On April 28, 1945, Berlin was a bombed-out, burning ruin. The Red Army had reached the city's eastern suburbs on Hitler's last birthday, April 20, and had spent the past eight days steadily surrounding Berlin and fighting toward its center.
The government quarter was still heavily defended. Some 5,000 SS troops held the massive official buildings of the Nazi state, alongside a mix of battered army units, sailors, improvised home guards, and loyal Hitler Youth.
Adolf Hitler had not left his bunker, deep beneath the Reich Chancellery winter garden, since his birthday. He had seemingly resigned himself to death, and the only questions left were when that death would come and how the Führer would pass.
The bunker still operated as a command center, though an inadequate one. The streets outside were carefully monitored, and for the time being the defense was holding. The Soviets were reported to be about one kilometer from the Führerbunker.
That day, Hitler was greatly affected by news from the BBC reporting that his most loyal acolyte, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, had been secretly negotiating an end to the war with the Western Allies. By evening, Hitler had raged against "der treue Heinrich," sending orders that Himmler be stripped of his posts, arrested, and executed.
The power to punish Himmler, now far to the north, no longer existed. Hitler instead took out his rage on Himmler's liaison man at Führer headquarters, Hermann Fegelein, who was executed under murky circumstances.
It was clear to Hitler that the defense of the Reich Chancellery area must fold within a day or two. Combined with Himmler's treachery, he made up his mind about an important personal matter.
With him in the bunker was his girlfriend since 1929, Eva Braun. She had voluntarily arrived at the Führerbunker from the safety of Bavaria on April 15, 1945, much to Hitler's initial disapproval, but she refused to leave, stating that she wished to stay by his side to the bitter end.
For a woman deliberately kept in the background and shadows throughout their long relationship, living either at Hitler's grand house, the Berghof at Obersalzberg, or in a house in the Munich suburbs, Braun now placed herself front and center in the final drama of the Third Reich.
Hitler was impressed by his consort's determination and pluck, later comparing it favorably with several of his inner circle who bolted from Berlin at the first opportunity, notably his deputy, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, by now also disgraced.
Eva Braun seems to have seen for herself the role of first lady of the Reich, something she had desired for years. Now she would have that position at Hitler's side at the very violent end of the regime she and her family had profited from.
But there was one thing she wanted above all else from Hitler: a ring on her finger. Marriage. She had worked assiduously at this in the bunker for several days until Hitler finally relented. It would be Eva's reward for her loyalty.
Among Hitler's circle of ministers, only two now remained in the Führerbunker, the rest having fled Berlin for safer locations on various pretexts. One was Hitler's private secretary, a minister without portfolio who ran the party chancery across Germany, Martin Bormann.
The other was Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who had accepted Hitler's invitation to move into the bunker with his wife Magda and their young children. Goebbels and his wife were also under no illusions: if Berlin fell, they would die with the regime.
Goebbels was also Gauleiter of Berlin. Later on April 28, Hitler came to a personal decision. He spoke to Goebbels, telling him that he had decided to marry Fräulein Braun. Arrangements were to be made at once.
While those arrangements were being made, Hitler withdrew with one of his private secretaries, Traudl Junge, to begin dictating his last will and testament and his political testament. It took several hours.
In the meantime, Goebbels ordered that a mid-level civil servant from the Berlin Gau be found and brought to the Führerbunker. A detachment of SS in one of the last functional armored halftracks was dispatched to the house of Walther Wagner, the official Goebbels had selected to marry his boss and his girlfriend in the bunker.
Wagner was at that time a 37-year-old lawyer and notary, and head of the central legal department of the Berlin Gau. He was known personally to Goebbels, who had appointed him to this position in January 1944.
Too young to have served in World War I, and in essentially a reserved occupation for most of World War II, Wagner wore the brown political uniform of the NSDAP. He had served in Poland representing Goebbels and Gau Berlin during a program to resettle Germans into annexed Polish territory.
Based in Posen until February 1944, Wagner knew the local Gauleiter, Arthur Greiser. It was in Posen that Wagner met his future wife, Cordula Kropels, a National Socialist People's Welfare social worker also working on resettlement in Poland.
They married in March 1944, and Wagner moved to an apartment in Berlin. He also held a position on the local council, in charge of refuse collection services for his district.
Due to the incessant Allied air raids on Berlin, Wagner had sent his pregnant wife to her mother's house on one of the North Frisian Islands. His son Michael was born there on November 1, 1944.
In October, Wagner, as an able-bodied male then aged 37, was drafted into one of the 92 battalions of the Berlin Volkssturm home guard. Receiving some limited military training, he was appointed a platoon commander. He continued to live in his apartment, with his sister also living with him.
When the SS from Hitler's bunker arrived at Wagner's apartment, his sister told them that he was with his unit at the front, holding positions in the Friedrichstraße area. The SS went to the unit's command post, and Wagner was located.
Bewildered, his uniform covered in dust and dirt from frontline action, Wagner was bundled into the halftrack and driven to the Reich Chancellery.
In the meantime, hasty preparations were being made in the Führerbunker for the marriage ceremony. It was now very early on April 29, 1945.
The cramped room where Hitler held his twice-daily military situation conferences, known as the map room, was rearranged by the Führer's SS guards, overseen by his faithful valet, SS Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Linge. Chairs were arranged before a table.
For those of the staff not privy to the forthcoming ceremony, the sudden flurry of activity caused a ripple of gossip throughout the lower bunker.
Wagner suddenly appeared in the lower bunker in his brown party uniform, escorted by two SS officers of Hitler's bodyguard unit. SS Sergeant Rochus Misch, who was manning the bunker telephone switchboard, asked one of his colleagues what was afoot.
He was told that the man in the brown uniform was the registrar. Misch was confused until his colleague explained that the man was a city counselor and a regional party leader. "The boss is getting married today," said Misch's colleague.
Goebbels explained to Wagner what was going to happen. Wagner had been selected because, as a licensed notary public, he was also authorized under the law to perform civil weddings.
The conference room now became a registry office. The ceremony was a simplified version of what would happen inside a church. In the case of Hitler's wedding, due to wartime conditions, the civil ceremony was extremely simple, but still contained strong National Socialist elements.
Wagner took his place behind the table, sorting out the necessary forms and beginning to fill them in. Then into the room stepped Hitler and Eva Braun, followed by the two witnesses, Martin Bormann and Dr. Goebbels.
Hitler was dressed in his customary field-grey tunic and black trousers. He looked very much older than 56, was stooped, and his face was gray and unhealthy, his eyes rimmed and restless. Eva wore a black dress, a favorite of Hitler's, and her hair and makeup were perfect as usual.
Goebbels indicated to Hitler's attendants to leave them, and the door was closed. Hitler and Eva sat in chairs before the table, while Bormann and Goebbels sat behind them.
It was quite ironic that the man brought in to marry Hitler was surnamed Wagner, given Hitler's devotion to the composer of the same name. The Führer appeared preoccupied and barely acknowledged Wagner's presence.
Wagner had the requisite marriage forms, and in a voice cracking with nervousness he solemnly asked Eva and Hitler in turn whether they were of pure Aryan descent and free from hereditary diseases. They said they were.
Following some brief formalities, Wagner declared them to be man and wife and invited them to sign the marriage register. Hitler signed first, his hand trembling, but he managed a decent copy of his usual signature.
When Eva signed, she wrote an E before realizing her mistake and scratching out the E, writing instead "Eva Hitler, geb. Braun" — formerly Braun. Then Bormann and Goebbels signed, followed by Wagner, who had completed the relevant sections of the forms.
In total, the wedding ceremony had lasted less than 10 minutes. Bormann and Goebbels congratulated the couple. The doors opened. Hitler kissed Eva's hand, and together they walked into the corridor where many of the other bunker personnel waited. Hitler and Eva shook hands with them.
Then Hitler and Eva withdrew to the Führer's private rooms, where a simple wedding breakfast of champagne and sandwiches awaited. Bormann, Goebbels and his wife, and Hitler's two secretaries, Gerda Christian and Traudl Junge, joined them to toast their health.
Wagner was also allowed to attend the wedding breakfast, but was present for only some 20 minutes, eating a liver sandwich and drinking a glass or two of champagne and chatting briefly to Eva before he was conducted from the bunker and driven back to his unit in the front line.
After Wagner's departure, more guests joined the party. Generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant Colonel Nicolaus von Below, Werner Naumann, state secretary of the Ministry of Propaganda, as well as Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann and foreign ministry representative at Führer headquarters Ambassador Walther Hewel, an SS major, Colonel von Linge, and Hitler's Austrian cook and dietician Constanze Manziarly.
It was a rather morbid feast. Hitler, drinking tea and picking at sandwiches, spoke of his plan to end his own life and said that National Socialism was dead. He said that death would be a relief to him now that he had been betrayed by his best friends.
Traudl Junge stayed only briefly at the party, as she was still busy typing up Hitler's last will and testament and his political testament. During the breakfast, Hitler three times came to Junge's office to see how far she had got.
At the party, Hitler discussed the list of new government appointments for a cabinet after his death, speaking to Bormann and Goebbels on the matter. Any changes were likewise duly transmitted to Junge's typing job. She gave the documents to Goebbels.
By now, Eva Hitler had retired to rest. Hitler and the witnesses then signed the documents, and at 6:00 a.m. on April 29, Hitler finally went to bed.
For Walther Wagner, his future was to be shorter than Hitler's. Wagner's unit had been pushed back to the Potsdamer Platz. The fighting was really intense.
Company commander Erich Illing was severely wounded by Soviet tank fire, and Wagner, who commanded number one platoon in the company, stepped up as temporary company commander. He continued to direct the fire of his men until he too was shot through the head and killed, less than 24 hours after marrying Hitler and Eva.
In the chaos of the Battle of Berlin, his body was never identified. He was just another corpse thrown into a mass grave after May 2, when the Germans surrendered the city. Only in 1951 was Wagner's widow issued with a death certificate. She remarried, and she and her son lived in Hamburg.
As for the marriage of Hitler and Eva, it lasted only some 40 hours. Both of them died together in Hitler's bunker study on April 30, 1945.