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Hitler by now lived and worked entirely underground, in a hidden mausoleum known as the Führerbunker. Dug in next to the Reich Chancellery in central Berlin, the bunker was nearly 60 ft. below street level; its earth-covered roof was 16 ft. thick (but leaky). It had 30 rooms, their concrete walls painted battleship gray. A staff of about 500 came and went. Here the Führer ate, slept, gave orders, shouted, raged. "Hitler never saw another sunrise or sunset after January," said an aide.
The dictator's physical condition was terrible. His head wobbled strangely, his left arm hung slackly, his hands trembled uncontrollably. He had never fully recovered from the bomb attack by rebellious army officers the previous July, which had left him partly deaf. Haggard and exhausted, he received large daily injections of vitamins, hormones and morphine. Recalls Ernst-Günther Schenck, now 81, a physician who was in the bunker to the end: "He looked like a man carrying a mountain on his shoulders. He was hunched, drawn into himself like a turtle. His face was a mask, gray and yellow. His glaring eyes were bloodshot, with large dark pouches from lack of sleep. His left hand, holding his glasses, kept trembling and banging against a table. He pressed his left thigh against the table to suppress the twitching of his leg."
By mid-April a Red Army force of 2.5 million had advanced to the Oder River, scarcely 50 miles east of Berlin. Meanwhile, the U.S. Ninth Army had nearly reached the Elbe, about 50 miles to the west. Hitler talked of leaving Berlin by April 20, his 56th birthday, of flying south to organize an invulnerable redoubt in the Alpine forests of Bavaria. But then came fits of wild euphoria, when he ordered his shattered forces to counterattack. "The Russians have overextended themselves so much that the decisive battle can be won at Berlin," he declared. Then came fits of despair, when he vowed to die in his besieged capital. "Should this fateful battle of the German people under my leadership fail," he said, "then the German people do not deserve to exist."
At his field headquarters near the Elbe, Lieut. General William Simpson was working on his plans to seize Berlin. There was little evidence of German opposition. Simpson's U.S. 2nd Armored and 83rd Infantry divisions would race right up the autobahn to the capital. Then Lieut. General Omar Bradley summoned him back to headquarters in Wiesbaden. "You have to stop right where you are," Bradley said. "You can't go any farther. You must pull back across the Elbe."
"Where in hell did this come from?" said Simpson. "I could be in Berlin in 24 hours!" Bradley: "I just got it from Ike."
It was probably one of Dwight Eisenhower's worst miscalculations, though he never admitted it. Berlin "was politically and psychologically important as the symbol of remaining German power," the Allied Commander wrote later. "I decided, however, that it was not the logical or the most desirable objective ... To sustain a strong force at such a distance from our major bases along the Rhine would have meant the practical immobilization of units along the remainder of the front. This I felt to be more than unwise; it was stupid."