Heinz Linge (23 March 1913 – 9 March 1980) was a valet for German dictator Adolf Hitler and also a SS officer who held the rank of Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) by the end of the war.
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Linge was born in Bremen, Germany. Before joining the SS in 1933 he was employed as a bricklayer and was selected by Sepp Dietrich to be one of 117 original bodyguards for Adolf Hitler.[1]
He worked as a valet in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, at Hitler's residence on the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden and at Wolfsschanze in Rastenburg. He stated that his daily routine was to wake Hitler each day at 11.00am and then keep him stocked with writing materials and spectacles for his morning reading session in bed. Hitler would then dress himself to a stopwatch with Linge acting as a 'referee'. He would take a light breakfast of tea, biscuits and an apple and a vegetarian lunch at 2.30pm. Dinner with only a few guests present was at 8.00 pm.[2]
Linge was one of many soldiers, servants, secretaries, and officers who moved into the Reich Chancellery and Führerbunker in Berlin in 1945. There he continued as Hitler's favourite valet and protocol officer and was one of those who closely witnessed the last days of Hitler's life during the Battle of Berlin. He was also Hitler's personal ordinance officer. Linge delivered messages to Hitler and escorted people in to meet with Hitler.
Linge stated in his memoirs that three days before his death at 3.15pm on 30 April Hitler told him of his planned suicide with Eva Braun and asked him to ensure their bodies were wrapped in blankets, then taken up to the garden and cremated. He said that following his marriage to Eva, Hitler spent the last night of his life lying awake and fully clothed on his bed.[2] In the 1974 video documentary The Two Deaths of Adolf Hitler, part of The World at War collection, Linge, along with Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, narrates Hitler's very last moments in the bunker. He tells with vivid details how the Führer said farewell to each of his servants and subordinates. He explains that he and Eva Hitler (not Eva Braun any more) committed suicide in Hitler's private room in the bunker. He tells how he went into Hitler's private room after hearing a sudden bang and found both Hitler and his newly-married mistress dead. He concludes by telling how both bodies were taken outside and burned by Linge himself and the bodyguards, thus keeping Hitler’s corpse from being captured by the enemy, as the Führer had commanded. Linge was one of the last to leave the Führerbunker.
Linge was arrested by the Red Army. He was interrogated by the Soviet NKVD (later known as the MVD, the forerunner of the KGB) about the circumstances of Hitler's death. He was released from Soviet captivity in 1955. He died in Bremen in West Germany in 1980. His memoir, With Hitler to the End, was published by Frontline Books (London) in July 2009 with an introduction by Roger Moorhouse, author of Killing Hitler.
Linge is portrayed by actor Thomas Limpinsel in Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 German film Downfall. In Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Hitler – ein Film aus Deutschland (1978) [1], he is played by Hellmut Lange.
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