Bunker Bingo Party is a short story written by Kilgore Trout, possibly one of the greatest writers to never exist. Trout is the machination of (real) author Kurt Vonnegut author of such literary main-stays as Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions. Bunker (as I'll call it from here on out) is first discussed in Vonnegut's final book, in which Trout reveals that he's really only impressed with one of his stories, which is Bunker, which goes as follows.
Set during, what Trout calls, "Western Civilization's second unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide", underneath the ruins of Berlin, Germany, Adolf Hitler, his mistress Eva Braun, Joseph Geobble, Goebble's wife and kids among others are locked in Hitler's private bunker, whose iron door is less than a mile from Soviet forces. "Hitler, trapped below, the most loathsome human being who ever lived," wrote Trout, "doesn't know whether to shit or go blind." Nothing is happening, and the only thing Hitler can think to do is to propose marriage to Eva. She accepts!
"What the Heck?" asks Trout in a paragraph all its own.
Everybody forgets their troubles during the ceremony, and everybody has a gay old time. But when the newlyweds kiss, the party goes stale. Soon, its back to the whole 'waiting for certain death' thing again.
But all of a sudden, Goebbles remembers that his kids brought a game of Bingo with them they that got from some captured American Troops in the Battle of the Bulge. Since the Motherland needed to save her resources, Bingo games were no longer produced. Because of the business of the war, the adults in the bunker have forgotten how to play bingo! Fortunately, the Goebbles kids were taught how to play by one of their neighbors
Imagine for a second the image of a boy and a girl teaching Adolf Hitler and a bunch of Nazis in full Nazi regalia, arguably the worst human in the history of the world, how to play bingo. This is the thing that Trout, turning seventy, is most proud of in his whole life.
The Nazi Minister of Information calls out the letters and numbers as he draws them from the bingo cage, and the old men, women, and children alike all mark their cards correspondingly.
Suddenly, Der Fuhrer shouts BINGO!!! Hitler wins! "ich kann nicht es glauben. Ich habe nie dieses Spiel vor gespielt, und doch habe ich, ich habe gewonnen gewonnen! Was können dieses sein aber ein Wunder? als ob es ein Fetzen vom Abschirmrahmen von Turin war. Was dieses Mittel aber einmachen, das Sachen sind nicht so schlecht, wie wir dachten sie waren?"*
Unfortunately, Eva spoils the moment by swallowing a cyanide capsule Mrs. Goebbles gave her for a wedding present. Trout wrote of Eva Braun, "Her only crime was to have allowed a monster to ejaculate in her birth canal. These things happen to the best of women."
Above ground, a 240mm howitzer shell explodes. Flakes of calcimine fall on the deafened occupants of the shelter. "Look, it snows." Jokes Hitler who decides that its high time he does himself in, too. He holds a pistol up to his head. "Nein, Nein, Nein!" shout the others. But the fuehrer convinces them that its the right thing to do. Now what should his last words be? "How about," he proposes, "I regret nothing?" But Goebbles points out that Parisian cabaret performer Edith Piaf has made a name for herself singing those same words in French for a decade.
By this time, Hitler has lost his sense of humor. He says, "How about Bingo?
Finally, he says, "I never asked to be born in the first place."
Bang!
* "I can't believe it. I've never played this game before, and yet I've won, I've won! What can this be but a miracle? as if it were a shred from the Shroud of Turin. What can this mean but that things aren't as bad as we thought they were?" (Thanks Babel Fish)