From the author.
Three-quarters of a century has passed since the last days of the Great War in Europe. It contained so many mysteries that it is still called ‘The Unknown War.’ One such mystery was Hitler’s disappearance from besieged Berlin. His footprints have never been found and the remains attributed to him have never been identified. Mysteries give rise to myths, and historians, fulfilling the will of their masters, multiply these myths.
In April 1945, in the days of the collapse of his Reich, Hitler disappeared. He was no coward, he had fought in World War I and had battle honors, and he had been in the battlefield areas throughout World War II. He was able to shoot himself, to not fall alive into enemy hands.
The victors found a body in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery that looked like Hitler, with a bullet hole in his forehead. However, experts determined that it was the body of his double, Gustav Weber. According to the then-head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, in the documents collected by his service, there was nothing to indicate that Hitler was dead. Stalin, who searched for Hitler for the rest of his life, was also convinced of this.
Fictions and speculations on the subject were written and circulated worldwide in hundreds of thousands of copies.
But as the rain washes away the old paint from the fence, so time washes away the lies. And many of the secrets of that war are now open. And the uncovered truth is available to millions. The question remains: if the Führer fled, what changed his vow to die for Germany? After all, he swore loyalty to his nation until his death, which proved decisive in his election as chancellor in 1933.
There are several versions of Hitler’s suicide. Officers close to him were in Soviet captivity. In a confidential conversation, the Führer’s adjutant, SS Major Heinz Linge, told the Führer’s security chief, SS General Rattenhuber, that he had carried out the last order of his boss and shot the dead Führer in the head after he had taken poison. The Führer’s wife, Eva Braun, was also poisoned. The bodies, wrapped in soldiers’ blankets, were then taken to the courtyard and burned.
Here the testimony of officers from Hitler’s entourage who were present at the burning of the corpses diverges. No one saw the faces of the corpses, some saw shoes, some saw boots, and others saw nothing. Though carried out, doused, set on fire… Wikipedia, this modern internet tool of mass propaganda offers its version, talking about the bloodstain on Hitler’s temple. According to this source, the dictator shot himself in the temple. According to the KGB version, Hitler swallows poison and then shoots himself in the mouth. There is even more drama here, just breathtaking! This story also ends with the burning of the bodies in the garden of the Reich Chancellery.
All versions are full of contradictory details. If you put them all together, the version of Hitler’s suicide looks like this: Hitler poisoned himself, then shot himself in the mouth, and for reliability put another bullet in the temple. Then the Fuhrer’s adjutant, Major Linge, shot his chief in the forehead. But that was not enough for Hitler! Wrapping himself in a soldier’s blanket so that no one would recognize him, he went out into the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery, doused himself with petrol, and burned himself, carefully mixing the burning remains, because even in this matter he trusted no one…
In the post-war years, the results of the work to identify Hitler’s alleged remains were never published. Nor were the archives of his doctors, dentists, and other medical records that could have been used as evidence made public. In secret from the Allies, Stalin continued his search, his special teams digging up the entire territory of the Reich Chancellery, and the excavations were only stopped with the death of the Kremlin schizophrenic in 1953.
After Germany’s surrender in May 1945, Stalin, watching the Allies’ fuss over projects to redefine the post-war world, realized that they had exhausted the subject of Hitler’s disappearance. Having told the people of Europe that Hitler was dead and they had nothing to fear, America became the main figure in the restoration of their economies. Britain was shattered by the war, lost its colonial power, and ceded it to America.
And what could Comrade Stalin offer the occupied countries of Europe? He had no economic model other than the Gulag economy. All he had to do to keep the people in line was to frighten them with the myth of a living Hitler. But Stalin himself needed proof that Hitler was dead and would never tell the world about the Soviet dictator’s plans to take over and divide Europe. Stalin’s fable writers distorted the truth about that war forever. Later, with the fall of communism in the late 90s, the KGB opened part of its archives and presented new documents to the public. There was nothing new in them.
“AND WHERE IS THE BODY…?”
On the night of May 2, 1945, the breakout groups were leaving the Reich Chancellery. Their fate was different. Some were lucky enough to escape and melt into the mass of refugees. Others were captured by the Americans, served short sentences, and were released, some were recruited and continued their normal lives, earning US dollars.
Those who were captured by the Russians were less fortunate: they spent many years of their lives in camps, and many died in Russia, far from home. Several officers from Hitler’s entourage who were present at the burning of corpses in the garden of the Reich Chancellery on April 30, 1945: the Führer’s personal adjutant Linge, chief of personal security Rattenhuber, military adjutant Günsche, the Führer’s pilot Baur and many others – were captured by the Russians.
When questioned, they all stated that they had not seen Hitler dead. But were these testimonies of the prisoners published in the Soviet press? Well, not least to support the myth of a living Hitler and continue to frighten the common people? No, they were not published! Stalin’s satraps hid these testimonies in their vaults forever. In the cellars of the KGB, prisoners were interrogated hundreds of times, squeezed out of them the necessary testimony, letter by letter, word by word, and forced to sign what the poor people could no longer remember. They were signing papers in exchange for their lives.
On 1 May 1945, when the commander of the 8th Red Army, General Chuikov, learned of Hitler’s suicide from the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht troops, General Krebs, he immediately reported the news to Marshal Zhukov. Marshal Zhukov telephoned Stalin.
“And where is the body?” came the question from Moscow. The very next day, the body was found by the counterintelligence of the 3rd Army on the grounds of the Reich Chancellery. The body was wrapped in a soldier’s blanket and lightly buried in the ground. This “Hitler” had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. There was no exit wound, the gun was of small caliber and the bullet was lodged in the dead man’s skull. As the digging continued, another “Hitler” was found!
On 4 May 1945, a special commission headed by Colonel Miroshnichenko, chief of counter-intelligence for the 3rd Army, drew up a report and sent it to Moscow. The report listed two bodies of Adolf Hitler, the body of his wife Eva Braun, and the bodies of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, his wife Magda Goebbels, their six children, and the body of General Krebs, which had been found on the grounds of the Reich Chancellery. The burned remains, allegedly those of another Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, could not be identified; both bodies were almost destroyed by the fire. The remains of one of the unidentified corpses were missing the upper occipital part of the skull.
The body of “Hitler”, the one with the hole in the forehead, was urgently sent to Moscow, to Stalin, who wanted to personally confirm the death of his enemy. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was a prank, a parting joke of the Third Reich. Stalin’s experts found darned socks on the body. But Hitler wouldn’t wear darned socks. Most importantly, the corpse had only one testicle in its scrotum, whereas Hitler had two. The Führer was a full-fledged man with a son and two daughters.
The “Hitler” found turned out to be Gustav Weber, a professionally trained stand-in who played his part to the end. The idea for the prank probably came from SS General Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo. The General was a master of practical jokes. Before the war, he had played a prank on Stalin. Taking advantage of the Soviet leader’s manic suspicions, he slipped Comrade Joseph a masterful fake, which provoked Stalin’s purges in the Red Army in 1936-1938.
The body of the double was cremated, and the unidentified burned corpse was thought to be Hitler’s remains. There was no proof, so the discovery was kept secret for many years. A search was ordered for the missing skull fragment. Stalin spent the rest of his life searching for it. After his death, Soviet propaganda published fictitious arguments and wrote weighty books about the discovery of Hitler’s remains.
Soviet intelligence shared some of its findings with the Allies. This information was included in the US intelligence report submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal on 3 November 1945. The report stated that between 2 and 8 May 1945 a special unit of the Soviet Army had found two corpses on the grounds of the Reich Chancellery. The corpse, which matched Hitler’s features, was wearing his uniform and had a bullet hole in the middle of its forehead. The second corpse was wearing the uniform of Martin Bormann, the sinister secretary of the Nazi Party. Original identity papers were found in the pockets of this corpse’s uniform. Stalin’s pathologists concluded that both bodies were fakes. The “Hitler” corpse was younger and shorter than the original, the “Bormann” corpse was taller than Bormann himself, and the corpse’s head was so disfigured that identification was impossible. Unlike Hitler, Bormann had no double, so at the last moment, his assistants had to make do with whatever material was available. The “material” was taller than Bormann, and the limbs sticking out of the uniform gave the fakeaway. The fake was so crude that the body was photographed and immediately burned. Bormann acted hastily and his unprofessional intervention only damaged Muller’s plan, who hoped that the body of Hitler’s double would be taken for the original. The search for the victors would be stopped.
In secret from the Americans and the British, Stalin’s services continued to excavate the Reich Chancellery for several more years. The results of the excavations were made public only 23 years later, in Lev Bezymyansky’s book ‘The Death of Adolf Hitler’, published in 1968. The author pointed out that in May 1945, brave diggers found the burnt bodies of Goebbels and his wife Magda on the territory of the Reich Chancellery. The bodies of Goebbels’ six children and the body of General Krebs were found in the bunker. In addition, two completely burnt corpses, which could not be identified, were found in a shell crater on the site. These unidentified remains were believed to be those of Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun. Evidence that the remains of these two bodies belonged to Hitler and his wife was never presented. In his book, the security author did not mention the body of Hitler’s doppelganger. An example of how history can be changed by glossing over some facts. In May 1945, Stalin did not believe that the remains found by his Cerberus belonged to Hitler, he was afraid that the latter was alive and could tell the truth about him, the perpetrator of the world slaughter. Stalin needed Hitler alive so he could find him and kill him immediately. But Stalin also needed Hitler alive to justify the Soviet occupation of part of Europe. On 26 May 1945, Stalin told Harry Hopkins, the American government representative in Moscow: “In my opinion, Hitler is alive and hiding somewhere..”.
On 9 June 1945, the Soviet military command in Berlin held a press conference for the Western press. Asked by journalists what the Soviet command knew about Hitler’s fate, Marshal Zhukov replied:
“We have not been able to identify Hitler’s body. I cannot say anything definite about his disappearance. He could have left Berlin at the very last moment…”.
General Bezarin, the Soviet military commander in Berlin, added his opinion: “…Hitler has disappeared somewhere in Europe. Perhaps he is in Spain, with Franco. He had the opportunity to fly away…”.
On 17 July 1945, at the Allied Conference in Potsdam, Stalin told the new US President Harry Truman and his Secretary of State James Byrnes: “I believe that Hitler is alive. A detailed examination by our experts found no evidence that the remains belonged to Hitler, nor did they find any other evidence of his death.”
In October 1945, Stalin’s NKVD opened a search file on Adolf Hitler, number 300919. At the same time, Gestapo chief SS General Heinrich Müller was declared wanted. In 1946, Stalin ordered the resumption of excavations in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. Stalin’s “archaeologists” searched for the unfortunate fragment of the occipital bone of one of the unidentified corpses. They found only a fragment of the left temporal part of the skull with a bullet hole, indicating that the owner of this skull shot himself in the right temple. The burnt corpse found, which was to be regarded as Hitler’s corpse, lacked the back of the skull, so the fragment of temporal bone found did not fit Stalin’s version of Hitler’s suicide, in which he was said to have shot himself in the mouth. Orders were given to dig deeper. In 1948, the Ministry of State Security of the USSR opened another search case on Adolf Hitler under the number PF10422 (archive number of the MGB Agent Fund 300919). Dead or alive, Hitler guaranteed Stalin sleepless nights.
HITLER’S DENTISTS.
The found, burned, and unidentified remains had teeth that were known not to burn in fire. That’s why counter-intelligence officers were so keen to find Hitler’s dentist. He was SS General Professor Hugo Blaschke, who had served the Führer since 1932 and knew his patient’s teeth as his own. The professor disappeared from Berlin on 21 April 1945, the day after attending the Fuhrer’s 55th birthday celebrations. With him disappeared the medical records of all his high-ranking clients. The dentist was later captured by the Americans, but the files disappeared without a trace.
While in American custody, Blaschke was informed of the Russians’ search for evidence and agreed to cooperate by offering his services to identify the teeth of his former client’s corpse from memory. The Americans then informed their Soviet allies. On learning that the Americans had the man they wanted, Stalin’s secret services immediately lost interest in him and never tried to take him up on his offer. Why was this?
They must have realized that if Blaschke failed to identify his former client’s teeth, their version of the discovery of Hitler’s body would burst like a soap bubble. Passionate interrogation, a favorite method of Stalin’s secret services to extract the necessary testimony, was impossible; Blaschke was in the American zone. And if, in the presence of the Americans, the dentist identified the remains presented him with Hitler’s teeth, the myth of a living Hitler, blown up by Stalin, would burst. The occupation of European countries by Soviet troops was explained to the world as protective action arguing Hitler was still alive and danger was real. The dentist’s proof of Hitler’s death would have immediately demonstrated to the world community Stalin’s real invasive intentions. The Soviet troops would then have had to withdraw from Europe and return home, to the East. Could Stalin himself have allowed this to happen?
Blaschke took the papers out of Berlin, but in his haste, he forgot something. While rummaging through the professor’s office, Stalin’s bloodhounds found in the remaining papers the names and addresses of Blaschke’s assistants. They were an assistant, Kathy Heusemann, and a technician, Fritz Echtmann, who made dentures. These two were taken to Moscow, to the Lubyanka. During the first interrogations, on 10 and 19 May 1945, Keti testified that she had worked as an assistant to Professor Blaschke since December 1944 and had served numerous leaders of the Reich. Blaschke’s employment of Keti lasted until April 1945, less than six months. All of her work as an assistant consisted of preparing instruments for the dentist, so when questioned by investigators, Kathy was unable to recall how Hitler’s teeth differed from those of two dozen of her boss’s high-ranking clients.
Technician Fritz Echtmann testified under questioning that he never witnessed Prof. Blaschke’s work at all, performing his assignments based on casts and recommendations. Echtmann noted that the dental bridge he made for Hitler in March 1945 was not claimed due to lack of availability, due to critical war circumstances. In the last days of the war, Hitler had no time for his problems. But Stalin’s services had their methods of restoring memory, so arrested people were sent to cellars so that there they could begin to remember.
THE GESTAPO CHIEF’S SENSE OF HUMOUR.
After the war, the head of the Gestapo, SS General Muller, was wanted by the secret services of many countries. Hunted for one reason: Muller had exclusive information on the intelligence and counter-intelligence agents of every country. General Muller was the only man in the world who not only knew the secrets of spies but knew many of them by sight, drinking coffee and cognac with them in his office. Possessing the art of psychology, he easily converted spies, turning them into his informants, double and triple agents.
According to official documents from the German authorities, the Gestapo chief died at the end of April 1945. There was also his grave in the cemetery, with a modest monument and an appropriate inscription. In 1963, the American Secret Service, overcome by professional curiosity, opened the grave. They discovered the remains of three bodies, none of which belonged to Mueller. Moreover, the remains of two of the bodies belonged to women. The familiar handwriting revealed the author of the riddle he had left for the Russians in Berlin in May 1945. A master chess player, Muller always calculated the game several moves in advance. A master of the secret police, whose profession taught him to see through people, he was also a master of black humor…
(Will be continued/ please, come again later)
© Copyright: 2019 Walter Maria
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