer waited. By now Knemeyer had figured out whose fancy manor Himmler was living in. The home once belonged to Sir Henry Deterding, the English lord known as the Napoleon of Oil. Next to Knemeyer on a side table were two portraits in silver frames. One showed G?ring wearing a medieval hunting costume and holding a large knife. It read, “[T]o my dear Deterding in gratitude for your noble gift of Rominten Reichs Hunting Lodge,” a detail Knemeyer shared with his son decades after the war. The second photograph was a portrait of Hitler. “Sir Henry Deterding,” it read, “in the name of the German people for the noble donation of a million reichsmarks. Adolf Hitler.”
Knemeyer and Baumbach headed outside. The SS officer posted to guard the hallway gave the two men a stiff salute. He told them that the Reichsführer-SS had arranged a tray of coffee and sandwiches for them to enjoy before they headed back to Travemünde.
The reason that the Greenland escape plan was still on hold was because Speer decided to visit Hitler one last time at the Führerbunker, compelled by an “overwhelming desire to see him once more.” Driving alone in his private car from Hamburg back into Berlin, Speer was fifty-five miles outside the city when the road became impassable, clogged with what Speer later recalled to be “a ten-thousand vehicle traffic jam.” No one was driving into Berlin anymore; everyone was getting out. All lanes in both directions were being used for travel west. “Jalopies and limousines, trucks and delivery vans, motorcycles and even Berlin fire trucks” blocked the road. Unable to advance, Speer turned off the road and drove to a divisional staff headquarters, in Kyritz, where he learned Soviet forces had encircled Berlin.
He also learned that there was only one landing strip inside Berlin that remained under German control, Gatow airport, on the bank of the Havel River. Speer decided that he would now fly into Berlin. But the nearest aircraft with fuel were parked on the tarmac at the Luftwaffe’s Rechlin test site, near Mecklenburg. Jet fuel was now as rare as hen’s teeth, and the aircraft was undoubtedly needed for other things. Speer insisted that the commandant at Rechlin locate a pilot capable of flying him into Berlin. The commandant at Rechlin explained that from Gatow, Speer would never be able to get to the Führerbunker if he traveled by car or by foot; the Russians controlled the way there. In order to get to the Führerbunker under the New Reich Chancellery, Speer would need a second, smaller aircraft to fly him from Gatow to the Brandenburg Gate. He would need a short takeoff and landing aircraft, or STOL, like the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (Stork).
“Escorted by a squadron of fighter planes, we flew southward at an altitude of somewhat over 3,000 feet, a few miles above the battle zone,” remembered Speer. “Visibility was perfect.… All that could be seen were brief, inconspicuous flashes from artillery or exploding shells.” The airfield at Gatow was deserted when they landed, with the exception of one of Hitler’s generals who was fleeing Berlin. Speer and his pilot climbed into a waiting Stork and flew the short distance over Berlin, landing amid rubble piles directly in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Speer commandeered an army vehicle and had himself driven to the Chancellery, or what was left of it.
American bombers had reduced the building to ruins. Speer climbed over a pile of rubble that had once been a ceiling and walked into what used to be a sitting room. There, Hitler’s adjunct, Julius Schaub, stood drinking brandy with friends. Speer called out. Schaub appeared stunned by the sight of Speer. The companions dispersed. Schaub hurried off to inform Hitler that Speer had come to see him. Speer waited next to a rubble pile. Finally, he heard the words he had come to hear: “The Führer is ready to see you now.”
Speer walked down into the bunker, where he was met by Martin Bormann, “Hitler’s Mephistopheles,” holding court. Bormann wanted to know if Speer had come to try to get Hitler to fly with him out of Berlin. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, were also in the bunker, plotting the murder-suicide of their six children and themselves. Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun, invited Speer into her quarters to eat cake and drink Mo?t & Chandon until Hitler was ready to see him. At 3:00 a.m. Speer was told he could come in. “I was both moved and confused,” Speer later recalled. “For his part he [Hitler] showed no emotion when we confronted one another. His words were as cold as his hand.”
“So you’re leaving?” Hitler asked Speer. Then he said, “Good. Auf Wiedersehen.” Good-bye.