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Hitler’s last bodyguard dies in Germany

Misch apparently worked for Hitler as a bodyguard, courier and telephone operator, according to the BBC.

In fact, Misch was on the phone on April 30, 1945, when Hitler retreated to his bunker with wife Eva Braun. Misch said he didn’t hear gunshots, but Hitler’s private secretary did and asked for silence as the doors to Hitler’s bunker was opened.

Later in life, Misch spoke openly and proudly about his service with Hitler. He referred to his boss as “a very normal man… he was no brute, he was no monster,” in an interview with the Associated Press in 2005.

During that same interview, he avoided answering questions about guilt and responsibility for the atrocities committed during World War II. He said he knew nothing of the murder of 6 million Jews and also that Hitler never brought up the topic of the Final Solution.

“I knew about Dachau camp and about concentration camps in general,” he told the BBC in 2009. “But I had no idea of the scale. It wasn’t part of our conversations. The Nuremberg Trial dealt with crimes committed by the Germans.

“But you must remember there was never a war when crimes weren’t committed, and there never will be.”

In the AP interview, Misch seemed to have no empathy for people he did and didn’t know, but was moved to tears when he spoke of Joseph and Magda Goebbels’ decision to kill their six children before killing themselves.

Misch was born on July 29, 1917 in tiny Silesian town Alt Schalkowitz, in what is Poland today. He was orphaned as a child, and decided at the age of 20 to join the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, a Berlin-based unit of the German secret police that served as Hitler’s personal bodyguards.

“It was anti-communist, against Stalin — to protect Europe,” Misch said, noting that thousands of other Western Europeans served in the Waffen SS. “I signed up in the war against Bolshevism, not for Adolf Hitler.”

In the last eight to 10 years of Hitler’s life, Misch followed him underground to live in the “Feurherbunker’s” reinforced concrete surroundings.

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