Poles?

Yes, they checked their papers. They were Polish, trying to run away. How they got there, gosh, I don't know.

Is that probable, that they were Poles?

Well, they had the passports. One of my comrades from the police commando told me. I know it's strange, but they were Poles. [Misch is silent.]

Right. I'd like to talk a little bit about the new movie portrayal of those last days in the bunker. Have you seen "Downfall"?

Oh, yeah, I've seen it. [Laughs heartily.] Dramatic operetta. It's all Americanized. All that yelling and screaming; it wasn't like that down there in the bunker. The reality -- it was a death bunker. Everyone whispered down there. A crazy screaming scene never happened.

Hitler never yelled?

Well, at least when the generals were down there, discussing military things, they were very quiet. It's a film, with all the freedoms of a film. It's no documentary.

Are there factual discrepancies, so far as you know?

No, no, just everything exaggerated.

Your character in the film is portrayed seriously thinking of killing himself at the very end, after Hitler and Eva Braun are dead, but then at the last minute he decides not to shoot. Was suicide something you remember considering very seriously?

It was different than in the film. At the very end, I asked myself: Why am I here? What am I doing now that everyone is dead or gone? But nevertheless, I was still there, one of the only ones left in the bunker, just left there to make sure that everything down in the telephone room continued to work. And then Dr. Naumann said to me that another doctor there, Dr. Stumpfegger, would give me something to drink, or a sort of candy.

And you thought about taking some kind of medical poison like that?

I had always believed -- well yeah, if it's all over, then I have to shoot myself too. And the atmosphere ... at the end, after Hitler was dead, it was so bad. I got a call from General Busse of the 9th Army and he wanted to speak to General Krebs. So I rang through to Krebs and he didn't pick up. So I went to his room and I thought he was sleeping and I tried to wake him, and he fell over. Then I noticed he was dead. I got such a fright! And sitting next to him was Burgdorf. Both of them had taken their own lives. Just before the very end. They were the last of the military, the last people responsible for the military there.

Let's go back in time to your early history: How did you start working as a bodyguard to Hitler?

I was an orphan; both my mother and father died when I was very small. I was the last son, the last of the family, so I wouldn't have been sent to the front, rather behind the lines, to a desk job, supplies and reinforcements, telegraph office, or some such thing. But after I was called up I was injured badly anyway. I was shot in the chest after a failed diplomatic mission in Poland. I was in a convalescent home for a long time, and then came a phone call from the Reichs Chancellery: They needed a young man. At headquarters.

Do you have any particular impressions of Hitler that have stayed with you?

Hitler, to me, was always a completely normal person. He spoke completely normally to me. I lived together with him for five years. I only knew him as a wonderfully good boss, right? I could talk with him. He was always satisfied with us.

Recent Stories