Death of Adolf Hitler

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Cover of US armed forces newspaper The Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945.
Cover of US armed forces newspaper The Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945.

The generally accepted cause of the death of Adolf Hitler on Monday, 30 April 1945 is suicide by gunshot and cyanide poisoning. The dual method and other circumstances surrounding the event encouraged rumours that Adolf Hitler may have survived the end of World War II along with speculation about what happened to his remains. The 1993 opening of records kept by the Russian KGB and FSB confirmed the widely accepted version of Hitler's death as described by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his book The Last Days of Hitler published in 1947. However, the Russian archives did show what happened to the cadaver.

Contents

[edit] Suicide

Hitler took up residence in the Führerbunker on 16 January 1945 where he presided over a rapidly disintegrating Third Reich as the Allies advanced from both east and west. By late April Soviet forces had entered Berlin and were battling their way to the centre of the city where the Chancellery was located. On 22 April Hitler had what some historians later described as a nervous breakdown during one of his military situation conferences, admitting defeat was imminent and Germany would lose the war. He expressed his intent to kill himself and later asked physician Werner Haase to recommend a reliable method of suicide. Haase suggested combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head.

Hitler had a supply of cyanide capsules which he had obtained through the SS. Meanwhile on 28 April Hitler learned of Heinrich Himmler's attempt to independently negotiate a peace treaty. Hitler considered this treason and began to show signs of paranoia, expressing worries the cyanide capsules he had received through Himmler's SS were fake. To verify the capsules' potency he ordered Dr. Haase to try them on his dog Blondi and the animal died as a result.

After midnight on 29 April,[1] Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the bunker complex. Antony Beevor states that after hosting a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife Hitler took secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. He signed these documents at 04:00 and then retired to bed (some sources say Hitler dictated the last will and testament immediately before the wedding, but all sources agree on the timing of the signing).[2][3]

Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for less than 40 hours. Late in the morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler had a meeting with General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, who informed Hitler the Berlin garrison would probably run out of ammunition that night. Weidling asked Hitler for permission to break out, a request he had made unsuccessfully before. Hitler did not answer at first and Weidling went back to his headquarters in the Bendlerblock where at about 13:00 he got Hitler's permission to try a breakout that night.[4] Hitler, two secretaries and his personal cook then had a light lunch consisting of spaghetti with light sauce, after which Hitler and Eva Braun 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 14:30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.

Some witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30 (the Goebbels' young son is said to have declared, "A bull's-eye!"[5], or "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 small study. Linge later stated he immediately noted a scent of burned almonds, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the gaseous form of cyanide. The Hitlers were both sitting on a small sofa, Eva on the left, Adolf to her right. Eva's body slumped away from Adolf's. Hitler appeared to have shot himself in the right temple (there was an exit wound towards the top, left side of his head) with a Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol which lay at his feet. Blood dripping from Adolf's temple and chin had made a large stain on the right arm of the sofa and was pooling on the floor/carpet. Eva had no visible physical wounds and Linge assumed she had poisoned herself.

Several witnesses said the two bodies were carried up to ground level and through the bunker's emergency exit to a small, bombed-out garden behind the Chancellery 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 after 18:00.

[edit] Ashes dumped in the Elbe river

In 1969 Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky's book on the SMERSH autopsy report was published in the west but because of earlier disinformation attempts historians may have thought it untrustworthy.[6] However in 1993 the KGB/FSB publicly released the autopsy records and other statements by former KGB members. Drawing from these, historians reached a consensus about what happened to the bodies of Hitler and Braun.

Red Army troops began storming the Chancellery at approximately 23:00, about 7 hours and 30 minutes after Hitler's death. On 2 May the remains of Hitler, Braun and two dogs (thought to be Blondi and her offspring Wulf) were discovered in a shell crater by Ivan Churakov of the 79th Rifle Corps (otherwise known as 79th SMERSH).

After the autopsy, which (contrary to public reports authorized by Stalin in 1945) recorded both gunshot damage to Hitler's skull and glass shards in his jaw, their remains were repeatedly buried and exhumed by SMERSH during the unit's relocation from Berlin to a new facility in Magdeburg where they (along with the charred remains of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and those of 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. Fearing the possibility any Hitler burial site might become a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised a special operation to destroy the remains. On 4 April 1970 a Soviet KGB team (which had been given detailed burial charts) secretly exhumed the bodies and thoroughly burned them before dumping the ashes in the Elbe river.

[edit] See also

[edit] Dramatizations

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

Main article: List of Adolf Hitler books
Books
Articles

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Hitler's last days: "Hitler's will and marriage" "In the small hours of 28-29 April.."
  2. ^ Beevor References p. 343. Records the marriage as taking place before Hitler had dictated the last will and testament
  3. ^ Hitler's last days: "Hitler's will and marriage" on the website of MI5 using the sources available to Trevor Roper (a WWII MI5 agent) The Last Days of Hitler records the marriage as taking place after Hitler had dictated the last will and testament.
  4. ^ Beevor, References p.358
  5. ^ Interview with Traudl Junge in The Two Deaths of Hitler. The World at War. Special Presentation, Episode 6. Producer & Director: Martin Smith. Series Producer: Jeremy Isaacs. Thames Television. 1973.
  6. ^ JSTOR bibliographical note
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