Darkness fell on the Reich capital. RAF Mosquito bombers had
begun pummeling Berlin. On an impulse Göring decided to
visit the air-raid shelters although he would have been better
advised to depart before the one remaining road to the south
was overrun.
It is clear that he wanted to test his own popularity. Wise-
cracking his way from one bunker to another, he said farewell to
the stoical Berliners. Word spread ahead, and messengers came
from other shelters the people there wanted to see “Herr
Meier,” the Reichsmarschall, too. He doubted they would have
greeted the Reichsführer SS like this. After that, in his own
words later, “We headed for the hills.”
It was : .. before he and Ondarza arrived out at
Kurfürst. His own armor-plated limousine, chauffeured by the
trusty Wilhelm Schulz, was followed out of the courtyard by
four more, laden with staff, detectives, and Philipp Bouhler. In
Göring’s own limousine traveled his manservant Robert and
nurse Christa, who had custody of his medicine cabinet.
Throughout the night the convoy drove south between the
closing jaws of the Russian and American armies. Once, around
Jüterbog, he glanced back. The skyline was rimmed by a fiery
haze lit by the flicker of artillery. Relief at escaping eclipsed all
other emotions. Tomorrow he would be on the Obersalzberg.
From there he intended to extend formal peace feelers to
Eisenhower and Churchill. He would end the war parleying and
dealing, just as he had begun it, and he would not allow Herr
Himmler to preempt him.
The route passed through Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. The
Air Ministry had been evacuated here, but he made no attempt
to contact it, merely pausing at a mobile flak unit to refuel be-
fore driving on.