In Europe

purpose, as he explained later during interrogations, because the Nazi leaders had ‘started becoming hysterical’ in late March 1945. They were on the point of causing great destruction within Germany itself, in accordance with the ‘scorched earth’ tactics ordered by Hitler. Speer did everything he could to prevent the implementation of this
Nerobefehl
, and to a certain extent he succeeded. Meanwhile, on 13 March, Hitler's right-hand man Martin Bormann had ordered all prisoners to be transferred from zones along the fronts to the middle of the Reich. Gruesome death marches followed during which many tens of thousands of prisoners – some estimates speak of 250,000 – were shot or hanged. There were even plans to continue fighting underground after the defeat: the Nazi leaders had started planning Operation Werwolf in autumn 1944, and within the SS as well there were attempts to set up a partisan army through the
SS-Jagdverbände
.
    Hitler issued his
Nerobefehl
on 19 March, twelve days after the Americans crossed the Rhine at Remagen. For Speer, who had protested, he had made the exception of providing a written justification of his order: ‘If the war is lost, the people will be lost as well, [and] then you must not worry about what will be needed for rudimentary survival. On the contrary, the best thing is to destroy that as well. For the nation has proven itself weak, and the future belongs entirely to the strong people of the East. Those who remain after this struggle will in any event be inferior, for the good will all be dead.’
    Speer saw Hitler for the last time on the evening of Monday, 23 April. The
Führerbunker
was shaking with the impact of the mortar shells. The day before, Hitler had thrown a fit of rage before his staff the likes of which they had never seen before. He had paced back and forth, railing against the world in general and against the cowardice and disloyalty of his political friends in particular, he had pounded his fists against his temples while the tears ran down his cheeks. Speer found a way to land a light plane in the centre of Berlin. Hitler had just turned fifty-six, but he looked like an ‘exhausted octogenarian’. His complexion was ashen, he was bent and dragged his left leg behind him, probably as a result of the daily cures given him by his physician, Morell. After treating him with intestinal bacteria ‘from a Bulgarian farmer's best strains’, Morell had begun using increasingly stronger remedies: amphetamines, deadly nightshade, strychnine.
    Speer spent a few hours talking to Hitler, constantly interrupted by adjutants who came and went, for official Berlin worked on until the very last moment. Hitler told him he could no longer fight on, he was giving up. He asked whether he should leave Berlin. Speer advised against it, saying the Führer could hardly end his life in a ‘summer cottage’. Hitler's greatest fear was to be captured alive by the Russians, his corpse was also to be burned, otherwise it might be ‘dishonoured’ after his death. He did not, he said with a disdainful snort, mind dying: it was only a moment. ‘I had the feeling I was talking to someone who was already dead,’ Speer wrote later in his cell.
    Then Speer visited Goebbel's wife Magda, who was lying in bed sick and pale. She and her husband had decided to let their six young children die as well. After that he went and said goodbye to Eva Braun, the only one in Hitler's entourage who spoke of death's approach in a calm and dignified fashion. Early the next morning Speer flew over the Brandenburg Gate, right past the Siegesalle, and everywhere below he saw the flash of artillery, tracer bullets flying up and the city aglow. A few hours later our anonymous diarist reported a direct hit in a line waiting in front of a butcher's: three dead, ten wounded, but the line regrouped. ‘For the prospect of a few steaks and ham, even the weakest of grandmothers will stand her ground.’ Everyone in her building was now more or less living together in the bomb shelter, and came out onlywhen it was absolutely essential. On Thursday morning, 26 April, an artillery shell – a
Koffer
– crashed through the roof of the building. At first everyone screamed and panicked, but then they all ran upstairs to tidy up while the shells exploded all around. Such scenes were reported later, too: sweeping up the shrapnel as quickly as possible, dusting and then a mop over the floor. The cleaning fits of