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On 16 April, Zhukov and Konev unleashed 2.5 million men, 41,000 guns and 6,250 tanks against Berlin, with the former given the honour of taking the city. When Zhukov was delayed by German resistance, Stalin rang Konev: ‘Turn your tank armies on Berlin.’ A cauldron battle was fought, street by street, as they converged on the Chancellery. In Germany alone, an estimated two million girls were raped by Russian soldiers.^* Down in the bunker ‘The artillery fire can already be heard,’ wrote Eva Braun, who practised pistol shooting in the garden. As Soviet tanks reached the outskirts, Hitler celebrated his birthday with Göring, Himmler and Goebbels. When they flew out of the city, he insisted on dying there. That night, Eva Braun had a party for him upstairs, dancing, singing and drinking champagne. But at the next day’s meeting he learned that his order to SS-General Steiner to counter-attack had been disobeyed, at which a flushed, foam-flecked Hitler denounced the treachery before collapsing in his chair: ‘The war is lost, but if you believe I’m leaving Berlin, gentlemen, you’re sadly mistaken. I’d rather put a bullet in my head.’ His SS doctor recommended a ‘pistol and poison’ combination for his suicide.

Outside Berlin, Göring claimed the succession and was dismissed, while Himmler was disgraced for talking to the Allies. Himmler’s representative, Hermann Fegelein, married to Eva Braun’s sister, was found drunk with a mistress and shot in the garden. The Russians captured Vienna; the Americans took the Ruhr, arresting Alfried Krupp at Villa Hügel. Russian tanks were closing in. The Goebbels family now moved into the Bunker with their five children. Eva Braun wrote a letter, a ‘final sign of life’, to her best friend; as death drew ‘perilously nearer’ she was suffering ‘because of the Führer. Maybe everything will turn out all right but he’s lost faith …’

On the night of 28 April, Hitler and Eva married – he wearing a grey tunic with medals, she a dark silk dress. She signed the certificate, ‘Eva Hitler née Braun’, and celebrated with champagne as the groom retired to dictate ‘my political will’, in which he blamed ‘Jewish interests’ who had been ‘made to atone for their guilt albeit through more humane means’, an oblique reference to the Holocaust. As the couple sat up until 4 a.m., the staff partied wildly. ‘An erotic fever seemed to take possession of everyone,’ recalled Hitler’s secretary. ‘Everywhere even in the dentist’s chair I saw bodies interlocked in lascivious embraces. The women had discarded all modesty … freely exposing their private parts.’

Rising late, Hitler learned that Russian tanks were just 500 yards away. In Milan, Mussolini and his lover had been shot and hung upside down by their feet. After lunch on 30 April, Hitler tested his cyanide on his Alsatian dog Blondi, who died instantly; he then shook hands with his staff and the Hitlers withdrew into their study. The staff waited until the sounds of partying upstairs were interrupted by a shot. The valet peeped inside, then re-emerged. ‘It’s happened,’ he said. Eva Hitler sat, legs drawn up, on the sofa, suffused with the smell of almonds, a sign of cyanide, while Hitler leaned the other way, a finger of blood at his forehead, pistol at his feet, blood spattered on the wallpaper. The bodies were wrapped in a carpet, carried out and burned in the garden as Russian shells exploded nearby. Just over twelve hours later, Zhukov phoned Stalin’s Kuntsevo mansion.

‘Comrade Stalin’s just gone to bed,’ said the bodyguard.

‘Wake him,’ ordered Zhukov.

Stalin picked up the phone. ‘So,’ said Stalin, ‘that’s the end of the bastard. Too bad we couldn’t take him alive. Where’s Hitler’s body?’^*

Germany surrendered three days later as Stalin sent Soviet and Mongolian armies to attack the Japanese in Korea and north China. As American forces fought their way across the Pacific, Hirohito repeatedly demanded Japanese counter-attacks. ‘There’s no sign of any attacks. Why aren’t you carrying them out? Isn’t there some way some place we can win a real victory over the Americans?’ he asked. ‘Do this for me so I can have peace of mind.’