“Hurry up, the coast is clear!” I whispered to my sister Grace as we crept through the concrete corridors and stairways of the Berlin Führerbunker. My heart pounded with equal parts fear and excitement. After several covert time travel adventures sparked by the discovery of our grandparents’ remarkable device, we had just achieved our riskiest leap yet – Berlin, April 1945.
Using our well-honed acting skills, Grace and I managed to blag our way past guards as visiting youth journalists. We wanted to personally document the downfall of the mighty Adolf Hitler in the twilight hours of World War II…without having any influence on the outcome, of course.
“Rich, that’s him!” Grace gasped under her breath as we entered the gloomy meeting room. Standing over a map table barking orders at stone-faced generals was the Führer himself – Hitler in the flesh. He looked older than his 56 years – face pallid, frame tense, eyes feverish. The mythic monster is reduced to an ordinary mortal on the brink of defeat.
As Hitler’s paranoid glare turned toward the odd sight of English adolescents amidst his inner circle, I stepped forward politely.
“Excuse me, Sir,” I started in flawless German (another amazing bonus of Pops’ time machine), “we are journalism students who have long followed your leadership. We hoped to gain your perspective in these difficult days on the future of the Reich.”
Hitler eyed us suspiciously before softening. The appeal of an outside audience for his selective version of events proved irresistible. He invited us back to his private quarters in the huge bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery.
As he launched into defensive rhetoric, Grace jumped in cleverly:
“But Sir, how did such calamity come to pass? Help us understand from your view – will Germany rise again from this?”
Hitler bristled, before asserting with manic confidence, “Calamity? No, no, this is but a minor setback! Our resilient people shall regroup. The Allies and the Bolsheviks may temporarily crush our cities with their bombs, but their decadent systems contain the seeds of their own destruction!”
Outside, the ominous crump of Soviet artillery landing ever nearer punctuated his words. The bunker tremored under the impact shockwaves, the atmosphere was full of fumes from the diesel generators. Hitler’s generals stood motionless, weathered faces caked in grime and resignation. They knew the dire reality, in contrast to their leader’s delusions.
I picked up the thread, feigning ignorance: “But your vision was of an invincible Reich reigning a thousand years. Where exactly did the tide turn?”
Hitler slammed a fist on the table angrily, launching into tirades against his own commanders whom he deemed incompetent failures, followed by manic rants blaming international Jewry, Bolshevism, and even Western indulgence for Germany’s plight.
Grace adopted a sympathetic tone, needling again: “Surely though the Reich also faced challenges at home? Resource shortages, political rifts, rumblings of civil chaos?”
I watched Hitler bristle at her prodding. For a flickering moment, his arrogance cracked into a spasm of fear – a liability for authoritarian regimes built on perceived invincibility.
But then his subsequent eruption of denial stunned with its fervour: “The German people are united behind their visionary leadership! Together with our ally Japan, we shall reverse the present misfortunes imposed upon us by illegitimate external enemies! Our scientists still perfecting new war-winning weaponry!”
Grace subtly rolled her eyes at me. We both knew Japan itself teetered on defeat and remaining Nazi wonder-weapons were fanciful propaganda myths rather than military solutions.
Another massive detonation rocked the bunker, raining fine dust from the ceiling onto the war room map table. We were running out of time.
I asked my final question point-blank: “Mein Führer, should Berlin fall as seems likely soon…what are your personal plans for the future?”
A deafening silence followed, broken only by distant artillery thumps. Hitler glared at me for what felt like ages, his haggard face contorting with what looked like anger, regret, shame and anguish all at war behind those infamous cold blue eyes.
For a moment I thought we had overstepped in our amateur probing. But then Hitler replied with a soft resignation.
“The future? The future is no more. One cannot outrun his fate yet all life must accept the inevitability of…destiny in the end.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, headphones crackled urgently with news of a Red Army tank breakthrough nearby. Hitler withdrew into himself, suddenly looking very small and elderly beneath the theatrical authoritarian posturing. The dictator’s facade melted, revealing the enfeebled man inside.
As advisors burst into hurried commands and countermands around the bunker, I tugged Grace’s arm. Our chance visit had concluded. We melted backwards outside into the crowded corridor. As a cacophony of shouts and boots pounding concrete echoed down the passageway, Grace and I grasped the Time Machine remote and prepared to launch ourselves through time once again back home to Whitby.
“Well, that was intense!” I exclaimed over the din. “Who knew we’d engage Hitler himself in a philosophical debate at the world’s end?”
Hitler took up residence in the Führerbunker on 16 January 1945, and it became the centre of the Nazi regime until the last week of World War II in Europe. Hitler married Eva Braun there on 29 April 1945, less than 40 hours before they committed suicide. West Germany issued a death certificate in 1956
Grace laughed drily, “We pressed our luck, but it paid off hugely. Nobody’s gonna top that 20th-century history class oral report!”
As the Remote gently vibrated for the temporal jump, Grace mused aloud her final takeaway: “In the end under all the layers of villainy, he seemed just a sad old disgraced man facing his mortality.”
With a familiar sudden jolt, our covert visit across war-torn Europe to document living history was complete. Back safe in Nana and Pops’ attic time machine chamber, Grace and I scrambled to scribble down our insights, racing to summarize the greatest exclusive scoop imaginable – a tense interview with the Fuhrer as flames engulfed Berlin. Maybe this future bestseller could even fund university someday!