On the evening of May 1 , 1945 , Hamburg Radio announced the death of Hitler who had, it was said , fallen that afternoon fighting at the head of his troops . Like much of the information that issued from Germany ‘s wartime propaganda machine, this was , infact , a lie. At the close of the war in the Europe , as the Allies advanced through the bombed-out rubble of the Reich , the Further was not at the front but in the Berlin banker , ranting about the betrayals that had brought him down .
In a Bunker , the history books now record , he killed himself. But through out the summer of 1945 , rumors circulated that the Nazi leader was still alive ; he had found refuge in moated Westphaliam castle . He was sighted living as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps , as a recluse in the cave near Italy ‘s Lake Garda , and as a casino croupier at Evian in France . Hitler was living in purpose-built underground quarters at a German-owned hacienda in Argentina , with a stone-walled entrance operated by photo-electric cells.
In September 1945 , an official inquiry into Hitler’s death was set up by the British to establish the truth . It was led by Hugh Trevor -Roper , a Young army major who was also an historian by training. Having tracked down witnesses from Fuhrer’s last days. He concluded that Hitler had committed suicide in the Berlin bunker -a suite of rooms 50 ft (15 m ) beneath the gardens of the Reich Chancellery . At about 3:30 pm on April 30 , 1945 , the Nazi leader had put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Eva Braun , his mistress whom he had married the day before , had taken a cyanide capsule and died with him . Trevor-Roper’s report published in 1947 as The Last days of Hitler ,became the classic work on the subject.
But the all-important question of Hitler remains was still an unresolved mystery. According to the report , the corpses of Hitler and Eva were taken up to the Chancellery garden , doused with petrol and set alight so that they should burn , as the Fuhrer had ordered , until nothing remained . However , Trevor-Roper himself acknowledged that although a petrol fire might char the bodies beyond recognition , the bones would have withstood the heat.
Question arises that Hitler’s bones have never been found , What had happened ?
Some continued to doubt whether the Fuhrer was dead at all : Hitler sighting continued for decades after the report was published and as late as Canadian newspaper reported the death of Fuhrer in Latin America .Even among those who accepted the idea of suicide in the bunker there was controversy.
Did Hitler really shoot himself , in soldierly fashion ? or did he take poison – an act perceived to be a coward’s way out ? There were some discrepancies in the reports , and , with no remains available for analysis ,these questions remained open to debate.
The attitude of the soviet authorities compounded the mystery. The Russians were the first to reach Berlin , and were known to have dug up a number of bodies in the Reich Chancellor garden . Among the remains were said to have been HITLER’S teeth- identified by the woman who was assistant to the Fuhrer’s dentist-but for more than 20 years , the soviets refused to comment on any such findings. Then , in 1968 , a book written by a Russian journalist called Lev Bezymenski described how in 1945 soviet troops had recovered the charred bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun from the bomb crater in the Reich Chancellery garden.
Doctors , he claimed , had identified them by their dental work and carried out autopsies.
The smell of bitter almonds emanated from their bodies , indicating poisoning by cyanide.
Recent revelations : More sensational revelations were yet to come . In 1992 , in the new climate of freedom in Russia , a researcher named Ada Petrova was given access to the six secret files of Hitler’s death , which had been hidden in KGB archives. These revealed that at the war ‘s end, the Russians had taken extraordinary pains to find out precisely what had happened to the Nazi leader. Some 800 people were interrogated , and 70 were brought back to Russia for long-term questioning along with a mass of material from the bunker . Stalin it is known , had been scepticial about Hitler’s death and wanted to be absolutely certain that the Fuhrer had not escaped. Among the material in the soviet archives were Hitler’s uniforms , his photograph album and 42 watercolors by the Nazi leader. There were also pictures from the chancellery of man bearing a striking resemblance to Hitler , who seemed to have been shot through the forehead .
This was not Hitler himself but his double -a man named Gustav Weller who was employed in the Chancellery and occasionally wheeled out in suitable costume to stand in the Nazi supreme . He either shot himself or was shot , in the last days before the fall of the Berlin .
Crucial among the finds in the soviet archives were fragments of what was alleged to the Hitler’s skull , burnt at the edges with the exit wound of the bullet hole clearly visible in one of them.
This astonishing relic indicated that the Fuhrer had , indeed shot himself. Piecing together the evidence , researchers proposed a theory in which the Nazi leader had taken poison and shot himself,placing a cyanide capsule in his mouth before firing a pistol through the underside of his chin .
Some critics have doubted the authenticity of the finds , suggesting that the forensic evidence was faked, perhaps by soviet bureaucrats who were under considerable pressure to convince a deeply suspicious Stalin that his rival really was dead .
Why if the finds were genuine , did the Russians not make them public sooner ?
The Answer may lie in their discovery that Hitler did shoot himself : Stalin would have preferred a coward death for the Nazi leader. Besides, the soviet secret services were notoriously secretive about everything. Who knows whose interests the silence best served ?
Hitler plans Suicide
Facing the certainty of defeat in Berlin bunker in the early hours of April 29 , 1945 , Hitler dictated his Will and his political testament to his secretary , Frau Junge . Passages in the documents make clear his intention not only to marry his mistress , Eva Braun , But also to commit suicide with her .
Although I did not consider that I could take a responsibility during the years of struggle of contracting a marriage . Have now decided , before the end of my life , to take as my wife the woman who , after many years of faithful friendship , of her own free will entered this town , when it was already besieged , in order to share my fate . At her own desire she goes to death with me as my wife . This will compensate us for what we have both lost through my work in the service of my people .
What I possess belongs – in so far as it has any value – to the party , or , if this no longer exists , to the State . Should the State too be destroyed , no further decision on my part is necessary ….
I myself and my wife choose to die in order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulation . It I sour wish to be burned immediately in the place where I have carried out the greater part of my daily work in the course of my twelve year’s service to my people …….’
Forensic evidence :In 1995 , an independent Russian expert , Professor Viktor Zvagin from the Federal center of Medical Forensic Examination declared himself 80 percent certain that the skull was Hitler’s . He even deduced from the color of the pieces of skull , that its owner had been vegetarian – as Hitler was . But the story need not end there : an absolute confirmation could still come from DNA fingerprinting . Some relatives of Hitler are still alive and tests on them could be matched against analysis of the skull bones to see whether genetic material is common to both . One way or another such an investigation could help to answer one of the most enduring mysteries of the modern history.
Detection and DNA
Is the ‘ Hitler skull ‘ in Moscow truly relic of Germany’s wartime Nazi leader ?
A DNA analysis could help to resolve this problem , just it has helped to clear up mysteries surrounding the late Russian Tsar’s family , and many criminal cases besides. Genetic fingerprinting has revolutionized forensic science in the late 20th century . The technique derived in the 1980 research into DNA , an acid in the nucleus of every living cell which carris genetic information . This determines a person’s individual characteristics , such as the color of hair and eyes , and the structure is different in everybody (except identical twins) . As a result , a person’s DNA profile is as distinctive as his or her fingerprint.
To obtain a specimen , scientists work from a tiny sample containing some human cells : a spot of blood , for example , or a single hair . To produce a visual record , the genetic information is translated into a series of bars on an X Ray film ; the result resembles the bar code printed on a consumer product . There is enough cellular material in human saliva to take a reading from a cigarette butt left at the scene of a crime , or an envelope licked by the blackmailer .
The technique can be employed in paternity disputes , because the DNA of the father and child match more closely than the DNA of unrelated individuals .It is through surviving relatives of Hitler that identification of ‘ his ‘ skull could be achieved . The remains of another prominent Nazi , Josef Mengele , have already been analysed with the help of DNA fingerprint . In 1985 , the supposed body of this notorious concentration camp doctor was exhumed from the grave outside the Sao Paulo in Brazil . DNA samples from the body closely matched samples from Mengele’s son and combined with dental and skeleton analysis , helped to fix the corpse’s identity as that of Josep Mengele , Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death .”
