Adolf Hitler & Eva Braun E-Book

Luc Vanhixe

• Herausgeber: Mijnbestseller.nl
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 477

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

After a brief investigation in 1945, a British secret agent concluded that Hitler and Braun committed suicide together in the Führerbunker in Berlin shortly before the fall of the German capital and were cremated immediately afterwards, although he had no concrete evidence to support this hypothesis. Nevertheless, this has been the official version ever since. Between 1945 and 2009, however, testimony and evidence began to emerge that suggested otherwise. Luc Vanhixe, criminologist and retired senior-level officer of the Belgian Federal Police, conducted a seven-year modern police investigation into the death of this notorious couple, based on all the original data and traces. And as unlikely as it may sound, this investigation shows with absolute certainty that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not die together in the Berlin Führerbunker on April 30, 1945.

Leseprobe

Adolf Hitler & Eva BraunThe Escape from Berlin

Adolf Hitler & Eva BraunThe Escape from Berlin

Luc Vanhixe

Author: Luc Vanhixe

Cover design: Luc Vanhixe

ISBN: 978 94 648 5568 5

© <Luc Vanhixe>

Preface

On April 30, 1945, Germany’s military situation was critical. The Allies had already conquered most of the Third Reich, and the rest was on the verge of collapse. Berlin was completely encircled by the Soviets.

The last German blood was shed in fierce house-to-house fighting in the government district. Some 2,500 Hitler Youth 1 children and teenagers tried to hold off the Red Army a little longer. They were aided in this hopeless endeavor by the Volkssturm, a militia formed in October 1944 from all male citizens who had previously been declared unfit or too old for military service. It was only a matter of hours before Berlin would fall.

Completely demoralized and disoriented, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives. This happened between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. in the Berlin Führerbunker 2, 25 feet below the surface. And that's what any serious historian will be happy to confirm.

But is this what really took place? Or should we put our faith in the many conspiracy theories that claim Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun escaped from Berlin at the last moment and lived quietly in South America or some tropical destination for many years after World War II?

To answer this question without a shadow of a doubt, we'll have to track down all available original sources of information. All the facts, statements and data will have to be examined in depth, according to the rules of a modern police investigation.

And this approach will lead to surprising results. To quote from the TV series 'The X-Files': ‘The truth is out there!’ And it's time for it to see the light of day.

Conspiracy theories

Since the end of World War II, a number of books have been written about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun's escape from the Führerbunker as the Red Army closed in on the besieged German capital. But to determine whether these theories have any merit, we must first consider whether the Führer3 and his new bride had both the time to prepare for their escape and the opportunity to get out of Berlin at the last moment.

The collapse of the Third Reich

The first ‘Instrument of Surrender’ was signed by the Germans in Reims in the early hours of May 7, 1945. But Stalin demanded a ceremony in Berlin. So the final text was signed in the German capital on the night of May 8, 1945. However, Nazi Germany didn't suddenly lose the war in the spring of '45. Defeat announced itself much earlier.

After considerable hesitation, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941. Opening a second front was a considerable risk. But the Führer was confident of a quick victory within a few months. And at first, the German war machine did indeed score a series of resounding victories on Soviet soil.

The German armed forces consisted of the Wehrmacht (army, navy, and air force) and the Schutzstaffel (SS).4 The SS was the paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party and was not part of the Wehrmacht.

But with the onset of a very cold Russian winter '41 - '42, the German offensive came to a halt. As a result, the Führer made a fatal mistake. There had been trouble between the U.S. and Japan for some time. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, starting a war between the two countries. Just a few days later, on December 11, the Führer declared war on the U.S. Adolf Hitler hoped that the Japanese, grateful for his support, would declare war on the Soviet Union to help him. But that didn't happen. Instead of drawing Stalin into a two-front war, Nazi Germany was faced with a new and very powerful opponent.

On the battlefield, it didn't make much of a difference right away because the United States wasn't ready for war. As a result, the German armies were able to resume their offensive in Russia in the spring of 1942. But the end was near. In mid-November '42, Soviet forces launched a counteroffensive, turning the tide on the Eastern Front for several reasons:

Although the Soviet Union had already lost some five million soldiers by the end of 1942, Stalin managed to mobilize more and more troops.

Adolf Hitler was convinced that the Soviet soldier was an inferior human being and that the leadership of the Red Army was nothing more than a bunch of amateurs. On the battlefield, however, the experience of the

Wehrmacht

and the SS was very different.

The German troops could not withstand Russia's harsh winter climate.

On January 31, 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended and the German 6th Army was forced to surrender. Generalfeldmarschall5 Friedrich Paulus lost 400,000 soldiers in the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. From then on, Nazi Germany was fighting a losing battle. The Führer couldn't stop the Soviet counterattack, and it was only a matter of time before the Western Allies landed in Normandy. All the Führer could do was try to delay his defeat as long as possible.

But this meant that preparations for the end of World War II began on both sides as early as 1943. And it also means that the Führer and his staff had ample time to prepare elaborate plans for every possible contingency.

Escape routes

It is a fact that many Germans fled to South America after the fall of Nazi Germany. Some high-ranking officials, such as Adolf Eichmann and Doctor Josef Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death’ of Auschwitz, escaped on a passenger ship. And at least two German submarines surfaced in Argentina several months after the end of World War II in Europe.

Adolf Eichmann organized and coordinated the details of the Endlösung6, the mass execution of the Jews.

In addition, tens of thousands of Nazis made their way to South America on the so-called ‘ratlines’. The first escape route was prepared as early as 1942. And the Vatican played an important role. That's why they were known as the ‘Monastery Routes’. Most escaped war criminals ended up in Argentina, but many also found safe haven in Paraguay, Colombia, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Even in some Arab countries, Nazis disappeared into anonymity.

Much of the Nazi gold, most of it stolen, was hidden in secret deposits and the vaults of European banking institutions. The Swiss National Bank and the Vatican Bank probably played a major role in this operation. Both institutions, of course, have denied any involvement in the scheme. In addition, credible sources claim that some of the Nazi gold was also transferred to banks in South America. In this way, the Nazi leadership would have the necessary funds available upon arrival. Martin Bormann, the Führer's private secretary, was most likely the driving force behind the preparations for the escape from Nazi Germany.

On April 7, 1945, the American 90th Infantry Division discovered some of the Nazi gold (8,198 bars and 55 boxes of gold bullion, hundreds of bags of gold objects, over 1,300 bags of gold Reichsmarks, British pounds, and French francs, 711 bags of American twenty-dollar gold, 40 bags of silver bullion, 118 boxes and bags of silver plate, six bars of platinum, etc.), SS loot, and valuable artwork in the Kaiseroda salt mine vault in Merkers, Germany. But much of the Nazi gold was still missing.7

Let's make a deal

Immediately after the end of World War II, the U.S. government launched Operations Overcast and Paperclip. These secret programs brought more than 1,600 German scientists and technicians to the U.S. Most famously, former SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun and his V2 rocket team. Von Braun went on to develop the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program and became one of NASA's heroes. He was even awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald Ford in 1977. Another German rocket scientist, Kurt Heinrich Debus, was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS. But in 1962 he became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center.

And during the Cold War, the U.S. was open to other deals. SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon,’ was responsible for the deaths of at least 4,000 people, mostly Jews, as head of the local Gestapo. Sentenced to death by a French court in 1947, he remained free and worked for the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) 8 in Germany from 1947 to 1951. From 1951 to 1983, he continued his work for the CIC in Bolivia. And during all this time, not even the Mossad could touch him.

In June 1946, the Americans established the Gehlen Organization in the United States Zone of Germany. This intelligence service was headed by former German Major General Reinhard Gehlen, head of German military intelligence on the Eastern Front during World War II. Gehlen's German spies were the CIA's eyes and ears in the Soviet bloc countries during the Cold War. Gehlen employed many former Nazis and known war criminals. In 1956, Gehlen became director of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), West Germany's federal intelligence agency.

On May 22, 1945, Gehlen surrendered to the CIC in Bavaria.The Americans immediately recognized his potential value.9

Based on all of this information, we can safely conclude that

1.Since the war was already lost for Nazi Germany in early 1943, Adolf Hitler had plenty of time to prepare one or more escape plans.

2.Many Nazis escaped to South America or some other destination after the end of World War II.

3.The U.S. employed a significant number of former Nazis. Even major war criminals were not prosecuted as long as they were useful to the United States.

Therefore, the Führer had both the time and the opportunity to flee Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945. Moreover, the U.S. was open to all kinds of deals in its fight against the USSR.10 But did Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun take advantage of these opportunities?

Conspiracy theories

Many conspiracy theorists are convinced that they did. Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams in their book ‘Grey Wolf. The Escape of Adolf Hitler,’ describe how the Führer and his wife escaped from Berlin on April 28, 1945, in a Junkers Ju 52.11 From Berlin they flew to Denmark, Reus in Spain and finally to Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands.

A few days later, Operation Seawolf was launched. Hitler and Braun boarded a submarine that took them to South America in 59 days. After arriving in Argentina, they continued their journey by plane to Patagonia in the south. First, Hitler and Braun spent nine months at the Estancia San Ramón, an estate owned by a German prince. Then the construction of his final refuge was completed: Residencia Inalco, near the Chilean border. According to Dunstan and Williams, Hitler and Braun lived a quiet life in Patagonia until 1962, the year of his death.

The Residencia Inalco still exists. But there is no evidence that Hitler and Braun ever lived there.

Adolf Hitler died in Paraguay

Argentine journalist and author Abel Basti also wrote an international bestseller about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun's escape: ‘Hitler in Exile’. Basti claims that the U.S. allowed the Führer to spend the rest of his life in South America out of gratitude for the scientists they were able to send to the U.S. in Operation Paperclip. According to the Argentine writer, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun sailed from the Canary Islands to Argentina in a submarine, which is consistent with Dunstan and Williams' story. The Führer lived in Argentina for 10 years and then moved to Paraguay, where he died on February 3, 1971. Adolf Hitler was buried in an underground bunker in Asunción. The entrance to the bunker was sealed in 1973. Again, there are no photos or other evidence to support this story.

The hospitality of the Eichhorns

Another very popular topic among conspiracy writers is the story of the Eichhorns. The wealthy German couple Walter and Ida Eichhorn owned the Eden Hotel in La Falda, Argentina. As great admirers of Adolf Hitler, they sponsored him beginning in the 1920s and offered him refuge should he ever need it.

Ida Eichhorn

These photos would prove that Adolf Hitler visited the Eichhorns in Argentina after the war. But they were taken during the Eichhorn’s annual visit to Germany in the 1930s.

Plastic surgery and Father Crespi

In another conspiracy theory, we can read how Adolf Hitler spent the rest of his life in Cuenca, Ecuador. After a visit to the plastic surgeon at the end of the war, he sought refuge in the Vatican under the name of Carlos Crespi and was later ordained a priest... A specialist in stolen art, he was given a position as ‘curator of art for the Vatican archives’. In 1956, he was sent as a priest to Cuenca, Ecuador. He died there in 1993 at the age of 104.

Adolf Hitler after highly successful plastic surgery? Father Carlos Crespi Croci did exist. He was a Salesian priest, born in Italy in 1891, who lived in Cuenca from 1923 to 1982. But he didn't start the Second World War...

No proof

All these conspiracy theories have one thing in common: they offer no proof. And when they do, it's fake. Why do people write such nonsense? An international bestseller can make a small fortune. Or maybe some authors don't take their medicine as prescribed. But there is, or was, another kind of motivation, especially shortly after the end of the war. Many Nazis and Nazi sympathizers wanted to keep the myth alive. As long as the Führer wasn't dead, or believed to be dead, Nazism could still make a comeback.

At this point, however, one thing is clear: no conspiracy theory will bring us any closer to the true fate of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun after World War II. It will take a thorough investigation to unravel this mystery.

Adolf Hitler lost his hair and mustache in a Photoshop attempt to prove he survived the war. The original photo was taken in 1943 on the terrace of the Berghof, his villa on the Obersalzberg in Bavaria.

Americans on the hunt

In 1944, World War II was almost coming to an end. On June 6th, the Allies landed in Normandy. That day, more than 5,000 ships and 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel. By the end of August, Allied forces in Europe numbered more than two million.

With defeat on the horizon, officials and the public in the West began to speculate about Adolf Hitler's last scheme. Was he planning to disguise himself and flee abroad? Eddie Senz, a Hollywood makeup artist, even created a series of manipulated photographs of the Führer in disguise.

Adolf Hitler in disguise, doctored photos by Eddie Senz. Most sources claim that he made these images for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). But they were first published in the New York Times in 1944, where the OSS supposedly happened to see them, ready for use...

On September 4, 1944, FBI Special Agent D.J. Ladd sent a memo directly to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informing him that there were indications that a hideout for Adolf Hitler was being prepared in Argentina.

In the spring of 1945, Hitler disappeared from the face of the earth. The Americans thought that the Führer might have fled to his Alpine Fortress (or Redoubt) in Bavaria. But other sources claimed that Hitler would never leave Berlin in the final stages of the war.

Carl Wiberg, a Swedish businessman who spied for the Allies in Berlin, sent a report on April 18, 1945, assuring that the Führer was still in Berlin. And five days later, on April 23, Generalleutnant12 Kurt Dittmar surrendered to the U.S. 30th Infantry Division. He claimed that there was no such thing as an Alpine Redoubt. But the Americans were not convinced. So when Berlin fell on May 2nd, no one knew where Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were.

FBI and CIA pull out all the stops

The fact that Adolf Hitler had disappeared greatly disturbed the Western authorities. The Americans, in particular, did their utmost to solve the mystery. Both the FBI and the CIA actively participated in the hunt for Adolf Hitler. For more than a decade, U.S. presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that every tip be thoroughly investigated. And the list was endless:

Many people were convinced that Hitler and Braun had escaped in a German submarine. In fact, after Nazi Germany surrendered, the submarine U-530 sailed for Argentina, as did U-977. Both ships surrendered to the Argentine Navy at Mar del Plata. However, the Argentine Navy Ministry issued an official communiqué stating that there were no Nazi leaders on board.

In the first half of July 1945, a search in the Bavarian Alps came up empty. A German POW had claimed that Hitler's body was buried near the

Berghof

.

Nor had the

Führer

opened a medical practice in Bern under the name of Doctor Brandl.

In August 1945, Adolf Hitler had a factory in Argentina for the production of ‘long-range robot bombs’.

In September 1946, the former

Führer

was seen in Spain commanding a number of submarines. But at the same time, Mrs. Jones of Culpeper spotted Adolf Hitler at a hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia. Another American lady shared a table with the fugitive at a diner in Washington D.C. A longshoreman sent a letter to the U.S. president informing him that Adolf Hitler was working as a butler on a ship. And in his spare time, the

Führer

even tried to sell an Encyclopedia Britannica to a young man in Elizabethton, Tennessee. In the run-up to Christmas 1946, Adolf Hitler apparently bivouacked in a cave somewhere in Scandinavia.

A thorough investigation revealed that the most wanted war criminal didn’t remain in Egypt after converting to Islam. Nor was he taking his daily walks around Lake Hohenlychen, north of Berlin.

In 1947, Adolf Hitler, disguised as an American officer, was preparing his comeback near the city of Heidelberg, Germany.

On July 16, 1948, the CIA in Washington received an anonymous letter. The informant was convinced that the

Führer

and some of his followers were living in Bobovo, a hamlet somewhere in Yugoslavia.

The landlady of a small boarding house in Washington D.C. contacted the FBI on October 9, 1948. Adolf Hitler had rented one of her rooms and she was very concerned that she would be arrested and sent to prison for aiding and abetting the Nazi fugitive.

In 1950, several people were convinced that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had taken refuge in a monastery in Tibet. At the same time, however, the former

Führer

went into hiding in Innsbruck, Austria, under the name Gerhard Weithaupt. He was seen in a cafe in Amsterdam, and an American GI even spotted him picking up his laundry at a laundromat.

And this went on for years... Someone was convinced that the FBI should look for Adolf Hitler in New York because 'that's the best place to disappear'. And a medium heard from a source 'on the other side' that the Führer had made the trip to the U.S. in a Japanese submarine and landed on a beach in California.

Year after year, hundreds of FBI and CIA investigations led to one dead end after another. In 1955, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower finally decided that enough was enough. With no tangible evidence, the case was closed and Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were presumed dead... But now the time has come to reopen the investigation.

‘Adolf Schüttelmayer Colombia Tunga. America del Sur 1954 iv.' (South America 1954, 'iv' could be short for invierno – winter.) In the hunt for Adolf Hitler, the FBI received thousands of tips, but only one (doctored?) photograph. But this investigation also came to nothing.

The crime scene

After his appointment as German Chancellor on January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler commissioned his architect, Albert Speer, to build him a new and much larger Reich Chancellery. But first, Hitler wanted a new banquet hall as an extension of the old Reich Chancellery, as well as an underground command center in the garden of the old Reich Chancellery: the Führerbunker.

The old Reich Chancellery on Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse.13

To make room for the new Reich Chancellery, Speer began expropriating and demolishing buildings on the north side of Voßstraße. Meanwhile, the banquet hall and the Führerbunker were being built. Both were completed in January 1936.

In 1937 and 1938, more than 4,000 (forced) laborers worked around the clock to build the new chancellery. The resources were unlimited.14

In January 1939, the imposing building on Berlin's Voßstraße was completed. It was no less than 421 meters long.15 The new chancellery had a volume of 400,000 cubic meters and was beautifully decorated.

Hitler's office was 400 square meters in size and 10 meters in height.

In the middle section of the chancellery was a 146-meter-long colonnade, twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, where the Treaty of Versailles was signed after World War One.16

But in addition to this splendor, the necessary infrastructure for the coming war was already in place. A series of large air raid shelters had been constructed under the new building for the hundreds of officials who worked there. In the vicinity of the old and new chancellery were the other government buildings, whose cellars were also reinforced and expanded into bunkers during the same period. In total, an underground labyrinth of more than 20 bunkers connected by tunnels was created. These spacious air raid shelters would prove their worth at the end of World War II.

A deeper bunker

On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. At first, everything went smoothly for the German army, but by the end of 1941, the attack began to falter. And in 1942, the odds on the Eastern Front changed for good. It became clear that it was not going to be a walk in the park for the Wehrmacht in Russia. In July 1943, the Allies landed in Sicily and turned up the heat from the south as well. Hitler knew he was now on the defensive. He decided to build an additional command bunker, even stronger and deeper underground than the previous one.

From then on, the first bunker, located under the banquet hall behind the old chancellery, was called the ‘front bunker’. The new Führerbunker was built behind the front bunker, under the garden of the old chancellery. This immense work began in 1943, and by the end of October 1944 the bunker was ready for use. But it was never fully completed.

1: The (new) Führerbunker.

2: The front bunker (the first Führerbunker) under the new banquet hall.

3: The new banquet hall.

4: The new chancellery.

5: The old chancellery.

6: The garden of the chancellery.

7: Ministries.

8: Barracks.

9: The garden of the ministries.

The new Führerbunker was built even more solidly than the front bunker. This first command bunker already had thick walls and initially a concrete roof 2.6 meters thick. Around the turn of '44-'45, the roof of the front bunker was reinforced with an additional meter of concrete. But Speer went even further with the new Führerbunker. Hitler's emergency residence was 2.5 meters deeper into the ground: 8.5 meters below the garden of the old chancellery. The floor slab was 2.5 meters thick, the outer walls were made of 2.2 meters of reinforced concrete, and the roof was made of 4 meters of reinforced concrete. The Führerbunker was sealed with double gas-tight steel doors, permanently guarded by SS men. At the time, the Allies did not have a bomb that could damage this structure.

The front bunker (the first Führerbunker) was used as a kitchen, guard quarters, storage room, shelter, secretariat, dining room, etc. The round watchtower also served as an escape exit. The photo was taken in July 1947 from the garden of the old chancellery. The emergency exit and the escape exit from the Führerbunker will play an important role in the investigation.17

1.The Führerbunker had a main entrance, via a staircase from the front bunker.

2. One could also enter and leave the bunker through the emergency exit. A staircase led to a concrete cube in the garden of the old chancellery. This emergency exit was used frequently in the last days before the collapse.

3. Less known is the escape exit. It consisted of steel climbing brackets in the wall of the bunker, which gave access to the circular observation tower. Inside was a hatch that could only be opened from the inside. In case of emergency, it was also possible to leave the bunker this way.

4. Heavily armed members of the Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD 18) guarded the entrance to the bunker. Adolf Hitler had several services protecting him. First, there was the Führerbegleitkommando (FBK 19). This unit was selected from the SS in 1932 and originally consisted of eight members. By the end of the war, the FBK consisted of 31 officers and 112 NCOs. The primary function of the FBK was to protect the Führer during movements outside of his official residences or headquarters. In theory, the FBK was under the command of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LAH), but in practice this unit took its orders directly from the Führer. The LAH was originally a private army of 120 SS men established in 1933. Over the years, the LAH evolved into an SS division that was used for combat missions and no longer performed tasks for the Führer personally. Finally, there was the RSD. The RSD provided bodyguards for the Führer. Its members were recruited from the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo – the ‘criminal police’) and had both Wehrmacht, SS, and police degrees. Each top Nazi had a section of the RSD, a Dienststelle, which provided personal security. Dienststelle 1 was the personal bodyguard of the Führer.

5. Ditto. Everyone, even the generals, had to leave their personal weapons here.

6. Room for RSD officers not on duty at one of the entrances. If necessary, they could help immediately.

7. Upon entering the bunker, one first entered a corridor that was again guarded by a heavily armed guard.

8. The first door on the right led to the engine room, which housed the diesel generators that provided power for lighting and ventilation.

9. The second door on the right led to the room where the ventilation system was located.

10. Behind it was the telephone and telegraph exchange, the domain of SS-Oberscharführer Rochus Misch, the telephone operator.

11. The toilets behind the door on the left were used by everyone in the bunker except Hitler and Braun. There was also a place for Blondi, the Führer's dog, at the back of the room.

12. Accomodation area for the Führer's personal valets.

13. Sleeping quarters for the Führer's personal valets.

14. Infirmary.

15. Joseph Goebbels' bedroom.

16. People who came for an audience with the Führer or for a staff meeting had to wait in the anteroom of the meeting room.

17. Daily meetings were held in the small meeting room. Here Hitler sat behind a table, usually with the necessary maps in front of him. About twenty participants stood shoulder to shoulder. Often a number of participants lower in the pecking order had to watch the meeting from the anteroom of the meeting room. It was in this small meeting room that the wedding of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun took place.

18. From the anteroom of the meeting room, a double armored door gave access to the Führer's apartment, which consisted of five small rooms. The first was Hitler's anteroom, again a waiting room for visitors the Führer wished to receive personally.

19. Behind it was Hitler's office and living room. To the right of the door was a desk with a chair. Against the back wall was a sofa, with a coffee table and two armchairs in front of it. It was in this room that the bodies were found. After the double suicide, or whatever really happened...

20. A door led from Hitler's office to his bedroom.

21. Eva Braun's bedroom was also part of the Führer's apartment.

22. Hitler and Braun shared a bathroom and dressing room.

Beginning in January 1945, the government district of Berlin was heavily bombed. The U.S. Air Force conducted heavy bombing raids every 10 days, and the British even every night. On February 3, 1945, the U.S. 8th Air Force pounded the German capital with 900 planes. In early 1945, when there were no air raids, the new chancellery was used for daily military meetings. In March, however, the air raids increased in intensity and frequency, and by early April the bunker was the only place left in use. And on April 21, the center of Berlin came within range of Soviet artillery. Hitler and his followers could hardly get out of the bunker. The investigation of the end of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun will therefore have to focus on the events in the Führerbunker and its immediate surroundings.

And what happened to Hitler's hiding place after the war? In any case, the Soviets wanted to prevent the site from becoming a pilgrimage site for Nazis and neo-Nazis. In 1947 they tried to blow up the bunker, but without success. The German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) made another attempt in 1959, but the bunker resisted again. In 1988, the roof of the bunker was finally removed, the inner walls demolished and the whole area filled with rubble. A parking lot was then built on the site. Deep underground today, the floor slab and most of the outer walls of the bunker remain, but nothing is visible on the surface. Thus, we can no longer examine the crime scene to find interesting clues.

The Führer is dead! Isn’t he?

In 1945, the vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg, tried to improve the fate of Scandinavian POWs as much as possible. In this context, he had several meetings with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in March 1945. And this led to a number of results. For example, Himmler agreed to gather all Scandinavian POWs at Neuengamme concentration camp, where they could receive help from the Swedish Red Cross. Later, Himmler also allowed all women and some civilians from this concentration camp to be transferred to Sweden. One of the greatest murderers of the Nazi regime was busy securing his post-war career.

But that would be a great disappointment. Himmler was arrested as a war criminal. On May 23, 1945, he committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule. His painful agony reportedly lasted 15 minutes. Interesting information that will come in handy when we analyze the suicides in the Führerbunker.

In the days following April 20, 1945, it became painfully clear that Germany's military situation was hopeless. On April 24, Himmler made a proposal to the Western Allies through Bernadotte. Since Hitler was almost dead, or perhaps had already died of a brain hemorrhage, Himmler offered the surrender of Nazi Germany to the West. He would not surrender to Stalin. This would allow American and British troops to advance more quickly and occupy a larger part of Germany. The proposal was immediately rejected. The German surrender had to be unconditional, to all the Allies. A measure for nothing. But the information about Hitler's poor health had stuck. If he was still alive, Himmler said, he could last a few days at most.

The Führer was killed in action.

By May 1, 1945, the battle for Berlin was all but over. Soviet troops had taken control of most of the government quarter and were within a few dozen meters of the Führerbunker. But no one knew where Hitler was or if he was still alive. Here and there it was assumed that he was still in besieged Berlin, but there was no certainty. At 10:26 p.m., the following message was broadcast over German Radio Hamburg:

‘It is reported from the Führer’s headquarters that this afternoon our Führer Adolf Hitler, in his headquarters in the chancellery, fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism, has fallen for Germany. On April 30, the Führer appointed Grand Admiral Dönitz as his successor.’

What were the Western Allies to make of this? They had heard from a variety of sources that the Führer's health had been deteriorating rapidly in recent months. Some said he had already died of natural causes. Others claimed that he had been killed by those close to him. Added to this was the official German announcement that Hitler had died in battle on May 1. But the West had no troops in Berlin, and the Soviets were particularly scarce with information. In retrospect, this is completely understandable, as the Russians themselves were not exactly sure how things were going. At the time, the Western Allies had no choice but to cautiously assume that the Führer had indeed died on May 1, 1945. Of course, it could have been a ruse. Perhaps Hitler had fled Berlin and would reappear somewhere later?

Radio Moscow acted quickly. As early as 3:12 a.m. on May 2, the people of the Soviet Union were informed of the end of Adolf Hitler. This seems extremely fast, but it later turned out that Stalin was informed as early as 5:00 a.m. on May 1 that Hitler had died on the afternoon of April 30. So he knew that the German radio message was a lie, because it situated Hitler's death in the afternoon of May 1. Stalin, however, kept his cards close to his chest and had the German message announced by radio Moscow a few hours later. But the news was delivered with reservations. The message to the Soviet people mentioned that it was probably another fascist trick. The Führer was probably not dead, but the announcement from his deputy Dönitz gave Hitler a chance to go into hiding. And we cannot blame the Soviets for being particularly suspicious. After all, contrary to the German radio message, Hitler not only did not die on May 1, but he did not die in the chancellery, nor did he die in battle...

The 'Master Liar’

The New York Times thought along the same lines as the Russians on May 2:

‘The Nazis have made lies so much a part of their politics, and their reports about Hitler’s alleged doubles have been so widely spread, that these announcements are bound to leave in many minds the suspicion that the master liar is attempting to perpetrate one last great hoax on the world in an effort to save himself, and perhaps prepare the way for his return at a later and more auspicious time.’

The important news also appeared in Britain on May 2, 1945, with big headlines. The Daily Mail wrote that no one knew how the Führer had met his end. It was assumed that he had either committed suicide or been murdered by those close to him.

The population in the West was eager for the war to end. Consequently, the authorities could not afford to make public their doubts about the Führer's death. Not only would that have damaged the morale of their own troops and civilians, but it would have emboldened the German soldiers and SS who were still fighting. In the West, for example, it was feared that the German navy would continue to fight, plundering the seas like a band of pirates for a long time to come. On the same day, May 2, U.S. President Truman held a press conference in which he did his best to reassure the public,

‘The two principal war criminals Hitler and Mussolini will not have to come to trial and I’m very happy they are out of the way… But how Hitler died we are not familiar with the details yet…’

Suicide?

But the information on which Truman's press release was based was extremely weak. On May 2, the Soviets had arrested Hans Fritzsche in Berlin. Fritzsche, who served as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' Minesterial Director until the fall of the German capital, told his Russian interrogators that he had heard that Hitler had committed suicide and that his body had been cremated. A reporter embedded with the First U.S. Army Corps had learned of this and reported it to military authorities. But Fritzsche had also added that there was a possibility that this was a ruse and that Hitler had fled Berlin. So, based solely on the first part of Fritzsche's statement, a press release was issued in the U.S. that Adolf Hitler had committed suicide. This news was picked up in London and disseminated in a new press release. Thus, reports of Hitler's death were spread in both the U.S. and Britain based on what Fritzsche had heard, but which he himself doubted... The certainty that Truman displayed at the press conference was deceptive. For there was not a shred of evidence that Hitler was actually dead.

On May 2, Soviet soldiers wiped out the last pockets of resistance in Berlin. This was no longer difficult, as there was virtually no one left on the German side to continue the fight. But that didn't make the British and Americans any wiser. Berlin had fallen, but the war was not over. The German capital was in the Soviet-occupied zone, and the Russians would not tolerate prying eyes.

Assassinated?

General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to prevent the ‘heroic death’ of the Führer, as announced by the new Reich President, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, from inspiring the troops still fighting and prolonging the war unnecessarily. On May 2, he ordered that Himmler's information that Hitler had been mortally ill be disseminated to the press. Thus, the Führer could not have gone down fighting. But this press release, in turn, gave rise to a series of rumors that Hitler had been assassinated on Himmler's orders, a trail that U.S. intelligence agencies took particularly seriously for quite some time.

The message published in the press on Eisenhower's orders was also read by the Brazilian ambassador in London. This diplomat sent a message to Churchill in which he wrote that he had received information that Hitler had been assassinated by Himmler. He forgot to mention that he had read it in his newspaper... And a little later the British Foreign Office came out with a series of press clippings saying that Soviet intelligence had also revealed that Hitler had indeed been murdered by Himmler and that his body was hidden in a crypt on the Obersalzberg. Until September 1945, the intelligence services were tracking the effects of Eisenhower's message. And in October 1945, the Swede Bernadotte came knocking again with the same information...

Soviet coverage

On May 3, 1945, Pravda 20 reported that the Soviets, for their part, were not at all convinced that Hitler was dead and were searching intensively. ‘We will see what really happened to him. And if he has escaped, we will find him wherever he is.’

There was silence for several days, but on May 6 the Soviets distributed a communiqué announcing that they had taken into custody Hitler's personal pilot, SS-Gruppenführer Hans Baur, and the commander of the RSD, SS-Gruppenführer Johann Rattenhuber. The Western Allies were very interested in this because these were two Hitler loyalists who had remained in Berlin until the final phase.They probably knew if and how Hitler had met his end. The Allies demanded additional information and immediately asked if the Russians had also captured Hitler's valet, SS-Obersturmbannführer Heinz Linge. In fact, they knew the answer to that question because Else Krüger and Gerda Christian, two of Hitler's personal secretaries, had recognized Linge in a group of Russian prisoners of war who were being taken away. The Soviets remained silent on both questions... It was not until October 1945 that Baur's wife learned that her husband was in a Russian hospital after having a leg amputated. In any case, the Western Allies were denied access to the interesting witnesses Baur, Rattenhuber, and Linge.

On May 6 and 7, the Russian news agency TASS sent out press release after press release. The Soviets informed the world that the search for the Führer was continuing. On May 7, Berlin was again thoroughly searched. The claim by some German generals that Hitler had committed suicide was not credible, according to the Soviets. The examination of a number of bodies found near the chancellery and the Führerbunker was in full swing. But TASS confirmed that no evidence had yet been found to support the Hitler suicide hypothesis. As the days passed, the Soviets thought it more likely that Hitler and his executioners had gone into hiding in a neutral country or were on a submarine bound for Japan.

Germany surrenders

And then the curtain finally fell on Nazi Germany. At 2:41 a.m. on May 7, 1945, Wehrmacht Chief of Staff Generaloberst21 Alfred Jodl signed the capitulation at Reims, which took effect at 11:01 p.m. on May 8. This, of course, presented an ideal opportunity to question the German Chief of Staff about the fate of his Führer. But Jodl had last seen Hitler on April 22. He had only heard that the Führer had committed suicide.

Soviet press information was, of course, only one source for the Western Allies. Through military intelligence, General Eisenhower learned that the Russians had found a body that was believed to be Hitler's remains. But no further details were available. The information came from a spy who had been given the news by a Soviet soldier in Berlin in exchange for a pack of cigarettes or a bar of chocolate. How reliable was that information?

On May 7, Time magazine gave a brief overview of the situation. As a political ruler, Hitler had been eliminated. But what had happened to him remained a big question mark. Either he had indeed suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, as reported from Stockholm after the Bernadotte-Himmler consultation. Either he had fallen at the head of his troops, as the Nazis claimed. But it was also possible that he was alive and had escaped, or that he had been imprisoned by Himmler. There was no way to know.

Germany had surrendered at SHAEF 22 in Reims on May 7, but Stalin had reservations. On the pretext that the document was only signed by the German Chief of Staff, Stalin demanded a re-signing. Naturally, the Soviets wanted to emphasize their role in the victory. So on May 8, shortly before midnight, the German surrender was signed again in Soviet-conquered Berlin. This time the supreme commander of the Wehrmacht, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, the Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and the British Marshal of the RAF, Arthur W. Tedder, sat around the table. And, of course, the opportunity was taken to find out if Keitel knew what had happened to Hitler. But Keitel had left the Führerbunker for the last time on April 23, 1945.

After the second signing of the German surrender, Zhukov offered the Western delegation a grand banquet. But even with the finest dishes and alcoholic beverages, the Soviets stuck to their version. They had not found the Führer in Berlin, dead or alive.

The aviator couple

But on the same day, May 8, the Americans arrested a particularly interesting couple: Generalfeldmarschall Robert Ritter von Greim and pilot Hanna Reitsch. Von Greim was the last commander of the Luftwaffe. His mistress, Reitsch, was the Führer's favorite pilot, who over the years became a true cult figure in Nazi Germany as a test pilot. There was great mutual admiration between Hitler and Reitsch.

Hanna Reitsch in 1941.

Following the (forced) resignation of Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring on April 23, 1945, Hitler summoned Generaloberst Ritter von Greim to the Führerbunker. Reitsch accompanied him, and the two flew first to Berlin-Gatow Airport and from there in a small Fieseler-Storch to the government quarter in Berlin. Soviet anti-aircraft fire hit them hard, and von Greim was shot through the foot. Nevertheless, they managed to land at 7 a.m. on April 26, 1945, on a makeshift airstrip near the Führerbunker. Hitler promoted von Greim to Generalfeldmarschall and made him the new commander of the Luftwaffe. Von Greim urgently needed to rally the last remnants of the Luftwaffe to relieve the pressure of Soviet forces on Berlin.

On the evening of April 28, von Greim and Reitsch took off in a training plane from the government quarter. The Soviets thought Hitler was aboard this small plane and did everything they could to bring it down. But von Greim and Reitsch managed to escape. It would be the last plane to succeed. According to Reitsch and von Greim, Hitler was still alive on the evening of April 28. But what happened in the bunker after that, they had no idea. Nevertheless, Reitsch managed to convince her interrogator that Hitler was definitely dead. According to her, he had nothing left to live for and had no intention of escaping, even if it had been possible.

Many questions

The war in Europe was over, and that would hopefully bring more clarity. Was Hitler alive or not? Had the Soviets finally found and identified his body? The British and Americans asked these questions again on May 10. And this time they received a different answer, which they immediately announced to the public. The SHAEF press service distributed a report that the Soviets had found at least four bodies in the underground bunkers of the chancellery. The corpses had been badly burned by the Soviets' flamethrowers, but one body might be that of Hitler. However, final identification was still pending.

On May 9, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring surrendered to the Americans. Two days later, he was paraded before the press in Augsburg and told that he was glad Hitler was dead. Not surprisingly, Göring had been branded a traitor by the Führer at the instigation of SS-Obergruppenführer Martin Bormann in late April 1945 and had been forced to resign from all his posts. The former Luftwaffe commander declared that Hitler was dead, and that the necessary steps had been taken to prevent his body from falling into Soviet hands. But he could give no further details. Göring had already left Berlin on April 20, 1945. And when the German capital fell, he was on the Obersalzberg in southern Germany.

On May 13, a meeting of Allied intelligence officers was held in the newly created QIC.23 The Russians reported at this meeting that they had new evidence that Hitler had died on May 1, 1945, as a result of an injection administered by his personal physician, SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger. This doctor was a confidant of Himmler's, so this was consistent with the rumor that Hitler had been killed on the orders of the Reichsführer-SS. However, this was only one of the many versions of Hitler's death that circulated. On May 14, Time magazine listed the various possibilities:

Killed in the battle for the chancellery (the official German version).

Brain hemorrhage (Himmler to Swedish diplomat Bernadotte).

Suicide (several sources).

Detonation of a grenade on the steps of the chancellery (Radio Tokyo).

A bomb planted by other Nazis in the

Führerbunker

on April 21, 1945 (Paris-Presse).

On his way to Japan in a submarine (London Daily Express).

Poisoned by his associates (several sources).

Already killed in the von Stauffenberg assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, and then replaced by a double (war correspondent Edward W. Beattie Jr., based on rumors he heard in Germany).

Still alive and hiding somewhere (many sources).

Uncertainty was the only certainty for the population at that time. And the same was true for the Western secret services...

On May 15, Gerhard Herrgesell spoke to the press in Berchtesgaden. Herrgesell was one of the Führer's personal stenographers. On April 22, 1945, his services were no longer needed in Berlin and he was sent to Berchtesgaden. He told reporters that although he thought Hitler and Braun were dead, there was still a possibility that they had escaped. And if they had indeed perished, their bodies were probably hidden in a vault in the basement of a government building in Berlin, after which the building was blown up.

Doctor Morell

On May 22, it was the turn of Dr. Theodor Morell, the Führer's personal physician, to speak to the press. Morell had asked Hitler on April 23 to allow him to leave Berlin because he could no longer stand the pressure. The Führer had allowed him to leave for Berchtesgaden, whereupon Dr. Stumpfegger took over as personal physician. According to Morell, Hitler did not commit suicide, but probably died of a heart attack. So many statements, so many versions....

The war was barely over, and the Allied coalition was already showing serious cracks. The Soviets' reluctance to share information was getting on the West's nerves. On May 23, 1945, the JIC 24 submitted a memorandum on relations with the Russians to the British War Office. In it, they proposed to be less lenient with the Soviets. No more requests were to be granted unless there was a quid pro quo of interest to the British. Such a souring of relations was obviously not productive.

An eyewitness in British hands

But then, suddenly, a major breakthrough occurred. On May 25, 1945, SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Karnau surrendered to Canadian soldiers in Wilhelmshaven, northern Germany. It soon became clear that Karnau had been part of the RSD's Dienststelle 1. In this capacity, he had guarded the Führerbunker until May 1, 1945. The Allies had their first eyewitness. Pretending to be a Dutchman returning home, Karnau had slipped through the Soviet encirclement. He told Canadian Sergeant Otto Almasy that on May 1 he saw the clearly recognizable bodies of Hitler and Braun burning in the chancellery garden. He did not know how they had died, but he suspected that Dr. Stumpfegger had been involved. The Canadians, however, did not believe Karnau's story. After consultation with the British, he was handed over to the British 21st Army Group. There he was interrogated again. Karnau stuck to his story. Karnau's arrest and testimony were kept strictly secret, both from the Soviets and from the population. Spreading another questionable story was not an option.

American diplomats Harry L. Hopkins, W. Averell Harriman, and Charles E. Bohlen met with Stalin in Moscow on May 26, 1945. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union told the Americans that he was convinced that Hitler was not dead, but in hiding somewhere. He added that his pathologists believed they had identified Hitler's body, but he himself remained skeptical. He knew that the Nazis had submarines carrying valuable items to Japan. So he had ordered his Secret Service to launch an investigation in that direction, since Hitler could easily have boarded one of those submarines. But the search had not yet yielded any results.

A worn set of teeth

On May 28, 1945, the Americans finally had some luck. They managed to arrest Hitler's dentist Dr. Blaschke in Salzburg. Blaschke had already left Berlin on the night of April 20-21, 1945, but if they ever found Hitler's presumed corpse, his testimony could be crucial for identification. Blaschke was immediately interrogated, but the results were somewhat disappointing. He cooperated well, but the information he was able to provide about Hitler's teeth was rather limited. It was later revealed that the interrogation had left much to be desired.

Anyway, there was nothing more available at the time, and the Americans sent a report to MI6 as early as May 30 with Hitler's dental data as provided by Blaschke. The information was immediately passed on to MI14.

The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) is better known as MI6. This service deals with the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. MI5 specializes in counterterrorism and counterintelligence. MI14 was a temporary British military intelligence service that dealt exclusively with intelligence gathering in and about Nazi Germany. There were a number of other British intelligence services. MI1, for example, was the service that tried to break codes during World War I, MI2 specialized in Russia and Scandinavia, MI3 covered the rest of Eastern Europe, MI4 made maps, etc. ....

This service suggested that the data be turned over to the Russians because MI14 had heard that the Soviets had found a body that their pathologists believed was Hitler's. The Americans did not agree. And so the information was not passed on to the Soviets. There was great suspicion that the Soviets would not share their conclusions with the West anyway. After all, a month after the fall of Berlin, there was still no clarity from the East. Until the Soviets released solid information, they would get nothing from the West.

The problem, however, was that the Soviets themselves apparently did not know very well either. At the end of May '45, senior Western military officers and diplomats went to Berlin to negotiate with Marshal Zhukov about the joint occupation of Berlin. And, of course, Hitler's fate came up for discussion. Some senior Soviets were convinced that Hitler had escaped, others thought he had perished. But at least Zhukov and his deputy, General Sokolovsky, played their cards straight. They showed the Western delegation the remains of teeth worn down to the bone. A few natural teeth and the rest were false teeth, crowns and gold bridges. According to the Soviet pathologists who performed the autopsy, this was decisive evidence to identify a discovered body with certainty as that of Adolf Hitler. However, none of this looked very convincing. Not surprisingly, Stalin continued to harbor grave doubts.

Was this openness the result of a hardening of Western attitudes? In any case, it was clear that the Soviets in Berlin wanted better cooperation with the British and Americans to solve the mystery. On June 5, 1945, a meeting was organized in the German capital with the supreme commanders of the Allied armies. The concrete agreements on the division of Germany into four occupation zones had to be reached. The principles had already been laid down at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, but the practicalities still had to be worked out. On the sidelines of the meeting, several Soviet generals announced off the record that they had discovered Hitler's body and that it had been scientifically identified with ‘near certainty’. It was one of four bodies discovered in the Führerbunker that the West already knew about. The Führer's corpse had been badly burned, probably by the flamethrowers used by Soviet soldiers to enter the bunker to eliminate any last resistance. But the news was not announced as long as there could be the slightest doubt.

On June 6, 1945, the Soviets held an international press conference in Berlin. The information they had given the Western Allied commanders the day before was now made public by a press officer for Marshal Zhukov. Examination of the teeth and other unspecified characteristics of one of the bodies discovered by the Soviets brought almost complete certainty that they were holding the remains of Adolf Hitler. It was one of four bodies burned by Russian flamethrowers found on May 3 and 4 in the ruins of the underground fortress beneath the chancellery. And toxicological tests had shown that Hitler had probably died of poisoning. The Soviets did not say what they had done with the body after the autopsy. When questioned by a member of the press, the Soviet spokesman replied that they had not yet announced the news from Moscow because they did not want to announce anything while the slightest doubt remained. On June 7, the information Zhukov had released appeared in all the major Western newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Stalin: Hitler is alive!

But at the time of Zhukov's press conference in Berlin, Stalin met again in Moscow with the American diplomats Hopkins, Harriman, and Bohlen. And on this occasion the Soviet leader once again repeated that he was convinced that Hitler had escaped and was still alive. The Americans had just left the meeting when Stalin learned what Zhukov had made public. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union couldn't believe his ears. The Soviet marshal was immediately reprimanded for his press conference and assigned a personal guard. And not the least. Andrei Vyshinsky was a Stalin confidant who had modified the legal system in the USSR to give the General Secretary's omnipotence a legal basis. Vyshinsky immediately left Moscow for Berlin as ‘Political Representative to the Chief of the Soviet Military Administration’.

At the same time, the Americans were looking for fingerprints and X-rays of the Führer