The quiet suburban street in Cambridge, England, offered no hint of the dark history its newest resident had left behind in the smoldering ruins of Berlin. But in May 1985, a reporter from the Daily Mirror, acting on a tip, knocked on the door of a comfortable home and found himself face-to-face with a formidable 70-year-old woman who gave him short shrift. The woman, known to her neighbors as Mrs.
Elsa James, was a British housewife. Yet, the story she refused to tell was one of the most explosive of the Second World War, a secret she had guarded for forty years, a secret that connected her directly to the inner sanctum of Adolf Hitler’s final days.
Mrs. James was, in fact, Elsa Krüger, the chief secretary to Martin Bormann, the sinister and powerful head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary and gatekeeper, had vanished into thin air on May 2, 1945, as Soviet forces tore Berlin apart.
His fate remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of the war, a mystery that Krüger, the woman who had worked at his side until the very end, held the keys to. Her transformation from a high-ranking cog in the Nazi machine to a quiet British housewife was as extraordinary as her absolute and enigmatic refusal to discuss the last days of Hitler’s life, a period she had witnessed firsthand, rebuffing historians and reporters throughout her entire life.
Born in Hamburg in February 1915, Krüger had joined Bormann’s staff in late 1942. As the war turned against Germany, she ascended to preside over a pool of thirty secretaries and typists who worked for Bormann. In the last weeks of the war, she spent large amounts of time at his side in the Führerbunker, dealing with his constant reports and instructions, working closely alongside Hitler’s remaining secretaries, Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge.
When Hitler initiated Operation Serail, the evacuation of many bunker staff and files to the relative safety of Obersalzberg in Bavaria, Krüger volunteered to remain in the bunker with a handful of Hitler’s female staff, including Christian, Junge, and his dietician, Constanze Manziarly.
As Soviet forces closed in on the city, the atmosphere in the bunker became one of frantic desperation. Krüger and Christian were even believed dead for some time after the war, as they were listed as air passengers on the last evacuation flight on April 23, 1945, an aircraft that crashed in Bavaria. Their luggage was recovered from the wreckage, leading to the assumption they had perished.
But Krüger remained resolutely at her post, becoming very friendly with Hitler’s girlfriend, Eva Braun, and sometimes taking tea with her and Hitler in the bunker during the chaotic final days. It was a surreal existence, a cocktail of intimacy with the most hated man in the world and the grim reality of a collapsing empire.
During this period, Martin Bormann was continuing his intrigues around Hitler whilst also making arrangements for his own survival. He sent messages to Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler’s nominated successor, at his headquarters in Flensburg in Northern Germany, making clear his intention to join him shortly and take up a position in the new Nazi government. The authority for that new government would lie in a document Hitler dictated to his secretary Traudl Junge in the early hours of April 29, 1945: his political Testament.
Krüger was involved with the drafting and copying of this document, as well as Hitler’s private will and personal testament, which Hitler eventually signed after many revisions at 4:00 a. m. on April 29.
The political Testament was in two parts, and part two set out Hitler’s intentions for the German government and Nazi party after his death. Dönitz was named as President of the Reich and Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces, with Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, appointed Chancellor of the Reich and Martin Bormann as Party Minister.
It was necessary for copies of these legal documents to be delivered personally to Dönitz. Three copies were made by Junge, with the probable assistance of Krüger, and were sent out by three couriers from Hitler and Bormann’s staff. None actually made it to Dönitz in the north, and these copies were either captured or destroyed.
However, the story of these documents was far from over, as forgotten archival documents would later reveal the existence of a fourth, unknown copy of Hitler’s will and personal and political testaments that survived the war.
Elsa Krüger was present at Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun and again shortly before their alleged suicides. She was part of the lineup of bunker staff that Hitler and his wife bade farewell to on the afternoon of April 30, 1945, shaking Hitler’s hand and embracing Eva before they disappeared into Hitler’s study for the final time. Thereafter, Krüger returned to her work alongside a stressed, exhausted, and heavy-drinking Bormann as an attempt was made by new Reich Chancellor Goebbels to negotiate a ceasefire with the Soviets.
Goebbels failed and committed suicide on May 1. Bormann was now the most senior Nazi official in the Führerbunker.
SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke, the battle commandant of the government district where heavy fighting still continued, had been given permission by Hitler to organize a breakout attempt by the remaining bunker personnel and defense troops. The plan was to infiltrate through Soviet lines and head northwest out of Berlin. Ten escape groups were organized, and Krüger, Junge, Christian, and Manziarly were included in group one, led by Mohnke himself.
Bormann would leave with group number three. Interestingly, Krüger had been the secretary who had been ordered to draft the lists of who should go in which group. She had typed them all up, and Mohnke had then taken them into Hitler for his final signature.
Krüger said little of the final days in the bunker. The one thing she did fairly consistently tell people was that Bormann was dead, that he couldn’t have survived outside of the bunker. In the affidavit she gave to US Army intelligence on June 17, 1946, she described speaking to Bormann for the last time on May 1, 1945.
She claimed that at the time she no longer worked for Bormann. His last words to her, which she recalled in 1946, were from a chance encounter: “So goodbye, this doesn’t make much sense.” Bormann referred to the breakout attempt due to begin that night.
He added, “I will try, but I’m sure I won’t get through.”
Krüger’s statements concerning Bormann’s fate were unequivocal. At the Nuremberg trial, where she appeared as a witness at Bormann’s trial in absentia, she said, “He must have died. He was not streetwise, a fatal thing to be in the Berlin of May 1945.”
She basically spoke ill of Bormann, a strange position when one considers that she had volunteered to remain at his side as his chief secretary in the Führerbunker, refusing evacuation to Bavaria. Her utterances at the Nuremberg trials were quite damning concerning her former boss. She said that Bormann “was a brutal man of violent temper and rude manners.
He was helpless when left on his own.” She also added, “I feel pretty certain that Bormann was killed and the Russians picked up his body without realizing who he was. He was not wearing any insignia of rank and could easily have been mistaken for an ordinary SS trooper.
There were innumerable bodies lying about in the streets. If he did get away, he would have been caught by now. He wasn’t clever enough to last so long.”
Both Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge said to postwar researcher James P. O’Donnell, a former US Army intelligence officer, that in their opinion, Krüger was Bormann’s mistress. Could Krüger’s damning comments about Martin Bormann be a case of the lady protesting too much?
More than one author would suggest that Krüger’s statements concerning Bormann’s fate were designed for Allied consumption. And of course, her complete refusal to discuss what happened in the bunker or to Martin Bormann was deeply suspicious.
The night of May 1-2 saw the breakout from the ruined Reich Chancellery proceed. The women taking part dressed in army uniforms stripped of insignia and wearing steel helmets. A curious incident allegedly occurred before group one departed when Brigadeführer Mohnke handed Hitler’s secretary Gerda Christian a small pouch of loose diamonds for safekeeping.
A ridiculous story was later spun by bunker participants that the diamonds had actually been held by General Burgdorf, Hitler’s Army adjutant, for use in the construction of high-level Nazi awards. If so, they would have been in the Berlin jewelers that made such medals, not in Hitler’s bunker. Clearly, small bags of diamonds were some of the best mobile wealth for fugitives to take when going on the run.
They were light, easy to conceal, and very valuable. Others have suggested that Christian gave this pouch of diamonds to Elsa Krüger to carry. Either way, though both Christian and Krüger managed to escape to Western Allied lines, the diamonds were never seen again, and both denied ever having had them.
It was also alleged by none other than General Mohnke himself, who survived a decade of Soviet captivity before moving to West Germany and giving many interviews about Hitler’s last days, that Christian or Krüger was given the until-then unknown fourth copy of Hitler’s political Testament. If true, then this made either or both of these secretaries official couriers. Further corroboration of Krüger’s purported courier role came from Krüger herself in a letter uncovered in the archives of famous British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Krüger wrote on February 22, 1977, to Trevor-Roper that “we,” meaning Krüger and Christian, “had a letter from Goebbels to Dönitz.” If they were carrying a letter from the deceased Reich Chancellor Goebbels to the new Reich President Dönitz, they sound like couriers to me. However, as will be seen, in later life Krüger took measures to deny having had any official function during the escape from Berlin or to be in possession of the fourth copy of Hitler’s political Testament as alleged by Mohnke.
So how did Krüger manage to escape from Berlin when nearly everyone else was either captured or killed? As stated, leading group one was Brigadeführer Mohnke, and the other prominent male members of this group were SS-Oberführer Otto Günsche, Hitler’s personal adjutant; Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s representative at Führer headquarters, Walter Hewel; and Vice Admiral Hans-Erich Voss, Hitler’s Naval liaison officer. Apart from the four women, including Krüger, and Mohnke, Günsche, Hewel, and Voss, the group also contained some other SS officers and SS troops from Hitler’s escort command, all heavily armed.
On the night of May 1, 1945, these people, in small groups, crossed from the Reich Chancellery’s court of honor to Wilhelmplatz under sporadic Soviet fire. They ran to the Kaiserhof U-Bahn station entrance and walked along the relatively safe underground tunnels to Friedrichstrasse station. A blocked tunnel forced them onto the street.
One part of the group had already disappeared into the crowds at Friedrichstrasse station, but Mohnke led the bulk of the group across the Weidendamm Bridge to the other side of the Spree River.
They proceeded through the courtyards of the Charité hospital and via connecting cellars onto Scharnhorststrasse, eventually making it to the Stettiner Bahnhof, reduced in numbers by now by desertions and casualties to only 20 to 25 people, including the four women. Coming under machine-gun fire from two Soviet T-34 tanks, the group got smaller still before, on the morning of May 2, the survivors entered the big air raid shelter next to the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer brewery on Quitzowstrasse. The brewery and cellars were full of hundreds of German troops from many units, and the brewery was also the command post for Oberst Harry Herrmann, commanding what was left of the Ninth Parachute Division.
Mohnke conferred with the senior officers present, hoping to continue with the breakout attempt, and many more Führerbunker personnel also turned up among them, including the former commanding officer of Hitler’s bodyguard unit, SS-Gruppenführer Johann Rattenhuber.
Interestingly, Krüger told the Nuremberg trial that Rattenhuber had informed her of Bormann’s death, having been a member of Bormann’s escape group. “I met SS-Gruppenführer Rattenhuber on the way. He was a member of Bormann’s escape party and told me their Panzer had been hit while they were crossing the Friedrichstrasse bridge over the Spree.
He said he last saw Bormann lying face downward on the bridge, either dead or severely wounded.” At 3 p. m.
, Soviet officers approached the brewery as a truce was then already in operation. They demanded the Germans lay down their arms and surrender. At this point, Otto Günsche spoke to the secretaries and Hitler’s dietician, advising them to leave the air raid shelter and try to make it by themselves.
They agreed, and a version of the story has Mohnke giving Gerda Christian the small bag of diamonds at this point. Either way, the women left as one group, including Elsa Krüger.
It appeared that Krüger was intent on going northwest towards where Grand Admiral Dönitz’s new government was in operation, which would take her into British-controlled territory. Bormann had apparently urged Krüger to only fall into British hands if she was to be captured, claiming that “the British will behave like gentlemen.” Don’t forget, Krüger came from Hamburg and would have had relations and friends still living in the area, and Hamburg was indeed captured by the British on May 3, 1945.
She probably felt most comfortable with the British, as she and her sister had worked as au pairs in Britain in the 1930s, working for the families of managers of Shell. The work was arranged by Sir Henry Deterding, who heavily funded the Nazi party during its early years and died in 1939.
After leaving the brewery, the women split into two groups: Traudl Junge and Constanze Manziarly in one, and Krüger and Gerda Christian in the other. Junge left Manziarly to go and try to find some civilian clothes for both of them and returned to see Manziarly being led towards a U-Bahn station entrance by two armed Soviet soldiers. She was never seen alive again.
Traudl Junge went on alone. Her intention was to reach the British Zone as well, but lacking any money, no papers, and no luggage, she nonetheless made it to the countryside outside of Berlin, walking for several days, sleeping in barns or sometimes in farmhouses and being given the odd bits of food and clothing along the way. Incredibly, whilst on the run, she ran into another Führerbunker fugitive, SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chief driver, who was on his way to try to cross the Elbe River.
In fact, Kempka made it all the way to Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, being apprehended by US troops on June 20, 1945. Junge couldn’t reach Western Allied lines, and eventually she went back to Berlin, arriving in June 1945, and was eventually identified and picked up by the Soviets. She was later released into the British sector of West Berlin in December 1945, suffering from diphtheria.
As for Christian and Krüger, their journey was somewhat different. According to statements made by Krüger and Christian, they managed to get to British lines by somehow getting themselves aboard a repatriation train returning French forced laborers from the Soviet zone, themselves posing as French female workers. Apparently, their cover was seen through by French officers on the train, who had the Soviets haul the two women off of it.
However, after speaking to the British train commander, he smuggled them back aboard. In this manner, Bormann’s secretary and Hitler’s secretary disappeared into the chaos of Northwestern Germany. If you recall, the two women had in their possession a letter from Dr.
Goebbels for Reich President Dönitz, an odd thing to be carrying in a breakout attempt. Could such a high-level letter have been some kind of covering note issued to the couriers carrying copies of Hitler’s last will and testament to Dönitz? Whatever its purpose or contents, we will never know.
So what became of this fascinating historical object? In the letter found in the archives from Krüger to Hugh Trevor-Roper, dated February 22, 1977, she tells us, “We had a letter from Goebbels to Dönitz and this, together with personal papers, we tore into pieces and flushed down a lavatory within hours after leaving Berlin.”
Elsa Krüger settled in Hamburg and began work as a clerk in an office but was eventually identified and picked up by British military police for questioning. She was one of the key witnesses to the inner workings of Hitler’s government and court, and as Bormann’s chief secretary, she had been privy to immense amounts of information concerning Bormann’s activities. She was also one of only a handful of people who had successfully escaped the Führerbunker and made it to the West.
Most of the others were either dead, missing, or in Soviet detention. She was subjected to interrogations by both British and American intelligence, keen to find out Hitler’s fate and that of Bormann. But here, things are a little strange.
She did speak at length with then-Major Hugh Trevor-Roper of the Intelligence Corps, who used her memories as a major part of his 1947 best-selling book, “The Last Days of Hitler.” But it was the relationship she developed with her other British Army interrogator, Captain Leslie J. James of the Intelligence Corps, that raises eyebrows still.
When she appeared at the Nuremberg trial, a newspaper article noted of Krüger, “Tall, blue-eyed, with a great shock of honey-colored hair, Miss Krüger enjoyed Hitler’s admiration because he believed she corresponded to his Nordic racial theories.” Krüger also had Captain James’s admiration, and the two formed a relationship while she was in British custody, a relationship that became official when she was released. During her appearance at Nuremberg, Krüger was lodged in an American-controlled rooming house in the city, which was run by Hungarian aristocrat Countess Ingeborg Kalnoky.
Countess Kalnoky would go on to write a book about this subject. The actual book was published in 1974; however, the Harvard Law School library holds the original unedited manuscript by the Countess. Countess Kalnoky spoke to Krüger frequently but felt that she was hiding something.
Krüger told Kalnoky that Bormann was dead, which is what she also said to the court.
Another witness staying at the Kalnoky house was Hitler’s official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who despised Bormann. Bormann had deliberately had him sidelined and later excluded from Hitler’s inner circle. Kalnoky states that “Hoffmann tried to draw her out about certain of her former boss’s actions and his relationship with Hitler, but Frau Krüger, though always friendly, was most unresponsive.
The one topic of conversation she avoided was her late employer. He’s got her trained like a poodle,” was Hoffmann’s disgusted assessment of Frau Krüger. And this was to be Krüger’s attitude to the subject of Bormann and Hitler for the rest of her long life: an almost complete refusal to discuss that period of her life.
And like Countess Kalnoky and Heinrich Hoffmann, many others have wondered whether she had something to hide.
After her release from British custody in 1947, Krüger moved to England with her former interrogator, Captain James, who had been demobilized. They married at Wrexham registry office at Christmas 1947 and moved into Ivy Cottage, Green Lane, in Wrexham, outside Liverpool. Locals thought Mrs.
James was Danish and accepted her as a war bride. Leslie James pursued a career as an academic, gaining his PhD. No one knew of her previous life as Martin Bormann’s secretary.
Her son Harold was born in 1956 when Krüger was 41 years old, but no other children followed. At this time, Krüger and her husband were living in Bedford. Dr.
James took a post teaching at Cambridge University in the late 1960s, and Elsa was not bothered by her past until she was approached by former US intelligence officer James P. O’Donnell, who was researching his now-famous book, “The Berlin Bunker.” This is where the problems started.
O’Donnell managed to track Krüger down to Cambridge, and she and her husband were living at 1 Lantons Down Road, a leafy suburb of the city. She spoke only briefly to O’Donnell about the war. “After all these years, she fights tooth and nail to stop the truth coming out,” said O’Donnell to the Liverpool Echo in May 1985.
“Personally, whenever I have met her, she strikes me as being hard and not at all pleasant. I wonder if she feels remorse.” O’Donnell’s book was due to be published in the UK and US in 1979, but for a couple of years before, Krüger fought tooth and nail to have passages of O’Donnell’s manuscript changed or deleted that mentioned her and her activities.
Three unpublished letters she sent to none other than Hugh Trevor-Roper, the man who had interrogated her back in 1945, were found, outlining her legal battles over O’Donnell’s book and the help that Trevor-Roper had given to the couple. In them, she accused Brigadeführer Mohnke of being a liar concerning her or Gerda Christian having been in possession of the mysterious fourth copy of Hitler’s last will and testament. But she did nonetheless confirm that such a document had existed.
In a letter dated April 14, 1977, she wrote to Trevor-Roper, “I believe there were only four copies of the will typed by Frau Junge in one operation, as one original and three copies, as is the habit in Germany to say, meaning one original and three copies.”
Mohnke suggested that he had given a bag of diamonds and a copy of the will to Krüger during the breakout on May 1-2, 1945. This was recounted in O’Donnell’s book, which Krüger disputed legally through her Berlin lawyer. Her correspondence with Trevor-Roper indicated she spent some time trying to get this thing changed before they went to publication, as she says here: “I do not see why I should let Mohnke spread completely false statements about me as these may again be taken up at any time by journalists.
My present efforts are directed at getting the publishers to agree as soon as possible not to publish the false statements about me in future editions. I hope, of course, without resorting to legal proceedings.” But Mohnke refused to withdraw the statement he had made to O’Donnell.
It should be noted that Gerda Christian backed up Krüger’s denials concerning both the diamonds and also Hitler’s will. Krüger was emphatic on this point to Trevor-Roper: “As I said before, I and Frau Christian were definitely not given any copy of the will.” But she admitted to possessing and later destroying a letter from Goebbels to Dönitz.
Krüger believed the location of the fourth copy of the will was to do with Dr. Goebbels’s attempted negotiations with the Soviets on May 1, 1945, negotiations that fell but took place between General Krebs of Hitler’s staff and General Zhukov of the Soviets. In Krüger’s opinion, Mohnke was lying to cover up the fact that he, an SS General, had turned over the fourth copy of Hitler’s last will and testament to the Soviets when he had surrendered at the brewery on May 2, 1945.
As she explained to Hugh Trevor-Roper in 1977: “I think Krebs may have shown the original Testament to Zhukov but brought it back with him in order to return it to Goebbels or Bormann. It seems to me extremely unlikely that Krebs left this will with Zhukov as his mission was not successful. I had long talks with Krebs alone before and after he went to the Russians, and he expressed repeatedly his fundamental distrust.
After Krebs returned, he probably gave the will back to Goebbels or Bormann. I believe that it was then handed over to Mohnke to be taken out by him to Dönitz. Mohnke, I believe, soon after his surrender to the Russians, then handed the will over, and it came into Zhukov’s possession.”
However, as Krüger and Christian were in possession of the official letter from Dr. Goebbels to Reich President Dönitz, it could also be argued that perhaps Mohnke was right. Perhaps he did hand over the last will and testament to either of these two secretaries to take out rather than surrender this document to the Soviets.
After all, the secretaries were going to attempt to escape from the brewery area, and it was common knowledge that copies of Hitler’s last will and testament had been sent, three in fact, ahead of this fourth copy in an attempt to reach Dönitz. It was deemed extremely important to the remaining bunker leadership. Krüger never explains why they were in possession of the Goebbels letter, and perhaps this fourth copy of Hitler’s last will and testament went the same way of that letter, torn into pieces and flushed down a lavatory.
Krüger’s relationship with Hugh Trevor-Roper was interesting in itself. As Major Trevor-Roper of the Intelligence Corps, he had, as mentioned, extensively questioned her after her capture in 1945 when she was a prisoner of the British. Her testimony formed a large part of his best-selling book on Hitler’s last days.
Though it should be noted that over subsequent decades, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s book underwent constant revisions as more and more information came out from both the East and new witnesses, and many things were found to be incorrect in the original version. Elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Dacre of Glanton in 1979, Trevor-Roper was elected Master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1980, while Krüger and her husband were living in the city and Dr. James was lecturing at Cambridge University.
James was also a fellow of Merton College. In 1985, the Liverpool Echo newspaper, whose reporter had tracked Krüger to Cambridge, telephoned Lord Dacre at Peterhouse. He was asked if he ever knew her husband, former Intelligence Corps Captain Leslie James, who had been in the same small section of the British army investigating Nazis in British-occupied Germany.
Lord Dacre “denied any knowledge of Leslie James,” which, considering the letters that passed between him and Elsa Krüger on World War II matters, stretches credibility.
O’Donnell’s book, published in 1979, was changed in the UK edition to alter references to Krüger, but not in the US version. The Jameses decided to move to West Germany, and interest in Elsa Krüger once more abated. Leslie James later suffered a stroke, and Elsa cared for her husband until his death in 1995.
Elsa James, née Krüger, died in Germany on January 24, 2005, at the age of 89, taking her secrets with her to the grave. During the course of researching this project, attempts were made to contact Krüger’s son, Harold James, but a journalist who had had some contact with Harold in the past reported that he, like his mother, has nothing to say about his mother’s wartime activities.
So what are we left with? Elsa Krüger definitely knew fascinating things concerning Bormann and also Hitler’s last days, perhaps things that might change our entire perspective of what occurred in the bunker and what happened to Hitler and Eva Braun, and also, of course, what happened to Bormann. But for some unknown reason, she refused, unlike most of the bunker survivors, to discuss them with historians for posterity.
Yes, she did give some information to Trevor-Roper whilst a prisoner of the British, but wasn’t questioned in later decades as new information or versions of stories appeared or were challenged in print and interviews, particularly concerning Bormann and his fate. Most of the bunker survivors wrote books and cashed in on their experiences, but not Elsa Krüger. And also interestingly, her escape companion Gerda Christian also remained silent after the war.
The obvious question is why. Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian, when interviewed by O’Donnell, both stated that Krüger was having an 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 with Bormann, and when O’Donnell asked Krüger if this was true, she neither confirmed nor denied it.
There was definitely an awful lot more to the enigmatic Elsa Krüger than has been released in the public domain. Countess Kalnoky’s assessment that Krüger was likely hiding something seems fairly accurate. If she was hiding something, was it to do with the fate of the fourth copy of Hitler’s last will and testament and that bag of diamonds that caused her so much trouble in the late 1970s and early 1980s?
Or was it due to her alleged relationship with Martin Bormann? Perhaps it was something to do with the Reich Minister and his possible escape from Berlin. Both sides of the story have been presented here, and it really comes down to who you believe and the reasoning behind decisions taken by those individuals in May 1945.
Either Elsa Krüger was unfairly maligned by General Mohnke, and she and Gerda Christian were not official or even unofficial couriers, and press and book speculation about Krüger’s role in the death of the Third Reich was a little better than a campaign of persecution; or she deliberately concealed her role, and Mohnke was right, and the suspicions of authors like O’Donnell were not without some substance. It has to be one of these two scenarios. The truth, like the fate of Martin Bormann himself, remains buried in the ruins of history, guarded by a woman who chose to take her secrets to the grave.
