"Frau Göbbels called him 'Pappa'. He called her 'Süssing' [Sweet Woman]. They were fond of each other and, great friends even though they lived such different lives.

From 1945 the hunt for Martin Bormann was on. During the confusion of those early post war years, the West German government kept the heat up, but the "hunt" was only, If anything, lukewarm. A concentrated search effort had been made in 1945 around the site of the supposed "moonlit" scenario of Bormann and Stumpfegger, with whom he was last seen alive.

With the advantage of hordes of allied troops on the ground to co-ordinate a thorough search near and around the Lehrter station in Berlin, no stone was left unturned. The same was done independently by a Russian recon group, after Lieutenant General Konstantin Telegin, of the Soviet 5th Shock Army was delivered a diary said to be of Bormann’s, found near the same site.

In those early post war years, it was not yet a "cold case", with memories still fresh and the ground still soft. Any such corpses although decomposed, would have certainly been on, or near the surface and easily identifiable with the minimum of forensics; but not as much as a scrap of flesh was found of either man. At least they had some disputable charred remains of Hitler, but the bodies of Bormann and Stumpfegger had literally "vanished" into thin air, along with the Nazi loot.

But after construction workers came across human remains near the Lehrter station in Berlin in 1972, the world’s press gathered to hear if this was indeed Bormann.

Bormann’s Nazi dentist Dr Hugo Blaschke was called and he recalled from memory his former patient’s dental physiology and gave testimony that they were one and the same, the case was then closed.

Farago, Manning, Thomas and Kempner, are sadly long gone, but the Bormann investigation is far from a cold case, as a new generation of investigative journalists have reopened the dusty Bormann files and have enthusiastically picked up from where their predecessors departed. Recent research reveals that the Federal police archives in Argentina show that the FBI were sending agents to Argentina to follow the Bormann case and his financial trails well into the 1980’s. New elderly witnesses, who till recently refused to talk have also come forward in the past 3 years and startling new evidence has come to light that cannot be ignored and may very well lead to the undisputable discovery that Bormann did escape and lived for many years in South America with the protection of the Allies.

Since 1972, "official" historians and academics have spun their tales and told the world that Bormann certainly died near the Lehrter station in the early hours of 2 May 1945. This oral history is based on no more than unreliable witnesses, two of which were Nazis and a DNA match to a skeleton found in 1972.

DNA may prove that the remains are those of Bormann, but there is more evidence to prove that he was alive for at least 25 years after 1945;. 25 years, in which he could have managed the vast Nazi wealth, including cash, gold, stocks, bonds, shares and priceless works of art. After all, with all the modern banking forensics available to date, not one single Intelligence agency or government claims that the vast, fat, booty has been found! Or has it?

Yet it has been officially written, printed, signed sealed and delivered, even into our children’s history lessons. Martin Bormann died in 1945 de-facto, the loot disappeared and anyone that tells you different is a deluded "conspiracy theorist".

Proving once and for all with new testimony, documentation and forensic science that Hitler’s handler, Martin Bormann survived, will redeem many damaged reputations and will certainly bury the myth and cause many a red face in the high end academic and "history" community. But more importantly, it will open a very nasty can of worms and raise many more complicated and embarrassing questions to those agencies and governments that will have knowingly perpetrated the Bormann death myth for the past 70 years.

What's the true story on South American Nazis? After World War II why would countries like Argentina and Paraguay want them?

LONDON: What about Hitler? If alive he must be unearthed, and if dead proved quite defunct. And no amount of trouble can be too great or expensive for satisfaction on this point.

We have not to go many centuries back for parallel. There was the miserable son of Louis XVI of France; the poor boy Dauphin imprisoned in the temple of Paris after his parents had been guillotined, and there supposed to have died or to have been put to death by gaolers. But had he died?

The Monarchist Party was not wholly squashed, and the evidence of death was weak and a gaoler was supposed to have befriended the boy and if there was one claimant over the next 60 years or so there were a dozen or more. Several had quite plausible credentials, and one known as Naundorff was almost more than plausible. To this day the legend of a Daughin who lived when he was assumed to be dead is extant in France. And it might well have been alarming and embarrassing to many of the Royalist claimants and pretenders, if their hopes of a throne had ever had any substance at all.

All this, mark you, for lack of definite proof of death. A resuscitation of Hitler in five, 10 or 15 years time, based on a similar lack of facial resemblance, might be much more dangerous. 

Doubts About Hitler's Death
The Northern Miner [Charters Towers, Qld]
20 March 1947

Nearly, two years have passed since the "1000-year Reich" caved in on Adolf Hitler, but there is still no evidence that the Führer is dead.

This is the opinion cf Mr. W. K. Heimlich, former Chief of Intelligence of the U.S. Army in Berlin. Most Germans, asked about Hitler, just shrug and say that, since he hasn't turned up any place, he must be dead. The Berliner accustomed to his frequent and pompous utterances, say the best proof that he is dead is the fact that nothing has been heard from him. Mr. Heimlich, who regards Hitler as "a little Austrian corporal who shot his wad, but still wanted to live", takes a more realistic approach.

To him, the story that Hitler and his sweetheart, Eva Braun, took their lives In the Chancellery Bunker on Wllhelmstrasse and that their bcdles were burned is false. Mr. Heimlich, who spent months investigating the bizarre story, is now Deputy Director of Political and Civil Affairs for the Berlin Military Government.

"Hitler did not die In the Chancellery, and as far as I know he is not dead," Heimlich said. "That goes for Eva Braun and Martin Bormanh, too".

Bormann, Hitler's deputy, was supposed to have been fatally injured or killed when the armoured car in which he was rlding was hit by a Panzerfaust on the Schlffbauer bridge rear the Relchstaff at 4 pm. on 30 April 19415.

"As a matter of fact"' Mr. Heimlich said, "Bormann had a conference with the commander of Berlin troops at midnight and was perfectly well".

Mr. Heimlich said his opposite numbers In the British and Russian Intelllgence Units in Berlin agreed with him that no evidence had been found to indicate that Hitler and Eva Brauh died in Hitler's Bunker. There is one possibility, that the first Russian troops to reach the Chancellery found the bodles and reported it only to the highest Russian levels. Heimlich doesn't believe it. To support his belief is the fact that pictures were taken of the body of Propaganda Minister, Josef Göbbels, but no pictures ever have been produced of the Führer's corpse

Of the story, told by some witnesses, that 40 gallons of gasoline were poured over the bodies of Hitler and Eva Bourn and the bodies burned. Mr. Heimlich says it is untrue. He pointed out that It takes 3200 degrees of heat to cremate a body in a closed crematory and that even then some bones remain.

"An effort had bcen made", he said, " to burn the body of a dead pig with 40 gallons of gasoline in the open, but that pig was still recognizable when the fire went out".

"The area around Hitler's Bunker was thoroughly excavated and one of Hitler's silk hats and a slip of Eva Braun's were found there, but there were no signs, that the bodies had been there", Mr. Heimlich said.

Copies of X-ray photographs of Hitler's skull are available and identification could have been made if the skull ever had been found.

Mr. Heimlich admits that Hitler's fate became an obsession to him. He spent days checking down rumours. The Russians insisted they had not found the bodies. He admits that both the British and American headquarters released stories indicating the more or less official belief that Hitler was dead, but that they were not based on Intelligence reports.

"I wish we could have found him in some ignominious grave with 4 feet of dirt on him, but we didn't," he added.

Mr. Heimlich believes that Hitler, Bormann, and Eva probablv would hide out together. Where? The former Intelligence officer wouldn't guess. But he pointed out that Hitler, an Austrian, never was able to shed his Austrian accent. With his mcustache shaved off and his hair cut short, that probably would be, the easiest place for him to lead a secluded life. It also would have been easy for Hitler to prepare a hideout in Berlin, months in advance of the Russian arrival. prepare false Identify cards and papers, including ration cards, and remain hidden in an obscure part of Berlin fcr years.

"There's no reason whv he shouldn't be right here," he said.

Hitler Did Not Die in Berlin Chancellery

Baumgart’s testimony would be corroborated by notes from the U.S. Army interrogation of an SS officer who claimed to have witnessed the escape, though –according to Dunstan and Williams– he too mysteriously disappeared shortly after levying the charges.

Hitler would have spent his first night in Necochea Argentina. Then he would have flown to Neuquén and Bariloche airport, which at that time was on the grounds of Estancia San Ramon, "a place closed and fully controlled by Germans". Ex-sailors of the 'Graf Spee', sunk off the coast of Montevideo after the Battle of the River Plate, acted as custodians of Hitler.

San Ramon sheltered Hitler and his wife for nine months. 

After that time, they moved to the shelter money from Bormann had allowed to be build about 100 kilometers away. The place was Inalco, on the Chilean border near Villa La Angostura. The new home of Hitler had a similar layout to the Berghof, the resting place the dictator had in Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps.

Hitler loved the mountains at Bariloche so like the Bavarian Alps

Dunstan and Wiliams claimed that Hitler made trips to Laguna Mar Chiquita in Córdoba, where he underwent surgery to remove chips from an old wound caused by the bomb attack on 20 July 1944. He also would have passed through La Falda, to visit the Eichhorns, a German couple who had contributed money to the Nazi cause from the beginning. Impunity was such that an FBI report published in "Grey Wolf", was by an by agent who saw Hitler "on vacation" in Casino, Brazil, in 1947. The movements of Hitler by Argentina were witnessed by countless witnesses interviewed by the authors. A former custodian of Peron even  told them that the three-time president met with Bormann. 

Where Dunstan and Williams differed with Basti  is on the date and place of death of Hitler. For the former, the Hitler expired on 13 February 1962 in La Clara, a place where he had moved after the coup that overthrew Peron in 1955. Abandoned by Eva, who had gone to Neuquen, Hitler would finally die, surrounded by his guardian, Heinrich Bethe and his doctor, Otto Lehmann. 

For Basti, Hitler's demise occurred in Paraguay, on 3 February 1971 in Paraquay, where the former Nazi dictator had traveled, fearing that Peron's fall could lead to the withdrawal of protection. 

Hitler's Skull Fragment Displayed
By Anna Dolgov
Associated Press Writer
26 April 2000

MOSCOW: What officials claim is a fragment of Adolf Hitler's skull went on display Wednesday, along with documents revealing what happened to the dictator's remains after they were seized by Soviet troops in 1945.

The piece of skull and the jaw are the only surviving remains of Hitler's body, according to officials at the archive service and at the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor of the KGB.

Photographs of the jaw went on display Wednesday. But the jaw itself, with the dental work that originally allowed the Soviets to identify Hitler's body, is still in secret archives.

"The jaw is the main piece of evidence in the decades-old Soviet investigation into Hitler's death," said Yakov Pogony, head of the FSB archive department. "And the main piece of evidence must be preserved".

After Hitler shot himself in his Berlin Bunker on 30 April 1945, his body was taken outside by his staff, doused with gasoline and set ablaze along with the remains of his longtime companion, Eva Braun.

Soviet troops seized the remains when they captured the Bunker. But what happened later has been shrouded in mystery and speculation.

Secret communications between Soviet counterintelligence units in Germany and the government in Moscow tell of repeated burials and exhumations of the remains, and of their final destruction by fire in 1970.

According to the documents, which also went on display Wednesday, the remains had been kept by the counterintelligence unit of the Soviet 3rd Army, part of an intelligence organization called SMERSH -- a Russian acronym for "Death to Spies." The soldiers buried and dug up the remains at least three times in 1945-46 as the army moved around Germany.

They were finally interred on SMERSH-controlled grounds in Magdeburg, a town about 70 miles west of Berlin -- until the Soviet government in 1970 ordered the remains be dug up and burned, the documents say.

The Magdeburg base was about to be transferred to East German authorities, and the Soviets feared "possible construction or excavation work on this territory that might lead to the discovery of the remains," according to a report by KGB boss Yuri Andropov.

"Hitler's jaw, however, had been removed and brought to Moscow in 1945, to be included as evidence in an investigation into Hitler's death", said Sergei Mironenko, head of Russia's State Archive.

Russia announced it had the skull fragment in 1993, and some Western experts argued it was not Hitler's. But Mironenko insisted his service had "no doubts that it is authentic."

"It is not just some bone we found in the street, but a fragment of a skull that was found in a hole where Hitler's body had been buried," Mironenko said in an interview.

Still, the archives service has asked Russia's Forensic Medicine Institute -- a top agency for genetic testing -- to help in positively identifying the skull fragment, Mironenko conceded.

So far, there seems to be no conclusive evidence.

"I have not seen any documents providing evidence that this is the skull of Hitler," said Alexander Kalganov, an official at the FSB's archives department.

According to records of the former Soviet Secret Service [KGB], the Kremlin threw Hitler's ashes into a river in 1970. The remains of the Nazi leader would have been buried for years in East Germany, until Moscow decided to dispose of them.  The ashes of Adolf Hitler were secretly thrown to a river of East Germany to prevent that their remains became an object of neo-Nazi pilgrimage.  Files that were previously closed and then released by the Russian secret service reveal the extraordinary story of how the bones of Hitler, for years the source of a morbid fascination, circulated throughout East Germany, were unearthed, re-buried and unearthed again late at night until they were cremated in 1970.  The story has been leaked in fragments since 1995, but Sergei Turtschenko, a journalist who writes for the Russian newspaper "Trud" elucidated, with the help of the archives of the former Soviet secret service, the KGB, the ultimate mystery:   The Führer's body odyssey began on 4 May 1945, when Soviet troops found the buried but intact corpses of Hitler, Eva Braun, his wife, and Josef Göbbels outside the Berlin Bunker.  The next day the SMERSH Army of counterespionage arrived to prepare the documentation of the bodies.  But on 5 May the area around the Bunker was transferred to the Fifth Shock Army. SMERSH agents were reluctant to hand over such a prize and the remains were taken on the night before the transfer of the sector among Red Army commanders.  In Buch, outside of Berlin, a post mortem examination showed traces of glass vials in the mouths of the victims as well as a smell of bitter almonds, an indicator of cyanide poisoning.  Lavrenty Beria, leader of the KGB at that time, was informed about this and the bodies were buried in the Soviet garrison in Buch, where the Third Army was stationed, that when transferred a few weeks later to Rathenow, to the west of Berlin, took the bodies with it. They were buried there and pines were planted on the tombs.  But Stalin never fully believed in Hitler's death.  The Russians had captured the most useful witnesses in the Führer's Bunker, which had included Johann Rattenhuber, Hitler's bodyguard;  Otto Günsche, assistant of the SS;  Hans Baur, his pilot, and Katarina Heusermann, dental assistant.  They had been interrogated at intervals during 1945 and had testified that the Nazi leader had shot himself.  The disparity between the original SMERSH report, indicating cyanide poisoning, and witness testimony provoked Stalin's suspicions.  An investigation was then established.  But before this the agents of the SMERSH, acting under the orders of Stalin, unearthed the bodies that were in Rathenow, near Magdeburg.  The research team was never able to inspect Hitler's body, according to Turtschenko.  They were able to reconstruct the last days of the Führer but did not give a final confirmation on the death by bullet.  By order of Stalin, all members of Hitler's circle in Soviet captivity were forced to represent the last hours of the Nazi leader. The performance was filmed.  Later all the German prisoners were sent to the Soviet Union and destined to different fields of forced labor.  In 1970, the Soviet Army was about to deliver the Magdeburg barracks to East Germany. Correspondence between Yuri Andropov, the late KGB chief, and Leonid Brezhnev indicates that there was a deep nervousness about the Germans, the Ostpolitik and the close relationship between the leaders of both Germanies.  Willy Brandt, the former Chancellor of the former Federal Republic of Germany, had visited Erfurt and had a warm reception from the East Germans.  German restlessness and the sudden discovery of Hitler's body could have resulted in an unpredictable mix from Andropov's point of view.  Brezhnev then agreed that the body should be destroyed.  On the night of 4 April 1970, Soviet soldiers erected a tent over the unmarked grave and three KGB officers unearthed the boxes of ammunition containing the scorched skeletons.  The bones were transferred to wooden Kalashnikov boxes.  The boxes were loaded into a vehicle that settled so that it looked as if the men were fishing.  In a garbage dump on a Soviet military training ground near Magdeburg, officials poured oil onto the boxes and set them on fire.  After an hour the ashes were thrown into a sack whose contents were emptied into the river Elbe near the village of Biederitz.

"It's All Over; I'll fall in Berlin": Hitler's Last Days
The Telegraph [Brisbane, Qld] 
16 May 1945

LONDON: "It's all over. I shall remain in Berlin. I shall fall here in the Chancellery". These were Hitler's words on 22 April 1945, after a long and hectic day in conference, the story of which was told by Gerhardt Herrgesell, a member of Hitler's staff of confidential typists, to a "British United Press" correspondent at Obersalzburg.

Herrgesell began his story with events on 21 April. At 10.20 the Russian artillery became heavier and heavier, and it was obvious they were concentrating shells on the Wilhelmstrasse area where conferences were held from noon onwards. Göbbels, as commander of the defence of Berlin, rushed in and out many times and still no decision was reached about removing the rest of us to the south. Hitler's special company of SS Guards was sent to protect the Chancellery. Various people tried to organise the Chancellery staff into a Volkssturm unit and finally about 500 were armed with rifles and pistols. During the conference from 3 pm to 7.30 pm, it was obvious that things were critical. Ofllcials constantly streamed into the conference room in groups of three or four, and pcrhnps totalling 30. Hitler's sweetheart, Eva Braun, was there. Keitel, Bormannn and Jodl had cramped emergency quarters in a Bunker [the word was unexplained] but the Chancellery was used to house and feed most who come in.

The Führer seemed slightly hazy, and often failed to reply to questions. Obviously he was paying no attention to many of them. During recent days he had not looked very fit. His face was rather florid and puffy. He flushed easily and seemed to become more stooped daily. When he walked his shoulders gave an almost hunchbacked impression. His left arm shook as it had done after I worked at his headquarters. His right hand, which was wounded in the explosion on 20 July, also shook. A bigdecision was made in a 15-mlnutc conference beginning at 5.30 pm on 22 April, attended by Hitler, Bormann, Keitel, and Jodl. Hitler was dressed as usual in dark trousers and a field grey jacket with an Iron Cross over his heart, which was his only decoration. He had previously said, "It doesn't make sense to go on any longer and I shall remain here", but as he did not elaborate nobody was sure whether this was his final decision. But when the steel door closed on the 5.30 conference Hitler announced to Bormann, Keitel and Jodl, "It's all over. I shall remain in Berlin. I shall fall here in the Chancellcry". The conference became heated with all but Jodl trying to make themselves heard at the same time. Keitel and Bormann vigorously opposed Hitler's decision. Only Jodl appeared indifferent.

Keitel and Bormann told Hitler what he said contradicted what he had told them in the past months, namely, that he would fight to the last scrap of German territory. Jodl, who was the only one who had dared to tell Hitler the truth, was quiet, during most of the conference. Bormann and Keitel continued to try to persuade Hitler to go to southern Germany, or Norway, hut Hitler could not be talked out of his decision. He frequently tried to sllcnce them, and then ordered Keitel, Bormann and Jodl to leave Berlin.

This order he must have repeated 10 times, but Keitel and Bormann each replied, "My Führer, we won't leave you," and later they added, "We would be ashamed to appear beforo our wives and children if we did so". Then Bormann said, "It is the first time 1 have refused to obey you," and Keitel said, "I will stay". Jodl said, calmly, "1 won't stay in the household. One cannot work, fight or operate here".

Keitel tried hard to persuade Hitler that Germany still had a great deal left wherewith to carry on the war, but Hitler was unimpressed. Twice Jodl asked, "My Führer, do you yield complete leadership?" Hitler never made, a really clear reply. He had said he expected he and others could hold out in Berlin for two days to a week. Later he said, "Go to southern Germany. Göring shall form a new Government. Göring is my successor, and in any case Göring will negotiate". Although Hitler repeated these statements he never made it clear whether he was ordering Göring to form a new Government or whether that should happen later when he himself was dead.

There was an interval after the conference and then the same people remet. All but Hitler were summoned by telephone several times. Events later indicated they had phoned various people urging them to phone Hitler and try to persuade him to leave Berlin. Among those who phoned was Dönltz. He gave an optimistic picture but Hitler, after listening awhile, merely said: "Thank you, Herr Grand Admiral. Heil!" then hung up. Then Ribbentrop phoned, apparently from somewhere in Berlin. He spoke excitedly and claimed to have a report of tension between the Western Allies and Russia.

He told Hitler:

"One of our best agents, who travelled in best British circles, has just arrived from Switzerland. He says the British Cabinet already is split and dissension between the Allies must come".

Hitler merely answered:

"Oh, that's what he says. That's what you say".

Then Göbbels appeared with his children. First he brought them to the conference room and then took them next door, where later I saw Eva Braun playing with them. Next Göbbels argued his old thesis about the fight agaihst Bolshevism, adding, "I propose we turn our backs on the west front and continue the fight against Bolshevism". Hitler replied, "No, that's capitulation to the west and I won't co-operate. I don't care". Arguments continued until about 7.30 pm, when Keitel continued to assert he could not leave Hitler, who continued to order him and others to leave. There was also an argument whether the conference records should be destroyed when the end came or whether I should fly with another staff member to transcribe the notes, Hitler decided for the latter course.

When I left the room Eva Braun asked me if I was flying south, and gave me a package to take, also a small box wrapped in paper, which I suppose contained some family jewellery. She wanted to write a letter, but I said I was in a hurry, and she said she would give it to someone later. Hitler and Eva were sitting alone together in the reception room when our party left. We left the Chancellery before dark in cars. There were some women with us, and Hitler's personal physician, Doctor Morrell. Our plane was ready at the airfield. It was a huge Condor transport plane and we took off for Munich at 1.45 am. Herrgeselle added that he and others drove on to Berchtesgaden. He does not know what happened later in Berlin but thinks Keitel may have tried to remove Hitler from Berlin by force.

He admits there is a slight possibility that Hitler is alive, but personally is convinced that Hitler died with Braun, Bormann, and the last of the SS Guards. He opined that to prevent the bodies falling into Russian bands they, with possibly a few others, were placed in a prepared vault in the basement of one of the Government buildings, then sealed off with possibly debris blasted down on the spot. Herrgeselle further stated that Hitler did say indirectly that all was lost, and they, he believed, could best serve the German people by remaining in Berlin. Apparently realising the end of the war would be speeded up by his death also, Hitler made clear he had now not only lost confidence in the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, but in Waffen SS. However, his confidence in the Navy seemed, to continue to the end.

Records Reveal J. Edgar Hoover's Obsession With Hunting Adolf Hitler FBI's documents expose a surprising preoccupation with conspiracy theories, namely Jewish plans to assassinate the Führer, and Hitler spottings in U.S. towns after the war Amir Oren Haaretz 20 April 2012 Hitler's life and horrors have been analyzed extensively and deeply from every angle, but the files of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation illuminate them from two different, bizarre perspectives.    The first, when Hitler rose to power in 1933, is the official response to threats by American Jews to assassinate him. The second, after his death in the Bunker in Berlin in 1945, is the investigation of the theory that Hitler had escaped and was living somewhere in the Americas, openly or clandestinely, and was plotting to revive the Third Reich. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover apparently intended to bring in Hitler's head. Hoover wrote to various informers, some crazy and some avaricious, who told him they had seen Hitler and his partner Eva Braun riding a train or sitting in a neighborhood café in a quiet Virginia town, right under the nose of a complacent administration. Many of these documents were released for publication only recently, at the end of the past decade, and only in part - the names of sources, witnesses and FBI employees are censored. Hoover wanted to impress the people at the top -the president, the cabinet secretaries, the top military brass- with his intelligence information. He was competing with other agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency [which was founded in 1947], and in defining the FBI's mandate, he tried to preserve its traditional bastions in Latin America. Hence the sources in Argentina, Brazil and their neighbors, the primary suspects as Nazi sympathizers. Hitler was elected German Chancellor in late January 1933. Less than two months later, on 23 March, the Reichstag voted to give Hitler dictatorial powers. That day, a letter signed by someone named Daniel Stern or Stearn was sent to the German ambassador in Washington. It states: "Dear Sir, I have asked President Roosevelt to publicly remonstrate with your government the outrage upon the Jews in Germany, and to demand an immediate and complete end of this persecution. "In the event that he does not make such a statement, I notify you that I shall go to Germany and assassinate Hitler". The ambassador, Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron, had been appointed during the Weimar Republic, opposed the Nazis and later resigned so as not to have to serve Hitler's regime. But the letter drove him to complain to the U.S. State Department about "a communication received here, wherein the assassination of the Chancellor of the Reich, Mr. Adolf Hitler, is threatened. I would be grateful if an investigation of the matter could be made and the results thereof communicated to me at its conclusion". The State Department forwarded the German Embassy's request to the Justice Department, which passed it on to the FBI. Hoover instructed the Bureau's Washington branch to "ascertain the identity of the writer". Two weeks later the investigation was passed along to a field office in Philadelphia. Investigators in both cities used a sophisticated method - flipping through phone books and municipal registries. They found that a man named Daniel Stern had resided at a specific address, but the building janitor said he had left the apartment more than a year earlier, and his whereabouts were unknown. Stern "appeared to be very high type person and was highly respected by the other tenants in the apartment house," the janitor reportedly said. The German consul in Philadelphia told an FBI agent that he believed the letter writer was "in all probability some crank, who is a sympathizer of the Jewish element". Moreover, the consul told the agent, he himself was also often inundated with such threats. He did not take them seriously, he said. On 21 April, the German Embassy received another letter, this time in German, signed by a C. Portugall. The translation by the German Embassy reads: "Permit me to draw your attention to the following. In listening to a conversation between several New York Jews, I learned that a plan is under way to murder Reich Chancellor Adolph [sic] Hitler, and that a young American Jew has already been chosen to perform the act. The Jews present were jubilant over the plan. [I] am informing you of the above in order to prevent a possible misfortune". The Portugall letter went the way of the Stern letter, from the Embassy to the State Department to the Justice Department and then the FBI, but its author was also not tracked down. In August 1933 another investigation was opened following a complaint by one "Col. Steinman". The writer stated he was a Mexican immigrant in Phoenix, Arizona, a mining engineer and an officer in the Mexican army "who spent 25 years in Mexico in both capacities" under dictator Porfirio Diaz. Steinman wrote to the German Embassy that in May he had heard two Jews talking in "the San Carlos Hotel in Phoenix" about an agent sent by New York Jewry to assassinate Hitler, and that a hotel worker said one of the two men was a rabbi. Upon questioning, the hotel bellboys said they knew who Steinman was, but did not remember seeing him speak to other hotel guests. Hoping to tie the case to the first threatening letter, agents searched the hotel registry for a guest named Daniel Stern, but found no record of such a guest between April and June. When he was questioned, Steinman claimed he had visited a friend in a room at the hotel. "And when the latter left the room for a few minutes and he was left alone, he chanced to overhear a conversation in Yiddish in an adjoining room. The two men were speaking about conditions in Germany and Chancellor Hitler and the latter's antipathy for the Jews. One of the talkers told the other that Hitler would not last long; that a number of Jews in New York City were sending a man to Germany to assassinate Hitler. They named the German boat on which the assassin was leaving, sometime in May, 1933. The assassination was to take place between May and September, 1933. Hitler was either to be poisoned or shot". Steinman reported that he had followed the two men down to the lobby. "He said they were both Jews of about 50 years old and quite stout .... He stated as they went out he asked one of the bellboys who they were and that he furnished him their names". He thought he recalled "the bellboy told him one of the Jews was a rabbi but he is not certain that he was told so". Steinman claimed that in his letter, he had given the names he had heard as well as the name of the ship, but when he was questioned, he could not recall them. Asked whether one of the names was Daniel Stern, he said he couldn't remember but that he thought not. Steinman expressed bitterness that the German Embassy had divulged his name, contrary to his explicit request. When the FBI agent continued to question him, Steinman "launched into a tirade against the Jews in this country, stating it will have to take the same action against them within 10 years that Germany has taken". He had tried to obtain a patent for a lead-copper alloy and sell it for industrial use, but American Jews "prevented the financing of same". In October the FBI branch in Detroit reported that on 25 September, it had questioned "a young Jewish boy, 19 years of age," who "has the appearance of a clean living and moral individual. He graduated from high school in June 1932 and is presently employed as a clerk". He denied that he had information about a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler or that he had spoken about such a thing. The only conversation in which Hitler's name had come up was at his dentist's office. As he was drilling the young man's teeth, the dentist noted that he had formerly used German drills, but that ever since Hitler had begun persecuting Jews, he and many other dentists in the building, he said, had been boycotting German products. FBI agents went to question the dentist, who said that another patient told him "he did not want any German products used on him and someone 'should bump Hitler off'. This dentist noted that this remark was not made in "a savage way" and added that this "was not the type of an individual who would be involved in such a plot". The patient "is 55 years of age, was born and raised in the state of Michigan, and it was also noted that he is quite hard of hearing and is more or less of the gossiping type". The Chicago police called the FBI and reported that the German consul general in that city had been told of a plan by American Jews to send a person to Germany to assassinate Hitler. The source had demanded $1,000 for the information and an additional $1,000 when the information was verified. The informer had left Chicago for Washington to meet with the German ambassador. An Embassy official had contacted the Washington police and asked them to keep the informer under surveillance there and in Chicago, in order to uncover his contacts. A top FBI official wrote to Hoover that the Washington police could not operate beyond city borders, and asked if the FBI would continue the surveillance once the man boarded a train to Chicago. At this stage the FBI agents agreed that the investigation would continue only if the secretary of state made an official request. There is no record of any such request being made. During World War II, Hoover did not receive much information about Hitler. He gave the little he did obtain - which was eventually proven false - to his superiors. "From a confidential source information has been received to the effect that widespread reports have been circulating in Germany that Chancellor Adolf Hitler has changed his former plans for his successors and now in case of his sudden death, three German army leaders will succeed him: Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, General Heinz Guderian and Field Marshal Karl von Rodstadt [correction: Gerd von Rundstedt]. It is said these three Army officers will continue to rule Germany for a period of five years after the peace in Europe has been established. "It will be recalled that Hitler first designated Marshal Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess as his successors. However, Hess is now a prisoner in England and it is said that Hitler is likely to outlive Göring". The most ridiculous chapter concerns the FBI's hunt for people who looked like Hitler. On 28 August 1945, to the FBI, from [deleted], Chicago, Ill.: "Gentleman: I truly believe that you will find Adolph [sic] Hitler and his Eva [perhaps even with a child, as reported by the papers] hidden in Japan and perhaps disguised as Japs. The disguise would naturally be there and what better country has he had to hide in up to now. Some of your agents better put on their most penetrating glasses". 21 September, 1945, a missive to Hoover from Los Angeles: A source [name deleted] told a reporter "on the City Desk of the 'Los Angeles Examiner' newspaper that upon his leaving the Melody Lane Restaurant at Hollywood and Vine on or about 28 July 1945, he met a friend of his who at the time was engaged in a conversation with an individual" whose identity he did not disclose. The interlocutor told the friend "that he wished to find some high government official who would guarantee him immunity from being sent back to Argentina if he told the following information. According to [deleted] he was one of four men who met Hitler and his party when they landed from two submarines in Argentina approximately two and one-half weeks after the fall of Berlin". Report of Hitler in Argentina, August 1945. FBI Case File 65-53615 The FBI headquarters file on Adolf Hitler, File 65-53615, began being released by the FBI to researchers under the Freedom of Information Act on 26 April 1976, though in a redacted form. The first document 65-53615-35, which is heavily redacted in the version on the FBI website [https://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/view] was completely opened to researchers by the FBI in 1991 and has been opened to researchers at the National Archives for over a dozen years.       FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover thought the story plausible enough to write a letter to the American embassy in Buenos Aires under the subject line: "Hitler Hideout in Argentina". Hoover asked the embassy to investigate an Argentine supporter of Hitler, one Mrs. Ida Eichhorn, reported to be a reputable member of Argentine society and the proprietor of the largest Spa Hotel in La Falda, Argentina". According to Hoover, Eichhorn: "Made available to [Josef] Göbbels her entire bank account which, at the time, amounted approximately to thirty thousand marks, which money was to be used for propaganda purposes. ...she and her family having been enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler since the Nazi Party was founded. "That during the years after he came to power, her friendship with Hitler became so close that she and members of her family lived with Hitler in the same hotel on the occasion of their annual visit to Germany". "That if Hitler should at any time get into difficulty wherein it was necessary for him to find a safe retreat, he would find such safe retreat at her Hotel [La Falda] where they had already made the necessary preparations". The FBI’s investigation proved inconclusive. The rumours about Hitler and Eva Braun disembarking near to San Antonio Oeste gave rise to all manner of assertions, and in 1997/1999 the ArgNavy even went so far as to fund a diving operation to look for a Type XXI believed to lie close inshore and which had been seen from the air by a private flier. Nothing was found, although Patrick Burnside produced the photograph of a mooring peg which was alleged to be similar to that fitted to a Type XXI. Unfortunately this particular Type XXI must have been constructed from very poor steel, for the wreck to which this peg was attached had virtually disintegrated and could not be photographed. In 2003 the ArgNavy, a team from Trondheim University and the BBC was involved in the search for a Type IXc40 believed to lie north of the Valdez Peninsula but nothing was found. 3 October 1946, from Mrs. [deleted], Department of State, to columnist Walter Winchell, New York: "One day in August 1946, I went down the street on business, stopped at the S.W. Restaurant for lunch, as usual the place was crow[d]ed, tables scarce, looking around trying to find a place I found this man at a small table just for two, so I asked if I may share his table ... I sat down, trying to figure out just who that person could be, after close observation, Hitler came to my mine [sic]. I thought Hitler in person. "So then I looked for something to make that name fit with the person, the following: Description: I found was right jaw larger than the left, black mustache cut like he had his cut, dark eyes, black hair, it looked like it had been dyed, the most impressive thing about the man was his hands, large with a large ring on the left hand, just as white as could be, looked like he had been in confinement for sometime, would say he is about 5 feet, 7 inches, 150 lbs., more or less, suit was miss matched [sic] coat of checks, cheap looking, very nervous he played with his napkin, after he finished his lunch he sat at the table playing with his napkin and watching his watch, after a period of time he leaves saying [Par don]... "I agree with you that Hitler is not dead, I really think he is right here in Washington, D.C." 8 May 1947, from Hoover to [censored]: "Reference is made to your letter dated 28 April 1947, wherein you state that a reputable physician and surgeon of [censored] reported information to the effect that possibly he had been treating Adolf Hitler ... Most of the statements in the public press allege that Hitler is in South America and he went there by submarine. None of these allegations of course can be proven by fact and the American Army officials in Germany have not located Hitler's body nor is there any reliable source who will say definitely Hitler is dead; therefore the possibility exists that he is alive. The United States Army is spending most of its efforts to locate Hitler in Spain". Hoover's letter goes on to say that the doctor prescribed the patient "tablets containing 20 milligrams Trasentine and 20 milligrams of phenol barbitol, one to be taken before each meal" and "formed the impression that the man might be Hitler," so much so that he had the man come back for a follow-up appointment in the presence of the doctor's daughter, a college student and "a very stable type young woman". The doctor stated that his daughter, after viewing this man, had become so nervous and excited she could not stay in the office, due to the fact that she too thought this man could have been Hitler from his appearance. A handwritten note, undated: "Dear Sir, I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that Hitler is located right in New York City! "There's no other city in the world where he could so easily be absorbed. No doubt you have considered this possibility, but I mention it for what it is worth anyway". 3 March 1948, FBI Office Memorandum. Subject: Adolf Hitler and woman aboard City of New Orleans, Ill. Central Railroad. "Dr. McSwain stated that this was washed out; that two Special Agents, [censored] and [censored], had got on the train and had closely observed the person in question and his woman companion. It was so obvious to the agents that this person was not Adolf Hitler that they did not make a positive determination of his identity, feeling that it would possibly create a situation causing absurd publicity. He stated that the person in question was not more than 42; that instead of a foreign accent he had a very pronounced southern accent; he wore a brown mustache; and his general appearance and over-all description precluded any possibility of his being identical with Adolf Hitler. The woman accompanying him, who had previously been stated to be 41 years old, in the opinion of Agents [censored] and [censored] could not have been more than 22 or 23". 28 November 1950, to Hoover from the branch in Madison, Wisconsin: "This is to advise that [censored] in Madison, Wisconsin, has reported to this office that he is positive that an individual by the name of [censored] was in reality Adoplh [sic] Hitler in disguise, and that he was very convinced of this fact and that in the event the agents of the Milwaukee office did not immediately apprehend [censored] he was going to write to Washington in order to see that this matter is properly taken care of. "It is to be noted that [censored] at the time of the interview would interrupt the interview to play the violin and to open the door in order to see that his neighbors weren't listening, and generally appeared to be mentally deranged". The FBI's obsessive concern with Hitler raises the question of whether it was only the censored sources who were mentally deranged.

Hitler, desperate for the East and West to come to him, decided to reside in the Chancellery's Bunker in the winter of 1945, from which he encouraged the Germans on the radio. The Bunker had Telefunken radio receivers that could only tune two or three official stations and were the only ones allowed and legal in the German territory. By then, the Third Reich was disintegrating. Its generals were killed one by one or taken prisoners and the SS had disappeared, most of them escaping to Austria. By late April the Soviets had already entered Berlin and were struggling, house by house, to the center of the city, where the Chancellery was.

On 22 April 1945, Hitler sent almost everyone out of the situation room and stayed with Göbbels and Krebs, Keitel, and Jodl. The more fanciful historians and the few surviving Germans close to Hitler, claim that he entered into a state of hysteria, ranting against his generals, accusing them of having betrayed him and that Germany would disappear because of such traitors and cowards. Some witnesses also tell he had symptoms of having suffered a heart attack, which in official history were described as "tremors".

According to the witnesses, Hitler consulted physician Werner Haase about an absolutely reliable method of suicide. Haase suggested to him to take a dose of cyanide followed by a bullet in the head through the mouth.

There are suspicions that Haase replaced the cyanide capsules with powerful narcotics, without Hitler knowing.

Heinrich Himmler, who was not in the Bunker, was negotiating on his own account  a peace treaty with Count Folke Bernadotte, president of the International Red Cross. Hitler regarded this as a betrayal of Himmler, but since Himmler was not at hand, ordered Hermann Fegelein, who was Himmler's representative in the Bunker, killed. That situation definitely broke Hitler, who, by what witnesses describe, suffered a second heart attack. So Dr. Haase decided to sedate him strongly.

The Russians claimed they had found the remains of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun.

The CIA, was instructed the same, but it happened Josef Stalin, meeting with James Byrnes, who was the American Secretary of State, during the Potsdam conference on 17 July 1945, shouted in his face, furious "Hitler is alive. Escaped to Spain or to Argentina". The accusation was followed by a silence, and then Stalin implicitly accused the Western allies of being ideologues of the Nazi leader's flight. In June 1945 General Georgy Zhukov, one of the leaders of the Red Army, was already furious because he was sure that Hitler had been flown to avoid the siege of the Red Army. CIA data, on the other hand, clearly stated that no German aircraft had taken off from Berlin since 23 April 1945, which meant that Hitler had been moved by an Allied or an unidentified aircraft.

LONDON, 30 April 1945—Russian tanks have smashed into the Tiergarten, Berlin's Central Park, converted into an underground fortress, the Nazi-controlled Oslo radio said today, and Moscow reports said the fall of the capital was imminent. Russian radar reported a light aircraft leaving the vicinity of the Tiergarten in Berlin on the morning of 30 April, the day on which Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

The English did their own research on the subject and left it to Hugh Trevor Roper, who had served as counterintelligence officer of MI6. Roper, after several interviews with people close to Hitler, came to the  "strict" and therefore "official" conclusion of the suicide and no longer talked about the subject with Josef Stalin.

The official story was that Hitler had married Eva Braun on 29 April 1945, and they both committed suicide the next day in the Chancellery's Bunker, their bodies then burned in the building's gardens by their followers inside a bomb crater.

Taking into account that a human body takes up to 30 hours to burn and must be aided by copious fuel, as estimated by the forensic expert Franco Vilanovam, what other evidence was there?

When Stalin died in 1953, the Russians officially reported that they had the remains of Hitler and that they had been identified by the dental pieces. Then the alleged corpses of Hitler, Eva Braun, Josef Göbbels and his wife were buried under a barracks in Magdeburg. As the controversy resurfaced from time to time, in 1970 the remains were exhumed, incinerated and the ashes were thrown into the sea so that they would not become objects of pilgrimage and worship.

In the 1990s the Russians publicly displayed what was supposed to be the last trace of Hitler's skeleton, and that being irrefutable evidence, they would end the rumors. However, when Western experts reviewed part of the skull at the request of the "History Channel", they determined that it belonged to a woman between 20 and 40 years. They were definitely not the remains of Hitler.

The Hungarian-Argentine Ladislao Szabo had already claimed in 1947, in his book that "Hitler is Alive", that Hitler had managed to escape from Europe by submarine but that after passing through Mar del Plata went to an Antarctic base of the Germans. Then Captain Manuel Monasterio, under the pseudonym of Jeff Kristenssen, so as not to compromise the navy, gave his version that is the one that comes closest to the possible. The other theory of interest is of the Italian Patrick Burnside, that gave the numbers of the submarines involved. They were joined the two Britons, Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, with "Gray Wolf" and the most fundamental researcher, the Argentine Abel Basti, with "The Exile of Hitler" and other publications.

What is believed today as possible and acceptable is that Martin Bormann and Heinrich Müller, who was the head of the Gestapo, had made arrangements with Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower and Eugenio Pacelli, alias Pius XII.

The United States was more afraid of Russia than of Germany as enemies. Hitler could tell them, if necessary, an enormous amount of war related secrets about Russia. It was feared that Russia would re-arm and continue its advance on Europe; Hitler replaced in Germany, supported by the Allies, would stop or definitively defeat the Russian bear. The third fear was that they feared they would not be able to recover a divided Germany and that another Weimar republic would ensue that would sink a weak Western Europe. Hitler, sedated, could be an amalgamator of the Pan-Germanic will with his magnetism, so he was a secret weapon to be guarded carefully.

Already in 1943 the Axis was in retreat by the intervention of the United States and the Russia, and the victory of the Allies was almost taken for granted. Martin Bormann, Hitler's right-hand man, conceived the "Aktion Feuerland" which means "Project Land of Fire", and offered to negotiate with the Allies the escape and "disappearance" of Hitler, Eva Braun and himself. He intended to carry the Nazi treasure from the invasions of the occupied countries. The destination would be Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, a place that considered secure and similar to the native Bavaria of Hitler. In return for this safe conduct, he promised sensitive information about the advanced Nazi secret weapons and secret settlements of the investigators and technicians so that the United States could recruit them before the Soviet Union. The other element, in order to escape through the Mediterranean was the immediate surrender of the million men of the Wehrmacht who still fiercely fought in Italy.

Obviously France, Italy, Holland and Denmark opposed allowing Germany to take their treasure.

Against the opposition of the previous owners, Martin Bormann, resorted to the intimidation of threatening to dynamiting the galleries of the mines where they were hiding the thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis and representing the best of European culture since its inception. He also let slip that the Reich already had almost ready long-range V2-style missiles, capable of attacking the east coast of the United States, simultaneously arriving at Washington, New York and Boston. If the negotiation advanced, he promised to immediately deactivate those missiles.

Bormann's interlocutor was Allen Dulles who headed the headquarters of the European OSS center in Switzerland, which was the Office of Strategic Services, the United States Intelligence service during the war, which was the origin of the CIA. Dulles recruited agents from all European countries, but especially the downtrodden Nazi diplomats.

The big problem, for many years and up to the present, is a confrontation with the Soviet Union and its new satellite countries, or now Russia. Dulles was a genius in negotiating with Bormann the possibility of adding the German technology to the anti-communist cause.

Hitler, already defeated, could still become an ally of last resort. Stalin was an enemy far more fearsome than Hitler.  For many generals, Hitler was the guarantee to stop the Soviet advance. Bormann agreed that Germany would receive aid for the reconstruction of Germany and the protection of the United States against the Soviet Union, a pact that remains.

In 1947 Dulles was the first civilian director of the CIA, who did not pursue a quest for Hitler in South America, unlike the FBI whose agents were detained and deported by Argentina and Brazil.

Apparently from the Bunker went tunnels of the Berlin subway to the vicinity of an airstrip that was operable, where waiting was an  Arado Ar 234 'Blitz' jetliner, unidentified and painted green like the American bombers, which could not be reached in speed, much less in height by the Soviet MIG fighters. It was piloted by Hannah Reitsch and landed in the military airport of Guidonia, 50 kilometers from Rome. 

Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bormann were driven by Italian light armor, with a pair of senior generals from the United States and Great Britain, and were housed on the fourth level of the Castel Sant'Angelo which was closed as a museum during the war. Guards occupied the terrace of the fifth level where  reinforced Italian anti-aircraft batteries were placed, and on the fourth and third level were American and British elite troops.

Since 1277, the castle is connected with the Vatican City by a fortified corridor, called Il Passetto, about 800 meters long. Hitler walked several times through Il Passetto with his guards to meet with the mediator, Pius XII where they had endless discussions of the conditions. 

Vatican diplomacy, Sodalitium Pianum and L'Entità, negotiated with Francisco Franco in Fuencarral-El Pardo, to convince the Argentine military to receive Hitler in Tierra del Fuego or a similar place. As well, the allies offered to Franco, as a strong incentive, a guarantee of forgetting his support of the Axis, if he accepted that Hitler would temporarily hide on Formentera Island, south of the island of Eivissa in Spanish territorial waters, where the English would take care from Gibraltar so that there were  no unpleasant surprises from the Soviets. Franco accepted because he was much more concerned with his own fate than with Spain.

Hitler and his entourage were taken, as a first step, to the Tiber, where there was a fast flat-bottomed boat of the US Navy was waiting. They waited for a night without a moon and high tide, and wearing American uniforms,  they were taken to the beaches of Fiumicino. There they boarded  a boat with their belongings, and thus transited, into  the sea, to a German submarine that took them to Formentera.

In Spain, Hitler was protected by Franco, while Martin Bormann arranged some matters with Peron, who by that time was already the strong man of Argentina. Pius XII and Peron had a tremendous mutual dislike, so everything was triangulated by the Francoist diplomacy that had an open and clear friendship with Peron.

Argentina had sent enormous amounts of wheat, meat, and food to the bled Spain of the Civil War. None of the former Overseas Provinces of Spain was as generous as Argentina.

From Formentera they went on a Spanish gunboat to the Canary Islands and boarded the U-518 submarine that left them near Mar del Plata after long days of travel. Hitler's entourage toured Mar del Plata, and spent the night in the city of Necochea, but these places, in the middle of the summer, did not seem safe to the German Intelligence agents in charge of the security of Hitler. The German submarine U-530 picked them up again and took them to Patagonia by entering the Parrot Cove, in the Golfo Nuevo, Province of Chubut, where it was to meet U-977 and U-518.

Golfo Nuevo, has very protected waters, still and with great tides that affect the superficial waters a lot, and in its interior, it resembles a huge flat boat, with 159 meters of depth in its central part, with cliff on the coast. This bottom is ideal for submarine settlement. The other peculiarity is that it has three large valleys or submarine canyons in the extreme west of the zone and another one on the mouth, which allowed, the concealment of several submarines simultaneously. It is believed that there were ten German submarines simultaneously there at that time.

The waters, at the bottom of the cove, are extremely cold, becoming 2^° and even less, refracting the echoes of the sonars of that time.

Hitler's guards, some scholars claim that the 'Graf Spee' sailors guarded Hitler, but that crew had been confined to the province of Cordoba,  and other acolytes made arrangements with the National Territory of Neuquén. Finally Hitler's entourage moved to the Inalco peninsula, on the Victoria Island of Lake Nahuel Huapi, not far from the Chilean border. 

Argentina was one of the last countries to declare war on the Axis. Martin Bormann transferred funds to Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile for over 6 Billion Dollars in 1943, equivalent to 84 Billion today. Buenos Aires allowed the entry of German scientists, who developed nuclear engineering, aeronautics, missile and much of the pharmaceutical and metallurgical industry.

The investigators Dunstan and Williams stated that Hitler made several trips. One of them to Laguna Mar Chiquita, in Córdoba, where a German doctor treated him for the after-effects of the 20 July 1944 bombing. On that occasion he would have been in La Falda to visit the Eichhorns, a German couple who had contributed money to the Nazi cause from the start. His impunity was such that there are FBI reports, of Hitler having been seen it in Rosario, in La Cumbrecita, in Córdoba, in Villa General Belgrano. They could also have been Hitler's doubles.

There are no agreements, when and where did Hitler died; some claim in 1962 in Córdoba and others in 1971 in Paraguay, under the protection of Stroessner. Anyway, he must have been well guarded since the Mossad and Simon Wiesenthal did not find him.

If this story were confirmed, all the fury of the Jews would not go to the United States or Argentina but to the Church because everything would have come to light.

-- Excerpted from Jorge A. Ricaldoni "Los Lobos de Roma"

Excerpt from "Berlin Twilight" [1947] by Lieutenant-Colonel W. Byford-Jones

Inquest on Hitler
Is Adolf Hitler dead? If so, how did he die?

These two questions, even at the end of 1946, were still not answered to the satisfaction of some jurists in the Allied Armies of Occupation, and may never be so answered.

Officially the British Army of the Rhine, through its Intelligence branches, stated categorically in October 1945, without anyone having seen the body, that Hitler was dead, and described how, when and where he had died. The United States Intelligence Service maintained a discreet silence, although they produced considerable evidence which contributed to the conclusion reached by the British authorities. The attitude adopted by the Soviet Union was dictated by the Minister of Political Reticence. Although the Red Army had captured the Reichs Chancellery, and their Intelligence Service was in sole charge of the air-raid shelter in which Hitler was known to have lived directing the battle, and although the Russians had captured several relevant witnesses, who had been in Hitler's Bunker, they made no official pronouncement on the subject. For them Hitler might never have existed.

In the absence of a categorical Quadripartite statement on this fundamentally important matter, it is impossible to know whether the Four Powers think that Hitler is dead or not. Certainly, so far as the Germans are concerned, some statement ought to be made with the full weight of the Control Council; until the possibility of his reappearance is eliminated from the superstitious German mind there will exist the greatest obstacle to spiritual de-Nazification. The Germans who survived the Battle of Berlin were almost unanimously of the opinion that Hitler was still alive. The statement made by the British Intelligence Service did not have the desired effect.

The belief in the ex-Führer's existence grew instead of diminished with the passing of the months, so much so that, out of twenty educated Berliners whom I questioned overtly on the subject on Easter Sunday, 20 April  1946, only one thought Hitler was dead. The other nineteen betrayed that they were conscious of the fact that it was their Führer's birthday. They were convinced he was alive, and spoke of him with anything but reproach. I found also that children, who are usually a good guide to the beliefs of adults, almost without exception spoke of Onkel Adolf as a living being.

A new feature in this belief was where Hitler was supposed to be hiding. In the summer of I945 I had been told he was in Spain, South America and other unlikely places, but now another hide-out was mentioned. He was with the Edelweiss, an illegal organization well known to exist, and he was in the wild mountainous area that extends from the Alps on the Swiss frontier to the Tyrol in Austria, where thousands of Wehrmacht troops, calling themselves Edelweiss, retain their wartime formations, stores, equipment and munitions and live high up in the mountain fastness.

The first clue to Hitler's alleged fate was obtained by the Canadian Army.

A German policeman, Hermann Karnau, aged 32, gave himself up to a party of troops in Wilhelmshaven, stating as his reason for doing so that he wanted to obtain proper documents from the Allies. This action was curious in view of the fact that he was well known in Wilhelmshaven, where he had been a member of the town's criminal police. Karnau stated that he had been a guard at the Reichs Chancellery in Berlin until 2 May, when he was given permission to leave his post because the Russians were closing in. He passed through the Russian lines in disguise, stating that he was a Dutchman returning home. He said that he had been a member of the second ring of guards round Hitler since I944, when he was at the headquarters in East Prussia and at Berchtesgaden.

He came to Berlin in March I945. Towards the end of April, the Chancellery servants told him that Hitler had married Eva Braun, to whom guards always referred as "E.B.", at Berchtesgaden. Soon everyone had heard of the rumoured marriage.

The German policeman went on to tell a story which I personally do not believe. He said that while he was in the Chancellery grounds on 30 April he met Eva Braun, who was in a state of great agitation. She was crying: "I would rather die here. I will not go away". Karnau described his efforts to placate the girl, calling her Fräulein Braun. "Then," Karnau said, "she turned to me and said, 'You may call me Frau Hitler now'. [The date on the marriage contract was 22 April].

Karnau explained that in the last days of the Battle of Berlin the artillery fire was so accurately directed on the Chancellery grounds that all the guards were permitted to go through Hitler's Bunker to avoid taking undue risk. While making such a journey on 1 May, at about 4 p.m., Karnau declared that he was confronted by Hitler, who came out of one of the rooms into the corridor. This, he said, was the last time he was in Hitler's presence, until, two and a half hours later, he saw two bodies, of Hitler and Eva Braun he thinks, lying in the grounds about two metres from the emergency exit.

Karnau described this scene with a wealth of detail.

"I looked later into the Chancellery yard," he said, "and saw the two,  Hitler lying on his back with his knees slightly drawn up, Eva Braun beside him with her face down. Both bodies were on fire, but that did not prevent me recognizing them".

Karnau added that near by there were four empty Jerricans which he had seen brought to the Bunker earlier in the day.

"These Jerricans were still there when I visited the Chancellery yard and there were charred remains on the ground".

The policeman went on to describe the investigations he made on the spot. He looked in the Bunker and found it empty.

After a search he met Sturmbannführer Schädle, a staff officer, who told him:

"The Führer is dead and burning".

Under cross-examination Karnau stated that on about 23 April, a party from the Reichs Chancellery was driven to the Tempelhof Aerodrome from where they went by aeroplane, destined for Bavaria.

The story of Hitler's death was told to the American Army by Erich Kempka who, with the rank of Obersturmbannführer [Lieutenant-Colonel], was officer commanding the Motor Pool at the Reichs Chancellery, and Hitler's favourite driver. In July I946, he also told some of the same story at the Nuremburg trials.

"On 30 April 1945, at 14:00 hours," Kempke told American Security Officers [and he did not budge from the main outlines of his story in two months of cross-examination] "I received a telephone call from S.S. Sturmbannführer Günsche, one of Hitler's personal adjutants, ordering me to report immediately to the Führerbunker with 200 litres of Petrol. I reported to the Führerbunker at 15:00 hours and was met by Günsche. Günsche said to me: 'The Führer is dead. He has shot himself,' and Günsche indicated that Hitler had shot himself through the mouth".

Kempka went on to say that Hitler's personal servant and another man left Hitler's private room at that moment, carrying what seemed to be Hitler's body wrapped in a grey army blanket. The head and body were completely covered and there were no traces of moisture or blood to be seen. Kempka said he recognized Hitler's black, low-cut shoes, black socks and black trousers, visible under the blanket.

"At the rear came Reichsleiter Bormann," declared Kempka, "and he was carrying Eva Braun".

"How could you tell she was Eva Braun?" he was asked.

"The body was not covered and it was easy to recognize her," he said. "Her face was unchanged, and her mouth was half open. The left side of her dress was moist, and had a dark stain on it.

"Bormann paused and looked helplessly around him, so I took the body from him, and carried it to the bottom of the stairs leading to the emergency exit. Günsche then came down and we met. He took Eva Braun's body from me, and carried it upstairs".

Kempka said he saw both bodies lying side by side in a shallow ditch. Bormann, Göbbels and Günsche, and Hitler's servant were standing near by. Kempke helped to pour petrol on the two bodies, he said, and Günsche set fire to them.

"As the flames leapt up all those present stood to attention and gave the last Nazi salute, afterwards hurrying back to the shelter".

The first Allied officer to reach the Reichs Chancellery was Major Feodor Platanoff of the Red Army, who on 2 May, in the closing stages of the Battle of Berlin, led a storming party of infantry across the grounds to the entrance to Hitler's Bunker. Major Platanoff stated that there was a body in the garden near the Bunker, that it was not Hitler's, "but a very bad double". He said that his men buried the body in the garden. It had already been half burned. When asked if he thought Hitler was dead, Platanoff shook his head. "I think he escaped," he said.

Before the assault was made, the Reichs Chancellery was stormed by artillery and mortars. At midnight on 30 April, when the Red Army had surrounded Central Berlin, a group of Nazi officers arrived under a truce flag at the Soviet headquarters, then in the Friedrichstrasse, saying that they had come from General Weidling, the recently appointed Commander-in- Chief of all German forces in Berlin, with authority to ask for an armistice between the Russian Government and German Government under Dr. Göbbels. The offer suggested that Hitler no longer existed, and is consistent with the statement that he committed suicide at 2.30 p.m. that day. Certainly it did not appear that he could be at his headquarters or in Berlin. The Soviet Commander replied that he would only consider an unconditional surrender: The Nazis returned to their lines, and the battle continued until next day.

During the night of 1 May there was heavy hand-to-hand fighting in the Wilhelmstrasse, and the streets which led off it, and the Russians secured the Chancellery. It was the last fortified place in the city to fall. Early on 2 May, General Weidling broadcast an order to all German troops in the city to lay down their arms, and two of the armies of Marshal Zhukov's command met and celebrated victory beneath the Brandenburger Gate. It does not seem that the Russian Intelligence Service grasped the real importance of the Chancellery in the first days of victory. True, everyone knew that it had been Hitler's seat of government, and it was not long before large cases of files and other documents were removed, and put under guard. But there does not seem to have been any systematic effort to find out what had happened to the man who led a group of conspirators towards the goal of dominating the world, and who might have escaped to lie for years in hiding, then to emerge and call the German people to action.

It is certain that if, within a few hours of the capture of the Chancellery a group of Scotland Yard detectives had been given the run of the place, assisted with one or two finger-print and forensic medicine experts, there would never have been any Hitler mystery at all.

If Hitler and Eva Braun had died there some proof would certainly have been found. However, it was weeks before the work of investigation was seriously undertaken, and then it was too late to learn anything conclusive. Mongol Russian sentries in filthy, unpressed uniforms were on duty outside the Chancellery when I visited it in the company of a Russian Intelligence officer soon after the Allies entered Berlin. They saluted and grinned as they always do, then leaned against a partly shattered wall.

Among the luxuries Hitler enjoyed as head of the Nazi Party were the best cars that Germany could produce. Those cars happened to be Mercedes-Benzes, some of the finest and best-designed automobiles in the world. The 770K model was known as Grosser Mercedes Offener Tourenwagen. With its 7655cc single-overhead-cam, dual-carburetor, straight-eight motor, which produced 230 hp when the supercharger kicked in, the vehicle was capable of reaching 120 mph, even though it weighed 10,000 pounds. Its huge weight was partly due to the addition of 6mm floor armor and 3mm hardened door armor, plus 40mm thick bulletproof glass. There were three “jump” or pull-out seats behind the driver’s seat, allowing the car to seat a total of nine persons. Entirely upholstered in leather, it had a raised, five-inch-high floor on the right to make Hitler appear taller when he stood. The front seat folded back to give him more room while standing in that position. The car had a 51-gallon gasoline tank and a 150-mile range, attaining three miles per gallon around town. The car also featured four-wheel, independent-coil suspension, dual-system power brakes and 8.25 x 17-inch tires.

I could not help recalling a very different scene in June I939, when I saw Hitler leave the Chancellery in his great Mercedes 770K car, accompanied by his faithful Göbbels, to go to Berchtesgaden. The smart Prussian Guards stood as though turned to stone, the drums rattled out in a fine tattoo, and, with great precision, the Führer's standard was lowered even before the sound of the car's engine was out of earshot. The deafening chorus of Sieg Heil! echoed again in my ears. I saw the excited crowds stretching right back to the now ruined Kaiserhof Hotel, heard the admiring applause, saw the looks of hero-worship on the faces of man, woman and child. Now there were Mongol sentries, and on their shabby sentry-boxes were pornographic drawings in white chalk.

The Germans who were near trod cautiously over heaps of debris, among which lay dozens of iron crosses, taken by looters from Hitler's medal mint. They scarcely raised their eyes to look on the building which had been constructed by 10,000 men only a few years before, and from which Hitler had thought he was going to rule the world. Not one of them would have admitted now to having been a Nazi. None existed. I could also hear a hoarse voice at the opening of the building on 9 January I939, a voice which was saying proudly that the place would outlive many centuries and would be a standing witness to the achievements of the new Great Germany. There, Hitler boasted, he would represent the German people.

Even if a thousand sorcerers had told him that the Reichs Chancellery would come within range of enemy bombers within less than five years, and that in the end his enemies would search for his bones amid its ruins, he would not have believed it. But on 3 January 1945, it was bombed for the first time by the R.A.F., and such considerable damage was caused that Hitler did not attempt to have it repaired; and that day the Russian officer and I were, in fact, looking for his bones.

"Did you ever see such a mess?" asked the Russian officer, and there was a gloating inflection in his voice. "Just think of it, think of the many diplomats, the puppet heads of States and their ambassadors who came in here just before and during the war, trembling with fear of what Hitler was going to say to them".

"How are the mighty fallen," I said. There never was in history such a clear example of the futility of arrogance or the dangers of aggression.

We climbed over fallen masonry, splintered timber, rain-sodden books and broken statues to enter the mosaic hall, its floor knee-deep in debris.

"Here," said the Russian, halting, "the Axis pact was signed. The Axis pact that was to lead to the conquest of all non-Nazis and non-Fascists, and which led, precisely, to this . . ."

The Axis had broken, and the mighty hall in which it was signed had become a ruin. Red upholstered furniture, broken and burned, lay about the floor of inlaid gold mosaic. A massive Swastika, at which two heavy gilded eagles clawed savagely, lay amid broken glass, brass fittings, shattered marble and the remnants of a moulded ceiling. Two enormous crystal chandeliers hung from the roof, the one resting on the floor, the other a few feet from it. Everything had been new and fine, from the smallest wall-fitting to the largest of the marble pillars. We went solemnly round the room collecting papers that seemed to us important, some of them personal letters of members of Hitler's staff but most of them official documents relating to the war. Russian engineers had already removed the steel door of a safe. Smaller rooms, libraries, studies, filing offices and the like, revealed secrets which, a few months before, would have sent three Cabinets into immediate deliberation, but which now, in the twilight of Hitler's fallen capital, were valueless except to the historian.

In Hitler's smaller library, there was a sight which could be called symbolic. Strewn about the floor, amid small personal things which he had used daily, were books by Nietzsche, H. S. Chamberlain, Rosenberg, Treitschke, Müller, Novalis, Fichte and Schönerer - fitting intellectual food for the megalomaniac would-be world conqueror. Two or three lay open in an evil-smelling corner, but those who had opened them had not wanted to read. A few pages had been torn out of one book -it was Spengler's "Men and Technics"- and on the next page my eye caught the words: "That to such beasts as we, eternal peace would be like intolerable boredom . . ." I showed this to my Russian friend, and he howled with laughter.

"See here," he said, wiping tears from his eyes, "it is all so magnificently ironic. See . . . books on Barbarossa, on Charlemagne, Frederick the Great, Bismarck, even Hindenburg's 'Aus meinem Leben'. Is life not funny?"

In another room there were many photographs, among which we recognized Kirdorf, Thyssen, Stinnes, Vögler, and a few Nazis whom I was to see a short time later at the Nuremburg Major War Criminal Court: Göring, Ribbentrop, Räder. . . . Everywhere in this shattered temple to a discredited ideology, there were ghosts of men who had gambled on one card and lost.

The large once ornamental garden to which we gained access through glassless french windows was a garden no more. It was like a battlefield, strewn with respirators, bandages, steel helmets, shells, broken weapons, bloody uniforms, water-bottles, and broken furniture. It was also a cemetery, for the bodies of soldiers and civilians, men, women and children, who had died violently by poison or bullet or shell, were there in new, unmarked graves.

The trees which had been planted there by Hitler were blasted, the terraces where he used to walk on quiet evenings when the daily round of the Wilhelmstrasse was over, and that street of evil quiet and deserted, were pock-marked with mortar and artillery shells. Everywhere there was a smell of death and decay.

We went carefully across the garden, halting every few yards to examine something of interest - a length of film, a bunch of keys, a file of documents; articles of male and female clothing ["May be those of Hitler and Eva," smiled the Russian incredulously], copies of Hitler's speeches, law books, more photographs, sports equipment, one or two English detective stories, a picture of a girl in a bathing costume.

An insignificant block of concrete, inlet with substantial steel doors, the hinges of which had been burned off with acetylene blow-lamps, led down to Hitler's elaborate air-raid shelter, so deep below the ground that no bomb used in Europe could have penetrated its walls. Beside the entrance was a concrete look-out, and, not far away, two or three concrete pillboxes with weapon holes looking to the back entrance. Other fortifications were only half-finished, and had obviously never been used.

We went down several flights of steps into the dark Bunker, where Hitler lived during the fateful days between the beginning of the great Russian offensive from the Oder on 16 April, and the time of his escape or death. Here he issued orders to an already crushed army, here he castigated friends whom he accused of deserting him, sacked one army leader after another, and appointed new ones. Here it was that he received his last commander, General Weidling, on 29 April - or was it his own double?

In the Russian film of the Battle of Berlin which the Russians showed the German audiences, Weidling is clearly to be seen exhibiting how strangely Hitler behaved during that meeting. Weidling refers to Hitler as being "almost unrecognizable", although that remark might have been applied to his strange behaviour arising from his agitation, and not to his appearance.

We stood for a moment in the dark, and a heavy silence fell around us. Certainly battle could have waged above, bombs could have fallen, shells could have crashed into the Wilhelmstrasse, and still nothing would have been heard in that sepulchral place. It was not difficult to visualize the confusion and depression of the last agonizing days of battle among people surrounded by the threat of death, who already had poison capsules in their pockets.

The timber was scorched black, the floor was covered with three inches of water. Each of the several rooms adjoining, without passages, was small, with a low roof, and the furniture, now scarred by fire, was mass-produced.

No fire had burned in Hitler's room, a room in which, according to reports, Hitler and Eva Braun had spent a fantastic Wagnerian honeymoon before they committed suicide. On a broad settee, its upholstery covered with brocade decorated with leaping antelopes and mediaeval warriors in Russian top-boots, there were clear signs of blood. My Russian friend and I examined the settee carefully. The signs were consistent with someone who sat in the corner of it having committed suicide by shooting, for the blood had run down the three-inch square arm of the settee and dripped on to the floor, where there were dark stains. On the wall were several splashes of blood, which could have been accounted for by a wounded head having come into contact with it.

We searched the room minutely and found nothing more than a hairpin and a few sheets of notepaper. Near by was the blood-stained room where Göbbels and his wife and six children were reported to have died. The most interesting part of the Bunker was, however, Eva Braun's bedroom, with its adjoining bathroom. The bedroom had in it a double bed, a cabinet full of cosmetics and drugs, a mirror, table and chairs. The bathroom was complete with all fittings, most of them obviously new, and on the chromium-plated rails were towels marked A.H. That a woman had lived there was evident. Little wisps of loose hair which had come out in combing lay on the floor, and there were other hairpins and two empty powder boxes. Was it possible, one thought, that any woman, living in that deep, silent place, with death approaching from east and west, could have thought so much about her appearance as to make up her face?

We went back into the bedroom, and sat on the bed trying to reconstruct the "last scene" from what we had already learned, but the whole thing was too fantastic - the last moments of a world war, a contemplated marriage in an underground hide-out, a last will and testament, a suicide pact. . . . Yet there was something so Wagnerian about it, especially about committing the bodies to the flames, that the man who borrowed his "Heil" from Wagner, who called his western forts the Siegfried Line, might also have seen himself as Wotan in "Der Ring", and even have rejoiced in a dramatic curtain to his own personal drama. From the Bunker the Russian took me by the arm, and led me to a deep tunnel which was as long and as wide as a street.

"Here," he said, "is the real headquarters of Hitler, secret until long after the war began. The men who built it were specially picked by the Gestapo, and were warned that the life of the Führer rested in their hands".

In this vast subterranean, air-conditioned Reichs Chancellery, intersected into safety sections with steel doors which weighed a ton each, were hundreds of huge rooms, each with one entrance only and that guarded by a steel strong-room door. This fortress was honeycombed by offices, which dealt with every aspect of the defence of the Reich, and had in it Hitler's own conference-room, a wireless transmitting station, a telephone exchange and a vast kitchen, with sufficient cooking facilities to prepare meals for a thousand people.

"They could have held out here for weeks," said the Russian, "if their defences had been properly manned".

The sun was going down as we regained the garden again. We walked to the conical concrete blockhouse by the Bunker, and the Russian halted near a shallow trench.

"That," he said, "is where Hitler and Eva Braun were supposed to have been burned."

The trench was black with ashes.

"You believe it?"

He smiled and shook his head. "We want more proof than I have seen up to now. All we know is that he was here".

I bent down, took up some of the ashes in my hand, and put them into an empty tobacco-pouch. They might have been the remains of burnt wood, or they might have been the remains of a cremated Hitler. I could not know.

"Maybe," said the Russian, "we shall still find something".

We made an appointment to meet again and parted. I walked down to the Charlottenburger Chaussee, the broad avenue which, as Germans will tell you, was used by important Nazis as a runway for their aero-planes just before the city fell. In a few minutes I was on the concrete road. By the roadside we saw the remains of one plane which had crashed in landing.

Never have there been so many "detectives" on any case. One day when in the Chancellery grounds, I counted forty-five separate parties of at least four nationalities, all armed with torches, pencils and notebooks, many with cameras and diagrams. Until the end no one gave up hope that one day someone would hit upon a clue. Intelligence officers and military police all over the country, especially at ports and harbours, in hospitals and prisoner-of-war camps, were warned to keep a look out for anyone resembling the missing Führer, his deputy or his adjutant.

The British and American Intelligence Service were at work for months reconstructing the last fantastic days in the bunker. The British worked as a team, and their enquiries took them all over Germany, excluding the Russian zone, following up many useless clues and trying to trace people who were in the Chancellery during the last days of Nazi Germany.

Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy, who was likely to know more than Göring or Ribbentrop, could not be found. A clue led to the Hamburg area, then all trace was lost. Bormann's adviser, Friedrich Wilhelm Zander, was also missing, as were certain important documents. British Intelligence officers discovered that Zander was in a German military hospital in Seeheim in June as a prisoner of war, and he was followed thence to Tegernsee, where he had hidden under a false name. British Intelligence officers prepared a statement which was made public in Berlin on 1 November. Those of us who had to do with its issue were surprised at the keenness of the Russians whom we invited to be present.

The statement claimed that available evidence, which had been sifted, was based largely on eye-witness accounts and showed, as conclusively as possible without bodies, that Hitler and Eva Braun died shortly after 2.30 p.m. on 30 April I945, in their Bunker, their bodies being burned just outside.

Hitler's original intention had been to fly to Berchtesgaden on 20 April, and from there continue the struggle. When that day came he postponed his departure. On 22 April, at about 4.30 p.m., he held a staff conference, at which he made it clear to his advisers that he considered the war was lost, and that he intended to remain in Berlin to the last in defence of the capital. If Berlin fell, he would die there. It is clear that Hitler suffered from an attack of nervous prostration, during which he blamed everyone but himself for the failure of Germany to win the war. His advisers, both military and civil, endeavoured to persuade him to change his mind and leave Berlin. This was of no avail. Göbbels took the same decision, and with Martin Bormann, Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger [Hitler's surgeon], and others of the personal staff, remained behind.

The generals retired to their new headquarters.

"Hitler's breakdown on April 22 was the beginning of his end," according to the statement. "From that time he never left the Bunker, surrounded no longer by soldiers and politicians, but by his 'family circle', and those officers responsible directly to him for the defence of Berlin.

"His state of mind was reported by all who saw him to have been very much calmer after the crisis on 22 April. He had made his decision. He even gained more confidence as to the outcome of the Battle of Berlin. Now and again, however, his calm was interrupted by tantrums, when he recalled old treacheries and found new ones. His physical health, on the contrary, was poor. The nervous strain, unhealthy living conditions, and eccentric hours told on him. Apart from a reported trembling of the hands, from which he had suffered for some time, and his general decrepitude, he was "as normal as ever in his mind"'.

The sifted evidence showed that on the night of 23-24 April, Hitler was visited by Albert Speer, the Reich Minister for Armament and Munitions and Chief of the Todt Organization, to whom he disclosed that he had made all plans for his suicide, and for the complete destruction of his body by burning. About the same time Himmler sent Gebhardt, his personal doctor, to Hitler to try to persuade him to leave Berlin before it was too late, but Hitler rejected this suggestion.

On the evening of 26 April, Field Marshal Ritter von Greim reported to Hitler's Bunker to receive his commission as C.-in-C. German Air Force in succession to Göring, the latter having fallen into complete disfavour by his endeavour to take over control from Hitler a few days earlier.

"Hitler informed Greim, as he had Speer, that he had made all arrangements for the destruction of his body and that of Eva Braun, so that they would not fall into enemy hands, and that nothing recognizable would remain".

He gave Greim and Hanna Reitsch, Greim's woman pilot, poison capsules, which the former afterwards used. Such capsules had already been issued to all people in the Bunker.

On 28 April, the inmates of the Bunker heard with a mixture of incredulity and disgust of Himmler's approach to the Allies through Sweden. Hitler called him a treacherous dog.

During the previous three days, the Battle of Berlin had been drawing nearer the centre of the city. Shells were falling all round the Bunker, and in the early hours of 29 April it was reported that Russian tanks had broken into the Potsdamer Platz. Hitler then ordered Greim to return to Rechlin to mount a Luftwaffe attack in support of General Wenck's 12th Army, which was reported also to be within shelling distance of the Potsdamer Platz. [In fact it was not, but this was probably unknown at this time]. Greim, with Reitsch, took off from the Charlottenburger Chaussee in an Arado 96, which had been flown in to collect them.

Later on 29 April any hope of the effective relief of Berlin by Wenck's army had to be abandoned. Captured telegrams sent to Dönitz at the time disclose the hysterical recrimination of despair.

On the evening of 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun, according to the report, the ceremony being performed by an official from the Propaganda Ministry, in a small conference-room in the Bunker.

Eva Braun may have suggested the marriage, for she had apparently wished for the peculiar glory of dying with Hitler, and she had used her influence to persuade him to die in Berlin, amid the indiscribable drama of those last days.

"After the ceremony," continued the statement, "the newly married couple shook the hands of all present in the Bunker, and retired to their suite with one of Hitler's women secretaries for a marriage feast. According to her the conversation, which had been confined to suicide, was so morbidly oppressive that she would have broken down if she had remained. It was about this time that Hitler had his Alsatian dog destroyed.

"At about 2.30 a.m. on 30 April, Hitler said a curt good-bye to about 20 people, about half of them women, whom he had summoned from the other Bunkers in the Old and New Chancelleries across the shell-blasted garden. He shook hands with the women and spoke to most of them. On the same day, at about 2.30 p.m., though the exact time is uncertain, orders were sent to the transport office requiring the immediate despatch to the Bunker of 200 litres of petrol. Between 160 and 180 litres were actually collected and deposited in the garden just outside the emergency exit of the Bunker. At about the same time, Hitler and Eva Braun made their last appearance alive. They went round the Bunker, shook hands with their immediate entourage, and then retired to their own apartments, where they both committed suicide, Hitler by shooting himself, apparently through the mouth, Eva Braun perhaps by taking poison, though she had been given a revolver.

"After the suicide the bodies were stated to have been taken into the garden just outside the Bunker by Göbbels, Bormarn, perhaps Stumpfegger, and one or two others. Hitler was wrapped in a blanket, presumably because his body was bloody. The bodies were placed side by side in the garden about three yards from the emergency exit, and drenched with Petrol. Because of the shelling, the party withdrew under the shelter of the exit, and a Petrol-soaked rag was lighted and thrown on the corpses, which at once caught fire. The party then stood to attention, gave the Hitler salute and retired".

From then on, according to the report, the evidence is less circustantial. How often the bodies were resoaked, or how long they burnt, was not stated. One witness was informed that they burnt until nothing was left. More probably they were charred until they were unrecognizable, and the bones broken up and probably buried.

On the evening of 1 May, Bormann sent a telegram to Dönitz, which I saw, informing him that Hitler's will was now in force [i.e. that Hitler was dead]. This was amplified later by a telegram from Göbbels, which stated that Hitler had died at 3.30 p.m. the previous day, and that his will appointed Dönitz as Reichspresident, Göbbels as Reichschancellor, Bormann as Party Minister, and Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. Göbbels added that Bormann was trying to get to Dönitz to inform him of the situation. British Intelligence officers thought their evidence not complete, but positive, circumstantial, consistent and dependable.

"There is no evidence whatever to support any of the theories which have been circulated, and which presuppose that Hitler is still alive. All such stories which have been reported have been investigated, and found to be quite baseless; most of them have dissolved at the first touch of fact, and some of them have been admitted by their authors to have been pure fabrication. Nor is it possible to dispose of the existing evidence".

It was considered quite impossible that the versions of the various eye-witnesses could represent a concerted cover-story, because they were all too busy planning their own safety to have been disposed to memorize an elaborate charade which they could still maintain, after five months of isolation from each other and under detailed and persistent cross-examination. Nor was it considered possible that the witnesses were mistaken in respect of Hitler's body [of the identity of Eva Braun's body no doubt is considered possible; not being blanketed she was easily recognizable]. Such a theory would require that Hitler escaped after 2.30 p.m. on 30 April, and that Eva Braun was "fobbed off" with the corpse of a double which had been secretly introduced.

But escape after 2.30 p.m. was almost certainly impossible. Even if it was still possible to fly a training plane from the Charlottenburger Chaussee, there was no pilot to fly it. Hitler's two pilots, who were in the Bunker on 30 April , both took part in the attempted escape on the night of 1 May. In any case, there was no valid reason for constructing such theories, which were contrary to the only positive evidence, and supported by no evidence at all.

Then the strangest inquest in history was held in the lounge of a middle-class Berlin hotel.

A spokesman for the officers who had carried out the investigation was closely interrogated on the results by a group of expert observers, British and American, whom I had gathered together, and I made a record of questions and answers. One Intelligence officer [Hugh Trevor-Roper - not identified at this time] an Oxford don before the war, still youthful and full of enthusiasm, admitted at once that the only conclusive evidence that Hitler and Eva Braun had died would be the discovery and certain identification of their bodies. The fact had to be admitted the bodies had not been discovered.

The interrogation began:

Question: Are the Russians still sceptical about Hitler's death, as they were earlier when they said they thought Hitler had escaped?

Answer: We are in consultation with the Russians, but I think that they are slightly skeptical still. [One Russian present nodded in agreement].

Q.: Was this an entirely British investigation or one with the co-operation of the Russians?

I believe it to be quite impossible that that can be true. After five months, I do not think it possible that people could have remembered elaborate stories, but only personal experiences. Therefore, if they had been taught a cover story, one would expect to find that they all agreed at the first telling, and then disagreed later, under cross-examination.

Q.: If the man who was burned was not Hitler but a double, and these people thought it was Hitler, their stories would tally, and indeed be true. [It is known for a fact that Hitler, like Montgomery on one occasion, did in fact use a double to deceive spies].

A.: If you should wish to believe that Hitler got away and if you believe it, you have got to assume that Hitler escaped after 2.30 p.m. on 30 April, very rapidly before the dummy body was brought out. In that case you have got to straighten out the following point:

(1) Eva Braun was deceived by a dummy. No doubt Eva Braun used her influence on Hitler, and she wished to stay and die in Berlin; she also wished for the distinction of dying with Hitler and she would certainly have resented a substitute corpse;
(2) Consider how Hitler could have got away at 2.30 p.m. on 30 April. Berlin had now been surrounded for at least four days by the Russians, and the only way out -and it is not certain that it was possible at that time- was to fly a training plane from the Charlottenburger Chaussee. You must also consider that Hitler's two pilots were both with him on 30 April, and were both still there on 1 May after the corpse was burnt, and therefore could not have flown him off on 30 April. Baur, one of the pilots, is a Russian prisoner of war now, and Betz, the other, had been seen with several head wounds. [The Russians never issued the details of relevant prisoners in their hands].

On the evening of 1 May, Göbbels committed suicide. One witness visited him before the mass escape attempt, and he [Göbbels] bade him farewell, and hoped they would escape. Frau Göbbels is known to have stated that two of her children were dead and the rest would follow. None of them was involved in the mass escape that followed on the evening of 1 May. Bormann was involved in that mass escape. After the first group had got across the Weidendamm Bridge, one group accompanied a German tank across the bridge. That group consisted of Neumann of the Propaganda Ministry, Bormann and Stumpfegger walking on the left-hand side of the tank, and on the other side of the tank were Kempka and a man named Rattenhuber.

This informal inquest without a body did not completely satisfy the curiosity of some experts, and next day I asked the Intelligence Officers to come to tea at a Berlin hotel to submit themselves to another cross-examination, and this they very sportingly agreed to do. Popular interest was beginning to centre on Eva Braun, and the first question was if any details could be given about the part she played in the Hitler drama.

"I can only tell you what Speer said about her when he was interrogated the other day," an Intelligence Brigadier replied. "He said that there was no doubt Hitler had the greatest respect for her, and her love was very significant to him. She had the deepest respect and reverence for Hitler. 

As was discovered later, the three men were Heinz Lorenz, a minor official of the Propaganda Ministry and a confidant of Göbbels; Willy Johannmeier, a major in the German infantry, and Wilhelm Zander, adviser to deputy-Führer Martin Bormann, and an officer in the S.S., who carried the originals of the documents.

The Intelligence officer then went on to explain how, on 29 April, Dönitz received a telegram from Bormann stating that Hitler had written a testament declaring Dönitz to be his successor, and giving him complete power in the country. On May I, both Bormann and Göbbels, who had been nominated to the next highest post to Dönitz, signalled to the Grand Admiral that Hitler was dead, and that a government had been appointed under Dönitz. Dönitz replied at once stating that he did not recognize the new government. He dismissed both Bormann and Göbbels, stating that he did not want the government he wished to appoint to be tainted by Nazis.

The three couriers separated when they reached the Hanover area, after making arrangements to communicate with each other when their mission was fulfilled.

British Intelligence officers were on their track, however, and the first to be arrested was Lorenz, who was first questioned near Hanover for being in possession of false identity documents. That was early in December I945.

"It was a crinkle like that of paper in the shoulders of his coat," explained the Intelligence officer, "that caused us to rip the coat open. There were the documents, cleverly concealed".

British Intelligence knew of the existence of three copies, and they wished to find another copy to prove how they were brought out of Berlin, as well as to confirm the authenticity of the documents and compare them one with another.

"The Lorenz set contained the Göbbels appendix, which was not contained in that found by U.S. Intelligence officers. "

Ten days ago the second messenger, Johannmeier, was arrested at Iserlohn, in the Ruhr, within a few hundred yards of British First Corps Headquarters.

"The man at first refused to reveal the hiding-place of his documents, but he was interrogated and later gave information which led to their being unearthed in the garden of his home at Iserlohn. With the documents, which had been buried in a glass jar, was a letter from General Burgdorf to Field Marshal Schörner, telling him that Hitler was sending his testament, written 'under the shattering blow of Himmler's treachery'.

"Investigations then started to locate Zander in the Hanover area. His wife gave me the address of his parents; she put up a splendid screen because she knew his whereabouts, but she had told his parents that he had died. I set off to Bavaria, and found evidence that Zander had been in hospital at Tegernsee as a result of walking from Hanover. He was treated by a Nazi doctor, who has since been arrested for removing identification marks from S.S. men.

"The U.S. authorities co-operated, and I discovered Zander living at Tegernsee, with false identification papers, under the name of Friederich Wilhelm Paustin. With the assistance of the U.S. authorities, I was able to identify Zander and went to the house where he was a porter. He was out, living in a village near the Austrian border with a girl-friend, Elsa Unterholzner, who was once Bormann's secretary. At three o'clock in the morning, accompanied by U.S. Intelligence officers, I raided the house and arrested Zander.

"Zander's set of documents, including the marriage certificate and the pictures, was found in the house of a relative, the sister-in-law of Elsa Unterholzner, where they had been taken earlier". 

Both Hitler's personal will [Mein privates Testament] and the political testament [Mein politisches Testament] were neatly and expertly typed on foolscap paper, widely spaced -not more than eight words to a line, twenty-five lines to a page- and show no sign of the haste that is apparent in the composition of the marriage certificate. The will comprises roughly 400 words on three pages, the testament about 1,700 words on ten pages, but the shortest of all documents is the appendix by Dr. Göbbels of about 300 words. At last these two Nazi leaders, who always wrote and spoke so verbosely, had learned the art of precise writing.

These three documents, signed between four and five-thirty in the afternoon of 29 April, were so carefully and thoughtfully prepared that they must first have been dictated the previous day, if not earlier. The signatures repay a close study. On Hitler's personal will the words "als Zeugen" [as witnesses] have been written twice by different people and with different pens; the signature of Martin Bormann, both on the will and the testament, does not appear to have been written by the same man. The name Martin, in both instances, has been carefully and legibly written, while the name Bormann is unrecognizable, being more like a spidery W than a name. On the will, Göbbels used only his surname, prefixed by the abbreviation "Dr.", while on the testament he signed Dr. Josef Göbbels. The greatest variation exists between the two signatures of Adolf Hitler on the will and the testament. On the will the signature is weak and spidery, especially the continental 7, which his initial resembles; on the testament the signature is bold, decisive, and the Hitler is telescoped.

Hitler's personal will of six paragraphs is a reasonable enough document. It began:

Although during the years of struggle I believed that I could not undertake the responsibility of marriage, now, before the end of my life, I have decided to take as my wife the woman who, after many years of true friendship, came to this city, already almost besieged, of her own free will, in order to share my fate. She will go to her death with me at her own wish, as my wife. This will compensate us for what we both lost through my work in the service of my people.

My possessions, in so far as they are worth anything, belong to the Party, or if this no longer exists, to the State. If the State, too, is destroyed, there is no need for any further instructions on my part.

The paintings in the collections bought by me during the course of the years were never assembled for private purposes, but solely for the establishment of a picture galley in my home town of Linz on the Danube. It is my most heartfelt wish that this will should be duly executed.

As Executor, I appoint my most faithful Party comrade, Martin Bormann. He is given full legal authority to make all decisions. He is permitted to hand over to my relatives everything which is of value as a personal memento, or is necessary for maintaining a petit bourgeois standard of living especially to my wife's mother, and my faithful fellow-workers of both sexes who are well known to him. The chief of these are my former secretaries, my housekeeper Frau Anni Winter, etc., who helped me for many years by their work.

My wife and I choose to die in order to escape the shame of overthrow or capitulation. It is our wish for our bodies to be burnt immediately on the place where I have performed the greater part of my daily work during the course of my 12 years' service to my people.

Berlin, 29 April 45 . . . 4.00 hours.

A. Hitler.
Witnesses: Martin Bormann
Dr. Göbbels
Nikolaus von Below

Little knowing that the Allies were soon going to gather secret documents, including reports of secret conferences and off-the-record speeches, and to read them in public at Nuremburg to prove beyond a shadow of doubt his personal war guilt, Hitler tried, by lies and bluff, in a document called "My Political Testament", to whitewash himself before the world.

He wrote:

More than 30 years have passed since I made my modest contribution as a volunteer in the First World War which was forced upon the Reich. In these three decades, the love of, and loyalty to my people alone have guided me in all my thoughts, actions and life. They gave me the power to make the most difficult decisions which have ever confronted mortal man. I have spent all my time, my powers and my health in these three decades. It is untrue that I, or anybody else in Germany wanted war in I939. It was wanted and provoked exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests. I have made too many offers of limitation and control of armaments, which posterity will not for all time be able to disregard, for the responsibility for the outbreak of this war to be placed on me. Further, I have never wished that after the first appalling world war, there should be a second one against either England or America.

Only three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war I proposed a solution of the German-Polish problem to the British Ambassador in Berlin - international control as in the case of the Saar. This offer, too, cannot be lied away. It was only rejected because the ruling clique in England wanted war, partly for commercial reasons and partly because it was influenced by the Propaganda put out by International Jewry.

Centuries will go by, but from the ruins of our towns and monuments, hatred of those ultimately responsible will always grow anew.

The Treaty of Versailles was one [Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and the Treaty of St. Germain on 20 September 1919] of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage during the war. This article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations. In 1921 the cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks. At the time economist John Maynard Keynes, predicted that the treaty was too harsh -a "Carthaginian peace"- and said the reparations figure was excessive and counter-productive. "The international bankers swept statesmen, politicians, journalists and jurists all to one side and issued their orders with the imperiousness of absolute monarchs". -- Lloyd George, British Prime Minister It also balkanized Germany by giving its land to France, Poland, Denmark and the newly formed Czechoslovakia, dividing it up into allotments satisfying the political intrigues of the architects of the Treaty. Under the Dictate of Versailles Poland was given a "corridor" to the Baltic Sea, along with large areas of West Prussia that were populated by Germans. This "corridor" completely separated East Prussia from the Reich, making trade and communication difficult or impossible. During Allied discussions on the peace treaty, Lloyd George, the English Prime Minister during the First World War, tapped this spot on the map and predicted "This is where the next world war will begin". Even many people who consider themselves well-informed about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich are ignorant of the German leader’s numerous efforts for peace in Europe, including serious proposals for armaments reductions, and limits on weapons deployment, which were spurned by the leaders of France, Britain and other powers. Hitler’s first major speech on foreign policy, a few months after taking office as  Reich Chancellor, delivered to the Reichstag on 17 May 1933, was a plea for peace, equal rights and mutual understanding among nations. So reasonable and persuasively argued was his appeal that it was endorsed even by representatives of the opposition Social Democratic Party: "Germany will be perfectly ready to disband her entire military establishment and destroy the small amount of arms remaining to her, if the neighboring countries will do the same thing with equal thoroughness. "... Germany is also entirely ready to renounce aggressive weapons of every sort if the armed nations, on their part, will destroy their aggressive weapons within a specified period, and if their use is forbidden by an international convention. "... Germany is ready at any time to renounce aggressive weapons if the rest of the world does the same. Germany is prepared to agree to any solemn pact of non-aggression because she does not think of attacking anybody, but only of acquiring security". No answer was received. The other powers heedlessly continued to fill their arsenals with weapons, to pile up their stores of explosives, to increase the numbers of their troops. At the same time the League of Nations, the instrument of the victorious powers, declared that Germany must first undergo a period of "probation" before it would be possible to discuss with her the question of the disarmament of the other countries. On 14 October 1933, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations, with which it was impossible to reach an understanding. "The last thing Hitler wanted was to produce another great war". -- Sir Basil Liddell Hart On 18 December 1933, Adolf Hitler came forward with a new proposal for the improvement of international relations. This proposal included the following six points: 1. Germany receives full equality of rights. 2. The fully armed states undertake among themselves not to increase their armaments beyond their present level. 3. Germany adheres to this agreement, freely undertaking to make only so much actual moderate use of the equality of rights granted to her as will not represent a threat to the security of any other European power. 4. All states recognize certain obligations in regard to conducting war on humane principles, or not to use certain weapons against the civilian population. 5. All states accept a uniform general supervision that will monitor and ensure the observance of these obligations. 6. The European nations guarantee one another the unconditional maintenance of peace by the conclusion of non-aggression pacts, to be renewed after ten years. An exchange of notes, which began with this and continued for years, finally came to a sudden end with an unequivocal "no" from France. This "no" was moreover accompanied by tremendous increases in the armed forces of France, Britain, and Russia. In this way Germany's position became even worse than before. The danger to the Reich was so great that Adolf Hitler felt himself compelled to act. On 16 March 1935, he reintroduced conscription. But in direct connection with this measure he once more announced an offer of wide-ranging agreements, the purpose of which as to ensure that any future war would be conducted on humane principles, in fact to make any such war practically impossible by eliminating destructive armaments In his Reichstag address of 21 May 1935, the German leader again stressed the need for peace on the basis of mutual respect and equal rights. Even the "London Times" regarded this speech as "reasonable, straightforward and comprehensive". Such appeals were not mere rhetoric. On 31 March 1936, for example, Hitler’s government announced a comprehensive plan for strengthening peace in Europe. The detailed paper included numerous specific proposals, including demilitarization of the entire Rhineland region, a western Europe security agreement, and categorical prohibition of incendiary bombs, poison gas, heavy tanks and heavy artillery: "The German government is ready to take an active part in all efforts which may lead to a practical limitation of armaments. It regards a return to the principles of the Geneva Convention as the only possible way to achieve this. It believes that at first there will be only the possibility of a step-by-step abolition and outlawing of weapons and methods of warfare that are essentially contrary to the still-valid Geneva Red Cross Convention. “Just as the use of dum-dum [expanding] bullets was once forbidden and, on the whole, thereby prevented in practice, so the use of other specific weapons can be forbidden and their use, in practice, can be eliminated. Here the German government has in mind all those armaments that bring death and destruction not so much to the fighting soldiers as to non-combatant women and children. "The German government considers as erroneous and ineffective the idea of doing away with airplanes while leaving open the question of bombing. But it believes it possible to ban the use of certain weapons as contrary to international law, and to ostracize those nations which still use them from the community of humankind, and from its rights and laws. "It also believes that gradual progress is the best way to success. For example, there might be prohibition of the use of gas, incendiary and explosive bombs outside the actual battle zone. This limitation could then be extended to complete international outlawing of all bombing. But so long as bombing as such is permitted, any limitation of the number of aerial bombers is dubious in view of the possibility of rapid replacement. "Should bombing as such be branded as barbaric and contrary to international law, the construction of aerial bombing planes will soon be abandoned as superfluous and pointless. If, through the Geneva Convention, it proved possible to prevent the killing of defenseless wounded men or of prisoners, it ought to be equally possible, through an analogous convention, to forbid and ultimately to bring to an end the bombing of similarly defenseless civilian populations. "In such a fundamental way of dealing with the problem, Germany sees a greater reassurance and security for the nations than in all the pacts of assistance and military agreements. "The German government is ready to agree to any limitation that leads to abolition of the heaviest arms, especially suited for aggression. Such weapons are, first, the heaviest artillery, and secondly, the heaviest tanks. In view of the enormous fortifications on the French frontier, such an international abolition of the heaviest weapons of attack would automatically give France nearly one hundred percent security. "Germany declares herself ready to agree to any limitation whatsoever of the caliber-size of artillery, as well as battleships, cruisers, and torpedo boats. In like manner the German government is ready to accept any international limitation of the size of warships. And finally it is ready to agree to limitation of tonnage for submarines, or to their complete abolition through an international agreement. "And it gives further assurance that it will agree to any international limitations or abolition of arms whatsoever for a uniform period of time". Once again Hitler's declarations did not receive the slightest response. On the contrary, France made an alliance with Russia in order to further increase her predominance on the continent, and to enormously increase the pressure on Germany from the East. On 18 June 1935, The German - British Naval Agreement: Adolf Hitler and Britain negotiated the Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935, which provided that the German Navy could have a strength of 35 percent of that of the British Navy. By this he wanted to demonstrate that the German Reich, to use his own words, had "neither the intention, the means, nor the necessity" to enter into any rivalry as regards naval power, which, as is well known, had had such a fateful impact on its relations with Britain in the years before the first World War. On every appropriate occasion he assured France of his desire to live at peace with her. He repeatedly renounced in plain terms any claim to the region of Alsace-Lorraine. Once again he followed the defensive step which he had been obliged to take with a generous appeal for general reconciliation and for the settlement of all differences.  On 31 March 1936, Adolf Hitler Put Forth The Following Major Peace Plan: "The German government....has no faith in the attempt to bring about universal settlements, as this would be doomed to failure from the outset, and can therefore be proposed only by those who have no interest in achieving practical results. On the other hand it is of the opinion that the negotiations held and the results achieved in limiting naval armaments should have an instructive and stimulating effect. "The German government therefore recommends future conferences, each of which shall have a single, clearly defined objective. "For the present, it believes the most important task is to bring aerial warfare into the moral and humane atmosphere of the protection afforded to non-combatants or the wounded by the Geneva Convention. Just as the killing of defenseless wounded, or of prisoners, or the use of dum-dum bullets, or the waging of submarine warfare without warning, have been either forbidden or regulated by international conventions, so it must be possible for civilized humanity to prevent the senseless abuse of any new type of weapon, without running counter to the object of warfare. "The German government therefore proposes that the practical tasks of these conferences shall be: 1. Prohibition of the use of gas, poison, or incendiary bombs. 2. Prohibition of the use of bombs of any kind whatsoever on towns or places outside the range of the medium-heavy artillery of the fighting fronts. 3. Prohibition of the bombardment with long-range guns of towns or places more than 20 kilometers distant from the battle zone. 4. Abolition and prohibition of the construction of tanks of the heaviest type. 5. Abolition and prohibition of artillery of the heaviest caliber. "As soon as possibilities for further limitation of armaments emerge from such discussions and agreements, they should be utilized. The German government hereby declares itself prepared to join in every such settlement, in so far as it is valid internationally. "The German government believes that if even a first step is made on the road to disarmament, this will be of enormous importance in relations between the nations, and thereby in reestablishing confidence, which is a precondition for the development of trade and prosperity. For years Hitler sought an alliance with Britain, or least a cordial relationship based on mutual respect. In that effort, he took care not to offend British pride or sensibilities, or to make any proposal that might impair or threaten British interests. Hitler also worked for cordial relations with France, likewise taking care not to say or do anything that might offend French pride or infringe on French national interests. The sincerity of Hitler’s proposals to France, and the validity of his fear of possible French military aggression against Germany is underscored by the immense manpower and funding resources he devoted to construction of the vast Westwall ["Siegfried Line"] defensive fortifications on his nation’s western border. Over the years, historians have tended either to ignore Hitler’s initiatives for reducing tensions and promoting peace, or to dismiss them as deceitful posturing. But if the responsible leaders in Britain and France during the 1930s had really regarded these proposals as bluff or insincere pretense, they could easily have exposed them as such by giving them serious consideration. Their unresponsive attitude suggests that they understood that Hitler’s proposals were sincere, but rejected them anyway because to accept them might jeopardize British-French political-military predominance in Europe. Hitler And Britain Secret Negotiations Alleged The West Australian [Perth, WA] 28 May 1948 MOSCOW: The Soviet Foreign Ministry has published documents from the Nazi Foreign Ministry archives according to which Britain was secretly negotiating an agreement with Hitler on the eve of the outbreak of war to carve up jointly the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. This allegation is contained in reports from Herbert von Dirksen, then German Ambassador to Britain. He reported that negotiations for a British military, political and economic alliance with Germany were conducted principally in London between Sir Horace Wilson and Dr. Helmut Wohltat, Hitler's economic commissioner, in June and July, 1939. -- Reuters Hitler did not want war in 1939 -- and certainly not a general or global conflict. He earnestly sought a peaceful resolution of the dispute with Poland over the status of the ethnically German city-state of Danzig and the "Corridor" region, which was the immediate cause of conflict. To resolve the problem, he made numerous sensible proposals which include: demilitarization of the key port areas, public referendum, accepting Gdynia as a Polish port city on the Baltic Sea, 1 km wide rail and road passages to link Eastern Prussia to Germany, or to link Poland to the Baltic Sea, and finally proposing that the region be placed under International control. Even the pre-war 28 August 1939 headline of the Hitler-hating "New York Times" confirmed that Hitler sought to avoid war with Britain and France. The sincerity of his desire for peace in 1939, and his fear of another world war, has been affirmed by a number of scholars, including the eminent British historian A.J.P. Taylor. It was, of course, the declarations of war against Germany by Britain and France on 3 September 1939, made with secret encouragement by US President Roosevelt, that transformed the limited German-Polish clash into a larger, continent-wide war. To justify its declaration of war, Britain protested that Germany had violated Polish sovereignty, and threatened Poland’s independence. The emptiness and insincerity of these stated reasons is shown by the fact that the British leaders did not declare war against Soviet Russia two weeks later [16 days later] when Soviet forces attacked the Polish Republic from the East. Britain’s betrayal of Poland, and the hypocrisy of its claimed reasons for going to war against Germany in 1939, became even more obvious in 1944-45 when Britain’s leaders permitted the complete Soviet takeover and subjugation of Poland. After the 3 week German-Polish War ends in victory for the Germans, Hitler declares: "I attempted to find a tolerable solution. I submitted this attempt to the Polish rulers. You know these proposals. They were more than moderate. I do not know what mental condition the Polish Government was in when it refused these proposals. As an answer, Poland gave the order for the first mobilization, and my request to the Polish Foreign Minister to visit me to discuss these questions was refused. Instead of going to Berlin, he went to London". In a speech before  the Reichstag in October 1939, Hitler pleads with Britain and France to rescind recent war declarations Before the actual shooting was to start in the Western theatre, Hitler did all could to reassure Britian and France of his peaceful intentions. The two Allied powers had, under the pretext of saving Poland, both declared war upon Germany on 3 September 1939. Before the Reichstag, and the world, Hitler declares: "I have always expressed to France my desire to bury forever our ancient enmity and bring together these two nations, both of which have such glorious pasts. ....I have devoted no less effort to the achievement of Anglo-German understanding, no, more than that, of an Anglo-German friendship. At no time and in no place have I ever acted contrary to British interests... "Why should this war in the West be fought?"  On 1-3 March 1940, Adolf Hitler Meets With U.S. Undersecretary Of State Sumner Welles: Right before meeting with Hitler, Welles was in Rome meeting with Benito Mussolini. Welles informed Hitler that he and Mussolini had engaged in a "long, constructive, and helpful" conversation, and that the Duce believed "there was still a possibility of bringing about a firm and lasting peace". Adolf Hitler made five points: 1) He had long been in favor of disarmament, but had received no encouragement from England, France ot the Untied States; 2) He states that he is in favor of international free trade; 3) Germany had no aim other than the return of the "German people to the territorial position that historically was rightly theirs"; 4) He had no desire to control non-German people and he had no intention to interfere with their independence; 5) He wanted the return of the colonies that were stolen from Germany at Versailles. In May 1940, Hitler deliberately allows the British Army to escape at Dunkirk The German "Blitzkrieg" across Holland and Belgium, as well as the earlier occupation of parts of Denmark and Norway, had denied the Allies of the opportunity to encircle Germany before invading it. As a show of good faith, and over the objectives of his own Generals, Hitler then allows the trapped Allied forces to escape untouched from the beaches of Dunkirk [France]. Hitler hopes that this gracious act will make the British more willing to make peace. "He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilization that Britain had brought into the world ... He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church – saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the continent. „The return of Germany’s lost colonies would be desirable, but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops, if she should be involved in any difficulties anywhere". The foregoing quotes summarize General Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt on Adolf Hitler’s words in a discussion on 24 May 1940 relating to the non-attack on the allied troops at Dunkirk, cited in the renowned British military historian Basil H. Liddell Hart's "The Other Side of the Hill" [1948]. Adolf Hitler had previously written similarly in "Mein Kampf".  [As late as 29 January 1942, after Britain had been at war with Germany for two years and five months, Hitler expressed a desire to help the British by sending them 20 divisions to aid them in throwing the Japanese invaders out of Singapore.  On 26 February 1945, Hitler lamented that Churchill was "quite unable to appreciate the sporting spirit" in which he had refrained from annihilating the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) at Dunkirk]. Colonel-General von Runstedt was elevated to General Field Marshal on 19 July 1940 in the weeks after Dunkirk. Adolf Hitler’s own motive for letting over 300,000 troops of the alleged war enemy escape at Dunkirk was, according to his own words, his wish to preserve the British Empire. No serious truth-oriented historian can cast substantiated doubt on this. How misled must a nation be in order to misunderstand that Hitler saved the life of his war enemy Great Britain at Dunkirk for the very reason that he wanted to protect it, as he himself said and wrote? What kind of an alleged war lord is that who has his alleged war enemy on the floor, picks him up with his own hands and then sends him home for him to continue fighting for years, until the country of the war lord is fallen in smoldering ruins? Why did Hitler promote von Runstedt, the commander of the strategically fatal German military failure at Dunkirk, right after the act, to the highest officer’s rank? Not only did Hitler protect his allied opponents in late May, early June 1940 from military destruction: that was not a blunder but it was his intention as stated. The British hailed von Runstedt out of Soviet captivity, they let him, as one of very few of Hitler’s generals, get away scot free without a day in court in the Nuremberg Trials, and then they comfortably retired him in an old age home in Hannover in the British occupied zone. The Americans even back then suspected political motives for this tidy chain of events In May 1940, after having defeated France and driven the British invaders off the continent, Hitler, via a Swedish third party, proposes generous peace terms to Britain The Germans contact the British ambassador in Sweden, Victor Mallet, through Sweden's Supreme Court Judge Birger Ekeberg, who is known to Hitler´s legal advisor, Ludwig Weissauer. According to Mallet: "Hitler, according to his emissary [Weissauer], sincerely wishes friendship with England. He wishes peace to be restored, but the ground must be prepared for it: only after careful preparation may official negotiations begin. Until then the condition must be considered that discussions be unofficial and secret.  "Hitler´s basic ideas [are that] today´s economic problems are different from those of the past [...] In order to achieve economic progress one must calculate on the basis of big territories and consider them an economic unit. Napoleon tried, but in his days it wasnt possible because France wasnt in the center of Europe and communications were too hard. Now Germany is in the center of Europe and has the necessary means to provide communication and transportation services. "England and America now have the best fleets and will naturally continue to, because they will need the oceans for their supply. Germany has the continent. In what concerns Russia [USSR] Weissauer has given the impression that it should be seen as a potential enemy". Hitler's peace proposal is as follows: 1. The British Empire retains all its Colonies 2. Germany´s position on the continent will not be questioned 3. All questions concerning the Mediterranean and its French, Belgian and Dutch colonies are open to discussion 4. Poland. A Polish state must exist 5. The former Czechosolavkian states remain independent but under German protection Ekeberg understands that this implies that the states occupied by Germany would de-occupied. Germany´s occupation was only due to the present war situation. Once again, Churchill is not interested in making peace. On 25 May 1940, Giuseppe Bastianini, the Italian ambassador in London, requests a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax to discuss Italy's neutrality. Halifax meets Bastianini later that afternoon. The discussion soon moves to that of Italian mediation between the Allies and Germany. Bastiani reveals that the goal of Italian leader Benito Mussolini [Hitler's close ally] is to negotiate a settlement "that would not merely be an armistice, but would protect European peace for the century". Halifax responds favorably to the idea and takes it to the British War Cabinet. The following morning Halifax gives his report, telling the Cabinet that in his opinion they  "had to face the fact that it was not so much now a question of imposing a complete defeat upon Germany but of safeguarding the independence of our own Empire". Halifax summarizes his meeting with Bastianini and urges his colleagues to consider Italian mediation. Again, Churchill would have none of it, instead of accepting any peace offers, chosing to frighten the British public with tales of imminent poison gas attacks from Hitler. For several days, Halifax continues to press for the Mussolini mediation. In an apparent attempt to placate Halifax, Churchill finally says that he "doubts whether anything would come of an approach to Italy, but that the matter was one which the War Cabinet would have to consider". But Churchill is lying to Halifax. Never did Churchill even consider Mussolini's offer to mediate peace between Britain and Germany. The matter eventually dies. The conflict between Churchill and Halifax became known as "The War Cabinet Crisis". In June 1940, Hitler drops "peace leaflets" over London. With Germany now in total control of the continent, Hitler continues his campaign for peace by by-passing the British press and air-dropping leaflets explaining the causes of the senseless war, and ending with "A Last Appeal to Reason" on 19 July 1940 . Excerpt: "... From London I now hear a cry –it’s not the cry of the mass of people, but rather of politicians– that the war must now, all the more, be continued ... Believe me, my deputies, I feel an inner disgust at this kind of unscrupulous parliamentarian destroyers of peoples and countries ... It never has been my intention to wage wars, but rather to build a new social state of the highest cultural level. Every year of this war keeps me from this work ... Mr. Churchill has now once again declared that he wants war ... I am fully aware that with our response, which one day will come, will also come nameless suffering and misfortune for many people ... "... In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not pleading for something as the vanquished, but rather, as the victor speaking in the name of reason. I see no compelling reason for this war to continue. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices it will claim ... I should like to avert them. As for my own people, I know that millions of German men, young and old alike, are burning with the desire to settle accounts with the enemy who for the second time has declared war upon us for no reason whatever. But I also know that at home there are many women and mothers who, ready as they are to sacrifice all they have in life, yet are bound to it by their heartstrings. Possibly Mr. Churchill again will brush aside this statement of mine by saying that it is merely an expression of fear and of doubt in our final victory. In that case I shall have relieved my conscience in regard to the things to come". On 1 August 1940, Adolf Hitler issued No. 17 Directive: On the conduct of air war against Britain, Hitler, specifically prohibited the Luftwaffe from conducting terror raids on its own initiative. The war against Britain is to be restricted to destructive attacks against industry and air force targets that have weak defensive forces. The most thorough study of the target concerned, that is vital points of the target, is a pre-requisite for success. It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population. Hitler is still taking the high road by doing this, while Churchill is still terrorizing German civilians with air strikes. Hitler told Maj. Vidkun Quisling on 18 August 1940: "After making one proposal after another to the British on the reorganization of Europe, I now find myself forced against my will to fight this war against Britain. . . ." In November 1940, the Vatican's "Papal Nuncio" [ambassador] presents Hitler's peace proposal to British officials An excerpt from Martin Allen's "Himmler's Secret War" describes a meeting held in Spain between the Papal Nuncio and British officials Hoare and Hilgarth in Spain; and the latest peace offer from Hitler: "The nature of the concessions that the German Führer was prepared to make in order to obtain peace with Britain must have astounded the men at the head of the Specialist Protection Branch [SO1].  This was not even a deal worked out through a process of hard negotiation. It was Hitler's opening gambit....an offer so generous and pragmatic that it would be very tempting to anyone who genuinely wanted peace. "His [Hitler's] offer of such remarkable concessions was an extremely threatening development. Should the terms become public, it had the potential to render British resolve to stand firm against German aggression to a shuttering halt". Nazis offered peace with the Allies in 1941… but only if they were allowed to invade Russia Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy, offered peace for Western Europe - in exchange for a clear path to attack the Soviets Anna Edwards Daily Mail 26 September 2013 The Nazis attempted to broker a peace offering with Britain - if they were allowed a free path to attack the USSR, a new book has revealed. Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain during World War Two to sign a peace deal ordered by Adolf Hitler has long been recorded as a bizarre one man mission to try and reconcile warring West Europe and the Nazis. But the high-ranking Nazi was actually carrying out orders from the Führer when he flew his Messerschmitt 110 [Me-110]  to Scotland in May 1941. He was to offer the British government a deal that would see Germany pull out of Western Europe - so long as the fascists could attack the USSR without intervention. As early as January 1941, Hitler was making extraordinary efforts to come to peace terms with England. He offered England generous terms. If Britain would assume an attitude of neutrality, Germany would withdraw from all of France, to leave Holland and Belgium . . . to evacuate Norway and Denmark, and to support British and French industries by buying their products. His proposal had many other favorable points for England and Western Europe. On 10 May 1941, London received its heaviest German air attack [Blitzkrieg] ever. With 1,436 people killed and 12,000 made homeless. The Houses of Parliament was struck, The Commons debating chamber, the symbol of British democracy, was destroyed. 10 May 1941, was also the day of the last major Blitzkrieg on Britain. The Hess flight for peace and the last major Blitzkrieg on Britain to occur on the same day is not a coincidence. Germany wanted peace with Britain. But historian Peter Padfield has discovered evidence he claims proves that the deputy Führer brought with him from Hitler, a detailed peace treaty, under which the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe, in exchange for British neutrality over the imminent attack on Russia, the "Daily Telegraph" reported. The existence of such a document was revealed to him by an informant who claims that he and other German speakers were called in by MI6 to translate the treaty for Churchill. The figure, who is not named by Mr Padfield, was an academic who later worked at a leading university. He has since died. Before his death, he passed on an account of how the group were assembled at the BBC headquarters, in Portland Place, London, to carry out the task. The academic said Hess had brought with him the proposed peace treaty, expressed in numbered clauses and typed on paper from the German Chancellery. An English translation was also included, but the British also wanted the original German translated. The informant said the first two pages of the treaty detailed Hitler’s precise aims in Russia, followed by sections detailing how Britain could keep its independence, Empire and armed services, and how the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe. The treaty proposed a state of “wohlwollende Neutralitat” – rendered as “well wishing neutrality”, between Britain and Germany, for the latter’s offensive against the USSR. The informant even said the date of the Hitler’s coming attack on the east was disclosed. These were Hess' peace proposals that he flew to Scotland with on 10 May 1941: 1 Germany and Britain would reach a compromise on world-wide policy based on the status quo. That is, Germany would not attack Russia to secure German Lebensraum [living space].  2 Germany would drop its claims to its former colonies, and would acknowledge British hegemony at sea. In return, Britain would acknowledge continental Europe as a German sphere of interest. 3  The then-current relationship of military strength between Germany and Britain in the air and on the sea would be maintained. That is, Britain would not receive any reinforcements from the United States.  Although there was no mention of land forces, it can be assumed that this balance of forces would be maintained in this regard as well. 4 Germany would withdraw from "Metropolitan France" [European France] after the total disarmament of the French army and navy. German commissioners would remain in French North Africa, and German troops would remain in Libya for five years after the conclusion of peace. 5 Within two years after the conclusion of peace, Germany would establish satellite states in Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Serbia. However, Germany would withdraw from Norway, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece [except for Crete, which German parachutists had taken at the end of May 1941]. After some rounding-off in the East, North, West and South [Austria and Bohemia-Moravia were apparently to remain within the Reich], Germany would thus concede Britain's position in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. 6 Germany would recognize Ethiopia and the Red Sea as a British sphere of influence. 7 The person to whom the Deputy Führer was speaking was somewhat confused about whether Italy had approved Hess' peace proposals. Hess himself said nothing about this, although points four and six would have considerably affected Italian interests.  8  Rudolf Hess admitted that Hitler had agreed in advance to the official "cover story" put out in Germany that he was of "unsound mind". -- "The Life And Death Of My Father", Rudolf Hess by Wolf Rüdiger Hess As for Operation Barbarossa, which started on 22 June 1941, and the German-Soviet War, there can be no doubt, in view of the revelations of the Russian secret agent Viktor Suvorov [Vladimir Rezun] in Icebreaker", that what the Germans suspected in 1941 is factual:  The Reich interrupted a Russian offensive that was scheduled to begin on 6 July 1941. This explains why millions of Soviet soldiers were quickly surrounded and taken prisoner - they were supposed to be rushed from hidden positions to the border just before the attack. It also explains why huge numbers of artillery pieces and stockpiles of munitions were captured at the border as well as millions of extra leather boots, detailed maps of the Red Army's objectives in Germany and so forth. Hess' mission began with him parachuting out over Renfrewshire where he was arrested by a farmhand, David Maclean, with a pitchfork. The Third Reich Deputy wanted to contact the Duke of Hamilton to set peace talks with Winston Churchill in motion. Sir Winston Churchill refused to agree to Hitler's peace deal offered by Hess, or to allow the Third Reich a clear path to attack the Eastern Front - because he did not trust Hitler's promises and it would have jeopardized his efforts to involve the U.S in the raging war, Mr Padfield says. The author claims the Prime Minister was determined to beat Hitler and he did not want to destroy a coalition of European governments, so the offer was not made public. Mr Padfield, who makes the claims in a new book, "Hess, Hitler and Churchill", said: "This was not a renegade plot". "Hitler had sent Hess and he brought over a fully developed peace treaty for Germany to evacuate all the occupied countries in the West". There is no mention of the treaty in any of the official archives which have since been made public, but Mr Padfield believes this is because there has been an ongoing cover-up to protect the reputations of powerful figures. The author says that his informant broke off contact with him after approaching his former masters in the security services. Ten Days To Destiny:  The Secret Story Of The Hess Peace Initiative And British Efforts To Strike A Deal With Hitler by John Costello The dramatic fight of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s infamous deputy, to England in May 1941 has been a mystery and a source of controversy for fifty years.   The official version maintains that this was the solitary adventure of a madman, unrelated to the course of World War II. But new archival research in Europe and the United States, substantiated by the author’s exclusive and unprecedented access to KGB files, reveals another story - one that shows just how close England came to making a peace deal with Hitler’s Germany.   In this latest of John Costello’s important and highly controversial re-examinations of modern history, "Ten Days to Destiny" reveals how Hess came to England at Hitler’s direction and with the connivance of the British secret service and powerful elements in British society, bearing a serious peace offer that would have allowed England to retain its empire in return for her support for Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.   To understand the significance of Hess’s mission, Costello takes us back to 1940, to ten critical days during that summer of Dunkirk and the fall of France, when it was unclear whether England would survive the war.   "This was their finest hour" was how Winston Churchill described the spirit of the nation, enshrining the myth that his people and government would fight Hitler, whatever the cost. But declassified government archives, private diaries, and captured German documents reveal that Churchill’s toughest battles were actually with senior members of his own administration, who had decided the time had come to negotiate a compromise peace.   Costello not only traces their secret maneuvering with Berlin [climaxing in Hess’s arrival the following year], but also details the desperate cabinet battle Churchill had to wage against them - which he came within a hairbreadth of losing.   "Ten Days to Destiny" can truly claim to be not only the first behind-the-scenes account of the agonizing history of 1940, but also the first major historical work to draw from actual KGB documentation. It also reveals that Ambassador Joseph Kennedy was the prime suspect for "The Doctor", the code name given by Hess’s staff to his source of reason why Hitler halted the advance on Dunkirk and details the German plot to bring the Duke of Windsor back to the throne.   And it exposes the masterful cunning of Churchill’s Machiavellian exploitation of American Embassy spy Tyler Kent both to silence his enemies and to blackmail President Roosevelt into helping England - a supreme gamble that quite literally saved the Allied effort to stop Hitler. These and many other revelations finally unlock the secrets of Hess’s mysterious mission. It is a dramatic story, scrupulously researched and rivetingly told, that is certain to rewrite the history of the critical opening phase of World War II.  John Costello is a Cambridge-educated historian who has spent eight years researching "Ten Days to Destiny". He is the author of a number of books, including "The Mask of Treachery", "The Pacific War", and the prize winning national best seller "And I Was There". He lives in New York City. Hess survived the war and was tried at Nuremberg for war crimes, where he appeared to be the delusional, forgetful, mentally ill figure that Hitler claimed he was after the abortive mission. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent more time behind bars than any other Third Reich leaders. With the liberalization of the USSR in the late 1980’s, there was talk of finally releasing him. but he is said to have committed "suicide" in his cell in 1987.  Many believe that the 93-year-old was murdered so that details of his peace mission would remain buried forever. The Myth that Hess Acted on a "Mad Mission" It was an act recorded as a one-man mad mission. Hess was, apparently, trying to set peace talks with Winston Churchill in motion under his own initiative. Hitler was even supposed to have scrambled aircraft to try to stop Hess, his deputy, from leaving Germany. But a 28-page notebook discovered in a Russian archive in 2011 disputes this theory and indicates that Hitler was in on the mission. It was written in 1948 by Major Karlheinz Pintsch, a long-time adjutant to Hess, who was captured by the Soviets and spent years undergoing  torture and interrogation at  their hands. In the notebook he writes that Hitler hoped that an "agreement with the Englishmen would be successful". Pintsch notes that Hess’s task –five weeks before Germany launched its invasion of Russia– was to "bring about, if not a military alliance of Germany with England against Russia, then to bring about a neutralisation of England". Pintsch’s interrogation transcripts found in the same archive in Moscow show that Hitler was not surprised when news came through of Hess' capture. The relevant section reads: "Nor did he rant and rave about what Hess had done. Instead, he replied calmly: 'At this particular moment in the war that could be a most hazardous escapade'. "Hitler then went on to read a letter that Hess had sent him. He read the following significant passage out aloud: 'And if this project ends in failure, it will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility. Simply say I was out of my mind'. This is what would happen after the mission failed, with both Hitler and Churchill claiming Hess was deranged. 1942, 1943 and 1944: Hitler maintains a standing generous peace offer on the table. Churchill, by his own admission, refuses to accept At all times, the Hitler-Hess offer of total cessation of the war in the West remains on the table. Germany offers to evacuate all of France except Alsace and Lorraine, which would remain German. It would evacuate Holland and Belgium. It would evacuate Norway and Denmark. In short, Hitler wants to withdraw from Western Europe, except for the two French provinces and Luxembourg [Luxembourg was never a French province, but an independent state of ethnically German origin], in return for which Great Britain would agree to an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Germany. In addition, Hitler is ready to withdraw from Yugoslavia and Greece. German troops would evacuate from the Mediterranean and Hitler would use his influence to arrange a settlement of the Mediterranean conflict between Britain and Italy. No country would be entitled to demand reparations from any other. As Churchill leaves London to meet Roosevelt for a conference in Quebec late in the summer of 1943, a reporter asks if they were planning to offer peace terms to Germany. Churchill replied: "Heavens, no. They would accept immediately". Again, in a 24 January 1944 letter to his ally, Josef Stalin, Churchill reassures Stalin that Britain will remain at war with Germany. In so doing, Churchill confirms the undeniable reality of Hitler's generous peace proposals: “We never thought of peace, not even in that year when we were completely isolated and could have made peace without serious detriment to the British Empire, and extensively at your cost. Why should we think of it now, when victory approaches for the three of us?" It has long been argued, most eloquently in Professor John Charmley’s "Churchill: The End of Glory", that Churchill’s single-minded obsession with Hitler prevented him from seeing the long-term implications for Britain and the Empire by an alliance with the Soviet Union.

They are the people whom we have to thank for all this; International Jewry and its helpers!

Three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war, I suggested to the British Ambassador in Berlin a solution of the German-Polish question, similar to that in the case of the Saar under international control. This offer, too, cannot be denied. It was only rejected because the ruling political clique in England wanted the war, partly for commercial reasons, partly because they were influenced by propaganda put out by international Jewry. I also made it quite plain that if the peoples of Europe were again to be regarded merely as pawns in the game played by the international conspiracy of money and finance, then the Jews, the race which is the real guilty party in this murderous struggle, would be saddled with the responsibility for it. I left no one in doubt that this time not only would millions of children of the European Aryan races starve, not only would millions of grown men meet their death and not only would hundreds of thousands of women and children be burnt and bombed to death in the cities, but this time the real culprits would have to pay for their guilt, even though by humaner means than war.

After a six years' war, which in spite of all set-backs, will one day go down to history as the most glorious and heroic manifestation of the struggle for existence of a nation, I cannot forsake the city which is the capital of this State. As our forces are too small to withstand the enemy attack on this place any longer, and our own resistance will be gradually worn down by men who are merely blind automata, I wish to share my fate with that which millions of others have also taken upon themselves by staying in this town. Further, I shall not fall into the hands of an enemy who requires a new spectacle, presented by the Jews, to divert their hysterical masses. I have therefore decided to remain in Berlin and there to choose death voluntarily at that moment when I believe that the position of the Führer and Chancellor itself can no longer be maintained.

I die with a joyful heart in my knowledge of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our soldiers at the front, of our women at home, the achievements of our peasants and workers, and of the contribution, unique in history, of our youth which bears my name. That I express to them all the thanks which come from the bottom of my heart is as clear as my wish that they should therefore not give up the struggle under any circumstances, but carry it on wherever they may be against the enemies of the Fatherland, true to the principles of the great Clausewitz. From the sacrifice of our soldiers and from my own comradeship with them to death itself, the seed has been sown which will grow one day in the history of Germany to the glorious rebirth of the national socialist movement and thereby to the establishment of a truly united nation. Many brave men and women have decided to link their lives with mine to the last. I have asked and finally ordered them not do this, but to continue to take part in the nation's struggle. I ask the commanders of the armies, of the navy and the air force to strengthen with all possible means the spirit of resistance of our soldiers in the national socialist belief, with special emphasis on the fact that I myself, as the founder and creator of this movement, prefer death to cowardly resignation, or even to capitulation. May it be in future a point of honour with German officers, as it already is in our navy, that the surrender of a district or town is out of the question, and that above everything else, the commanders must set a shining example of faithful devotion to duty until death.

This political testament must have been written, despite the date on it, some days before the fall of the-Chancellery, according to some experts, because it shows a studied effort at deception. He even wrote a second part to the testament, probably in a fit of rage, when he learned that Himmler and Göring had deserted him. It is this second part that is so inexplicable. In it he says that he is about to die, and yet he would have the world think that the war could still go on. Otherwise why did he appoint a new cabinet?

In this supplementary testament Hitler wrote:

Second Part of the Political Testament

Before my death, I expel the former Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring from the Party, and withdraw from him all rights which were conferred on him by the decree of 29 June 41 and by my Reichstag speech of 1 Septtember 39. In his place I appoint Admiral Dönitz as president of the Reich and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht. Before my death I expel the former Reichsführer S.S. and Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler from the Party and from all his State offices. In his place I appoint Gauleiter Karl Hanke as Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German police, and Gauleiter Paul Giesler as Minister of the Interior.

Apart altogether from their disloyalty to me, Göring and Himmler have brought irreparable shame on the country and the whole nation, by secretly negotiating with the enemy without my knowledge and against my will and also by illegally attempting to seize control of the State. In order to give the German people a government composed of honourable men, who will fulfil the task of continuing the war with all means, as leader of the nation, I appoint the following members of the new cabinet: A list followed, the chief names being President: Dönitz Chancellor: Dr. Göbbels Party Minister: Bormann.

Writing about the cabinet, Hitler said although a number of these men, such as Martin Bormann, Dr. Göbbels, etc., as well as their wives, have come to me of their own free will, wishing under no circumstances to leave the Reich capital, but instead to fall with me here, I must nevertheless ask them to obey my request and in this case put the interests of the nation above their own feelings. They will stand as near to me through their work and their loyalty as comrades after death as I hope that my spirit will remain among them and always be with them. May they be severe but never unjust, may they above all never allow fear to influence their actions, and may they place the honour of the nation above everything on earth. May they finally be conscious that our task, the establishment of a National Socialist state, represents the work of centuries to come and obliges each individual person always to serve the common interest before his own advantage.

I ask all Germans, all National Socialists, men, women and all soldiers of the Wehrmacht to be loyal and obedient to the new government and its president until death.

The document ended:

Above all I enjoin the government of the nation and the people to uphold the racial laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, international Jewry.

Berlin 29 April 1945 . . . 4.00 hrs.

A. Hitler
Witnesses:
Dr. Josef Göbbels
Hans Krebs

The set of documents which Lorenz had, contained an appendix to Hitler's political testament, which had been written by Göbbels after he had been appointed by the Führer as Reichschancellor of a country already crumbled to ruin.

Dr. Göbbels, in his last announcement, wrote:

The Führer has ordered me to leave Berlin if the defence of the Reich capital collapses, and to take part as a leading member in a government appointed by him. For the first time in my life I must categorically refuse to obey an order of the Führer. My wife and children join me in this refusal. Otherwise, apart from the fact that on grounds of fellow feeling and personal loyalty we could never bring ourselves to leave the Führer alone in his hour of greatest need, I would otherwise appear for the rest of my life a dishonourable traitor and common scoundrel, and would lose my own self respect as well as the respect of my fellow-citizens, a respect I should need in any further service in the future rebuilding of the German nation and German State.

In the nightmare of treason which surrounds the Führer in these most critical days of the war, there must be at least some people to stay with him unconditionally until death, even if this contradicts the formal, and from a material point of view, entirely justifiable order which he gives in his political testament. I believe that I am thereby doing the best service to the future of the German people. In the hard times to come, examples will be more important than men. Men will always be found to show the nation the way out of its tribulations, but a reconstruction of our national life would be impossible if it were not inspired by examples which are clear and easily understandable to all. For this reason, together with my wife, and on behalf of my children, who are too young to be able to speak for themselves, but who, if they were sufficiently old, would agree with this decision without reservation, I express my unalterable decision not to leave the Reich capital even if it falls, and at the side of the Führer, to end a life which for me personally will have no further value if I cannot spend it at the service of the Führer and by his side.

BERLIN 29 Apr 45. . . . 5.30 hours

Sgnd. Dr. Göbbels

Whatever is revealed to substantiate or refute the legitimacy of the will and the political testament, and the claim that Hitler and Eva Braun died at 3 p.m. on 30 April I945, in the Chancellery Bunker, there will for many years to come be arguments, both in Germany and the outside world, about the authenticity of the certificate purporting to document Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun.

These arguments will not be based alone on such questions as alleged mis-spellings, absence of Umlauts, or even erratic punctuation, or on the makeshift character of the certificate and the blots and smudges and other odd features -by the way, does one preface one's name as a witness in a wedding ceremony by a title such as "Dr"- but on the irrational, purposeless act that the marriage at that time represented.

Only in one way could the marriage be regarded as anything but fantastic, if one postulated that Hitler and Eva Braun had lived together and had offspring, two possibilities which were widely and authoritatively refuted. Hitler, who had seen this vain and not very clever girl around him daily, apparently regarded his marriage, once he had made up his mind, in a most serious light. He began his personal will with the announcement of his decision to marry, and he ended with the announcement of his and his wife's decision to commit suicide, and of their wish that their bodies be burnt immediately. It could be that, as a reaction to the "delirium of treachery" which he said was all around him, he had also a "delirium of loyalty", and out of appreciation for that made the only gesture that he, trapped and condemned, could make.

The certificate was typed on plain white paper and bore no stamps or seals. The five signatures, of Hitler and Eva Braun and of the witnesses, are smudgy and at times, as in the case of Hitler, scarcely legible. One would have thought that after Hitler had signed -his was the first signature- the other witnesses would have produced their own fountain pens. The signatures, however, appear to have been written with the same indifferent pen and the same poor ink. The reaction of any admirer of Hitler in such circumstances, called upon to sign his marriage certificate, would have been to use his own pen, if only to be able to keep it as a memento. Some of the smudges can be accounted for because the document was folded before it was dry, and even that is a strange fact, since it was not a case of an anxious bridegroom who wanted to hurry his bride away. There was nowhere for them to go except into that dismal little room where, everyone would have us believe, the honeymoon couple began to talk not of their future life, but of their death together. There are many details of this strange document which are worth recording.

The first page is headed "Der Oberbürgermeister der Reichshauptstadt", but lower down the words that the marriage was celebrated before the Reichs Oberbürgermeister are crossed out and a correction made in handwriting that it took place before "City Councillor Walter Wagner".

The words "Marriage of parents" [Hitler's] are crossed out. The certificate reads:

There appeared before me [Councillor Wagner] to be immediately married: Adolf Hitler, born 20 April 1889, at Braunau, now resident at the Berlin Chancellery. Father's name [blank] Mother's name [the entry is smudged]. Proof of identity-personally known. Fräulein Eva Braun, born 6 February 1910, at Munich. Father - Frederic Braun. Mother - Frances Braun, nee Kronburger. Identity proved by special identity card No. 59 issued by Chief of German Police [Himmler].

Eva Braun's signature, when she apparently signed herself as Mrs. Hitler for the first and last time of her life, contained a mistake which was hastily corrected, She was obviously going to sign Braun. Hitler broke one of his own racial laws, for the ceremony took place without the production of health certificates or of proof that the two parties were of Aryan stock.

Among that set of documents which contained the marriage certificate -it was found at Tegernsee- was the photograph of a boy, estimated to be between eleven and twelve years of age, and this at once revived a story that Hitler and Eva Braun did, in fact, have a son. It became a popular theory, for it explained to many puzzled minds why Hitler lent himself to the ceremony. The boy bore sufficient resemblance to Hitler -his eyes and hair were dark, and he had the same deeply thoughtful frown- to cause Allied Intelligence officers, especially the Americans, to begin enquiries. This had not been the first suggestion that Eva Braun had a son, although it had not before been suggested that Hitler was the father. The Russians had long before found a photograph of Eva Braun with a boy aged about four years old, and many journalists had tried in vain to see it at the Russian Kommandantura.

There was evidence that in I935 Eva Braun was very unhappy, often stayed at home for long periods, and did not want to meet her friends. Her father, a teacher of carpentry at a small school, constantly reproved her for her melancholy. In Eva Braun's diary for the year 1935, which was captured and translated by American Army Security officials, the girl gave a clear picture of herself as a jealous, ambitious, moody person.

The fact claimed by British Intelligence officers that she urged Hitler to stay in Berlin and die there, and that she committed suicide, is recalled when one reads passages which she wrote in the diary about previous suicide attempts.

"Tomorrow will be too late," she wrote. "I have decided on thirty-five pills so as to make it dead certain this time. If he would at least get someone to telephone me for him". She also wrote of a letter she has sent to him which was decisive for her.

There were theories at the time when photographs of Eva Braun with a child were found, that Eva Braun knew, on 29 April 1935, that she was going to become a mother, and that Hitler was the father. These theories had nothing more to substantiate them than constructive imaginings and circumstantial evidence.

The diary had marginal notes, some of which appeared to have been written in fits of depression.

Many photographs were found showing Hitler and Eva Braun with children. All the children could be identified as being those of officials of the party, excepting one in the photograph found at Tegernsee, although Hoffmann, who introduced Eva to the Führer, gave his expert opinion that this boy was the son of Bormann. Hoffmann, who knew Eva as well as anyone, stated categorically that she had never had a child. So did her parents. The mystery of the child gave many people -Intelligence officers, police, private detectives, and journalists- many sleepless nights. In their opinion the identity of that boy might explain an act which history would one day represent as being as dramatic as any since the death of Antony and Cleopatra.

The various developments in the Hitler case revived interest in the Bunker and the Chancellery. The red marble-topped table which rumour wrongly described as Hitler's work-table was "eaten away" by souvenir hunters, who chipped pieces off it; fittings were removed from the walls; everything that was portable appeared to have been taken from the Bunker. The material that covered the built-in settee on which it was stated Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide was cut to pieces, as also the mattress of Eva Braun's bed. In the underground Chancellery, a friend and I once contacted a Mongol guard. He took us into the guard's quarters with the intention of interesting us in some of his loot, for which he hoped to get cigarettes. We found that the room in which he and the other men slept was much like a museum. These simple soldiers had collected an infinite variety of Hitler's personal belongings, and many costly presents which had been given to him by ambassadors, including an elaborate enamel and gold chariot, which had come from the Emperor of Japan. The Mongol had treasured this, but he now wished to exchange it for a thousand cigarettes. My friend, a famous Canadian K.C., was offered Hitler's personal towels and an album in which there were photographs of Hitler's friends. These ignorant guards had probably robbed history of many important revelations.

It was obvious to most of us in Germany, in the early months of 1946, that the question of Hitler's marriage and death would have to be dealt with carefully, unless the Allies wished to encourage the later growth of legends which might raise a common war criminal to saintly heights.

Of all the people in Allied hands -unless the Russians hold prisoners whose names have not been revealed, which is more than likely- none could better refute or substantiate the story which was told in the marriage certificate, the will, the last testament and Göbbels' appendix than Wilhelm Friedrich Zander.

Of the three men who carried the documents, Zander was the leader. He held the originals of the documents, he was in command of the party, and he stood nearest to Bormann, Hitler's deputy, from whom orders for the mission with the documents were obtained. There is little doubt that, of all the people known to have been in the Bunker, Zander is the last living person to have had contact with Hitler and his deputy. Despite this, both the British and American Intelligence Services remained quiet long enough for all kinds of rumours and legends to arise.

The number of people who believed Hitler to be still alive increased.

Even in England prominent people who had known Germany and German mentality well expressed their doubt on one or other of the documents in no uncertain manner.

Douglas Reed, in a letter to the "Daily Telegraph", for instance, wrote:

"In view of the importance of the matter, may I offer, the opinion that Hitler's "marriage certificate", of which you recently published part in facsimile, is a patent forgery? As your correspondents W.E. and Miss Margarete Vernon have pointed out, it was clearly typed on a non-German machine by a non-German. The registrar supposed to have officiated, "Walter Wagner", proves unknown to the Chief Registrar of Berlin. Hitler may be dead or alive, married or unmarried; this document proves only that there is somebody who either wishes the world to think he is dead, and died married, or just wished to deepen the mystery surrounding those April days in Berlin and the still unanswered riddle of his death or disappearance. May I draw attention to several curious aspects of the mystery? Hitler's body has not been found, but the only man who could identify it, his dentist, disappeared, according to British Intelligence, 'eight months ago' - about the same time, apparently, as Hitler himself. From what zone did he disappear? Is it a fact, and can it be proved, that Göbbels's body was found? Photographs of the bodies of Nazi leaders who committed suicide in the British or American zones were published. None was published, to my knowledge, of the dead Göbbels. Is British Intelligence in possession of proof of his death?"

On 1 May 1945 Göbbels pulled on his gloves and hat, and arm-in-arm with his wife, climbed the stairs to the Bunker’s emergency exit and emerged into the Reich Chancellery garden. His adjutant, 29-year-old SS-Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann, followed him. [Historical Footnote: at the time of writing in 2016 Schwägermann remains alive, aged 101. He is certainly the last living witness to the events in the Bunker, but has refused to give any interviews]. Schwägermann went to collect more petrol to burn the Göbbels' bodies while Göbbels and his wife went around the corner out of sight. Schwägermann said that he heard a pistol shot and came upon his master and Magda Göbbels dead. She had taken poison while Göbbels had shot himself in the head. Schwägermann ordered the SS-Begleit-Kommando sentry at the Bunker emergency exit to shoot Göbbels again in the head to make sure – Schwägermann could not face doing so himself. The two men then poured petrol over the bodies and set fire to them. Unfortunately, there was insufficient petrol remaining to burn the bodies and the fire-blackened corpses remained easily recognizable to Voss when he was forced by the Soviets to identify them the following day. Interrogated by Soviet officers on 6 May 1945, Vice-Admiral Hans-Erich Voss recounted: "When Göbbels learned that Hitler had committed suicide, he was very depressed and said: 'It is a great pity that such a man is not with us any longer. But there is nothing to be done. For us, everything is lost now and the only way out left for us is the one which Hitler chose. I shall follow his example'. On 1 May, Voss saw Göbbels for the last time: "Before the breakout from the Bunker began, about ten generals and officers, including myself, went down individually to Göbbels' shelter to say goodbye. While saying goodbye I asked Göbbels to join us. But he replied: 'The captain must not leave his sinking ship. I have thought about it all and decided to stay here. I have nowhere to go because with little children I will not be able to make it'." Voss then joined the group led by SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke which broke out of the Bunker and tried to escape from Berlin. Most of the group were captured by Soviet forces the same day. Voss was brought back to the Bunker for questioning, and to identify the partly burned bodies of Josef and Magda Göbbels, and also the bodies of their six children, who had been poisoned, as was Hans Fritzsche, a leading German radio commentator who had answered directly to Göbbels, the following day.  The Soviet account states: "Vice-Admiral Voss, being asked how he identified the people as Göbbels, his wife and children, explained that he recognised the burnt body of the man as former Reichsminister Göbbels by the following signs: the shape of the head, the line of the mouth, the metal brace that Göbbels had on his right leg, his gold NSDAP badge and the burnt remains of his party uniform". The bodies were then brought to the Buchau Cemetery in Berlin for autopsy and inquest by Soviet doctors

"How did the three emissaries, bearing copies of Hitler's marriage certificate and will, make their way through the enemy lines when these were so near the Chancellery?"

Some of the questions Douglas Reed asked could certainly be answered by Zander, if he decided to tell the truth.

Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander was not, however, a completely trustworthy man, as was revealed when he was arrested. He then called himself Friederich Wilhelm Paustin and was living with a single girl, 22-year-old Elsa Unterholzner, former secretary to Martin Bormann. The arrest was made in the girl's house in Aldendorf, near Vilshofen, in Lower Bavaria. Zander has also been described as "an incorrigible fanatic", who believed in Hitler and Nazism until his end. Born thirty-four years ago in the Saar district, he became a wood merchant, and would probably have remained one had he not joined the Nazi Party. In I930 Zander was working in Italy as a "merchant", but in reality he was only a pedlar. After his return to Germany, he joined the S.S. and served under the Chief Constable of Brunswick, S.S. Obergruppenführer Jeckeln, as aide-de-camp. He later went to the Munich Chancellery of the Party, with the title of S.S. Sturmbannführer, and was attached to the staff of the Stellvertreter des Führers, Rudolf Hess.

At that time Zander made acquaintance with Eva Braun, who always had time for him. It might have been through her kind offices that Zander was transferred to Hitler's Berlin headquarters. In 1942 he joined the Army, became a lieutenant, and was wounded in the following year. Zander then became aide-de-camp to Martin Bormann, although he pretended to have an aversion to Hitler's deputy, and he succeeded in getting himself nominated as Oberreichsleiter fur den Stellungsbau im Osten [Realmleader for fortification building in the East]. He specialized on the restoration of fortifications and railway stations on the Eastern Front, at the same time playing an important role in an organization for removing children from dangerous areas into the country.

It is reported that Zander refused to carry the documents, either through fear or from personal aversion to Bormann, and that Hitler had personally to ask him to perform the task. After weeks on the road, he reached Tegernsee where he met a relative in a sanatorium, which had become an American hospital for wounded Germans. Zander's feet were sore, and he remained for some time in the hospital. When he was well, he became an assistant to the gardener under the false name. He had contacted his wife, and she had met him in Bruckmühl. and later in Munich. Zander knew that his friend, Elsa Unterholzner, had flown to Berchtesgaden in the last plane that had left the Chancellery and had gone to Aldenbach near Vilshofen, where a married sister, a prominent leader of the Hitler Frauenschaft, lived. On 20 October he visited his friend, and returned to her again on 22 December, remaining in her house to celebrate Christmas. He was arrested there at 3.30 a.m. on 28 December.

Zander was subjected to long interrogations, but inconsistencies were discovered in the statements he made. It was obvious that he had no intention of telling all that he knew, and what he did tell could not all be relied upon.

During early January, clues discovered by both the British and the American Intelligence Services caused them to ask for the help of the Russian Intelligence Service, but this organization remained non-co-operative. The only letter sent to the Soviet Headquarters in Berlin by the British in relation to Hitler remained unanswered. Only on one occasion, so far as I know, did the Russians show any interest in Hitler, and that was when, on my invitation, two Russian majors came to a meeting at which we revealed information.

Intensive enquiries all over the British and American zones revealed a variety of unimportant facts, these including such trifling details as that "Adolf Hitler of 16 Prinz Regenten Square, Munich", the home of Eva Braun, to which Hitler was stated to have gone secretly, owed, according to the books of the Munich City Treasurer, an electric light bill of 600 Marks. Eva Braun owed another bill for 400 Marks.

Among the people arrested was Johanna Wolf, who had been Hitler's confidential secretary during the whole of the war. A forty-five year old spinster, she told the Americans who arrested her and took her to Nuremberg, that she still had faith in the ideals of Nazism, that the Führer's ideals "would live on in the hearts of men", and that she would again fight for her beliefs; but she told them none of the many secrets that she had learned about Hitler's private life. She could not resist ridiculing, however, the report that Eva Braun had borne Hitler children, and she discredited the story of a German girl who at that time claimed that she was Hitler's daughter. The Americans knew that Miss Wolf had left the Chancellery Bunker at the behest of Hitler who "could see that the fighting was coming nearer, and was afraid we couldn't stand it", in the early hours of 21 April 1945, and that she had left Berlin by aeroplane. That excluded the possibility, which had long been considered, that Wolf typed Hitler's will, political testament and marriage certificate.

British Intelligence officers now concentrated their enquiries on Nicolaus von Below, the only living witness of Hitler's will. The fact of Martin Bormann's death was now tacitly accepted, and the only witness, Dr. Göbbels, had long been presumed dead. Many facts had been collected about von Below, but the most interesting one was that he had left one of the Bunkers in the Reichs Chancellery on either 29 or 30 April.

Von Below came of a line of soldiers -his father was a regular officer- and he followed the same career himself, first as an infantry officer and later as a Luftwaffe officer. Long before he joined the Army, von Below had been interested in rearmament and, as a great admirer of Göring, became one of the earliest pilots of the German Air Force, when it existed in secret in defiance of the Versailles Treaty.

He stood close to Hitler, answering his queries about the growth and efficiency of the Luftwaffe and carrying out such personal services as arranging his flights. Von Below was known to have prided himself on the fact that he had accompanied Hitler on many important missions. He was with the Führer when he went triumphantly into Vienna after the annexation of Austria, and he was with him at the Godesberg, Sudetenland and Godesberg Conferences, and in Prague after the complete occupation of Czechoslovakia. Hitler insisted that von Below should be present at his various headquarters, and he was present when the bomb attempt on Hitler's life was made on 20 July I944. He saw Hitler come out of the doorway of the conference-room after the explosion with his uniform badly torn and his leg bruised.

A description of von Below was circulated and a careful watch was kept in many towns. On two occasions it was thought that he had been living in Berlin, but discovery of his whereabouts was made far from the capital, as the result of the shrewdness of a woman. Von Below, as he admitted after his arrest in Bonn in January 1946, left Hitler's Bunker at midnight on 29-30 April I945, having taken his official leave of Hitler, Eva Braun, Göbbels, and General Burgdorf, to whom he had been responsible, half an hour before.

The idea of trying to get away had occurred to him at tea-time on 29 April, when he realized, since the sounds of battle could be heard at the bottom of the Bunker steps, that the Russians would have reached the Chancellery by the next day, or the day after. It was generally known in all three of the Bunkers that Hitler and Eva Braun had decided to commit suicide, and that Göbbels and his family and General Burgdorf would do the same after the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun had been burned. Von Below did not relish the idea of being left in the Bunker, either to follow the example of his Führer or to fall into the hands of the Russians, and so he asked permission of General Burgdorf to leave, and try to get through the enemy lines to the headquarters of General Keitel "to put up a brave fight". The general said that since von Below was Hitler's adjutant he thought he ought to ask him. This von Below did, and Hitler said he would not require him any more, shook hands with him, and wished him luck on his journey.

After the conference concluded, von Below met with Hitler.  Earlier during the day von Below had asked Hitler if he would allow him to attempt a breakout to the West. Hitler considered this straightaway and said only that it would probably be impossible. Von Below replied that he thought the way to the West would still be free. Hitler gave him written authority to go and told him he should report to the headquarters of the Combined General Staff, then at Plön, and to deliver a document to Field Marshal Keitel. That afternoon von Below made his preparations and took part in the evening situation conference.  Hitler gave him his hand and said only "best of luck". After saying his goodbyes, Burgdorf handed von Below Hitler’s message. It was addressed to Keitel. In it Hitler stated that the fight for Berlin was drawing to its close, that he intended to commit suicide rather than surrender, that he had appointed Karl Dönitz as his successor, and that Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler had betrayed him. At midnight, with his batman Heinz Matthiesing, von Below left the Bunker and followed roughly the same route as the others [including the three couriers] who had left earlier during the day. -- Trevor-Roper, "The Last Days of Hitler" 1947; Nicolaus von Below, "At Hitler’s Side: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Luftwaffe Adjutant 1937-1945", trans. By Geoffrey Brooks [London: Greenhill Books and Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2001] There seems to be some doubt about von Below’s mission and to the message that he carried. During imprisonment after the war von Below  was interviewed by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who later wrote a book about Hitler's last days.  In order to end the detention and achieve better conditions for himself, he told the latter about an alleged command from Hitler, which he was to deliver to Keitel. "Es hat mir später nicht geringes Vergnügen bereitet, in Trevor-Ropers Buch "The Last Days of Hitler" den Quatsch über Hitlers Auftrag an mich zu lesen, Keitel eine geheime Botschaft zu überbringen".  [It provided me no little pleasure later on to read in Trevor-Roper's book 'The Last Days of Hitler' the balderdash about Hitler's commission to me to deliver a secret message to Keitel].  - Nicolaus of Below,"Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937-45" by Hase & Köhler Verlag Mainz.

What happened to von Below afterwards sounds like a passage out of a detective story.

Shells were dropping not far from the Unter den Linden as the adjutant left the Bunker. There were many fires burning in various parts of Berlin and the sky was ablaze. The noise was deafening, heavy artillery, mortars and Panzerfausts adding to the perpetual din of small-arms fire. Obviously the Germans were making their last stand. Von Below crept across the garden of the Chancellery and went out the back way in the direction of the Charlottenburger Chaussee. He made good progress that night, stole through the Russian lines and lay up at dawn. For three nights he continued in the direction of Keitel's headquarters, and when he found he could go no further he secured some civilian clothes and turned west through territory occupied by British and Americans.

He contacted his father-in-law, Stefan Kuhne, his brother-in-law, Major Heinrich Behr, and a woman named Maria von Groote, and they helped him although they knew that he was wanted by the British. One of them enabled him to enroll as a student of law at Bonn University under an assumed name. He would not stay longer than was necessary with his friends because he feared detection, and he took a room not far from Bonn University at the house of a stranger. For six months he lived the life of a University student, deceiving everyone, until one January morning he gave himself away.

He was sitting at the breakfast table reading the "Kölnischer Kurier", when he jumped in surprise, rushed past his landlady and went to his room. He did not come back for his breakfast. He had read the report of the finding of Hitler's will. Shortly after that von Below was arrested. Von Below told British Intelligence officers that he took up his quarters in one of the three Bunkers outside the Reichs Chancellery on Hitler's orders on 20 April I945, and that he was present at the conference at which Hitler decided to stay in the capital.

He confirmed the story told by Hanna Reitsch, without adding additional facts. He spoke of the effect the news of his betrayal by Göring and Himmler had on Hitler, who had grown very nervous and was suffering from delayed shock caused by the attempt on his life on 20 July I944. He heard about the arrangements for the marriage of Hitler and Eva Braun on 28 April, but was not invited to the ceremony. He stood outside the room, however, and he saw Hitler and Eva Braun leave it, accompanied by the registrar. He was invited later the same night to go to Hitler's living-room, where he drank champagne together with Dr. Göbbels and Martin Bormann.

Frau Göbbels, who was very quiet, General Krebs and General Burgdorf and two of Hitler's ordinary secretaries -probably the ones who had prepared the will and testament- were also present. This strange champagne party lasted for about one hour, during which everyone talked rather nostalgically about the past, and pretended to ignore the fear for the future that showed on their faces. When the party was over von Below was called into a nearby room, where he was joined by Göbbels and Bormann. Hitler came in with a paper. Turning to von Below, Hitler said that since he had served the Führer as Luftwaffe adjutant for such a long time he was going to ask him to perform a last service. Von Below was then invited to sign Hitler's personal will. Von Below read the will after it had been discussed by Göbbels and Hitler. Hitler signed it with a flourish, followed by Martin Bormann and by Göbbels. Von Below signed last. He was not asked to sign Hitler's political testament, and he did not hear of this until later, when General Burgdorf told him a new Government had been formed.

Von Below revealed that he took two letters with him from the Bunker, one from Hitler to Field Marshal Keitel and the other from General Krebs to General Jodl. He declares that he burned these two letters on his way through the Russian lines, but before doing so he read them, committing their contents to memory. At our request he recited from memory "the contents of these letters".

That from Hitler to General Keitel, dated 29 April, was alleged to have read:

"The fight for Berlin is drawing to a close. On the other fronts as well the end can be expected within a few days. I am going to commit suicide rather than surrender. I have appointed Grossadmiral Dönitz as my successor as Reichspräsident and Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht. I expect you to remain at your posts, and to give my successor the same zealous support you have granted me, and to do your utmost to fight gallantly to the end. Two of my oldest supporters, Göring and Himmler, have broken faith with me at the last minute.

"The people and Wehrmacht have given their all in this long and hard struggle. The sacrifice has been enormous. My trust has been misused by many people. Disloyalty and betrayal have undermined resistance throughout the war. It was therefore not granted to me to lead the people to victory. The Army General Staff cannot be compared with the General Staff in the Great War. Its achievements were far behind those on the fighting front. The Luftwaffe fought bravely. Its Commander-in-Chief has been unable to maintain the superiority of the years 1939 and I940. The Navy has wiped out the disgrace of i918 by its morale during this war. It cannot be blamed for its defeat. The efforts and sacrifices of the German people have been so great that I cannot believe that they have been in vain. The aim must still be to win territory in the East for the German people".

The letter from General Krebs to General Jodl, dated 29 April, was:

"The encirclement of Berlin by the Russians is complete. Our own resistance against enemy superiority can only last a few days. Arms and ammunition are lacking. Supplies by air are insufficient. It is no longer possible to land in Berlin. There is no information about the position of Wenck's army here. Their help in saving Berlin is no longer reckoned with. The Führer expects that the other fronts will fight on to the last man".

Allied Intelligence officers were still being called upon to deal with new phases of "the Hitler Case" in the summer of 1946, and in July evidence was given about it at Nuremburg: but a Quadripartite statement was not issued. How best to convince the Germans that he is dead is a great problem. Maybe it will be easier to prove to them that what he represented was evil, and that if he had survived it would have been a great tragedy not only for his opponents, but for Germany too.

The two basic interpretations of the last days in Berlin come from British and Russian sources. As the first one is the source for all subsequent treatments, it will be considered first. Following the end of the war in Europe, numerous and persistent rumors about Hitler’s disappearance were rife in Allied military Intelligence circles and, as a matter of course, leaked to the press. In an effort to head off any independent investigation, British military Intelligence rushed one of their young agents into the breach. Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, a historical research student at Oxford in 1939, was seconded to MI 6 and put to work evaluating transcripts of German radio intercepts. Trevor-Roper was not fluent in the German language, either written or verbal, and his specialty was 17th century English history. Whether Trevor-Roper read or spoke no German was irrelevant to his work, as qualified translators were employed by many of the Allied Intelligence Officers conducting the interviews of prisoners. Nor can his well-documented mistake in accepting as genuine the notorious "Hitler Diaries" some thirty-seven years afterwards, in 1983, be used to impugn the scholarship of his book. Something more substantial is needed if the historian is to dismiss "The Last Days of Hitler". According to the Trevor-Roper explanation, there were no onlookers to the Dictator’s Bunker suicide. Witnesses said they heard a loud gunshot shortly past 3:00 in the afternoon. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, and secretary Martin Bormann opened the door to the small study and stumbled on the dead bodies of the “just married” Führer and Eva Braun. However, the eyewitness testimonies did not see eye to eye on a variety of fine points. A bystander described examining the body of the Führer slumped lifeless next to deceased Eva Braun on an elongated, upholstered couch. But another witness said that he observed Hitler’s body isolated –seated on a chair by itself– near a corner of the Bunker room. An offhand assessment gave evidence of a traumatic gun blast wound in Adolf Hitler’s mouth, while conflicting information claimed the injury was next to his eyebrow. But as indicated in "Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography" [1976] by historian John Toland, the Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski made a claim in 1968 that the autopsy by the Forensic Medical Commission of the Red Army proved that there was no bullet hole in the cranium. "The skull 'proving' that there was no bullet hole had been conveniently destroyed". Toland scornfully voiced disapproval. Hitler’s valet afterward said he caught a whiff of burnt almonds in the Bunker study, a frequent observation made concerning the scent of toxic cyanide. Those facts, and other details that were released by the Soviet KGB in 1992, led to the current "dual method" portrayal of Hitler shooting himself with a pistol while sinking his teeth into a cyanide capsule. It was often said Hitler killed his dogs, Blondi and Wulf, before committing suicide. Hitler officially instructed his adjutant or assisting SS officer, Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, to oversee the cremation of his body after his death. The Bunker witnesses supposed that newlywed Eva Braun poisoned herself because her dead body had no visible wounds. Despite that, historian John Toland guardedly offered striking details: "Only one empty poison capsule had been found" in the Chancellery Bunker study. Finally, Trevor-Roper’s inquiry did not lay enough emphasis on the fact that there were two supposed Hitler cadavers: the fake bad double and the real burnt corpse. John Toland wrote: "Skeptics wondered why Stalin had spread the story in 1945 that Hitler had escaped when he knew the body had been found". The Soviet correspondent Bezymenski said Moscow made the decision to hold the forensic details "in reserve" in case someone might try to slip into the role of "the Führer saved by a miracle". In other words, conceivably one more "Hitler double' was potentially on the loose, and possibly responsible for brutal war crimes. . In Great Britain it was barely a murmur that the Nazi tyrant had escaped in 1945 from the ruins of Berlin. But in the Soviet Union it was lectured in all public schools. For the most part, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s rationalization is still the most well regarded tale. But as one American military officer, Colonel Henry Heimlich, stated: "Upon reviewing the actual facts, not a single insurance company would ever pay out a cent to similar claims based on such scant, non-conclusive evidence". A statement was made by General Dwight D Eisenhower in the 8 October 1945 issue of the newspaper “Stars and Stripes.” In that report Eisenhower said there was reason to believe Hitler was still alive [after the war] and it was also noted he had, thus, reversed his opinion that Hitler had died of suicide in the Bunker. Other American media simply ignored the report and Eisenhower’s comments. History books also ignore it even today. Trevor-Roper’s post-war paper was probably more disruptive to historians than anything since the production of the "Donation of Constantine" at a point somewhat earlier in time. He claimed that he had conducted "numerous" interviews with former members of Hitler’s staff. But the fact that most of the key personnel such as Otto Günsche, Hitler’s military orderly, Heinz Linge, Hitler’s long-time valet and Hans Baur, Hitler’s chief pilot, were in Soviet custody [where they made documented statements directly opposed to Trevor-Roper’s findings] coupled with Trevor-Roper’s admitted unfamiliarity with the German language, has rendered his book "The Last Days of Hitler" highly suspect in factual content if not in its well-polished context. As a result of this work, a self-perpetuating series of myths have become well-established in historical circles and Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper automatically became the original source from which an army of subsequent writers copiously copied. He quickly assumed the mantel of the leading expert on the subject of Adolf Hitler and no self-respecting work on the German leader was complete without a skillfully crafted foreword by Trevor-Roper. In due time, he was made King’s Professor of History at Oxford, and in 1979, raised to the peerage as Lord Dacre of Glanton. On 8 April 1983, Lord Dacre, the man who believed he had a "patent on Adolf Hitler" flew to Zürich, Switzerland, at the request of newspaper  publisher, Rupert Murdoch, to authenticate the now-notorious "Hitler Diaries".  Although possessed of a keen intellect and sharp wit, Trevor-Roper was also blessed with a monumental ego which overrode the basic fact that he was not fluent in German and certainly could not read a word of the old style German script that Hitler wrote. Following the Zürich visit, which entailed a very cursory examination of unintelligible script, Trevor-Roper returned to England and solemnly announced that "I am now satisfied that the documents are genuine". [Robert Harris, "Selling Hitler" New York, 1986] A subsequent thorough investigation by experts of the German National Archives quickly disclosed that the documents were not only not genuine but "crude forgeries” by “someone of limited intelligence". It would be a secure assumption, following this debacle, that Trevor-Roper’s "patent on Adolf Hitler" had finally expired. In the "Last Days of Hitler", very heavy emphasis for the suicide/cremation theory is placed on statements and alleged statements from a number of SS personnel, allegedly involved in the last act. In addition to Otto Günsche and Heinz Linge, a member of Hitler’s RSD bodyguard, Hermann Karnau, and another RSD member, Erich Mansfeld ,were all alleged to have participated in the removal of Hitler and Eva Braun’s bodies from the Bunker and their subsequent cremation in the Chancellery garden. Since Günsche and Linge, along with Hans Baur, the pilot, were in a Soviet prison camp and not available for interview when Trevor-Roper wrote his official report, statements attributed to them should be taken with extraordinary caution, if not skepticism. Hermann Karnau, stated to be an SS member of the RSD was apparently interviewed by Trevor-Roper and claimed he saw Hitler’s body burning in the garden. Unfortunately, an extensive search by Dr. David G. Marwell, then director of the Berlin Document Center, repository of SS personal records, failed to locate any Hermann Karnau or Erich Mansfeld, or "Skripczyk " as Trevor-Roper also calls him. Neither of these men were in either the RSD or the SS.It would be fair to assume that when the British official report was prepared, the SS personnel files and records were not available and no doubt Trevor-Roper may be excused his gross errors on the grounds that he was unaware that he was interviewing non-existent people. Trevor-Roper's Notes on Sources is a scholarly listing of the "personal sources" of information used in his report. He never claimed to have interviewed Hitler's staff-members Otto Günsche, Heinz Linge or Hans Baur. Statements attributed to them are rigorously noted as hearsay. He does not state that Karnau was an SS member, only that he was a policeman and member of the RSD [Reichssicherheitsdienst]. Thus, Karnau would not have appeared on the SS membership lists. Karnau stated that he had been a guard at the Reichs Chancellery in Berlin until 2 May, when he was given permission to leave his post because the Russians were closing in. He passed through the Russian lines in disguise, stating that he was a Dutchman returning home. He said that he had been a member of the second ring of guards round Hitler since I944, when he was at the headquarters in East Prussia and at Berchtesgaden. He came to Berlin in March I945. The interrogation report notes that Hermann Karnau was in British Custody - which is precisely where Trevor-Roper interviewed him.  Mansfeld is another matter. Erich Mansfeld [alias Skripczyk] was reported by Trevor-Roper to have been a SS-Hauptscharführer and a member of the RSD. One would therefore presume that his name would appear on the SS enlisted men's list in BCD, but it apparently does not.  However, in the Interrogation Records prepared for the War Crimes Proceedings at Nürnberg 1945-1947, and in the catalogue, prepared by the National Archives and Records Service in 1984, is a listing for Erich Mansfeld. His Intermediate Interrogation Report [IIR] is on Microfilm Roll 25. In this report, conducted in the Bremen Interrogation Center by a G-2 officer of the 29th Division on 30 July 1945, Mansfeld's apparent SS rank is explained: He was accepted into the RSD in June of 1944 with a rank of Kriminal Assistant and SS Hauptscharführer. Whether this was a provisional rank or not is not known. Other disputed characters of the Bunker Finale are also mentioned, including Karnau, Harry Mengershausen, and Hufbeck, mentioned on page 204 of "The Last Days of Hitler" as Hans Hofbeck. -- David Irving However, there is no question of the existence of Günsche, Linge and Baur. Since they too are used as direct sources for the Viking funeral theory, let us consider recently disclosed information. In a U.S. CIC document of 15 November 1948 [Throughman report: 0933-034] Günsche stated to the senior Wehrmacht medical officer and commander of all military hospitals in besieged Berlin, Dr. Walter Schreiber, that “I did not see the dead Führer. Those things were done without us". Baur said at the same time that he had not seen the bodies either, and Linge, who is alleged to have assisted in carrying the bodies of Hitler and his wife up the Bunker exit stairs said that he "did not see the body of the dead Führer". The debriefing of these SS members following their return from Soviet imprisonment produced similar but still classified statements. Insofar as the fate of Hermann Fegelein, whom Trevor-Roper has shot in the Chancellery on Hitler’s orders, a careful inspection of his files now located at Ft. George Meade, Maryland, depicts a somewhat different scenario than the one put forward by Trevor-Roper. According to an official CIC report of 21 September 1945, one Walter Hirschfeld, a Jewish refugee from Vienna and agent for the CIC, was in close contact with Hans Fegelein, Hermann’s father, then resident in Munich. According to the Hirschfeld report, Hermann Fegelein had been in contact with his father after the war and reported that "the Führer and I are safe and well" and that he would try to get in contact with his family if possible. The Russian version, which appeared over twenty years later, approaches the events from a different perspective. When Soviet troops occupied the government quarter of Berlin during the first week of May, 1945, an immediate search was made of the Chancellery complex for any traces of Hitler and his top aides. Much of Albert Speer’s new Chancellery was in ruins; the air raid Bunker under the Chancellery garden was partially flooded by the ever-present ground water and the interior showed signs of an attempt to burn the contents by the last SS guards on the scene. There were numerous bodies strewn about the Chancellery gardens including those of Dr. Göbbels and his wife, both of whom were badly charred. The bodies of General Hans Krebs and the six Göbbels children were found in the Bunker itself. Since the Russians had complete physical control of the Chancellery areaand, if Hitler’s body had been discovered, they would have been the sole parties to disclose this. Let us consider the official Soviet pronouncements following their capture of Berlin. 3 May 1945. "Pravda": "Hitler not in Berlin". 13 May1945. "Pravda": "Moscow has directed the senior officers of the Red Army in Berlin to discuss nothing about the situation in the Führerbunker". 26 May 1945. Josef Stalin to Harry Hopkins in Moscow: "In my opinion Hitler is not dead but is hiding somewhere". 6 June 1945. Red Army spokesman from Marshal Zhukov’s staff: "Hitler’s body has been found and identified". 9 June 1945. Marshal Zhukov, accompanied by Andre Vishinski, Deputy Foreign Minister and General N. Bezarin, Soviet military commandant of Berlin, held a press conference for Western journalists. Zhukov stated that "Hitler’s fate was doubtful" and that "we did not identify the body of Hitler. I can say nothing definite about his fate. He could have flown away from Berlin at the very last moments". To this, General Bezarin added that in his personal opinion, "he has disappeared somewhere in Europe. Perhaps he is in Spain with Franco. He had the possibility of taking off and getting away". 9 June 1945. "Red Star" military publication stated that "Hitler had committed suicide two days before Berlin surrendered". 17 July 1945, Josef Stalin to President Harry Truman and US Secretary of State James Byrnes at the Potsdam Conference: "I believe Hitler is alive. Careful investigation by Soviet investigators has not found any trace of Hitler’s remains or any other positive evidence of his death". Following these often contradictory pronouncements, the Soviets lapsed into silence until 1968 when a small book entitled "The Death of Adolf Hitler" appeared, authored by Lev Bezymenski, a Soviet journalist and KGB official. According to the thesis of this book, the Soviets did, in fact, find the bodies of Adolf Hitler, his wife, his dogs, the Göbbels family and General Krebs. A number of photographs accompanied the official autopsy reports and among the pictures are views of what are purported to be Hitler’s bridgework and teeth, [removed from the body] as well as Eva Braun’s dental bridge and a photograph of Hitler’s favorite German shepherd bitch "Blondi". In establishing the identity of human remains by dental forensics, a number of factors must be taken into account. Firstly, photographs and X-rays of the teeth and dentition of the deceased must be prepared. Secondly, these photographs and X-rays must be compared with the actual dental records of the deceased, to include [if  possible] X-rays of the deceased’s actual teeth and any dental fittings. If these two sets of data are identical, the identity of the deceased should be established to a strong certainty. It should also be stated that a specific chain of control must exist for the evidence to be valid. An actual corpse must exist and be in a controlled environment such as a morgue or mortuary. The photography and X-rays must be prepared of the body under controlled conditions and the resulting negatives and prints kept in a secure area. Also, the dental records must be original and must also be secured as evidence. The reasons for this should be as evident to the layman as they are to the professionals of law enforcement agencies and insurance companies. Without proper control exercised over the two sets of records, the opportunity for manipulation is obvious. On the evening of 20 April 1945, following the parade of dignitaries who paid their respects to Adolf Hitler on the event of his 56th birthday, Hugo-Hannes Blaschke, a General of the Waffen-SS, Senior Dental Officer of that organization, a member of Himmler’s personal staff and Hitler’s long-time dentist, paid a brief and hurried visit to his Reich Chancellery dental office. Here, he quickly assembled and packed into cases his dental equipment and all of the dental records of his prominent patients including Albert Speer, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Josef and Magda Göbbels, Martin Bormann, Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler. These files were flown out of Berlin later that night along with SS General Dr. Blaschke and a number of other senior officials. The flight landed near Salzburg early the next morning. Blaschke’s entire file case vanished at that time and none of its contents have ever surfaced. The Führer dentist was subsequently taken into American custody where he claimed he would make an attempt to "reconstruct Hitler’s dentition from memory" [US CIC Interrogation Reports, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, June-September 1945]. The Soviet investigators probing Hitler’s disappearance tried to locate Blaschke in Berlin so that they might interrogate him under their control. When they were advised that the dentist was in American hands and available for questioning, they abruptly discontinued their search and never made any attempts to contact the dentist [US CIC Report, Blaschke, 5 September 1945]. Without dental records, identification of missing Third Reich leaders was severely hampered and a great deal depended on Dr. Blaschke’s cooperation with his American captors. U.S. CIC interrogation files on Blaschke indicate that he appeared to be co-operative in his attempts to reconstruct Hitler’s dental records but that the results were of little value because the Führer dentist "could do very little without his records which have disappeared and cannot be located even after an extensive search". Blaschke was eventually released from custody and died in 1957 at the age of seventy-seven without having contributed anything at all to verifying the deaths of a number of his patients. His records and X-Rays are still missing. There exist a number of X-Rays which purport to have been taken of Hitler’s head. All of these were said to have been made in 1944 and early 1945 by various doctors treating Hitler for various infections of his sinuses and tonsils, following the 20 July 1944 attempt on his life. The published records of Dr. Theo Morell, Hitler’s chief doctor indicate that X-Rays were taken at the Karlshof military hospital in Rastenberg, the location of Hitler’s headquarters. These films were made at the request of Dr. Karl Otto von Eicken, a specialist called in to treat an infected sinus. Two X-rays were taken of Hitler’s head on 21 October 1944, but proved to be "too meager" for diagnosis. Several other X-Rays were taken, also at Karlshof on 18 November 1944, shortly before Hitler left the Wolfsschanze for the last time. Other X-Rays were produced for Dr. Erwin Giesing and were said to have been taken in Berlin in early 1945. The U.S. National Archives has purported copies of these X-rays, none of which have the standard German military medical information on the developed films. At least one X-Ray has the date "21. Oct. 44" scratched on it whereas the proper German date would be "21.Okt.44". The date on the negative is standard U.S. military form. There are no further identifying marks on these films. The Bezymenski book, which appeared in 1968, makes no mention of these X-Rays but does show photographs of what the author  purports to be the original bridgework found in what is claimed to be the badly charred and partially obliterated corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun. The author also includes a photograph of a small card purported to have been prepared on 11 May 1945 by one Käthe Heusermann, Dr. Blaschke’s technical assistant, who assisted in the manufacture of bridgework for the dentist. To consider the Bezymenski publication as anything but crude Soviet disinformation would be a serious error for an objective historian to accept. Like Trevor-Roper’s 1945 report, which took him only two weeks to prepare, the Bezymenski dissertation was obviously prepared to fulfill an official point of view. It should be noted that in the 1960s, Soviet writers were not free to express their views on international political matters and, in any case, like Trevor-Roper who was a member of MI 6, Bezymenski was a KGB official. Trevor-Roper, to be sure, is a far better writer but in the end, the two books were prepared with similar goals. The Bezymenski work is easily demolished because of extraordinarily poor research. The author states that on 9 May 1945, a Soviet investigator interrogated Heusermann. A transcript of the official report disclosed that Heusermann in the company of the official found Hitler’s dental file in Blaschke’s Berlin office and then accompanied the investigators to the ruins of the Chancellery where they discovered all of Hitler’s dental X-Rays and some gold crowns alleged to be destined for Hitler’s mouth. The author appears to be unaware that all of these records were removed from the Chancellery on the night of 20 April and that Hitler’s dental records were kept in the Chancellery dental facility and not at Blaschke’s private practice. Blondi was Adolf Hitler's German Shepherd, a gift as a puppy from Martin Bormann in 1941. In March or in early April [likely 4 April 1945], she had a litter of five puppies with Gerdy Troost's German Shepherd, Harras. Hitler named one of the puppies "Wulf", his favorite nickname and the meaning of his own first name, Adolf ["noble wolf"]  Note also, that Hitler did not have dark hair. Too many people accept whatever they see in a photograph -any individual photograph- without taking into consideration that hair invariably looks darker in photos that are not taken in direct sunlight. The resolution/quality of the photo also makes a big difference. Hitler's hair was medium brown; light to medium brown is probably the most common hair color among ethnic German people [this includes Austrians]. From there it goes to lighter and to darker in probably equal numbers. As has been previously noted, Soviet agents seeking Blaschke in Berlin at once abandoned their search upon learning of his detention by the United States and made no attempt to contact him although invited to do so by  American authorities. The sketch of Hitler’s dental work is accompanied by numerous notes, all in Russian, a language that Käthe Heuserman was not acquainted with in May of 1945. A further lack of familiarity with his subject emerges rather painfully when Bezymenski discusses the purported corpse of Hitler’s dog "Blondi". The dog, of whom Hitler was extremely fond, accompanied him everywhere, even on many of his trips. In 1945, she had recently whelped and was still nursing her pups at the end of April. The official Soviet autopsy report indicates that the dog in question had a black coat with white lower extremities, worn teeth which would indicate a dog of about eight years of age and who had not been nursing at the time of death. [The real "Blondi" was four years old and a light tan in color]. Since an official Spanish police report of April, 1945, mentions a "large brown wolfhound" as part of the manifest of Hitler’s personal transport, it could be assumed that like her master, "Blondi" did not meet her end in Berlin. In addressing the reliability of the Soviet view one must consider their  previous record of producing forged anti-German documentation. Official forgery was not the sole bailiwick of Communist creative writers. Czarist secret police took a French satire on Napoleon III by  Maurice Joly, "Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ou la politique de Machiavel au XIXe siècle", made minor changes in the text and produced the well-known "Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion". Aside from period rewritings of their own history, the Soviets produced the notorious Adolf Heusinger file that attacked a former Wehrmacht General who was slated for inclusion in NATO. Original documents captured from Army Group Center during the war were liberally larded with KGB fakes designed to prove that Heusinger was responsible for the murder of Russian civilians. The added documents were, like most KGB productions, very bad,and Heusinger obtained his appointment. The Soviet apparat also produced the notorious SS camp pass for John Demjanjuk, the alleged "Ivan the Terrible" and gave it to an informed U.S. agency who then used it to prosecute the former Russian citizen. That document was of such transparent falsity that it is a wonder that it was ever introduced in a civilized court of law. The then-West German criminal investigative agency to whom it was shown immediately branded it a fake although this professional opinionin in no way prevented the document from being introduced at Demjanjuk’s various trials. The notorious "Hitler Diaries" were concocted by the East German Stasi to raise foreign capital and it now appears that the former KGB is attempting to sell to gullible journalists what they claim are the "personal diaries of Josef Göbbels". This project is more extensive than the East German tour de force because the KGB has had more time to prepare it. It is still possible that a sudden “discovery” bolstering the Bezymenski thesis could be forthcoming from hitherto closed KGB files but given the current state of German-Russian relations, somewhat doubtful. In 1972, Dr. Reidar Sognnaes, a professor of anatomy and dental biology at the University of California, delivered a paper at a seminar on forensic science held in Scotland [Toland, John, "Adolf Hitler," Doubleday, New York, 1976; McKale, Donald, "Hitler," Stein & Day, Briarcliff Manor, NY, 1981; Luntz, Lester,"Connecticut Magazine," March, 1983]. Dr. Sognnaes strongly believed that he was now able to prove that a "positive identification of Hitler’s remains" had been made as the result of his own brilliant forensic detective work among the archives. His conclusions stemmed from a comparison of the purported Hitler head X-Rays which he claimed had somehow been mislaid in the National Archives, only to be rediscovered by himself in a stunning coup in 1972, with the Bezymenski photographs and drawings in the 1968 book. He also claimed he had searched the Blaschke CIC interrogation file and had found the dentist’s sketches from memory of the Hitler dentition. This work was also located in the National Archives. Since all of this data appeared to coincide, Sognnaes concluded that there could be absolutely no doubt that the corpse found in the Chancellery garden was that of Hitler. Parenthetically, Sognnaes [and other dental forensic specialists] concluded that the alleged burned corpse of Eva Braun was, to a certainty, not the remains of Hitler’s wife. Among other interesting facets of the Eva Braun matter is that the artificial teeth contained in what the Russians stated was Eva Braun’s bridgework found in the mouth of the very badly charred corpse would under no circumstances have withstood the heat of the cremation and would have been thoroughly melted. The Sognnaes theory is, from a logical point of view, more badly flawed than the Bezymenski one. Firstly, the X-Rays in the National Archives had never been mislaid, and in fact, had been used in several publications prior to both the Sognnaes production and that of Bezymenski. The latter certainly had reference to these X-Rays which were available to any researcher from 1946 onwards. Secondly, the technical information about the dental records in the Russian’s book very obviously came from the same source that Sognnaes had used, namely the files of the National Archives. The Russians based their creative writing efforts on official files and Sognnaes merely copied their end product. If one takes the previously stated criteria concerning positive identification of a body through dental forensics, it becomes immediately evident that the evidentiary chain does not now, and never did exist. The requirement of an actual body kept in a secure location has certainly not been met. The Russians have repeatedly stated that they burned the purported corpse of Hitler and scattered the ashes. The official Soviet statement that they had recovered Hitler’s personal X-Rays and dental records conflicts with extensive evidence that these records were removed from the Chancellery before the occupation of Berlin. In any case, the Soviets never produced any such material in the furtherance of their claims. Not one scrap of this material could ever be presented in a responsible court of law to support a claim of identification. There is a regrettable tendency for many authors, in treating a historical subject, to write to an idea. In doing so, they will accept any theory or any evidence, no matter how illogical or patently false, which will tend to prove their case and reject any material that would tend to disprove it. Recently, a grouping of OSS telegrams has been released, one of which is of particular relevance to the above. It is classified as Document 5-55, Telegram 6487, dated 8 March 1945, and is a report relayed by an agent, Fritz Molden, giving rise to the possibility that Hitler might have been considering escape by air. Source K-28, report B-1839. In Pocking, lower Bavaria near Braunau between Zeithen and Schönberg, recognizable by two hangars and large runways is located part of "Flieger Staffel Adolf Hitler". Work going on actively in hangars. There is one 4-motored Ju 290 being luxuriously equipped with armored plates, bullet-proof glass, guns fore and aft, etc. Capacity 20-22  persons. Delivery originally fixed for 28 February 1945 for Berchtesgaden now  postponed to middle March. Hitler greatly disturbed over delay. Original plan called for three machines but, on account of material shortage, only one built. General Baur, air pilot of Führer, personally supervising reconstruction, together with assembly man Zintel. Baur also practicing handling of airplane. Immediately after the end of the war in Europe on 9 May 1945, a great search was conducted to locate Adolf Hitler in or near his last command post, the so-called Führerbunker located beneath the garden of his Berlin Reich’s Chancellery. This is a subject which is certainly well known to historians of the period. The source for all of the writings which have followed was a book entitled "The Last Days of Hitler" by a young British Intelligence agent, Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper. This report was hastily cobbled together by the scholarly writer in only six weeks time, and while grossly inaccurate, is an example of polished historical writing rarely seen at the end of the 20thcentury. Bremen Interrogation Center Enclave Militaray District  APO 29, U.S. Army “29 LET’S GO” Intermediate Interrogation Report [IIR] Prisoner: Mansfeld, Erich Alias: Skripczyk, Erich. Reason for Report: Verbal request of the A.C. of S. [Acting Chief of Staff] G-2, 29th Infantry Division. 2. REPORT: a. Personal Data: Born: 30 May 1913 at Bewallne [OBERSCHLESIEN] Occupation: Laborer until 1934: Land Polizei: 1934-36 Schutz Polizei: 1936-38 Party Affiliation: SA May 1933-September 1933. NSDAP Member: 1937-45 SS Bewerber [candidate] 1938, but claims he was rejected due to non-Aryan appearance. Attempted to join the Gestapo in March 1944, but was offered an opportunity to join the RSHD [an incorrect title for the RSD -Reichssicherheitsdienst- Hitler’s personal police bodyguard]  Accepted into the RSHD in June of 1944 with the title of Krimminal Assistant [Lowest police rank] and rank of SS-Hauptscharführer. b. Introduction: On 23 April 1945, the following personnel was [sic] detailed for guard duty at the Bunker occupied by Hitler, in the Reichskanzlei, Berlin: Hufbeck, FNU [First Name Unknown] Krimminal Secretär [SD -Sicherheitsdienst- The SS Security Service]: Karnau, Hermann, Krimminal Assistant [SD] Now in custody of British: Mengershausen, Harry, Krimminal Assistant [SD]: Mansfeld, Erich, Krimminal Assistant [SD]; Lanzer [Lanz] SS-Unterscharführer: Names Unknown - 2 Oberscharführer  [possibly  Hans Reisser and  Werner Schwiedel].  These men were instructed to guard two of the three exits of the Bunker, the emergency exit, and the emergency escape. The latter could not be used as an entrance: the door could only be opened from the inside. The third exit was through the Reichs Kanzlei. Usually there were two guards at the emergency exit and one at the emergency escape. c. Alleged Disposition of Hitler: On 27 April 1945, Subject states that he was on guard at the emergency escape from 14:00 to 17:00 hours. His post was inside a concrete tower situated on the left of the emergency escape. Mengershausen, who had  preceded Subject on guard at this post, had left his machine pistol in the tower and returned at 16:00 asking Subject to hand the weapon to him. As Mansfeld opened the iron window of the tower to hand out the machine pistol to him, he noticed Hufbeck and three members of the Begleit Kommando [Hitler’s Bodyguard] running out of the emergency exit. Page 1 of original [Subject claims he later learned that these men hastened to close entrances to the area to prevent any spectators observing what was to follow immediately]. A few minutes past 16:00, Mansfeld left the tower and went over to the emergency exit to see what was happening. He went in through the exit where he met SS-Sturmbannführer Gintsche [sic], personal adjutant to Hitler, and immediately following Gintsche were two SS-Hauptsturmführers carrying a body wrapped in a blanket. Both legs were exposed almost to the knees, as well as a portion of the right arm. The rest of the body was covered by the blanket. Subject claims he recognized the boots as those of Hitler and that a portion of the black trousers, which color only Hitler wore, was also visible. Immediately behind the men carrying the alleged body of Hitler, was SS-Hauptsturmführer [Hermann] Jansen, who was carrying in his arms the body of a woman identified by Subject as that of Eva Braun. It was clothed in a black dress identified by Mansfeld as the one Eva Braun was wearing between 02:00 and 03:00 that same morning when she came up to the tower to ask for information about the shelling. Subject claims that he had seen Eva Braun on many occasions and that he was positive that it was her body Jansen was carrying. [Subject states he also knows Eva Braun’s younger sister, but that the latter never came to this Bunker]. Following Jansen were (1) Göbbels, (2) General Burgdorf, Chief of the Personalabteilung of the Wehrmacht, (3) Reichsleiter Bormann, (4) SS-Sturmbannführer Linge, Aide to Hitler. Mansfeld claims that in the excitement of the moment, he remained a few minutes on the stairway leading from the Bunker even though he had been ordered by Ginsche [sic] to return to the tower at theemergency escape. Just as he entered the tower, he saw through an observation slit in the tower a huge column of black smoke coming from the direction of the emergency exit. A few minutes later, when the smoke had nearly cleared, he could see two burning bodies about 2 meters to the left of the emergency exit. Mansfeld claims he recognized the body of Eva Braun, and that he could recognize the other body as being that of a man, but could not be certain that it was Hitler's. From time to time somebody poured additional gasoline on the burning bodies. At 17:30, Mansfeld was relieved of his post by Karnau  and on his way to the emergency exit he recognized the remains of the still burning body of the woman. The other body was almost completely burned and no longer recognizable. At 18:30, Subject went out to relieve himself at which time the bodies were still burning. Returning immediately after, he had occasion to pass through the corridor passing Hitler's rooms. The doors were open and no one was present inside. At approximately 20:00, SS-Gruppenführer [sic] Rattenhuber, Chief of the Reichs SS [sic], entered the guard room and instructed one of the SS-Oberscharführers to go to the Begleit Kommando Dienststellen after he requested three men to bury the bodies. At 23:00, Subject was directed to guard the emergency exit. Subject claims at that time the bodies were nowhere to be seen. Subject states he noticed a shell crater 4 to 5 meters in front of the emergency exit door, had been partly covered. Subject is of the opinion the bodies were buried in the crater. Subject believes that Hitler and Eva Braun were given shots by SS-Obersturmführer [sic] Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor,which eased their immediate deaths. This was rumored among the guards. Subject claims the bodies must have been disposed of between 20:30 and 21:00, 27 April 1945. Subject claims there is a possibility these events took  place on the 26th instead of the 27th, but is positive it was not later than the 27th April 1945. Page 2 of original End   This report, compiled by the U.S. Army some three months after the event, appears on the first reading to completely substantiate the version of Hitler's end as postulated by Trevor-Roper. His account contains exactly the same information set forth in the American report and the two would seem to be mutually supporting. However, further and more extensive investigation results in an entirely opposite conclusion. The Trevor-Roper work from which all subsequent publications on the subject are taken, was ordered by British Brigadier Dick White, later head of MI5 and MI6, in September 1945, following the surrender of Germany on 9 May 1945, Trevor-Roper was a thirty-two year old Oxford scholar who had been recruited into British signals Intelligence at the beginning of the war, and while a skilled writer, had no knowledge of German history and could neither read nor write the language. This failing later led him to his authentication of the crudely forged "Hitler Diaries" in 1983. The official study was written over a six week period in 1945, and with official  permission, was published by Trevor-Roper in 1947. Trevor-Roper was British and that country controlled the city of Bremen in 1945, but American Intelligence had what was known as an Enclave Presence there which meant that U.S. military Intelligence units were permitted to operate in the British-occupied city In the US interview, it is noted that one Hermann Karnau was in British custody and in his book, Trevor-Roper makes use of statements made by both Karnau and Mansfeld on pages 202-205 of his book. The U.S. interrogation of Mansfeld, alias Erich Skrzipczyk, is a part of the holdings of the U.S. National Archives, but the records on the British-held Hermann Karnau are, like most such records in British hands, not available to researchers. There is no question, whatsoever, that the 30 July interview with Mansfeld/Skrzipczyk did take place, but there is a very serious question of who this individual really was. The US record indicates that their subject was a SS NCO, a Hauptscharführer, and a member of the Reichssicherheits-dienst [RSD] from June of 1944. Karnau was also listed as a member of the RSD and a member of the Sicherheitsdienst which would indicate a membership in the SS itself. All of the records of the SS and Police are in the custody of the Berlin Document Center. These records consist of the personnel files of all SS and Police members as well as alphabetical lists of names of such individuals. Further, records are extant of all the members of the elite RSD as of 1 January 1945. None of the persons named are on it. A copy of this list may be found in the US National Archives. Neither Messers Hufbeck, Karnau, Mengerhausen, Mansfeld nor Lanzer are to be found on the rolls of either the SS, the Police, or most importantly, the RSD. This information was not available to either British or U.S. Intelligence when the Trevor-Roper report was compiled, so neither party, nor Trevor-Roper who used their reports, would be aware that the quoted Karnau and Mansfeld were not SS personnel and certainly not in the SS bodyguard unit at the Chancellery Bunker. The second very serious error deals with dates. Mansfeld states repeatedly that the events of the burning of Hitler’s body occurred on the 27 of April1945. In point of fact he states that the happenings might have taken place on the 26th, but certainly on the 27th. The supposed suicide of Hitler and his wife, by all other accounts, took place on 29 April 1945. In his book, Trevor-Roper comments that "....Karnau and Mansfeld agree on facts, but differ on dates and times. Both mistake the date". He goes on to state that Karnau’s facts are "hopelessly erratic" and makes the qualification that, "If Mansfeld is reliable throughout..."  A letter from the Director of the Berlin Document Center, concerning the lack of documentation on the membership of Mansfeld and Karnau in the SS or Police, indicates that an extensive search was made of their files and nothing on the purported RSD personnel could be found. Mansfeld claims to have been stationed in the "emergency escape" inside a concrete tower adjacent to the underground Bunker on 27 April 1945. He refers to activity occurring at the "emergency exit" from the Bunker in which various SS men were seen carrying out two bodies. One of the bodies was recognizable because of the boots, on one occasion, or because of the black trousers on another. Except for his visits to the front during the war, Hitler wore long black pants and low shoes, not boots. Mansfeld also states that he left the emergency exit tower and crossed the ground to the Bunker exit, and was somehow standing on the stairway leading down into the Bunker although he had been warned off by Otto Günsche, Hitler’s SS ADC. Although this makes dramatic reading, it is badly flawed. A commentary on the Bunker itself might be in order here. The Bunker was designed initially as an air raid shelter. It was not built under the Chancellery, but under the garden. There was an exit to the garden area consisting of four flights of concrete steps, protected at ground level, by a square, reinforced concrete building. To the right of this exit, facing it, was a round tower, also of reinforced concrete, with a conical roof and three observation ports protected with heavy steel shutters. The entrance into this tower, which was used primarily for protection of the actual exit, and secondarily for use as a ventilation outlet, was from inside the Bunker itself. There was no exit from this tower to the garden area unless one chose to squeeze himself through an observation port and drop down some distance to the ground. If Mansfeld had indeed been inside the tower, which is not likely, he could not have left it to wander about in the garden and watch the mortuary parade. He would have had to go down the steps inside the tower, cross a corridor inside the Bunker and climb up the steps leading to the garden proper. Mansfeld also states that he went through the corridor "passing Hitler’s rooms" and noticed that the doors were open and that he could see no one inside. The only corridor which led past Hitler’s quarters was one used for visitors and one would have had to see past three steel doors and around two corners to look into Hitler’s rooms. Again, at the time the book was written, an accurate plan of the Bunker was not generally available so such errata passed into history unchallenged. A complete and accurate plan of the Bunker exists in the papers of Wehrmacht General of Engineers, Alfred Jacob, and the only exit into the Chancellery garden is the emergency one visible in all the post-war  photographs. Numerous pictures that include the tower Mansfeld claims to have occupied indicate clearly that there was no ground-level exit. Here we have the edifying spectacle of a man who was totally unauthorized to be inside the Bunker complex, handing guns to people, crawling out of embrasures, running up and down many flights of steps and possessing the ability to see through steel doors and concrete walls. And all of this three full days before the event itself, and in the company of others who also seem not to have existed. Given the eagerness with which people postulate plots and conspiracies, it regrettably appears that the Mansfeld and Karnau stories are not part of a complicated Allied Intelligence plot, but more likely the desire of a prisoner of war to please his captors and probably secure better treatment and possible fame. In view of his use of this unverified and obviously fictitious material, it is ironical to note that Trevor-Roper comments acidly on...."the value of unchecked human testimony on which, however, much of written history is based".  A number of serious factual errors contained in the Trevor-Roper book have been brought to the attention of that gentleman, but he like others who are confronted by their extraordinarily careless approach to facts, has declined any answer. This episode deals with original material that is totally misleading, and from a historical prospective, results in the creation and subsequent perpetuation of mythical hypothesis. There are other episodes which encompass both documentary frauds and what Trevor-Roper termed "unchecked human testimony". The collapse of the Soviet Union may have seen the temporary end of Russian expansionism, but it did not see a termination to an incredible outpouring of documentary forgeries which have plagued the historical world since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Russian historical experts working for the NKVD and its successor, the KGB, conducted, and still are conducting, a prolific forgery factory in Moscow. These products have sown dissension and confusion in the ranks of legitimate historians and journalists. The former are more difficult to delude, but the latter, eager for sensational material with which to reap profits, are extraordinarily careless in assessing the accuracy of offerings from Muscovite document peddlers. Aside from extensively rewriting their own history, Russian forgery experts spent most of their time in producing material designed to delude, confound and mislead their perceived enemies, both domestic and foreign. Much of this began after the Second World War with extensive rewriting, editing and deliberate forgeries of German military and political documents designed to embarrass the United States and its client, the West German government, as well as to elevate the image of their own regime. Faked reports dealing with the purported death of Hitler began the deluge and these were followed by endless papers concerning the fate of Martin Bormann who the Soviets claimed was living somewhere in the West, probably protected by the insidious Americans. The same creative writers also heavily edited and enhanced the records of German Army Group Center, captured by their military units, when that entity was overrun during the war. The purpose of this exercise was to supply proof that German General Adolf Heusinger, nominated for a high NATO position, had been involved in war crimes on the Eastern Front during the course of the war. The KGB intermingled original, relatively unimportant documents with doctored or completely invented papers, released these through their agencies in the West and awaited the results. Fortunately, other period copies of the original documents were safe in German and American archives and comparisons quickly disclosed the fraudulent nature of the Heusinger attack. Many documents were prepared over the years in the event that they might be needed for a future propaganda assault and then left secure in Soviet archives.In addition to these activities, the KGB experts also concocting material  proving that many American prisoners of war remained in Vietnam after the American withdrawal, as well as a series of badly forged papers proving that U.S. citizen, John Demjanjuk, was a notorious German concentration campguard. Both of these projects were eventually exposed as frauds, but the problems they engendered during their brief life span were monumental. One of the most ambitious Soviet productions concerned the writings of Dr.Josef Göbbels, Hitler’s brilliant Minister of Propaganda, who killed himself and his family in the Berlin Führerbunker in 1945. Dr. Göbbels was adevoted diarist, setting forth his experiences and thoughts on a daily basis beginning in the 1920s and running through to the final days in Berlin. After he became Minister of Propaganda, these records were dictated by Göbbels on the following day and typed by a secretary on special paper using a large-type continental typewriter. An original and two carbons were made and the completed documents carefully stored. It should be noted that with the increasing pressures of his offices, Göbbels no longer had the time to write out his diary by hand, but always dictated it to a secretary on the day following the events he wished to record. After the war, in 1946, a book appeared in East Berlin entitled "Extracts and Confessions of a War Criminal" and purported to be quotes from the Göbbels’ diaries. It was later discovered that the book, which was entirely fictitious, was written by one Max Fechner, a well-known German communist and once the deputy head of the Socialist Unity Party, and a colleague of the German communist leader, Walter Ulbricht, who had spent the war in Moscow amongst his friends. In 1967, Soviet historian Yelena Rshevskaya, published a book in East Berlin entitled "Hitler’s End Without Mythology" in which she discusses having inspected "thick folders of handwritten Göbbels material" found in the Bunker. In the same year, the pump was further primed by a similar report from Juliusz Stroynowski, a historian from Communist Poland who had fled to the West. He disclosed that he had accidentally discovered "several stacked folders" of handwritten Göebbels’ diaries "in the archives of the Soviet Ministry of Defense". Stroynowski claimed that he had been permitted to examine the material, but was not allowed to make copies of any of it. The stage was now set in the press and interest aroused. The actual  purported diaries were disclosed once again, this time to British journalist John Costello, who again was only permitted to look and not to copy. A copied document is, in the hands of any journalist or academic, a published document. And a published document which has passed from the control of its owner, and in the case of the Göbbels material, its creator, cannot be sold for profit.Because handwritten documents on the original, special paper Göbbels used would have been nearly impossible to successfully fake, the new Soviet line was that the documents had actually been typed and then put onto glass negatives. These were hidden by the Germans in cases where the Soviets were able to "discover" them after the war. Having altered the Göbbels’ diaries from "several stacked folders" of handwritten material to a box of more easily forged photographs of typed manuscript, the Russians began to offer their rare, politically-incorrect material to sources in Germany for sale and  publication. German experts universally rejected these productions as completely fake. Genuine Göbbels papers are to be found in the archives of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University in California [1942-1943], the German State Archives in Koblenz, the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, and in the hands of the collector and archivist, Francois Genoud, in Switzerland. Much of this original material has been published and is well-known to the academic world. But the documents originating in Moscow, especially the glass-negative photographic copies, are entirely spurious and were initially designed with political propaganda in mind, though later sold for a considerable sum of money to a tabloid journalist intent on publishing them as his own political propaganda. Like the fictitious Walter Schellenberg "memoirs" published under the title "The Labyrinth", the dissemination of the equally fake Soviet produced Göbbels’ Papers does a tremendous disservice to legitimate historians and researchers into whose works some of this contaminated material will eventually seep. The temptation to embroider historical facts to fit a particular ideological point of view is difficult for some journalists to successfully resist. Some might well accept a faked Göbbels file, if for example, it were to prove that Hitler did not order a holocaustic killing of European Jews, while others might well use the medium of a questionable interview to prove the contrary.