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167 D Chapter Forty-Eight d last Visit to daChau OnApril 21,1945,a Saturday,Else Niemoeller traveled from Leoni on Lake Sternberg to the Dachau Concentration Camp for the last time. It was the day after Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday , which he spent in the Reich Chancellery bunker in the beleaguered capital of Berlin, surrounded by some of his most faithful accomplices and the woman who would become Eva Hitler for the last few hours in her life.While Soviet troops encircled Berlin,preparing to penetrate the heart of the city,theAmericans were approaching Munich from the south.On April 7,Martin wrote in his diary that,for the first time,the roar of cannons could be heard. The chaotic atmosphere prevailing in the entire camp did not escape Else; everyone seemed busy packing, the offices having already been stripped of furniture and appliances. The time allotted with her husband was brief. She found him more depressed and nervous thanever.Rumorshadreachedhimthroughthecampgrapevinethatanumberof prominent political prisoners from other concentration camps all over the “Reich” had been brought to Dachau to be deported with him. Among the new arrivals, hermetically sealed off from the other inmates who would soon be driven from the camp like cattle, were the former Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg with his wife and little daughter,former French Minister-President Léon Blum, the Italian General Sante Garibaldi, Commander in Chief of the Greek Forces Alexander Papagos, the two British spies Best and Stevens, and the Prime Minister of Hungary Miklós Kalláy. In addition, the German generals von Falkenhausen, Halder, and Thomas, as well as a number of surviving members of the Stauffenberg family, including Colonel von Bonin, who refused obedience to the führer, and Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s former finance minister until he fell out of grace. “They want to deport us. I don’t want to be deported,” Martin continually repeated, though he had hardly a say in the decision, should it come to pass. As the situation grew more precarious,the pastor,his nerves at the breaking point after eight years of captivity and the loss of two children, lost his composure. The prospect that he and other high-ranking inmates would indeed be taken south as Hitler’s most valuable hostages sent Martin into a fit of rage. The Catholic priests, in despair over not being able to calm him down, summoned Colonel Dick Stevens in the hope that the British officer would talk sense into their raging fellow prisoner. Martin threatened to kill anyone who would force him to leave his cell against his will. Dick finally succeeded in convincing him Part two 168 that, in order to be liberated by the Americans, they had to leave the camp, which was still crawling with SS. With her heart heavier than ever, Else Niemoeller left Dachau. When, if ever, would she see her husband again? ...

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