SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Erich Kempka (16 September 1910 – 24 January 1975) served as Adolf Hitler's chauffeur from 1934 to April, 1945. He was SS member #2,803 and served in the Allgemeine SS.
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Kempka was born in Oberhausen to a miner with ten children. He worked as a mechanic for the automotive manufacturer DKW.[1]
Kempka joined the Nazi Party on 1 April 1930 as member #225,639. Two years later, he was one of eight founding members of the SS-Begleit-Kommando.
Kempka served as chauffeur for Josef Terboven until 29 February 1932, when, based on Terboven's recommendation, he was tasked as a reserve driver for Hitler's personal entourage. In 1934, he replaced Julius Schreck and Emil Maurice as Hitler's primary chauffeur, valet and bodyguard. That same year, he was present at the arrest of Ernst Röhm.
As his chaufeur Kempka usually drove one of Hitler's black Mercedes cars from a fleet of six to eight stationed in Berlin, Munich and other places. Unless in the company of an important personality, Hitler would sit in the front, next to Kempka, with his valet behind him.[2] In a cavalcade, Hitler's car would be followed by a second car with the SS bodyguard, then a police car, further a car with his adjudants and physician, and more cars for press agency representatives, stenographers, and provisions. Later, Hitler's car was protected by bulletproof glass and armor plates.[2]
On 1 December 1937, Kempka joined the Lebensborn society. He was also awarded a Totenkopfring from Heinrich Himmler. He had been engaged to Gerda Christian (born Daranowski), a private secretary of Hitler's. She later married Luftwaffe officer Eckhard Christian on 2 February 1943.[3]
In 1945, as the end of the Third Reich drew near, Kempka accompanied Hitler to the Reich Chancellery and then the Führerbunker. On 20 April, ten days before Hitler's suicide, he briefly wished the Führer a happy birthday and spent about fifteen minutes with him.
Kempka was one of those responsible for the burning of Hitler and Eva Braun's corpses after they committed suicide together on the afternoon of 30 April 1945. Otto Günsche telephoned Kempka to deliver 200 litres of gasoline to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery. Kempka and his men brought over eight to ten Army petrol cans and deposited them by the emergency exit of the Führerbunker.[4] Later, SS guards brought over additional cans of petrol to further burn the corpses.[5] Kempka left the bunker complex on the following night of 1 May along with SS-Hauptscharführer Heinrich Doose, a driver who was part of his staff. During his escape, Kempka came across Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Georg Betz† (Hitler's personal co-pilot and Hans Baur's substitute) and left him in the care of Kaethe Hausermann. On 20 June, Kempka was captured by U.S. troops at Berchtesgaden.[6]
†According to The Last Days Of Adolf Hitler, H. R. Trevor-Roper, p. 128, Betz was last observed in the area of the Weidendammer Bridge as part of a group which left the Führerbunker during the evening of 1 May 1945. Other sources give more details as to Betz's fate, stating that he died from wounds received during the crossing of the Weidendammer bridge.[7]
Despite claims made to the contrary during his interrogation, Kempka later admitted that when Hitler and Eva Braun locked themselves in a room to commit suicide, he lost his nerve and ran out of the Führerbunker, returning only after Hitler and Braun were dead. By the time he returned to the bunker, Hitler and Braun's bodies were already being carried upstairs for cremation.
Despite his questionable reliability, many interviewers quote Kempka in their accounts of Hitler's suicide because of his colorful (and raunchy) language. For example, one interviewer, O'Donnell, recounted the following quips in his book, The Bunker:
At the Nuremberg trials, Kempka was called to testify because he claimed to have seen Martin Bormann killed by a Soviet anti-tank rocket. He later referred to Eva Braun as "the unhappiest woman in Germany". He was released on 9 October 1947.
Kempka was the subject of Mauri Sariola's 1972 book Kolmannen valtakunnan kuningatar (Queen of the Third Reich).
He died on 24 January 1975, aged sixty-four, in Freiberg am Neckar.
Kempka retained his association with the "Führer-Begleit-Kommando" by attending reunions of I SS Panzer Corps members until the year before his death. His memoirs first appeared in 1951 under the title Ich habe Adolf Hitler verbrannt (I cremated Adolf Hitler). In 1975, it was reissued with a foreword by author and former member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Erich Kern under the less sensationalist title Die letzten Tage mit Adolf Hitler (The Last Days with Adolf Hitler). An English edition of the book was published in 2010 by Frontline Books-Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., under the title I was Hitler's Chauffeur: The Memoirs of Erich Kempka, with an introduction by Roger Moorhouse.
At the 2008 military trial for Osama bin-Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan, the defense argued for his innocence, noting that Kempka was not tried as a war criminal for being a chauffeur for Hitler.[1]
Erich Kempka was portrayed by Jürgen Tonkel in the 2004 German film Downfall (Der Untergang).[8] He is also played by Axel Werner in the comedy film Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler.
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