If Eva had not worked on Hitler, he might have been persuaded to bail out and carry on elsewhere
persuaded him that all was finished, they might have persuaded him to bail out and carry on from somewhere else.”
Weinert, who was among staff living in the bunker, added: “Adolf was the most horrible sight I ever hope to see. He walked without lifting his feet off the ground and his whole body seemed to he made of jelly.
“The features of his face had sagged monstrously, and his mouth seemed to droop open all the time. His voice was hoarse and his speech blurred. You see, in those few days he realised that not only had he lost the war and driven Germany into disaster, but – and I think this was the worst blow – he realised also that nearly
VIVID ACCOUNTS: War crimes trials translator Wolfe Frank all the people who he had trusted had turned against him or deserted him.”
Weinert escaped from the bunker six days before Hitler and Braun killed themselves on April 30, shortly after Eva’s brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein, was shot in the garden above the bunker on the direct orders of the Führer. It is known that Hitler had a travelling masseur, but this is the first time his interviews have been published in the UK.
Author Paul Hooley came across the papers while researching the incredible life of Wolfe Frank, who was born in Germany but fled to Britain in fear of his life in 1937 with a bounty on his head as he had criticised Hitler’s regime.
During the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Frank became a key interpreter because of his language skills. He delivered the translations of death by the rope to Nazi leaders who were sentenced to capital punishment. All but one were hanged on October 16, 1946. After the hangings, Frank became something of a media star as his translations had been beamed around the globe on radio.
But he also became an unofficial Nazi hunter using a fake identity, leading a dangerous double life unmasking members of the former regime. To help make ends meet, he sold some of his interviews to the American Herald Tribune newspaper in 1949.
While researching Frank’s life, Paul Hooley came across his original notes and typed up interviews.
“He was an incredibly brave man who risked his own life to track down many of these Nazis,” said Hooley.
“I found his interviews with Hitler’s masseur fascinating because they give a different insight into what was really going on with Hitler and his inner circle.”
SOME of the information Frank gathered was fed back to intelligence chiefs in London, who were monitoring the fall-out from the Nazi regime. Frank managed to secure a confession from one senior Nazi, SS General Waldemar Wappenhas.
As the war progressed, Wappenhas had suffered heart troubles, which presented a problem to his boss Himmler who had been put in charge of running large parts of the Third Reich.
One day Himmler drove him to meet Hitler and talked about a future job once Britain has been invaded.
“Himmler was at the wheel of a small Mercedes,” said Wappenhas.
“I sat beside him and in the back were two aides. Himmler praised my service record. He didn’t need me urgently, only in good health.” Himmler told him he ought to “brush up his English” as they were forming a British legion of the SS and he wanted him in charge.
However, as the war was ending, Himmler was later caught by the British and killed himself while under arrest.
Wappenhas was taken into custody briefly after being tracked down in 1949 but, after giving Frank 84 pages of detailed testimony about the Nazi war machine, was allowed to go back to his family. He died in Hanover in 1967, age 74.
Wolfe Frank took his own life while living in poverty in Britain in 1988, but his documents only surfaced when a friend found them while clearing out an attic in 2015 and passed the files to author Hooley.