{"id":9738,"date":"2012-04-30T16:25:08","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T16:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/04\/30\/april-30th-1945-berlin\/"},"modified":"2012-04-30T16:25:08","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T16:25:08","slug":"april-30th-1945-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/04\/30\/april-30th-1945-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"April 30th, 1945, Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why did Hitler commit suicide on this day in his bunker in Berlin in 1945?  One reason was that he didn't want to end up like Mussolini and his girlfriend<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

I was in Hitler's suicide bunker<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the attempts on Hitler's life, in particular Claus von Stauffenberg's <\/a>of July 1944, the Leader of the 1000 Year Reich died by his own hand. <\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum.<\/strong>  I woke up in the middle of the night and asked myself how Hitler could have known how Mussolini and his girlfriend ended up.  After all, the execution of the two Italians occurred on 29 April, 1945, the day before Hitler's murder of Eva Braun and his suicide.  Could Hitler in his Berlin bunker have gotten word that quickly?  Apparently yes, as I discovered when I pulled Antony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945 <\/em>(Penguin, 2002) from the shelf of my well-stocked library:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Apart from Himmler's betrayal, Hitler's other great preoccupation remained his fear of being taken alive by the Russians.  News had come through of Mussolini's execution by partisans and how the bodies of the Duce and his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been hoisted upside down in Milan.  A transcript of the radio report had been prepared in the special outsized 'Fuehrer typeface' which saved Hitler from wearing spectacles.  It was presumably Hitler who underlined in pencil the words 'hanged upside down.'  (p. 357)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For another excerpt from Beevor's book, one  which recounts the savage rape inflicted upon German women by the Soviet army as it approached Berlin from the east, see  They raped every German female from eight to 80<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is important  to rub one's nose in the horrors of history as prophylaxis against the dangerous utopianism of progressives with their Rousseauean fantasies about  man as inherently good. Man is capable of some good, but he is not inherently good.  The study of the history of just the 20th century should disabuse one of that notion once and for all.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why did Hitler commit suicide on this day in his bunker in Berlin in 1945?  One reason was that he didn't want to end up like Mussolini and his girlfriend. I was in Hitler's suicide bunker. Despite the attempts on Hitler's life, in particular Claus von Stauffenberg's of July 1944, the Leader of the 1000 … Continue reading “April 30th, 1945, Berlin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-varia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}