Bud McBain at his Pickerel Lake home, with a photo album from his World War II Army days. |
Hidden Places: Pickerel man among first to see Hitler's bunker July 24, 2010 Outside of Dante’s ninth circle, it is perhaps the most evil hidden place ever recorded.
Adolf Hitler spent his final hours on earth literally entombed in a bunker deep beneath Berlin’s Reich Chancellery, guiding imaginary troops and generals like so many toy soldiers as bombs destroyed the people above who had offered him misguided trust and in some cases worship.
And it was in that bunker where he died, the newly legitimized Eva Braun as his wife by his side, and his dog, Blondi, killed to test the efficacy of the poison, nearby.
The place is long gone—and good riddance—but one man remembers.
Bud McBain of Pickerel, who’s been inside.
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In most cases, it’s best to start at the beginning.
But not now.
Today, Bud lives in retirement, happy as a beagle at his cottage on the shores of Pickerel Lake.
He’s 86-years-old, but doesn’t look it, and has a razor-sharp mind and wit honed by decades in the news and talk radio business in the Fox Valley.
Bud stumbled into his career the way most reporters do—he could type—and during World War II served in the 72th Publicity Service Battalion. There, he worked alongside the network and print correspondents who brought the war into living rooms and onto front pages across America.
It was all fascinating stuff, and will be the focus of the next Prime Time monthly magazine, which will be distributed on Monday, Aug. 2. But for now, let’s fast-forward through Bud’s war career to early June, 1945, and the Allies’ entrance into Berlin.
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Some history—but not of the entire war effort—first.
By 1945, Hitler and his cronies certainly knew the war for Europe was lost and for the most part had retreated into the elaborate “Fuhrerbunker” beneath the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin.
The shelter was located about 24 feet under the chancellery gardens and had two levels connected by a stairway set at right angles. Protected by 12 feet of concrete, it contained about 30 small rooms with exits into the buildings overhead and into the gardens as well.
The upper level was constructed in 1940 and the lower portion, including Hitler’s quarters, by early 1945.
Hitler moved into the bunker on Jan. 16, 1945, joined by Blondi, senior staff, and later by his soon-to-be wife, Eva Braun.
The bunker, home to the world’s worst criminals, was among the best. It did an outstanding job of protecting its tenants from the relentless shelling by the Russians, who pounded the city above into rubble.
It was in this bunker, on April 30, 1945 where Eva bit down on a cyanide tablet as her grim-faced husband put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
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Russia had sprinted into Berlin from the east while the United States and its Allies were crawling their way across western Europe and it was weeks after the surrender of the city on May 2 before the press corps from the United States could get near the capital of the fallen Third Reich.
On its way to Berlin, the press party was held up for three days at the Elbe bridge awaiting permission to cross. It finally came following intense negotiations between McBain’s commanding officer, Col. Jack Redding, editor of the Chicago Tribune, and the Russians.
“Late at night, in the pouring rain, that was our big entrance into Berlin,” Bud says.
The unit set up headquarters in the former postmaster general’s house in the Wansee region of Berlin, where high-ranking Nazis had maintained estates in halcyon days. The area had basically survived the bombing that had devastated most of the once-beautiful city.
Word had circulated throughout the press corps about the existence of an underground bunker and the details of Hitler’s suicide. And everyone, especially the correspondents, wanted a look-see for themselves.
Time reporter Percy Knauth, who went on to a distinguished career as the Time-Life European bureau chief, was among the first to learn that the bunker could be entered.
“He said, ‘do you want to go?’ and I said, ‘sure’,” Bud recalls, in the understated tone of a true journalist.
Percy, Bud and a few others traveled to the ruined chancellery building, left unguarded and looted of anything of value. Armed with their Rolleiflexes, they made their way down a long Teutonic hallway and “at the very end was Hitler’s office, with an enormous bronze door. There was a huge desk and a massive chandelier. We had to be the first Americans to get in there.”
The men unabashedly rummaged through the drawers and safes, picking up pieces of Hitler’s personal stationary and other memorabilia as souvenirs.
(An aside here: It was typical ‘to the victor belongs the spoils’ behavior but the items had no intrinsic value. Bud took some blank Nazi certificates home and inscribed them with his name, or in some cases his father’s name, for a rather macabre joke. The Hidden Places Crew’s crack German translator said the paperwork includes citations for 25 years in the fire service along with a “Cross of Merit of the Order of the German Eagle of the First Rank” with Hitler’s preprinted signature at the bottom.)
Bud continues:
“We went through the hallway and in the courtyard was an old German, who asked ‘do you want to see where the Fuhrer died?’ We said yes and he took us down the stairs and into the bunker, and Hitler’s sitting room.”
Percy picked up the tale in a dispatch filed with Time magazine.
“Against one wall stood a sofa with a light wooden frame and thick brocade cushions. This was where Hitler and Eva Braun - his bride of 48 hours after she had been mistress for 16 years - had shot themselves if the story told by Hitler's driver Ernst Kempka is true. We held our lights close to the sofa. There were blood stains on the light-coloured armrest of the sofa. Blood had dripped down and collected in small coagulated stripes in the corner. Blood was also to be seen on the outer side of the sofa on the brocade cloth.”
That report, Bud says, is as he remembers.
Afterwards, that same old German asked the men if they wanted to see the ditch where Hitler and Braun’s bodies had been burned. Hitler had ordered the cremation to prevent the Russians from parading the corpses as war trophies, as had been done to Mussolini in Italy.
Bud recalls they were taken outside and, amidst the rubble of Berlin, shown a shallow ditch, long emptied of any remains or artifacts but with a number of empty gasoline cans strewn about.
It was, he suggests, all rather anticlimactic.
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Unlike Dante’s ninth circle, Hitler’s bunker is truly a thing of the past.
It was a stubborn cuss though.
The Soviets tried to level it numerous times but those 12-foot thick walls held fast and as late as 1988 underground sections were being uncovered by work crews and destroyed. Still more pieces were excavated, and again quickly filled in, during extensive construction work in the 1990s.
The site’s ignominy is well-founded. Officials fear that it could evolve into a Neo-Nazi shrine, a terrible thought.
Today, it is marked, modestly, with a small plaque and schematic. Officials argue that even the most grim sites must be remembered, lest the actions that happened there be forgotten.
Bud will never forget.
“We were the first ones to get in there besides the Russians,” Bud recalls.
And then, with an emotion uncharacteristic for a newsman, he allows a tiny bit of flourish.
“What a place to be in history.”
(Hidden Places is an occasional Antigo Daily Journal column that looks at some of the more unusual or unknown people, places and events of the northwoods, and, in this case, farther afield in both location and time. The crew is always looking for ideas and willing tour guides. Contact Lisa at adjlisa@solarus.net or Debbie at adjdebbie@solarus.net.)
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