Hitler

should it no longer exist, to the state; he still hoped his collection of paintings would go to a gallery in Linz; and he appointed Martin Bormann as executor to see that relatives and his long-serving staff had some reward for their support.
    He came to the more significant part. ‘This is my political testament,’ he declared. Traudl Junge paused for a moment, expectantly. But she had heard it all before. His last words for posterity were a piece of pure self-justification. The rhetoric is instantly recognizable, redolent of
Mein Kampf
and countless speeches; the central idea of the responsibility of international Jewry for the death, suffering, and destruction in the war remained unchanged, even as he himself now looked death in the face. ‘It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939,’ he dictated. ‘It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or who worked for Jewish interests … Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns and cultural monuments the hatred will ever renew itself against those ultimately responsible whom we have to thank for everything: international Jewry and its helpers.’ The conspiracy theory continued unabated. He attributed the rejection of his proposal on the eve of the attack on Poland partly to the business interests of ‘leading circles in English politics’, partly to the ‘influence of propaganda organized by international Jewry’.
    He came to a key passage – an oblique reference to the ‘Final Solution’ – relating once more to the fulfilment of the ‘prophecy’ of 1939: ‘I alsoleft no doubt that, if the nations of Europe are again to be regarded as mere blocks of shares of these international money and finance conspirators, then that race, too, which is really guilty of this murderous struggle, will be called to account: Jewry! I further left no one in doubt that this time millions of children of Europe’s aryan peoples would not die of hunger, millions of grown men would not suffer death, and hundreds of thousands of women and children not be burnt and bombed to death in the towns, without the real culprit having to atone for his guilt, even if by more humane means.’
    Despite all its setbacks, the six-year struggle, he went on, would one day go down in history as ‘the most glorious and valiant manifestation of a nation’s will to existence’. He himself could not forsake Berlin. The forces there were too small to hold out against the enemy and – the inevitable side-swipe against those deemed to have betrayed him – ‘our own resistance is gradually devalued by deluded and characterless subjects’. He would choose death at the appropriate moment.
    Again, he gave an indication of his own fear of what he saw as the still dominant power of the Jews: ‘I do not wish to fall into the hands of enemies who, for the amusement of their whipped-up masses, will need a spectacle arranged by Jews.’
    A renaissance of National Socialism, he avowed, would eventually emerge from the sacrifice of the soldiers and his own death alongside them. He ended with an exhortation to continue the struggle. He begged the heads of the armed forces to instil the spirit of National Socialism in the troops. His long-standing scapegoat, the officer corps of the army, did not even now go unscathed: ‘May it at some time be part of the concept of honour of the German officer – as is already the case in our navy – that the surrender of a district or a town is impossible and that above all the leaders have to proceed here with a shining example in most loyal fulfilment of their duty unto death.’
    In the second part of his Testament, Hitler went through the charade of nominating a successor government for what was left of the Reich. The tone was vindictive. Göring and Himmler were formally expelled from the party and from all their offices for the damage they had done through negotiating with the enemy ‘without my knowledge and against my wishes’, for attempting to take power in the state, and for disloyalty to his person. Nor was there any place in the new government for Speer. The new head of state and head of the armed forces was Grand AdmiralDönitz – less of a surprise than at first sight, given his specially high standing in Hitler’s eyes in the closing phase of the war, and in view particularly of the responsibility he had already been given a few days