into the eastern outskirts of Berlin. He knelt briefly, then
straightened and left the cold granite tomb where once he had
planned to join her.
He drove along the deserted autobahn into the city, taking
only his doctor Ramon von Ondarza with him. At the noon
conference he found twenty senior officers standing shoulder to
shoulder around the cramped briefing table. Hitler announced
that he was splitting up the high command Admiral Dönitz
would command in the north and Göring in the south until
such time as he himself arrived from Berlin. As he signed the
orders, his right hand trembled violently.
Not keen to be trapped like a rat in Berlin, General Koller
pointed out in his thick Bavarian brogue that nobody should
bank on being able to fly out, and that the Russians might cut
off Berlin at any moment. The bunker room emptied rapidly.
Göring lingered behind. “Mein Führer,” he ventured. “I
presume you have no objection to my leaving for the Ober-
salzberg right away?”
“Do what you want,” said Hitler curtly. “But then Koller
stays here.”
It was an ignominious parting for two men who had been each
other’s fortune and misfortune for over twenty years. But even
Koller found it hard to condemn Göring for turning his back
on the clique around Hitler. He had not a single friend there
now there remained just ambitious men who had fought
tooth and claw for power, while millions of ordinary citizens had
perished.
It must have been now that a curious private discussion
took place between Göring and Himmler. Göring touched on it
only once in later months, saying it was the last time he saw
Himmler (and Hitler’s secretary Gerda Christian specifically re-