Sunday, April 29, 1945

On the forenoon of Sunday, April 29, 1945, Hitler received news of the execution of Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, by the Italian partisans. Mussolini was then hung upside down and thrown into the gutter.

By the afternoon, Soviet ground forces were about a mile away from the Führerbunker. Hitler immediately ordered his staff to be prepared to face the worst. He began sorting through his own papers and selected documents to be burned by his SS bodyguards.

Hitler then signed the order to allow those in the bunker to breakout. According to a version on record, Eva was overheard crying, “I would rather die here. I do not want to escape.“

Late in the evening, General Hans Krebs contacted Alfred Jodl, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command) by radio:

“Request immediate report. Firstly of the whereabouts of Wenck’s spearheads. Secondly of time intended to attack. Thirdly of the location of the Ninth Army. Fourthly of the precise place in which the Ninth Army will break through. Fifthly of the whereabouts of General Rudolf Holste’s spearhead.”

Most of his staff left and headed south for the area around Berchtesgaden using a convoy of trucks and planes. Only a handful of Hitler’s personal staff remained, including Martin Bormann, the Goebbels family, SS and military aides, and two of Hitler’s secretaries.

After discovering that his Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler was trying to negotiate with the Allies, Hitler no longer trusted the SS. He wondered whether the cyanide capsules given to him by Ludwig Stumpfegger, the SS doctor, would be effective. So, Hitler, gave his physician, Werner Haase, the grim task of testing the cyanide capsules on his favorite dog, Blondi.

Here is an eyewitness account by Armin Lehmann, Hitler’s last youth courier, of what happened to Blondi:

“That afternoon Hitler summoned Professor Werner Haase from the emergency hospital to the bunker to stage a dress rehearsal of his own suicide. Hitler no longer trusted the SS and he wanted an assurance that the poison capsules he had been provided with by the SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger actually worked. The guinea pig chosen for this experiment was his beloved Alsatian Blondi.

The dog was led into the toilets off the waiting-room at the foot of the steps to the upper bunker by Hitler’s dog attendant Sergeant Fritz Tornow. Inside, Tornow forced Blondi’s jaws open and crushed the capsule with pliers as Haase watched. The dog collapsed on the ground instantly and didn’t move.

Tornow was visibly upset. Hitler couldn’t bear to watch the scene himself. However, he entered the room shortly afterwards and, seeing the results for himself, departed without saying a word. Tornow was further mortified to be given the task of shooting Blondi’s four young puppies. The Goebbels children were understandably upset when their sprightly little playthings were wrenched from them.

Tornow took them up to the Chancellery Garden where they were put to death along with several other pets of the bunker inmates. Later, Hitler met the medical staff to thank them in the lower bunker. As Professor Schenck records in his memoirs, one of the nurses became hysterical.”

Three years after the war, Hitler’s air force aide Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven said: “Hitler was emotionless. He only wanted to know if it [cyanide] worked and it did.”

After the battle of Berlin, the dead body of Blondi was exhumed and photographed by the Soviets. In 2005, Hitler’s nurse, Erna Flegel, said that Blondi’s death had affected the people in the bunker more than Eva Braun’s suicide had.

According to a report commissioned by Stalin and based on eyewitness accounts, Hitler’s dog-handler, Sergeant Fritz Tornow, took Blondi’s pups from the arms of Joseph Goebbels’ children, who had been playing with them, and shot them in the garden above the bunker. Tornow then killed Eva Braun’s two Scottish Terrier dogs and his own dachshund by lethal injection.