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Adolf Hitler had ranted “Germans deserve to perish” and was a “broken man” just days before he took his own life in 1945, according to newly disclosed documents.
Hitler told senior Nazis that “everyone has lied to me, everyone has deceived me” just eight days before he killed himself in his bunker, declassified diaries that Guy Liddell, head of counter-espionage at MI5, kept during the 1940s and 50s, have revealed.
Hitler ranted that the German people had not fought with enough heroism and they “deserved to perish”, according to the documents.
Liddell includes in his diaries a Joint Intelligence Committee paper detailing Hitler’s final days.
During a conference on April 22nd, 1945, Hitler gave a speech to his assembled generals and Heinrich Himmler, his minister of the interior.
The report states: “Hitler came in at 8:30 a completely broken man. Only a few army officers were with him. Himmler urged Hitler to leave Berlin. Suddenly, Hitler began to make one of his characteristic speeches”.
“Everyone has lied to me, everyone has deceived me, no one has told me the truth. The armed forces have lied to me and now the SS has left me in the lurch. The German people have not fought heroically. It deserves to perish,” Hitler had said according to the report.
“It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people,” he had said.
The report continues: “Then his face turned purple, his twitching left arm became quiet, and he could not put his left foot on the ground properly. Throughout that night he suffered from a nervous collapse and kept on raving that he would meet his end in Berlin.”
On the night he killed himself however, Albert Speer, the then minister of armaments, said he was “calm”.
While witnesses said Hitler remained defiant to the last, however, Liddell’s diaries also contain reference to a letter from Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister.
“He said that neither he nor Hitler had ever wanted a war with England and that he himself had always regarded England as his second home. He was sure the future lay in close collaboration between England and Germany,” Liddell writes.
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