Customer Reviews

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

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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

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.

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.

This book is so much more than what the title suggests. Of course, Mr. Lehmann gives a unique look inside the final days of the life of Adolph Hitler as he hid himself away in his bunker, but he also takes the reader through the hell that was Berlin in April, 1945. To say that the book was engrossing would be an understatement as the intensity of action combined with the sense of desperation turns this book into the type of page-turner that I just could not put down. Another of the most interesting features of this book is the fact that all these moments of intense warfare, face-to-face encounters with Hitler, and final-hour death throes of the Third Reich are being experienced by a sixteen-year-old boy who manages to show a resolution, focus, and courage well beyond his years. Mr. Lehmann gives an honest vision of what it was like to be a young soldier fighting for his country and a political system that he had been raised to believe in, as well as the feeling of disillusionment when the truth of the holocaust was eventually brought to the fore. He very skillfully manages to put a human, even sympathetic face on what the rest of the world regards as one of the darkest forms of evil the world has ever witnessed.

Do yourself a favor and read this book. Highly recommended.

In Hitler's Bunker, Armin Lehmann provides riveting details of his epic life story. We learn of Adolf Hitler's doctrine of hate and how he injected political poison into the mind of every German child living in the Third Reich.

Armin Lehmann was one of them.

Armin's epic journey began with a descent into the horror of world war. At 16 years old, he experienced bloody combat on the Eastern Front, and he sustained serious wounds.

Yet his Fuehrer demanded more of this boy-soldier.

Armin's journey to the deepest recesses of hell was complete when, by a quirk of fate, he entered the Fuehrer's bunker to become one of Hitler's last couriers.

Epic journeys end on an uplifting note, however, and so it was with Armin.

Learning of the Holocaust shortly after turning 17, Armin's moral compass led him away from the Fuerer he so faithfully served. Totally rejecting Hitler and Nazi doctrine, especially anti-semitism, Armin chose to build a new belief system in which he could work for a better world.

Armin Lehmann became a peacemaker, traveling to more than 150 countries to deliver his message of compassion and understanding to all who would listen.

An amazing outcome, especially after reading this horrific account of a German teenager whose fate it was to witness Hitler's last days and live to tell about it.

In Hitler's Bunker is a "must read" for anyone interested in World War II.

Armin Lehmann lived the horrors of the Third Reich growing up in Nazi Germany. Only a child when the war started, Lehmann became a Member of the Hitler Youth, and ended up being one of the Fuhrer's last couriers. His final encounter was just hours before Hitler committed suicide. His story is told in clear descriptive terms, bringing the horror of all out war in vivid perspective. If you want to understand how normal, honorable people can be swept up in the hysteria of an evil movement, this is the book for you. The scenes of battle are realistic and graphic, not heroic and epic. Lehmann is a remarkable man with a incredible tale of a time we may wish to forget, but cannot afford to, lest it happen again.

This outstanding book has my highest recommendation. As a history, it is a riveting firsthand account of Lehmann's life as a 16-year-old in Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. He tells of his training in January 1945 with the Hitler Youth to defend Germany against Russian advances on the eastern front, of his efforts to defend his hometown, Breslau, and of the extraordinary set of circumstances that led to his becoming Adolf Hitler's last courier in the Fuhrerbunker itself! He served in the bunker to the very end.

Lehmann's recollections are honest, vivid, unvarnished, and fresh. This is no reworking of events as is so frequently found in the memoirs of politicians, generals, and assorted hangers-on to the great and powerful. I know of no other such honest and straightforward account of the personalities and activities in the bunker. With the assistance of his co-author, Tim Carroll, Lehmann's personal story is seamlessly integrated into the larger story of the fall of Berlin and the events unfolding in the bunker. That account is extremely well-written and comprehensive, and well worth the price of the book in its own right.

But this is more than just a history well-told; this is also a history lesson. Lehmann presents the story of his youth as a painfully gained case study in war and evil. His aim is to warn others, especially the young, of the mindless horrors of war and of the absolute necessity for the peaceful resolution of conflict. Near the end of the book, he sums it up by saying "My own experience of war has created in me a passionate devotion to peace. Raised in an atmosphere of hate and prejudice, I've surmounted the teachings of my youth and risen to carry the word of peace around the world."

To that end, Lehmann's book recounts his growing revulsion at the suffering and horror all around him, and his ultimate disillusionment with Nazism and its leaders. He is no Nazi apologist. His message is two-fold: Nazism was an evil for all people, including the Germans, and war is a useless tool to resolve conflict. After the war, Lehmann became estranged from his father, who remained an unrepentant Nazi, and Lehmann has devoted the remainder of life to promoting the cause of peace around the world, bringing to that cause the same passion and enthusiasm that he exhibited in defending his homeland.

For readers with an appetite to hear Lehmann's personal story in even greater detail, I heartily recommend his earlier book, Hitler's Last Courier- A Life in Transition, now out of print, which runs to 531 pages. What it may lack in presenting a broader overview of the fall of Berlin, it more than makes up for in its detailed recollections of Lehmann's personal journey from innocent youth, to Hitler's last courier, to advocate for peace. Quite a transition and quite a life!

It's hard sometimes to know what to make of books like this one. People once complicit in crimes who later recant, but only after it is convenient to do so, are always going to be a little suspect. This is true regardless of how sincere their current enlightenment appears to be. Armin Lehmann, the author of this book, is such a person, for he was during World War II a member of the German Hitler Youth. Yes, these were the creepy blond kids with short pants and burning eyes immortalized in Nazi propaganda films. Lehmann was one of them. Some readers will find it impossible to overlook this background and endow him with much credibility now. Others, however, may be inclined to accept his position that he was a gullible teenager at the time, and that he had been brainwashed by a totalitarian state and a father who himself was a dedicated Nazi SS official. Reasonable people can disagree about how much guilt Mr. Lehmann can still be expected to bear. He was nearly seventeen years old at the end of World War II, placing him on a fuzzy line somewhere between innocence and responsibility.

Putting all that aside, however, and trying to evaluate his book strictly on its merits, I find it important and extremely interesting. It's also quite well-written, although Lehmann had a co-author. I would guess the book's literary distinction may reflect more of his collaborator's talent than his own.

The book's historic importance revolves around two of its aspects:

First, we learn much about the nature of totalitarianism here. Lehmann speaks from the perspective of someone who was both a victim of the Nazi system and one of its budding perpetuators. He himself in his epilogue speculates on whether, had Germany won the war, he would ever really have recognized the nature of the regime, or rather remained its loyal supporter. Even though we have to suspect the latter, he doesn't come across as a fundamentally bad person in this book, but rather as someone caught up in the snares of an overwhelming system. His father's perverse parenting would have augmented the trap's power. Like most surviving former Nazis, Lehmann claims to have known nothing about what was actually going on in the concentration camps. While this is probably true, he obviously failed to ponder the issue very deeply. While he says virtually nothing in the book about Nazi ideology, perhaps trying to suggest he didn't really understand or accept it, he was by his own account a blind and true-blue follower of Adolph Hitler. He was thus the embodiment of the psychological syndrome that facilitates totalitarian power.

The second area that Lehmann illuminates for us is the deranged nature of the Nazi leadership itself as the individual principals faced their demise. Lehmann resided in Hitler's bunker complex at the very end, and he experienced first-hand the surrealistic atmosphere that pervaded the place. He reported directly to Artur Axmann, who ran the Hitler Youth. Axmann seems to have been a man of little accomplishment, but weirdly he was one of the individuals whom Hitler took into his tiny inner circle in the war's closing days. Thus, while young Lehmann had minimal contact with Hitler himself, the dictator's personal presence was palpable to him. He could hear his voice at times and occasionally passed him in the hallways. He interacted regularly with Axman and others who took orders from remnants of the Nazi hierarchy, including Hitler.

The reason for Axmann's elevation at the end was that he had pledged to Hitler that every one of his child soldiers was prepared to fight to his death in defense of their Fuhrer. By now, many of Hitler's senior Party henchmen had abandoned him either to escape or to make their own accommodation with the advancing Allied powers. Most of his senior military staff too had ceased taking his orders, recognizing the futility of their military position and seeking to minimize further slaughter among their troops. Paralyzed by paranoia, Hitler seemed to take comfort in Axmann's continued display of the blind and fatal obedience to which he had grown accustomed. Armin Lehmann's own reason for being allowed in the bunker is thus clear, because he was one of the kids upon whose sacrifice Axmann was basing his own claim to last-ditch glory. With Berlin surrounded and under constant bombardment, Lehmann's job was to serve as a courtier running repeatedly back and forth over the killing zone between Hitler's bunker and the Party Chancellery across the street. The boy was nothing if not physically courageous, and he managed to survive a bloody gauntlet that took the lives of most of his young peers.

Apart from the events of his own personal story, Lehmann did not actually witness much of what he reports on in this book. He gleaned the material from later research, and from conversations and rumors communicated to him by various people around him at the time. He tells us about Hitler's curious endgame marriage to Eva Braun, followed almost immediately by their mutual suicide. He pictures for us another mutual suicide too, this one between Magda Goebbels and her notorious and freakish husband Joseph after she had methodically poisoned each of her own six children residing with them there in the bunker. Lehmann describes the drunken sexual revelry that went on day and night in parts of the bunker complex, as the Nazi death wish seemingly found erotic expression in the midst of destruction.

Remote from all this depravity yet presiding over it was the enigmatic Hitler himself. Fastidious and monk-like in his personal habits, he remained a teetotaler and strict vegetarian to the end, tended to by his personal nutritionist. The incongruous fatherly solicitude he showed for his secretaries and other menials in his entourage was punctuated routinely by psychotic outbursts against Jews, Bolsheviks, cowardly German generals, and Nazi party turncoats. We hear all about Hitler's famous German Sheppard Blondi, for whom he seemed to have genuine affection, at least until the end. At that point he sacrificed the dog too, using her to test the cyanide ampules provided to him to facilitate his and his new wife's suicides. He had feared that his most intimate associates now could not be trusted even to give him poison that would work. At least this one fear proved to be ill-found, because the Blondi died instantaneously. Hitler decided on a more foolproof method anyway and shot himself.

Armin Lehmann, of course, did not witness any of these events. His immediate proximity to them, however, gives an authenticity to his account missing from the same stories that have been told by others from a distance in space and time.

This is a very good book, and I recommend it to people seeking better insight into the appalling piece of history that Lehmann lived through. I googled Armin Lehmann after finishing the book, and it seems that he died only a couple of years ago. He had done nothing during the war exposing him to any legal punishment afterward, and he spent most of his later years in the United States working as a travel agent, of all things, in the state of Oregon, an oddly conventional end to a most unconventional life.

very interesting. What a shame and waste of the nation's greatest resource, its youth.

What a great book, and a very quick read. I read it at Barnes and Nobles while my wife was shopping...

Brian - you should definately read this book.