The front cover of
Time magazine,
May 7,
1945. Although he had committed suicide on April 30th and German radio reported Hitler had died in battle on May 1, his death was widely presumed but not yet confirmed (and although the artist depicted Hitler's eyes as brown, they were blue).
- For fiction about Hitler's death see Hitler in popular culture
The generally accepted cause of Adolf Hitler's death on April 30, 1945 is suicide by gunshot and cyanide poisoning. The dual method and other circumstances surrounding the event encouraged rumors that Adolf Hitler may have survived the end of World War II along with speculation about what happened to his remains; however, consensus on most of the details was eventually reached among historians, aided by the 1993 opening of records kept by the Russian KGB and FSB.
Standard account of Hitler's death
This is a reconstruction of the layout of the
Führerbunker. It is believed that Hitler and Eva Braun were found in the room marked "Hitler's Sitting Room".
This map shows the approximate location of the two bunkers (
Führerbunker and Vorbunker) in Berlin 1945.
Hitler relocated to the Führerbunker on January 16, 1945, where he presided over the rapid disintegration of his Third Reich as the Allies advanced from both east and west. By late April, Soviet forces had entered Berlin itself and were battling their way to the center of the city where the Chancellery was located. Realizing that defeat was imminent, Hitler began making preparations for his suicide.
Hitler, having dictated his last will and testament to secretary Traudl Junge, signed them at 4 am on April 29. Shortly after midnight on April 30, 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the bunker complex, before finally retiring to bed at around 4:00 am.
Shortly after noon on April 30, Hitler had a short meeting with Party Secretary Bormann before eating a small lunch consisting of spaghetti with a light sauce. Hitler and Eva Braun then said their personal farewells to members of the Führerbunker staff and fellow occupants, including the Goebbels family, Bormann, the secretaries, and several military officers. At around 2:30 pm, as Soviet forces raised their banner over the neighboring Reichstag, Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.
Some witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 3:30 pm (the Goebbels' young son is said to have declared, "A direct hit!" thinking it was a bomb overhead). After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, with Bormann at his side, opened the door to the study. Linge later stated he immediately noted a scent of burned almonds in the small study, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, a form of cyanide. The Hitlers were both sitting on a small sofa, Eva on the left, Adolf to the right. Eva's body slumped away from Adolf's. Hitler appeared to have shot himself in the right temple with a 7.65 mm pistol which lay at his feet. Blood was dripping from the wound to his right temple and had made a large stain on the left arm of the sofa. Eva had no visible physical wounds and Linge assumed she had poisoned herself.
Several witnesses stated the two bodies were carried to a small, bombed-out garden outside the bunker complex, where they were doused with petrol and set alight by Linge and members of Hitler's personal SS bodyguard. The SS guards and Linge later noted the fire did not completely destroy the corpses, but Soviet shelling of the bunker compound made further cremation attempts impossible and the remains were later covered up in a shallow bomb crater.
Soviet troops stormed the Chancellory at approximately 11:00 pm. Hitler and Braun's badly burned and hastily buried remains were recovered by a SMERSH unit which was subsequently assigned to locate the Führer's body (it was attached to the 79th Rifle Corps of the Soviet Third Shock Army and is frequently referred to as 79th SMERSH).
Autopsy
An autopsy was performed by this SMERSH unit, led by Chief Forensic Pathologist Dr. Faust Sherovsky. They first identified Hitler using odontological records of removable dental fittings given to Hitler by his dentist Hugo Blaschke. Two of Blaschke's arrested assistants (Fritz Echtmann and Kaethe Hausermann) confirmed the accuracy of the records by first drawing sketches of his bridgework from memory.
Sherovsky noted in his initial report that a piece of Hitler's skull cap was missing. The autopsy also led to the discovery of glass fragments in his mouth along with traces of cyanide in both bodies and the official cause of death published by the team was poisoning by cyanide with no mention of a gunshot wound. The findings were released by the USSR on May 16, 1945 and were quickly recognized as lacking by both Soviet and Western authorities.
Rumours of escape
Allied officials were deluged with a flurry of unsubstantiated reports that Hitler had escaped from Berlin and fled to Argentina, Spain or a moated castle in Westphalia. Although such rumours abated somewhat after the war, the lack of public confirmation of the existence of Hitler's remains caused rumours to circulate and re-appear for several decades, including various myths that he had fled to New Swabia in Antarctica (and even descended into a hollow earth). These rumours, often repeated on websites, usually conflated facts regarding the post-war activities of fugitive ex-Nazi officials (including the ODESSA organisation) with fictional storylines from the many popular books, films and television programs that have been produced on the topic, but no evidence has ever emerged that either Hitler or Braun were alive after April 30, 1945.
Later Russian disclosures
A book by Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky on the SMERSH autopsy report was published in the west in 1968 but was associated with other disinformation attempts and considered untrustworthy.
The KGB/FSB opened their files to the public in 1993, releasing records and statements by former KGB members. Drawing from these, historians reached a general consensus about what happened to the bodies of Hitler and Braun.
After the autopsy their remains were frequently buried and exhumed by SMERSH during the unit's relocation from Berlin to a new facility at 30-32 Klausnerstrasse in Magdeburg where they (along with the charred remains of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, his wife Magda and their six children) were permanently buried in an unmarked grave beneath a paved section of the front courtyard and the location was kept highly secret.
By 1970 the SMERSH facility (now controlled by the KGB) was scheduled to be handed over to the East German government. Keen to destroy any possibility Hitler's burial site might become a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised a special operation to destroy the remains. On April 4, 1970 a Soviet KGB team (who had been given detailed burial charts) exhumed the bodies and thoroughly burned them before dumping the ashes in the Elbe river.
Skull and jaw fragments
A skull fragment had also been recovered from Hitler's sitting room in the Führerbunker and it was found to contain a single bullet hole, most likely from a 7.65mm round. The skull fragment was taken to Moscow in 1946 along with the jaw section which had been used for the dental identification, both eventually finding their way to the Moscow Archives. Decades later they were located in a basement of the Moscow Archives, and the skull fragment was publicly displayed as part of an exhibition called The Agony of the Third Reich.
By 2003 the skull fragment was being kept in a plastic floppy disk case. That year, American forensic scientist Mark Benecke was given access to the skull and jaw fragments along with some surviving teeth and two metal dental bridges. He positively identified the upper bridge from a 1944 X-ray of Hitler's head which had been obtained by US and British intelligence operatives after the war. "You could challenge the validity of the skull," he said, "but the teeth are absolutely conclusive. They are definitely Hitler's."
When asked if he would have liked to do a DNA test, Benecke replied, "Absolutely. It was only that I didn't have a sterile drill with me at the time that I didn't take a sample. I would like to do a DNA match but, otherwise, the story is over for me. There is no secret left." [1] DNA testing would not be possible without a specimen for comparison, for which the cooperation of living relatives of Hitler would be needed. None of them show any evidence of wanting to participate in such a test. (Gardner, 2001).
Pistol or cyanide?
Journalist James O'Donnell, after extensive interviews with inhabitants of the bunker (including those unavailable for years due to Soviet detention), noted a consensus that shortly before his death, Hitler spoke with another doctor, Werner Haase, who gave him instructions on how to make the suicide successful, which included recommending a combination of cyanide and a gunshot to the temple. However, Haase died in Soviet captivity and O'Donnell relied on witness accounts.
Moreover, O'Donnell learned that many of the witnesses who claimed to have heard a gunshot actually did not (the doors to the study were considered thick enough to muffle such a sound). Some witnesses told O'Donnell that during interrogations Allied officers encouraged them to confirm they heard a shot.
It's often asserted attempts have been made to portray a more "honorable soldier's death" for Hitler by way of single gunshot, as opposed to a "coward's suicide" by poison. O'Donnell noted that such claims are based on ideology, not fact, and remarked such claimants should learn how to "give the devil his due."
In 2005, Erna Flegel, who served as a nurse in the bunker, said Hitler was so paranoid he suspected spies had filled his cyanide capsules with something nontoxic and may explain why he killed his dog Blondi while testing a capsule. Moreover, the capsules had been obtained through Heinrich Himmler, who Hitler believed had betrayed him [2].
Flegel was also quoted that year as saying, "There were a few people who then heard it [the shot] and there were others who didn't. The Führer suddenly wasn't there any more. I knew that the Führer was dead. Suddenly there were more doctors in the bunker, including Professor Haase. I didn't see Hitler's body. It was taken up to the garden. The Führer had such an authority that when he was there you knew it. It felt so extraordinary."
Could he have done both?
Another point of speculation has been whether Hitler was physically capable of shooting himself in the moments following biting a glass ampule of cyanide, since rapid and violent convulsions often occur during cyanide poisoning.
One theory suggests Hitler died after ingesting cyanide and his body was then shot by someone else to either make sure he was dead or make it appear the Führer had died a soldier's suicide by gunshot. Eva Braun is sometimes mentioned as the shooter. She had trained with a pistol during the preceding weeks (as did many German women in response to stories of widespread rape and murder by advancing Red Army soldiers) and was presumably one of the only people Hitler trusted at the end of his life. Other candidates would include Heinz Linge (Hitler's valet) and Martin Bormann, who were the first to enter the study. Most historians discount these possibilities.
O'Donnell also noted that Walter Hewel, like Hitler, was given instructions on the same dual suicide method (along with the same type of cyanide capsule). Hewel committed suicide on May 2 by a combination of the capsule and a gunshot wound to the head. O'Donnell cited Hewel's death as a cruel positive proof such a suicide was possible.
Based on witness reports of a loud gunshot and Linge's account of finding the bodies, Hitler shot himself in the right temple after Braun took cyanide. There is significant evidence that to ensure self-destruction, Hitler bit into a glass ampule of cyanide as he pulled the trigger of his personal Walther PPK pistol.
Trivia
- During Hitler's last lunch of spaghetti with a "light sauce," according to the secretaries who ate with him, conversation revolved around dog breeding and how lipstick was made from sewer grease. Both were topics Hitler had brought up on numerous past mealtime occasions.
- There was an anecdote, likely an urban legend, that the fragment of Hitler's skull from the Archives was presented as a gift to Stalin, who then used it as an ashtray. This story may have emerged from a more prosaic tale however, since the fragments were kept for a time in a wooden cigar box by a member of 79th SMERSH.
See also
Documentaries
- Adolf Hitler's Last Days, from the BBC series "Secrets of World War II" tells (obviously) the story about Hitler's last days.
- The World at War (1974) is a famous British series which contains much information about Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, including an interview with his secretary, Traudl Junge about the very end in the bunker.
Dramatizations
Bibliography
References
- O'Donnell, James - The Bunker. - New York: Da Capo Press; Reprint(2001). - ISBN 0306809583.
- Waite, Robert G.L. - The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. - New York: First DaCapo Press Edition, 1993 (orig. pub. 1977). - ISBN 0306805146.
- Ada Petrova - The Death of Hitler: The Full Story With New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives - W W Norton & Co Inc (May 1, 1995) - ISBN 0393039145
- Gardner, Dave - The Last of the Hitlers, BMM, Worcester, UK, 2001. ISBN 0954154401
- Beevor, Antony, Berlin - The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2004
- Ryan, Cornelius, The Last Battle, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966
- After the Battle, No.61 Special Edition, Battle of Britain International Ltd, 1988, London
- Hansig, Ron, T. HITLER'S ESCAPE, Athena Press, London, ISBN1 932077 82 0.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_death under GFDL
