- For fiction about Hitler's death see Hitler in popular culture
The April 1945 death of Adolf Hitler is generally accepted and the most commonly cited cause of his death is that he shot himself in the head while simultaneously biting into an ampule of cyanide. However, due to the chaos and fluidity of circumstances in the Führerbunker at the time, no theory has ever been completely accepted.
Standard account of the circumstances of Hitler's death
Hitler relocated to the Führerbunker on 16 January 1945 and from that location he presided over the rapid disintegration of his Third Reich before the Allies advancing from both east and west. By late April Soviet forces were fighting within Berlin itself and Hitler began to make preparations for his suicide. At 4:00 am on April 29 he finished his last will and testament. Shortly after midnight on the morning of 30 April 1945 Hitler married Eva Braun in a small ceremony in a map room within the bunker complex. He then dictated his personal will and political testament to secretary Traudl Junge before retiring to bed at around 4am.
That afternoon Hitler had a short meeting with Party Secretary Bormann before eating a small lunch (said to be "spaghetti with a light sauce"). Adolf and Eva Hitler 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. Adolf and Eva Hitler then retired to Hitler's personal study.
After a period of time Hitler's valet Heinz Linge , with Bormann at his side, opened the door to the study. Linge later stated that 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 7.65mm 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 that she had poisoned herself.
Autopsy, controversy and urban myth
Reports of the autopsy performed on Hitler's alleged remains immediately after the fall of Berlin, along with two conflicting accounts of the cause of death, resulted in years of controversy following World War II.
Witnesses stated that following his reported suicide, Hitler's remains (along with those of Eva Hitler) were taken to a small 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 remains, but Russian shelling of the bunker compound made any further cremations attempts impossible.
The badly burned and partially buried remains were recovered by a SMERSH unit which had been assigned the task of locating Hitler's body (this unit was attached to the 79th Rifle Corps of the Soviet Third Shock Army and is frequestly referred to simply as 79th SMERSH). An autopsy was performed by the SMERSH unit, led by Chief Forensic Pathologist Dr. Faust Sherovsky in an attempt to determine the exact cause of death. The team first identified Hitler using odontological records relating to removable dental fittings given to Hitler by his dentist Hugo Blaschke . Two of Blaschke's arrested assistants, Fritz Echtmann and Kaethe Hausermann , confirmed the dental records as being accurate. The autopsy ultimately led to the discovery of traces of cyanide in the tissues of both bodies and the official cause of death published by the team was poisoning by cyanide with no mention of any gunshot wound. The findings were released by the USSR on May 16, 1945 but were quickly recognised as lacking by both Soviet and Western authorities.
Autopsy report declared false
The autopsy report was publicly questioned by both Stalin and the Allies due to persistent testimony from other members of the Führerbunker staff that Hitler had shot himself. Stalin, apparently concerned the autopsy may have been botched and that the Soviet Union had a major embarrassment on its hands, directed Marshal Zhukov to announce on June 9, 1945 that the remains of Hitler had not been found and that Hitler was probably still alive.
This statement was never retracted. The motives were made clearer when the KGB/FSB opened their files on the matter to the public in 1993 (a book by Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky which detailed the SMERSH autopsy report had been published in the west in 1968 but was associated with other disinformation attempts and was considered untrustworthy).
Hitler's escape?
For decades after World War II rumours of Hitler's escape from Berlin and supposed flight to Argentina, Spain or even a moated castle in Westphalia continued to circulate.
The initial announcement of the discovery of Hitler's remains, quickly followed by a Soviet denial that the remains had been found and a statement that Hitler was probably still alive led many to believe Hitler had indeed escaped to South America along with other prominent Nazis (see the article on the ODESSA organisation).
Skull fragment
Dr. Sherovsky had noted in his initial autopsy report that a piece of Hitler's skull cap was missing. A skull fragment was later recovered from the Führerbunker and was found to contain a single bullet hole, most likely from a 7.65mm round. This bullet hole, together with the cyanide trace elements found in the body tissue and witness accounts, ultimately led to the widely accepted conclusion that Hitler had shot himself in the right temple with a 7.65mm pistol while simultaneously biting down on a glass cyanide ampule. The skull fragment was taken to Moscow in 1946 along with the jaw section used for the dental identification and eventually found its way to the Moscow Archives .
There was a rumour, probably an urban legend, that the skull fragment was presented as a gift to Stalin, who then used the fragment as an ashtray in an ultimate show of triumph over his previous enemy. This story may have gotten started with the fact that the fragments were stored for a time in a wooden cigar box by a member of 79th SMERSH who was tasked with their safe-keeping.
The skull fragment disappeared from official records but was later located in the Moscow Archives basement after the fall of the Soviet Union and publicly displayed as part of an exhibition on the fall of the Third Reich entitled The Agony of the Third Reich.
Debate
Some suggested that the traces of cyanide found in the body were a result of the medicines prescribed to Hitler by his personal physician Theo Morrell and that the probable cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Critics point out that although Morrell often prescribed unorthodox treatment including doses of arsenic and strychnine, cyanide compounds were never included. Also, according to Dr. Sherovsky's autopsy report shards of glass were found inside the mouth suggesting a glass ampule (similar to those used by Himmler and Göring) had been bitten.
Journalist James O'Donnell , after extensive interviews with the inhabitants of the bunker (including those who were unavailable for years due to Russian detention), noted agreement among them that shortly before his death, Hitler had a conversation with another doctor, Werner Haase , who gave him instructions on how to make sure the suicide was successful, describing a combination of cyanide and a gunshot to the temple. However, Haase died in Russian captivity and O'Donnell had to rely on witness accounts.
One often-repeated idea is that the "gunshot only" argument was an attempt to portray a more honorable "soldier's death" for Hitler by way of gunshot, as opposed to an "honorless" suicide by poisoning. This idea was later extended to include any suicide scenerio that involved Hitler shooting himself (as opposed to using poison only). O'Donnell, citing the body of evidence that indicates otherwise, noted that such claims are based on ideology, not fact, and remarked that such claimants should learn how to "give the devil his due."
Physically possible?
Another continuing point of speculation is whether Hitler was physically capable of shooting himself while taking poison at the same time, given the rapid and violent convulsions often evident during cyanide poisoning. This led to another theory that Hitler ingested cyanide, died and then his body was shot by someone else to either ensure he was dead or make it appear the Führer had died a soldier's suicide by gunshot. As for who the shooter might have been, Eva Braun is sometimes mentioned. 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 possibilities would include Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet, and Martin Bormann who both had the opportunity to be alone with the body long enough to inflict a gunshot wound before it was removed from the bunker. However, historians for the most part discount this possibility.
Destruction of remains
In the decades following the war there was much speculation regarding the exact location of Hitler's final resting place. Historians have reached a general consensus (based on reports from declassified KGB files and statements by former KGB members) that following the autopsy, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were at first frequently buried and exhumed by SMERSH during the unit's relocation from Berlin to a new facility at 30-32 Klausnerstrasse in Magdeburg.
Once in Magdeburg they were permanently buried in an unmarked grave underneath 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 of Hitler's burial site becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised a special operation to destroy the remains. On 4 April 1970 a Russian KGB team (who had been given detailed burial charts) exhumed the bodies and burned the remains before dumping the ashes in the Elbe river.
In 2005 the skull and jaw fragments taken to Moscow were still kept in the Moscow Archives. An earlier public display on the destruction of the Third Reich contained the skull fragment, although the jaw fragment was not shown as it is apparently too fragile to be handled.
The overall confusion as to the wherabouts of Hitler's corpse can be attributed to Stalin's growing paranoia in his later years, which included ideas that Hitler escaped death. A slight possibility remains that agents and doctors in the USSR attempted to qualm Stalin's fears by producing a body, even though it may have rotted away to nothing long before.
Could he be alive today?
On 31 October 2003 Kamato Hongo, the only living person known to be older than Adolf Hitler, passed away. As of 14th of April 2005 no one born in the decade of the 1880s, male or female, was known to be alive. In effect, if Hitler were still alive he would be the oldest living person in the world.
References
- O'Donnell, James (2001). The Bunker. New York: Da Capo Press (reprint). ISBN 0-306-80958-3.
- Waite, Robert G.L. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. New York: First DaCapo Press Edition, 1993 (orig. pub. 1977). ISBN: 0-306-80514-6.
External links
Last updated: 05-07-2005 13:25:56
