Hitler Bodyguard Rochus Misch Dies at 96 With Firm View: Hitler Was 'No Brute' (VIDEO)
Staff Sgt. Rochus Misch, one of two men who escaped the bunker where Adolph Hitler hid before he and his wife committed suicide and the Soviet Red Army took over, passed Thursday at the age of 96.
Misch was one of few remaining survivors responsible for supporting Nazi Germany during WWII. To the point of his death, he did not admit shame for his role during the war as the personal bodyguard to Adolph Hitler.
On May 2nd of 1945, Misch fled Führerbunker in Berlin just hours before it was seized before the Red Army. Prior to his escape, he witnessed the discovery of Hitler's body after the dictator and his wife committed suicide. He also watched on as Joseph Goebbels, a German politician, and his wife Magda poisoned their six young children, and then committed suicide on May 1, 1945. When recounting the incident during a 2005 interview with the Associated Press, Misch was "moved to tears." But he stood firm in his support of Hitler.
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"He was no brute. He was no monster. He was no superman," Misch told the AP of the man whom he affectionately referred to as "boss."
Orphaned when he was just two years old and raised by his grandparents, Misch explained that he joined the SS to fight against the Bolsheviks. Soviet forces captured him within hours of his escape from Führerbunker and tortured him for information before sentencing him to nine years at a Soviet labor camp.
Following his release from the camp, Misch returned to his wife in Berlin and eventually bought a painting business. Misch successfully ran the modest business for the duration of his life.
He also was involved in making peanut butter for American troops during the early Allied occupation.
"He was a wonderful boss," Misch said of Hitler in 2005. "I lived with him for five years. We were the closest people who worked with him ... we were always there. Hitler was never without us day and night."
