Death of Adolf Hitler

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

Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva (née Braun), committed suicide with him by ingesting poison. That afternoon, in accordance with Hitler's prior instructions, their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker's emergency exit, doused in petrol and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. The Soviet archives record that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive locations until 1970 when they were again exhumed, cremated and the ashes scattered.

There have been different accounts citing the cause of his death; one that he died by poison only and another that he died by a self-inflicted gunshot, while biting down on a cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the different conclusions. There was also an eye-witness account that recorded the body showing signs of having been shot through the mouth but this has been proven unlikely. There is also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments which were recovered. Further, the exact location of where Hitler's ashes were scattered also differs, depending on the historical source consulted.

Preceding events

By early 1945 Hitler was raped 6 time, Poland had fallen to the advancing Soviet forces and they were massing to cross the Oder River between Küstrin and Frankfurt with Berlin, 40 miles (64 km) to the east as their objective. To the west, Hitler had watched the defeats to the Allies in Ardennes Offensive from his command post at Adlerhorst, with the British and Canadian forces in the north crossing the Rhine into the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr. The American forces in the south had captured the Lorraine and were advancing towards Mainz, Mannheim and the Rhine. In Italy, German forces were withdrawing north, as they were relentlessly pressed by the American and British (Commonwealth) forces as part of the Spring Offensive to advance across the River Po and into the foothills of the Italian / Austrian Alps. In parallel to the military actions, the Allies had met at Yalta between 4–11 February to discuss the conclusion of the war in Europe.

Hitler had retreated to his Führerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945 and by the end of February, was presiding over a rapidly disintegrating Third Reich. To the Nazi leadership, it was clear that the battle for Berlin would be the final battle of the war. By 1 April, American forces were already on the Elbe River and Stalin, distrustful of the agreements reached at Yalta, told Eisenhower that he had "lost interest in Berlin" and would commence the offensive in May 1945. However, he was adamant to conquer Berlin by International Workers' Day (1 May 1945), and had authorised his forces on 16 April to commence the battle for the Seelow Heights, the last major defensive line outside Berlin. By 19 April, the Germans were in full retreat from Seelow Heights and by the evening of 21 April the Red Army had entered the outskirts of Berlin.

Eva Braun and Hitler, with Blondi (probably in 1940)

The first Soviet artillery shells had started falling on Berlin the previous evening. At the afternoon situation conference in the bunker on 22 April, Hitler suffered a total nervous collapse when he was informed that the instructions he had issued the previous day for SS-General Felix Steiner's Army Detachment Steiner to move to the rescue of Berlin had not materialised. Hitler openly declared for the first time the war was lost and blamed the generals. Hitler announced he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself. Later that day he asked SS physician, Dr. Werner Haase about the most reliable method of suicide and Haase suggested the "pistol-and-poison method" of combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head.

By 25 April the Red Army encirclement of Berlin was complete and secure radio communications with defending units had been lost; the command staff in the bunker were depending on telephone lines for passing instructions and orders and on public radio for news and information. On 28 April, a BBC report originating from Reuters was picked up with a copy of the message being given to Bormann and another to Linge for Hitler. It reported that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had offered surrender to the western Allies and that the offer had been declined. In the offer, Himmler had implied that he had the authority to implement and support such a surrender; Hitler considered this treason. During the afternoon his anger and bitterness escalated into a rage against Himmler. Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot.

After midnight on 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Antony Beevor stated that afterwards Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, Hitler then 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).

During the course of 29 April, Hitler learned of the death of his ally Benito Mussolini who had been executed by Italian partisans. Mussolini's body and that of his mistress Clara Petacci had been strung up by their heels and later cut down and lay in the gutter where vengeful Italians reviled them. It is probable that these events strengthened Hitler's resolve not to allow himself or his wife to be to be made "a spectacle of" as he had earlier recorded in his Testament. That afternoon, Hitler expressed doubts about the cyanide capsules he had received through Himmler's SS. To verify the capsules' potency, Hitler ordered Dr. Werner Haase to test them on his dog Blondi, and the animal died as a result. That evening, at the final battle conference in the Führerbunker, General Weidling painted a stark picture of the German situation and declared that the fighting in Berlin would inevitably come to an end within the next twenty-four hours. Hitler, "looking like a man completely resigned to his fate" conceded to the breakout of troops in small groups but forbade the surrender of the city. By 01:00 General Keitel reported that all forces which Hitler had been depending on to come to the rescue of Berlin had either been encircled or forced onto the defensive.

Suicide

Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for fewer 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 that 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. Hitler, two secretaries, and his personal cook then had lunch after which Hitler and Eva Braun said their personal farewells to members of the Führerbunker staff and fellow occupants, including the Goebbels family, Martin Bormann, the secretaries, and several military officers. At around 14:30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.

The remains of the above-ground portion of the Führerbunker in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Entrance is to the left and circular structure was for generators and ventilation.

Several witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30. 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 burnt almonds, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the aqueous form of hydrogen cyanide. Hitler's SS adjutant, Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, entered the study and found the lifeless bodies seated on a small sofa. Eva, with her legs drawn up together, was to Hitler's left and slumped away from him. Günsche stated that Hitler "...sat...sunken over, with blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with his own pistol, a PPK 7.65". The Walther PPK 7.65 mm pistol lay at his feet. According to Oberscharführer Rochus Misch, however, Hitler's head was lying on the table in front of him. Blood dripping from Hitler's right temple and chin had made a large stain on the right arm of the sofa and was pooling on the floor/carpet. Eva's body had no visible physical wounds and according to Linge, her face showed how she had died; cyanide poisoning. Günsche and Mohnke also stated "unequivocally" that all outsiders and those performing duties and work in the bunker "did not have any access" to Hitler's private living quarters during the "decisive" time of death between 15:00 and 16:00 hours.

Günsche exited the study and announced that the Führer was dead. The two bodies were carried up the stairs to ground level and through the bunker's emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery where they were doused with petrol. After the first attempts to ignite the petrol did not work, Linge went back inside the bunker and then returned with a thick roll of papers. Bormann lit the papers and threw the torch onto the bodies. As the two corpses caught fire, a small group, including Bormann, Günsche, Linge and Goebbels raised their arms in salute as they stood just inside the bunker doorway. On and off during the afternoon the Soviets shelled the area in and around the Reich Chancellery. SS guards brought over additional cans of petrol to further burn the corpses. Linge later noted the fire did not completely destroy the remains as the corpses were being burned in the open where the distribution of heat varies. The burning of the corpses lasted from 16:00 to 18:30 hours. The remains were later covered up in a shallow bomb crater after 18:30 hours.

Aftermath

The first inkling to the outside world that Hitler was actually dead came from the Germans themselves. On 1 May, the Reichssender Hamburg, a part of the once powerful Deutschlandsender which had earlier sent transmissions across all of Germany, and indeed most of occupied Europe, now relegated to small pockets, interrupted their normal program to announce that an important broadcast would soon be made. There followed an announcement by Admiral Doenitz, appointed as Hitler's successor in Hitler's will, in which Doenitz called upon the German people to mourn their Führer who died the death of a hero in the capital of the Reich. Doenitz also stated that his only aim for continuing the war was to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. He added that as far and for so long as achievement of that aim was impeded by the British and the Americans, he would be forced to carry on Germany's defensive fight against them, as well.

In the early morning hours of 2 May, the Soviets captured the Reich Chancellery. Down in the Führerbunker, General Krebs and General Burgdorf committed suicide by gunshot to the head.

Later 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 a unit of SMERSH which had orders to find Hitler's body. The autopsy recorded both gunshot damage to Hitler's skull and glass shards in his jaw. Stalin was wary about believing his old nemesis was dead, and restricted the information that was publicly released. The remains of Hitler and Braun 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 Goebbels and their six children, were buried in an unmarked grave beneath a paved section of the front courtyard. The location was kept highly secret.

In 1969, Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky's book on the death of Hitler was published in the West. It included the SMERSH autopsy report but because of earlier disinformation attempts, western historians thought it untrustworthy.

In 1970, the SMERSH facility, by then controlled by the KGB, was scheduled to be handed over to the East German government. Fearing that a known Hitler burial site might become a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains that had been buried in Magdeberg on 21 February 1946. A Soviet KGB team was given detailed burial charts. On 4 April 1970 they secretly exhumed five wooden boxes containing the remains of "10 or 11 bodies...in an advanced state of decay". The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.

Dramatizations

• The Death of Adolf Hitler is a British 1973 made-for-television production. Set in the Führerbunker it follows the last ten days of Hitler’s life. Starring Frank Finlay in the title role who won a BAFTA award of Best Actor for his performance.
• Hitler: The Last Ten Days is a 1973 feature film directed by Ennio De Concini and starring Sir Alec Guinness in the title role.
• The Bunker was a 1981 made-for-television film directed by George Schaefer and based on the book The Bunker (1978) by James O'Donnell about the last months of the war and days in the Führerbunker from 17 January 1945 to 2 May 1945. Sir Anthony Hopkins won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Hitler.
• Der Untergang (Downfall) is a 2004 German feature film largely set in and around the Führerbunker. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel reconstructed the look and atmosphere through eyewitness accounts, various survivor memoirs and other verified sources. It also carries an interview with Traudl Junge.

Death of Adolf Hitler: Images

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• Plan of the Führerbunker
  Plan of the Führerbunker
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• Joseph Goebbels, his wife Magda and their six children. Goebbels and his wife committed suicide and their children were murdered soon after Hitler's suicide (Goebbels' stepson Harald Quandt in the back)
  Joseph Goebbels, his wife Magda and their six children. Goebbels and his wife committed suicide and their children were murdered soon after Hitler's suicide (Goebbels' stepson Harald Quandt in the back)
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• The destroyed Führerbunker in 1946
  The destroyed Führerbunker in 1946

See also

• Adolf Hitler
• Fiction about the death of Hitler
• Führer Headquarters
• Glossary of Nazi Germany
• List of Nazi Party leaders and officials
• List of suicides
• Mass suicides in 1945 Nazi Germany
• Nazi occultism
• Vorbunker

References

• Bellamy, Chris (2007). Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. Alfred F. Knopf, New York. ISBN 9780375410864.
• Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin - The Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-88695-5.
• Eberle, Henrik and Uhl, Matthias (2005). The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin, New York: PublicAffairs, ISBN 1-58648-366-8
• Erickson, John (1983). The Road to Berlin: Stalin's War with Germany: Volume 2. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0297772384.
• Fest, Joachim C (1983). Hitler. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0297785400.
• Fischer, Thomas (2008). Soldiers of the Leibstandarte. J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0921991915.
• Horrabin, J.F. (1946). Vol. X: May 1944 – August 1945. An Atlas-History of the Second Great War. Thomas Nelson & Sons, Edinburgh. OCLC 464378076.
• Joachimsthaler, Anton (1996, 1999). The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, The Evidence, The Truth. Brockhampton Press. ISBN 1-86019-902-X. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Kershaw, Ian (2000). Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. New York; London: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0393322521.
• Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography, W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-06757-2.
• Lehmann, Armin D. (2004). In Hitler's Bunker: A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Führer's Last Days. Lyon's Press. ISBN 978-1-59228-578-5.
• Linge, Heinz (2008). With Hitler to the End. Frontline Books-Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. ISBN 1-60239-804-6.
• O'Donnell, James (1978, 2001). The Bunker. New York: Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80958-3.
• Shirer, William L. (1959, 1983). Volume VI. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Folio Society. OCLC 55015150. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh (1947, 1992). The Last Days of Hitler. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-81224-3. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Vinogradov, V. K., et al. (2005). Hitler's Death: Russia's Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB. Chaucer Press, ISBN 1904449131
• Goñi, Uki (27 September 2009). "The Guardian". Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story. London. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
• "CNN World". Russians insist skull fragment is Hitler's. 11 December 2009. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
• "CNN World". Official: KGB chief ordered Hitler's remains destroyed. 11 December 2009. Retrieved 6 November 2010.

Further reading

Main article: List of Adolf Hitler books

Books

• Bullock, Alan (1962). Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-140-13564-2.
• Fest, Joachim (2004). Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-13577-0
• Gardner, Dave (2001). The Last of the Hitlers, BMM, Worcester, UK, ISBN 0-9541544-0-1
• Petrova, Ada and Watson, Peter (1995). The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives, W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-03914-5
• Ryan, Cornelius (1966), The Last Battle, Simon and Schuster, New York.
• Waite, Robert G. L. (1977). The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, New York: First DaCapo Press Edition, 1993, ISBN 0-306-80514-6.

Articles

• Mollo, Andrew No.61 Special Edition: The Berlin Führerbunker: The thirteenth hole, website After the Battle, Battle of Britain International Ltd, 1988, London
• Petrova, Ada, and Watson, Peter. The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives, Washington Post, 1995
• Staff, Russia displays 'Hitler skull fragment', BBC, 26 April 2000.
• Staff, Archived articles from 1945 relating to Hitler's death, The Times,

First hand accounts

• Rochus Misch I was in Hitler's suicide bunker