Hocus-Pocus Rochus

By Peter David Orr

SS-Oberscharführer Rochus Misch was the telephone operator for the Führerbunker.  It took Misch decades to publicly describe his experiences.[1] It wasn’t until 77 years of age that Misch agreed to public interviews, and it wasn’t until his mid-eighties that his memoirs were written.

He claimed to have been an eyewitness to the direct aftermath of Hitler and Braun’s suicides, minus any participation in or direct knowledge of the burning and burial of the corpses.

Misch fled the bunker in the early morning of May 2, 1945. He was captured by the Soviets attempting to escape by way of U-Bahn tunnels. After months of solitary confinement, he ended up in Moscow's infamous Lubyanka prison and was subjected to heinously painful and demeaning torture by SMERSH agents attempting to get whatever they could out of him about Hitler's final days.

The Misch dossier in the Russian archives indicates that initially Misch had very little to contribute compared to Otto Günsche, Heinz Linge, Harri Mengershausen, Hans Baur and others. Nevertheless, Misch was included in the collaborative effort in 1946 when Soviet intelligence reopened the investigation into Hitler’s ‘last days’. However, only one inconsequential mention of Misch is found in the final report prepared for Stalin.[2] He was also listed as a witness for the Nuremberg trials, but the Soviet prosecutors never called him to the stand or entered an affidavit.

Obviously the Soviets thought Misch’s contributions to understanding Hitler’s death were inconsequential. And British historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper, must have agreed with that assessment because Misch isn’t mentioned once in the many editions of The Last Days of Hitler.

Misch was released by the Soviets in December of 1953 and he returned to what was then West Berlin in early January of 1954.[3] But unlike so many other former Nazi “Heimkehrer”[4] associated with Hitler, Misch was not pursued for questioning. No newspaper stories mentioned his homecoming, let alone that he knew anything about Hitler's suicide. In fact, Misch wasn’t even called as a witness by Judge Heinrich Stephanus for the civil court case then underway to determine the official time, manner and place of Hitler’s death. Judge Stephanus called 43 witnesses.

It wasn’t until 1985 when Rochus Misch first went on the public record. Then it was nearly ten years before he was heard from again, when he was quoted in a full-page article in an Italian newspaper in 1994, and described Hitler’s face as looking exhausted, sickly, and hopeless in the last days of his life. Yet, Misch insisted, Hitler was still lucid.[5] The next year German television host, Anna Doubek, featured Misch in Part One of an RTL series entitled, “The Last Hours in the Führerbunker”.[6]

It was again another ten years before Misch consented to an in-depth interview with Anne Feibelman. The audio of Feibelman’s[7] interview is part of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, and is important to a study of Hitler’s suicide because it occurred years before Misch composed his memoirs with the help of two ghostwriters.

From the Feibelman interview:

Misch on the Hitler-Braun marriage—

A simple civil ceremony was performed in Hitler’s Führerbunker office by “a group” of men. It lasted only a matter of minutes and then “the marriage authorities left”. Misch was at his station as the Führerbunker switchboard at the time, so he was not present in the room where the ceremony was conducted.[8]

Comments: Walter Wagner is mentioned, by name, in Misch’s memoirs, whereas Misch originally said the Hitler-Braun marriage was performed by a group of civil servants. This was not a one-time error by Misch in this interview. He even differentiated between the group that conducted the ceremony and the witnesses–Bormann and Goebbels in the Anne Feibelman interview.

Misch on seeing Hitler and Braun dead—

Eva had already entered Hitler’s private quarters some time ago when Hitler went in and shut the door. Someone heard a shot and called for Linge; it could have been Bormann or Goebbels, Misch couldn’t tell because he was at his station. After “a quarter hour or even longer” the door to Hitler’s private quarters was opened by someone.[9]

Misch left his post but did not go inside. He remained just beyond the outer door to Hitler’s private rooms and only saw Hitler and Braun once the second, inner door, was opened. Misch didn’t specify who entered the room first.

Hitler was dead. It looked like Hitler “had nodded off”; slouched forward his head rested the table. Eva was “lying there with her knees pulled up...almost to her breast”. She was wearing a dark blue gown with some sort of white frills. What Misch was viewing was a mere “six to eight meters away”.[10]

Misch left and returned a bit later. He didn’t indicate how long he was away from the suicide scene. This time he saw Hitler on the floor. Those inside were wrapping up the body. He did not see Eva’s body. It was no longer on the couch. If her body was elsewhere in the suicide room, from Misch’s vantage point he couldn’t tell.

It was around that time when Misch noticed Heinrich “Gestapo” Müller was involved.[11] Fearful of Müller, for some unspecified reason, Misch returned to his station.

Comments: Heinz Linge’s drawing  (see below) of Hitler's private quarters shows Misch’s line of sight would have been inadequate. However, if Linge was mistaken and the couch was actually situated much closer to the wall on the left-hand side of Room D, then Misch could have seen everything he described. Misch’s description of the distance between him and Hitler’s corpse (6 to 8 meters) is a good approximation.

The Feibelman interview matches up well with an on-camera TV interview Misch did with Al Murray a few months later, except in one aspect. Misch told Murray that he recalled someone had called out for Hitler’s valet, Linge, to come quickly. He also explained that it was “about 20 minutes before anyone dared open the door to Hitler's private quarters”. However, Misch also said that he “saw Hitler sitting at his desk”. Hitler’s head was “on the desk” and Eva was “lying on the sofa” with “her head towards him [Hitler] with her legs drawn up”.[12]

Misch could not have seen Hitler sitting at his desk. On the other hand, Misch could have seen Hitler sitting on the left-hand side (from viewer’s perspective) of the sofa and leaning forward so that his head was resting the table. It’s difficult to make out what Misch actually said to Murray in the interview because the English translation was dubbed over the original German. However, after reviewing the segment of the video multiple times, it sounds like Misch actually said “Tisch” (table) and not “Schreibtisch” (desk).

Misch’s Memoirs

Misch’s popular memoirs[13] are filled with anecdotes intended to leave readers under the impression that he was privy to details known only to an insider. The problem with dishing up tasty morsels is that sometimes they seem so sweet but end up detracting from the main course.

Such is the case with one of Misch’s most endearing recollections of Eva Braun.

Misch wrote that it was “around mid-March” when Eva Braun arrived at the Reich Chancellery. She stayed only a short while, but then resurfaced a second time to everybody's surprise a few days later. It appeared that nobody had been informed—Hitler included. He was anything but delighted when she turned up again, and he did everything he could to convince her to return to Munich.[14]

Unfortunately for Misch this story illustrates that he didn’t know when Eva came and went. Martin Bormann’s diary shows that Eva had departed Berlin February 9, 1945, and the best information shows that she did not return until early April, perhaps April 4, and then moved into the Führerbunker on April 15, 1945.

Rochus Misch was probably kind and considerate to Eva Braun on the few occasions they interacted. He didn’t need to make up something as specific as this next charming anecdote to get that point across:

“Soon after her second appearance [at the Reich Chancellery] she came to me in the lobby and handed me her watch: ‘Ach, please, it doesn’t work’.

‘I’ll have it seen to’, I promised.

She handed it to me, a small patch of white gold, the face enclosed in diamonds. I took it to a jeweler in the Friedrich-Strasse and collected it the next afternoon. The jeweler Wiese was still going, and so now was Eva’s watch. I had a servant take it to her, and I was happy to have been of small service to her”.[15]

"Jeweler Wiese" is actually Berlin's "Juwelier Hermann Wiese". Unfortunately for Misch, the shop on the Friedrich-Strasse had not been open since 1943. However, Hermann Wiese's well-known Berlin Artillerie-Strasse 30 remained open throughout the war.[16] 

Oh, but Misch must be allowed this minor mistake. He was just confusing the location of the store. The rest of his story may still be true.

Wrong. The rest of his story is provably false.

Eva Braun wrote this in a letter to her sister, Gretl, on April 23, 1945:

"...Unfortunately my diamond watch is being repaired—I will give you the address at the end of this letter. With any luck you should be able to get it back. It's for you: you have always wanted one for yourself...The address of the watchmaker is: SS-Unterscharführer Stegemann, SS Lager Oranienburg, evacuated to Kyritz".[17]

So, Eva’s watch had been in Oranienburg. When the Soviets captured Oranienburg on April 22, SS-Unterscharführer[18] Stegemann (with the watch) was evacuated to Kyritz. Kyritz is 58 miles WNW of central Berlin and 43 miles west of Oranienburg.

The watchmaker mentioned in Eva’s letter to her sister was a Berlin master watchmaker, Martin Stegemann.[19]

The Soviets went on to overrun Kyritz on May 4, but Stegemann (and Eva’s watch) had moved on from Kyritz, going north on April 28.

Obviously this watch never made it back to Berlin.

Rochus Misch was a switchboard operator assigned to Hitler’s bodyguard; he wasn’t Eva’s manservant. Eva had no reason to walk up to Misch out of the blue and hand him her broken watch.

Why did Misch include this fiction in his memoirs? It was more than his desire to seem closer to Adolf and Eva than he really was. It was his way of linking himself to the following false claim made by Heinz Linge:

“Eva Braun was carried out by Major Günsche...I can still remember, she was wearing a dark blue polka-dot dress, light brown Italian shoes and nylon stockings.  On her wrist was the only jewelry she regularly wore, a platinum wristwatch studded with diamonds. It was a gift from Hitler many years before”.[20]

So, Eva was wearing her favorite wristwatch when she killed herself, a ‘fact’ made possible because the bunker telephonist made sure it was fixed and returned in one day.

Well, that’s odd, because the same wristwatch was found in Denmark—unscathed and unscorched.[21]

“...a diamond-studded platinum wristwatch which Hitler gave to his mistress, Eva Braun, was in Denmark...British and Danish intelligence agents found the watch on a German SS officer and handed it over to the Danish Army. The watch bore Hitler's dedication to the woman he married...”[22]

Before leaving this topic, the reader deserves to know why it was worth dwelling upon it. It wasn’t just Linge and Misch that lied about it for the sake of drama. For decades, historians and journalists have peppered their stories about the events leading to Hitler and Braun’s supposed suicides with this wristwatch fabrication. Moreover, Eva’s wristwatch has been used as ‘evidence’ to support other falsities. Perhaps the most egregious example was Erich Kuby, who wrote what is arguably the most popular article of all time on Hitler’s ‘last days’. In the May 26, 1965, edition of Der Spiegel, Kuby spiced up the story of Hermann Fegelein’s supposed disappearance. According to Kuby, when Fegelein was tracked down at his Berlin apartment, his suitcase was “full of German and Swiss currency, silver, gold, jewelry and other valuable, saleable items—including a diamond wristwatch belonging to Eva”.[23]

There’s plenty of drama in Misch’s memoirs without the wristwatch story; his telling of the suicide scene in particular:

“I just hung up, I hear someone calling: ‘Linge, Linge, I think it’s time’. Bormann or Goebbels, I'm not sure which of them is asking for Hitler’s servant, so one must have heard something. At the switchboard anyway, no one heard a shot.

I take some careful steps out of my room in the corridor. Linge pushes me from behind rudely...rushing past me. I do not know if he [came] from washroom or from the stairs from the Vorbunker. Dead silence. Linge puts his ear to the door to the vestibule. He and Günsche open the first door to the vestibule. I followed behind slowly.

The second door opens. I take another two steps forward and craned my neck to see in. The picture that presents itself to me, I took in for just a few seconds inside, but I’ve never forgotten it”.[24]

Let’s think this through. Linge claimed that he was just outside of Hitler’s private quarters when he heard the suicide shot. If that’s true, Linge would not have pushed or rushed passed Misch from behind.

Misch and his ghostwriters have removed the 15-20 minute delay between the shot and the opening of the door to Hitler’s quarters that is found in Misch’s earlier accounts. Furthermore, take note of the subtle way Misch’s line of sight has been altered. In all previous accounts he remained just outside of the first doorway. Now, after Linge and Günsche open the first door to Hitler’s quarters Misch “followed behind slowly”, implying that he entered and walked across the room to the second door.

From this much improved vantage point, Misch’s attention was first drawn to Eva. She was “sitting with her legs pulled up on the sofa and her head tilted towards Hitler”. Eva’s shoes were under the sofa.

Then his focus shifted to Hitler, whose eyes were open and “staring into space”. Hitler’s “head hung slightly forward”. Though Misch recalled that Hitler was sitting next to Eva he admitted uncertainty as to whether Hitler was sitting next to Eva on the sofa or on the armchair next to Eva. Misch saw no blood on Hitler.

Some, like Erich Kempka, claimed Hitler’s eyes were closed. Others, like Günsche, claimed Hitler’s face had been severely mutilated by the bullet. When someone is shot in the head there should be plenty of blood unless they were already long dead when the bullet entered their skull.

Again, think back to Misch’s earlier descriptions of the death scene. He had claimed Hitler was face first on the table in front of him, and he had never even mentioned an armchair. In Misch’s later telling he’s squaring up the tale told by others, cognizant of the discrepancy between Günsche and Linge’s accounts, for example. 

Misch left the death scene for an unspecified amount of time. When he returned, he saw Hitler’s body. It was wrapped up and being taken out. Linge, Günsche, Kempka and an RSD man that he didn’t know had wrapped Hitler in a grey blanket and carried the body passed Misch. The blanket wasn’t long enough to completely cover the corpse, so Hitler's shoes stuck out.[25]

 “I watched as they wrapped Hitler up. His legs were sticking out as they carried him past me. Someone shouted to me: 'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' I decided not to go because I had noticed that Müller from the Gestapo was there - and he was never usually around”.[26]

In a state of disbelief, Misch returned to his post at the Führerbunker switchboard. He sat there with the bunker’s chief mechanic, Hans Hentschel, and then he noticed Gestapo Müller was in the Führerbunker.[27] This was quite disturbing to Misch and Hentschel, for it was highly unusual. The two men sat there silently, “rigid with fear”. Quietly they speculated that Müller was there to get rid of evidence and to silence witnesses.[28] Misch recalled instinctively unsnapping his pistol holster.[29]

Whereas Misch describes these events as taking place on April 30, 1945, his mention of Gestapo Müller’s presence suggests that he’s describing April 27 or 28. That Misch has assigned the wrong date to his own experience can be deduced by other comments he made about seeing Müller earlier that same day during his lunch break.

Misch ate lunch in the bunker of the New Reich Chancellery that day, not in the Führerbunker. He noticed Müller’s presence in the mess hall. Müller was accompanied by two, unidentified, high-ranking SS officers, and all three men were in full dress uniform.[30] 

Misch’s Müller sighting matches up with the account of Gestapo Müller’s mistress, Anna Schmid. The last two times Anna saw her lover were April 20 and April 24.[31] On the evening of the 20th she had gone to visit him at his Cornelius-Straße 22 residence in Berlin. When Anna arrived, Müller had company: “Scholz and Deutscher”. SS-Sturmbannführer Christian Scholz was Müller’s radio specialist. “Deutscher” was the last name of Müller’s personal driver. All three men were busily burning ID cards and other documents when she arrived. He even offered Anna a fake ID card, but she refused.

Then, on April 24, Anna rode her bike to visit Müller at his office. She recalled that he was “arrayed  in  his  full  uniform  with  the Knight’s  Cross  around  his  neck”. The same two men were present. In a private moment she begged him to fly out of Berlin and take her along, but discovered that was impossible. It was now his responsibility to act as Himmler’s representative[32] at the Führer conferences in the bunker.[33]

The drama increased when he revealed to Anna that this would be the last time they would see each other. When she pressed him for an explanation, he told her that he had to report immediately to the Reich Chancellery because his men had been involved in the arrest Hermann Göring.[34]

Anna Schmid’s account reveals why Müller and his men were in full dress uniform with decorations when Misch saw them. He was at the Reich Chancellery to attend the last Führer conferences. The last Führer conferences took place on the evenings of April 24-27, 1945. Müller was there as Hermann Fegelein’s replacement, not as Fegelein’s executioner.

The last Führer conference took place on the evening of April 27, 1945, so it makes no sense for Müller to be in full dress uniform thereafter, unless he was there to settle the Fegelein matter with a pistol to the back of Fegelein’s skull. But Müller didn’t need to be in full dress uniform to bust a cap in the back of the Fegelein’s head at some mysterious location.

Since Heinrich Müller would not have been strutting around in full dress uniform after the evening of April 27-28, 1945, the date Misch assigned to Hitler’s suicide is questionable. It’s reasonable to conclude that Rochus Misch’s memoirs unwittingly reveal that Hitler’s ‘suicide’ took place days before April 30.

Misch’s account makes two things clear: 1). Müller’s unexpected appearance in the Führerbunker caused Misch to fear for his life as a potential witness to something, and, 2). in Misch’s mind, Hitler’s ‘death’ is associated with Müller’s presence in the Führerbunker.

Consider Rochus Misch’s reaction:

“I said to my comrade Hentschel, the mechanic: 'Maybe we will be killed for being the last witnesses.'”[35]

How could Rochus Misch seriously regard himself and Hentschel as the ‘last witnesses’ to Hitler’s suicide and thereby potential targets for elimination? By that ‘logic’ at least a dozen others would have been on Müller list to be snuffed out.

Had Misch actually seen or heard Hitler commit suicide? No. Had Misch seen any more of Hitler or Braun’s corpses than Günsche, Linge, Axmann, or any of the guards? No. Had Misch been present in the Reich Chancellery garden during the burning or burial of the remains? No.

Were Günsche, Linge, Axmann or any of the guards afraid of being knocked off by Gestapo Müller for what they had witnessed? If so, they never mentioned it. None of them mentioned Müller’s presence in the Führerbunker, let alone at the suicide scene.

With the exception of one witness, Hans Hentschel, no witness ever even mentioned Misch’s presence in the Führerbunker—let alone Hitler’s private quarters. Unfortunately, for Misch, the rest of his dramatic account is seriously undermined by Hentschel’s account.