In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days [Hardcover]

Armin D. Lehmann (Author), Tim Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2005

One boy's eyewitness account of Hitler's bunker at the fall of the Third Reich.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lehmann gives a convincing feeling of the nightmare scenario in the bunker."--London Times Sunday Supplement

"A moving tribute to the ability of the human spirit to rise above everything that seeks to destroy it and testimony to the passionate pursuit of peace."--The Morning Star

From the Back Cover

During the last ten days of Hitler's Berlin, thirty thousand German teenagers perished defending their beloved Fuhrer in the Allied onslaught. Armin Lehmann was one of the few boy soldiers who escaped the bloodbath. Like every other member of the Hitler Youth, Lehmann would have gladly given his life for his leader. But he was not to be sacrificed to the enemy at the gate. Instead, he was chosen to serve in the German High Command's bunker complex. It was a stroke of fate that brought him into the company of the most notorious and bizarre Nazis of Hitler's hated Reich: Bormann, Himmler, Göbbels, and, of course, the Führer himself.
When Hitler greeted Lehmann with a friendly tug on the cheek, the sixteen-year-old boy knew he had been granted a unique part in history. And as Germany braced itself for a bloody Gotterdammerung, a horrific drama of Wagnerian proportions unfolded before his young eyes. In Hitler's Bunker is a fascinating vision of the Nazi apocalypse that combines Lehmann's eyewitness account with what is known to have occurred. It is also the story of how his unquestioning fanaticism won him that role in the final act of the Third Reich. It takes
us back to his boyhood and the brutal SA officer father who instilled the Nazi's hateful creed in his son, and follows Lehmann's odyssey through the ranks of the Hitler Youth, joining when he was only ten and winning two Iron Crosses for his bravery in battle. It is the story of how Lehmann gradually realized the full horror of his unquestioning participation, and his quest for the truth that took him in the footsteps of Mahatma Ghandi and to a meeting with Albert Schweitzer. Above all, In Hitler's Bunker is the story of how one man came to discover a past he had lived through but not seen, and how he came to deal with his regrets.
Armin D. Lehmann, after his experiences in Hitler's Germany, was arrested by the U.S. military and underwent the "denazification" process. After a career in the travel industry, he moved to the United States and has become an outspoken pacifist and peacemaker.
Tim Carroll is a British newspaper journalist and television producer. He is also the author of The Great Escapers and Woody's Women.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press; First edition (January 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592285783
• ISBN-13: 978-1592285785
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #490,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( H ) > Hitler, Adolf

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In Hitlers Bunker by Armin Lehmann, March 2, 2006

By 

CAB Sanders - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days (Hardcover)

At first sight, just another "I Saw Hitler`s Bunker" book - this is in fact a much broader memoir written by a witness to the fall of Berlin in 1945.

Written many years later and published in 2004, this memoir covers the period between 1928 and 1945, during the rise and subsequent fall of the Third Reich.

Armin Lehmann was, in April 1945 a 16 year old member of the Hitler Youth involved in those events - he had recently been involved in actions near Breslau, during which he was awarded the Iron Cross Class 2. During the battle for Berlin he was employed as a "runner" (courrier)carrying messages between Hitler`s headquarters and a variety of German units already doomed by the massive Soviet assault on the German Capital.

His book starts with a description of his childhood and upbringing in Silesia and schooling in the State system of the 1930`s. His relations with his mother and grandmother are warm and constructive, in contrast to his father, an early member of the SS, which are cold and unfriendly.

In January 1945 he abandons a basic military training course and returns to his Hitler Youth unit in the North, which is assigned to the defence of a village near Breslau. He is wounded but nevertheless provides assistance to other casualties and is awarded the Iron Cross (Class 2). On 20 April 1945 he is called to the Fuhrer`s birthday celebration in Berlin to be presented to Hitler, in company with 25 or so other SS and HJ members.

Subsequently appointed a courrier, with a motor bike driver, his missions take him around the decreasing area around Berlin with messages and orders from the High Commmand to the hotch-potch of German units still resisting the Soviet advance into the centre of Berlin.

He is subsequently awarded a further decoration - Iron Cross (Class 1)

Lehmann gives a vivid description of the Armagedon of the Third Reich from a first hand viewpoint, which is valuable. Most of those incarcerated in Hitler`s Bunker had little opportunity to see what was actually happening in the streets outside.

Telephoned reports from senior Wermacht commanders gave a distorted picture to Hitler and his High Command as to what was going on.

Lehmann`s memoir is therefore almost unique in that respect. It is also written with considerable honesty, and pulls no punches over the issue of Hitler`s betrayal of his subjects towards the end.

There have been a number of reviews published on Lehmann`s work which are critical of his lack of clairvoyance regarding the evils of the Nazi regime - on the assumption that a boy of his experience and background should have realised the extent those evils. These should be taken against the broadly accepted subservience of many senior German officers and functionaries to Hitler`s moral influence.

To expect a sixteen year old to go against that broad political thrust is unrealistic. Those who would claim that the many Germans, who later claimed ignorance of the evils committed by the Nazi regime, are lying are recommended to review the evidence of Christabel Bielenberg.

She, the British wife of a German anti-Nazi, also lived in Berlin during World War 2. She later claimed (in a BBC interview) that as a post-war journalist she had access to, and trawled, the German news archives of the wartime years, but she found nothing to indicate in what had been fed to the German public, any evidence of excesses in for instance, the concentration camps.

Mrs Bielenberg was certainly no friend of the Nazi regime and her evidence supports Lehmann`s claim that he too was ignorant of those terrible activities.

In any case Mr Lehmann has a clear record post-war as an opponent of those who would mitigate the responsibilty of Hitler and his subordinates for the crimes they committed. Now a naturalised American he is noteable for his lectures to contemporary students on this subject.

His memoir can with some confidence be accepted as an honest report - within the acceptable scope of innaccuracies involved in any eye-witness account written years after the event.

The main criticism of his work is his detailed account of high level events in Hitler`s bunker, some of which it seems unlikely he actually witnessed himself - these give the impression of having been "re-constructed" from other sources. Thus it is easy to conclude an editorial priority aimed at selling his story.

Although adding little of direct value to his account - (these events have been well written up elsewhere) - this is perhaps understandable, in the sense that a backdrop to his experiences helps to build up a picture of what was going on at the time.

Recommended.

AS

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good and bad, September 5, 2007

By 

J. Pilon "tallkooljp" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days (Hardcover)

Okay the good part, it is written very clearly in an easy to read way and adds some color to a fascinating time period. The bad part, I think this writer watched "Downfall" and copied a ton of what was said and shown in there and then added a little bit of his experiences that he could remember. There is no way some 15 year old kid knew what was being said in Hitler's situation conferences, thoughts of the top tier of the NSDAP party members, who was sleeping with whom and so on. There is a lot of filler in this to get enough material for a book here.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking and Intense account of the Madness of War., June 14, 2005

By 

Mariano Vassalluzzo (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days (Hardcover)

Armin was 16 years old when he started serving as a military mailman under the orders of Artur Axmann, a fanatic nazi who was the Reich Youth Leader and was very close to Hitler, during the last days of the Nazi Regime in Berlin. Armin's trivial military position in that crucial historic moment made him an outstanding witness of the wild frezny lived in Hitler's Bunker, the surroundings of the Wilhelmstrasse and the outskirts of Berlin immediately before the Russian occupation of the Nazi captital.
The author makes a lively, absorbing and shocking account of how he and his friend Hannes, another young military mailman, drove in a motorcycle around the streets of Berlin in order to deliver the last military messages of the Nazi leadership to the front lines (or what was left of them). During this description, Armin makes a wonderful job by transmiting the sense of confusion, terror and misery he and Hannes felt in the battle zones, the same feelings any private or civilian must have felt in any combat zone during those crazy times.
He combines this lively account of his personal struggle with the events occurring inside Hitler's Bunker. I will not anticipate what were Hitler, the Goebbles and other nazi authorities doing in that "comfortable shelter" during those last days, but be prepared for some real-life insane behaviours!
I believe the combination of Armin's personal experiencies in the war, with the not less astonishing history inside Hitler's Bunker, is what makes this book so intense and dynamic.
More than once, you will experience a kind of dreadful, intolerable pitty for the Nazi Party Bastards who were all of the sudden a revealing a human, and sometimes even compassionate, side.