LAST SURVIVOR OF HITLER’S BERLIN BUNKER CROAKS

He steadfastly claimed that ‘the boss’ was ‘so nice and so friendly,’ and never said anything about wiping out the Jews.

HITLER’S BODYGUARD WHO WAS ONE OF THE FIRST MEN TO FIND THE FUHRER DEAD IN HIS BUNKER DIES AGED 96
Rochus Misch, the bodyguard, saw Hitler after he had killed himself in Führerbunker, Berlin

By Lizzie Edmonds

Mail Online
September 6, 2013

Hitler's bodyguard, the last surviving member of the Fuhrer’s entourage who was with him in the Berlin bunker on the day he killed himself, has died aged 96.

Rochus Misch was a member of the SS and deeply admired Hitler, calling him ‘the Boss’ up until the end of his own life.

He was the telephone operator in the underground refuge when Hitler and his bride Eva Braun killed themselves on April 30, 1945.

Misch died in a hospital less than three miles from the site of the bunker near the Brandenburg Gate.

He was born in 1917 and joined the SS in 1937. After being wounded in battle he was assigned to the Fuhrer’s SS Escort.

He steadfastly claimed after the war that he never heard Hitler talking about the destruction of the Jews, nor was he ever asked to transmit a message about the Holocaust through the equipment entrusted to him.

‘He was so nice, so friendly,’ he would say. ‘The Boss was good to me. I can never imagine him as a mass murderer.

As the war went on he became more lonely, staring for hours on end at a portrait of Frederick the Great. The war took a great toll on him.’

He also recalled seeing the bodies of Hitler and Braun after they killed themselves.

‘I saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table. Eva Braun was lying on the sofa. Her knees were drawn tightly up to her chest.’

Misch was captured by the Russians in May 1945 and taken to Moscow, where he was tortured.

After eight years in prison camps he returned to Berlin and took over a friend’s painting business.

He was even consulted by Christopher McQuarrie, the writer of 2008 film Valkyrie, about an assassination attempt on Hitler's life.

Hollywood actor Tom Cruise, who starred in the film, refused to meet Misch and told the Los Angeles Times: 'I didn't want to meet him. Evil is still evil, I don't care how old you are.'

With the death of Hitler Youth courier Armin Lehmann on October 10, 2008, Misch was the last survivor of the Führerbunker staff.