Our story begins with what, under other circumstances, might have been a happy occasion--the wedding of Adolf Hitler and his longtime mistress Eva Braun. Following the reception, just after midnight on April 30, "with a faraway expression," Hitler "went down the hall, shaking hands. Several said a few words, but he did not answer, moving his lips inaudibly."
After awakening later in the morning, Hitler conferred with his SS adjutant Otto Günsche, his servant Heinz Linge and his chauffeur Erich Kempka. Günsche brought cyanide capsules to the anteroom that served as the Führer's makeshift office, and Hitler had him feed one to his pet Alsatian dog.
Curiously, Hitler, who loved dogs, showed no emotion as he watched the animal die during the next hour. He seemed only interested in how long the cyanide took to take effect.
Why did Hitler have his dog poisoned?
Could it be that Hitler realizes that fooling the bystanders with a replacement corpse is going to be much easier than fooling his faithful pet?
Late in the forenoon, the military conference took place as usual. Hitler received the information that the Soviet (Russian) forces had by now occupied the Tiergarten, Potsdamer Platz and the subway in the Volkstrasse, in the immediate vicinity of the chancellery.Then he ordered the delivery of 200 liters of gasoline.
At 2 p.m., Hitler received Generals Burgdorf and Krebs, Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann and Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels and advised them to "break out the best way you can -in small groups."
Then he had a very strange conversation with his personal pilot, Hans Baur.
As they clasped hands, Baur begged him to escape by plane to Argentina, to Japan, or to one of the Arab countries, where his anti-Semitism had made him such staunch friends. But the Führer would not have it.
"You must have the courage to face the consequences," Hitler told Baur, "I am ending my earthly stay. I know that by tomorrow millions of people will curse me, but Fate wanted it that way."
Why did he say "earthly stay" instead of "life?" Was he speaking of himself in a religious sense as the Teutonic Messiah? Or was he planning to flee into space?
Between 2:30 and 3 p.m., the phone rang. It was Günsche again. 'I need two hundred liters of gasoline immediately,' he said huskily. Kempka thought it was some kind of joke and wanted to know why he needed so much. Günsche could not tell him on the phone. 'I want it at the entrance of the Führerbunker without fail.'
Note that it was Günsche and not Hitler who made this phone call, even though it was Hitler himself who originally ordered the gasoline. Why didn't Hitler pick up the phone?
Because he was no longer in the Bunker?
Around 3:15 p.m., Traudl Junge was telling the Göbbels children a fairy story to keep them from going downstairs when a shot echoed through the damp concrete. Young Helmut (Göbbels) thought it was an enemy bomb and said, 'Bull's-eye!'
Nobody heard the shot that killed Hitler...
Witnesses who were standing by the double doors to Hitler's study, which were thick enough to muzzle such a sound, claimed they heard nothing.
Those who did make this claim in 1945 withdrew it, saying Allied interrogators pressured them into saying it.
Some people who claim to have heard a shot were not even present at the scene.
|
At this point there are wildly varying versions of what happened. Günsche said he was in the conference room with Göbbels and Bormann when he heard the shot, and they rushed to the anteroom with Göbbels in the lead.
But Rattenhuber, commander of Hitler's SS guards, claimed that Günsche was already in the anteroom when he arrived.
One version has Hitler and wife Eva sitting together on the bloodstained couch. But Kempka's first words when he walked in were "Where's Eva?"
Other versions had Hitler shot in the right temple, in the left temple, or in the mouth. Hitler lying slumped back in the couch. Hitler pitched forward with his face at rest on the coffee table.
Never was there a more confused crime scene.
The most common version goes like this: "the Führer on the couch, sprawled face down across a low table, and Eva, slumped over the armrest, her lips slightly closed in death, discolored by cyanide. Her dress was wet.
Most homicide detectives, upon viewing this crime scene, would have turned to Günsche and said, "Why did you kill him?"
Someone got shot. But was it Hitler?
Rattenhuber ordered the bodies (of Hitler and Eva) to be taken into the courtyard. There he had the gasoline poured over them and invited the mourners to come up. No sooner had they assembled than Russian shelling drove them back to the bunker entrance. Hitler's SS adjutant Otto Günsche thereupon tossed a burning rag upon both corpses, and when the leaping flames swathed the bodies, everyone stood at attention and gave the Nazi salute.
German historian Werner Maser wrote in his biography Adolf Hitler that
The charred body (Hitler’s)….. there was nothing left of the face and only a horribly burnt remnant of the shattered skull- was pushed on to a tarpaulin, lowered into a shell crater in the vast graveyard around the chancellery and, under heavy soviet artillery fire, covered with earth, which was then stamped down with a wooden stamper.
Maser cited Otto Günsche’s testimony. But when asked in 1994 Günsche said that he didn’t known Maser and that he had never said anything like what Maser cited in his book. This quote from Otto Günsche was used in a biography on Hitler by Joachim C Fest, newspapers and many other books. This shows how myths and legends are born and perpetuated in literature by reputable historians and journalists.
It's possible that Hitler might have faked his own death. It seems strange that Eva's body was "slumped over the armrest," as if someone had dropped it there. And why did she spill that Tokay wine on her dress?
Suppose Hitler had decided earlier to fake his own death. It would have been a simple matter for the SS to find a "double" for the Führer among the thousands of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps.
Hitler already has his exit prepared. That may explain his unusual sang-froid when Baur proposes a last-minute flight out of embattled Berlin.
A live Hitler would have brought the Allies into howling pursuit. But who's going to search diligently for a "dead man?"
After Baur leaves, Hitler invites Eva to join him for a glass of Tokay wine. But Eva's glass contains an ampoule of cyanide--one of the capsules Hitler was experimenting with that morning. Eva takes the fatal sip, then topples to the floor, spilling the wine on her dress. Hitler picks her up and drops her over the armrest. His new wife has become "stage scenery" for his great death scene.
After shaking hands with his co-conspirator Günsche, Hitler is out the door.
He had ordered that no-one was to enter the "Death Room" until 10 minutes after the shot was heard - Why? Because that was the time needed to carry the already dead double in. The vase with roses in it was knocked over and that was too far away to be hit by anyone in their death throes. He was slumped forward, hands on knees, leaning to the right slightly- against logic because the bullet was IN the right temple and the gun he fired was on his left and he was not left-handed. NOT ONE witness there mentioned the smell of cordite from a gun; but all recognised the smell of cyanide. Bormann carried Eva on his own and she was described as "hanging like a wet dishrag" whereas not even Günsche could carry Hitler and 3 people had to carry his ALREADY STIFF body to the chancellery garden. after 10 minutes his body was already stiff.
So, did Hitler really shoot himself? Or did he, with Günsche's help, pull off an escape worthy of Harry Houdini?
No bullet was ever found. But that does not matter. The blood stains on the sofa were reportedly of the wrong blood-type. But such details need not concern us. Hitler's entire body apparently vanished into thin air.
In 1952 there was a proper proceeding at the Federal Court in Berchtesgaden to declare Hitler’s dead and to determine the exact time of his death.
It could not be concluded because no body has ever been found identifying Hitler.
Hitler’s chauffeur Erich Kempka and former Reich Youth leader Artur Axmann, had both testified under oath in Nuremberg that on 30 April 1945 they had seen a body being carried out of the Führer’s bunker which was wrapped in a blanket and was dressed in Hitler’s trousers, shoes and socks. Nevertheless the Berlin records office did not consider this to be proof that Hitler was dead maintaining that this could have been any corpse dressed in Hitler’s trousers and shoes.
Is there any credible evidence that there was ever a Hitler "double" recruited and trained by Germans to act in Hitler's place?
a) No documentation has ever come into the public light detailing any programs, initiatives, payments, personnel involved with a doubles program;
b) Peter Hoffmann, one of the foremost experts on Hitler's private security, makes no mention of doubles in his book Hitler's Personal Security;
c) No one need bother drag out yet again the grainy, out of focus black and white photograph of the so-called Hitler double found by the Soviets. It is nothing more than an image of a cadaver that was misidentified as Hitler by the Soviets in their initial rush to find the body. They worked it up a bit to make it look more like Hitler. A day or two later, they found the real Hitler corpse, rather than admit their mistake, the Soviets covered themselves by calling it "Hitler's double".
The fact that a maid admitted seeing a Hitler look-alike confined to the bunker's kitchen area was not considered to be of great consequence, and the murder of the Doppelgänger was just another war technicality.
Russian photo of "Hitler Corpse"
May 2, 1945
(note bullet hole in forehead)
Western sources have reported that the dead body in the photo was Hitler's double (or Doppelgänger), a man called Gustav who was executed with a gunshot to the forehead. Some give his name as Gustav Weber, while other say he was Gustav Weler.
99% of Google hits will just contain a single sentence:
Gustav Weler was employed as Hitler's body-double, a political decoy who was shot in the forehead after Hitler's suicide, and his corpse put in a water cistern where it was discovered and photographed by Soviets who mistook him for Hitler.
He was known around Berlin for his amazing resemblance to Hitler. In prewar Berlin he was repeatedly arrested by Gestapo for impersonating Hitler and at one point ordered to remove the moustache.
Martin Bormann introduced Weler to Hitler at the Berghof, but the Führer was enraged and ordered that he never wanted to see the Doppelgänger again and that he was to be imprisoned in a concentration camp.
Bormann, sensing that Weler could prove to be useful, disobeyed Hitler's order and hid Weler away in Munich.
During the last year of the war Gustav Weler was again arrested and disappeared.
The body discovered in the water tower of the Berlin Führerbunker in May 1945 has been wrongly reported as that of Gustav Weler. However, this is not the case. Hugh Thomas's 1996 book Doppelgängers reports that Weler was indeed a Hitler lookalike but was located and interviewed by Allied forces after Hitler's death.
Who could it be then?
Reports now circulate in Russia that an actor, Andreas Kronstädt, was the impersonator who had volunteered to die in Hitler's place. This was the theme of the 1996 film, Conversation with the Beast, directed by one of Fassbinder's followers, Armin Müller-Stahl.
Meanwhile, in Germany some suspicion still points to Julius Schreck, who was Hitler's favorite driver and party member from 1921. He occasionally acted as Hitler's double because of their resemblance.
An attack on Hitler motivated by Röhm's assassination was brought forward by Otto Strasser in his book Flight from Terror (NY 1943). A SA man named Heinrich Grunow, who had not swallowed Ernst Röhm's murder, got in touch with Otto Strasser, head of the Black Front opposition movement to Hitler, and set up a plan to kill Hitler while the Führer was driven to his beloved Berchtesgarten retreat. Grunow was a member of the close guard protecting Hitler at Berchtesgarten and knew that at some spot on the road the car had to slow down to less than 15mph and argued to Strasser that it would be a propitious location to shot at Hitler. Strasser agreed to the plot and Grunow went to execute his murderous task.
Unfortunately, according to Strasser, Hitler had taken the wheel on this day and Grunow shot the driver in the back seat while Hitler escaped alive. The irony is that Grunow, persuaded that he had succeeded in his attack, committed suicide on the spot while Hitler-the-driver scared to death rushed out of the car that he had put to a sudden halt. Hitler's chauffeur, Julius Schreck, was hit in the chest, the jaw and his right temple. Officially he died of a tooth infection.
|
According to some reports, Schreck died in a traffic accident in 1936. Other reports say that he died from an abscessed tooth fever. To confuse matters more, Time magazine once wrote that Hitler's alleged double was Heinrich Bergner who was killed when Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg planted a bomb under Hitler's chair on July 20, 1944, at his headquarters in East Prussia. Some sources have oddly suggested that the burnt corpse found in the Chancellery garden was that of SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, husband of Eva Braun's sister, Gretl, who was stripped of his rank for committing treason and shot outside the Berlin bunker two days before Hitler's suicide.
|