Hunting Hitler
Page 8
Evidently Trevor-Roper’s investigation was not sufficient to impress Eisenhower that Hitler was dead. The report in The Stars and Stripes that Eisenhower had changed his mind to think Hitler had escaped and was alive was published the day before Saxe sat down to type his report of Trevor-Roper’s conclusions to the contrary. Still, in the final analysis, the pressure to be politically correct weighed on Eisenhower as he was preparing to enter politics. In his 1948 book on World War II, Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower portrayed Hitler’s demise as a suicide, commenting: “Hitler had committed suicide and the tattered mantle of his authority had fallen to Admiral Doenitz.”93
Hitler killed by artillery fire?
The declassified US military intelligence documents in the National Archives make clear that a second story of how Hitler died was prepared and ready for use, just in case the inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony and the lack of a corpse or any other physical evidence Hitler committed suicide began to cause suspicion.
On September 10, 1945, Dr. Karlheinz Spaeth provided a sworn and signed statement to First Lieutenant Dennison G. Stevens of the US Summary Military Government Court in Germany about how he attended Hitler after he had been mortally wounded by Russian artillery fire. Spaeth swore to the following:
During the last months of the war I was the battalion doctor with the 2nd Battalion, 23 Regt. 9th Parachute Division. Our unit was engaged in battle in and around Berlin (area of Kuestrin). On the 1st of May I had established a collecting station in the cellar of the Landwehrkasino right across from the Bunker at the Zoo. Along about 3 o’clock in the afternoon I was informed that Hitler was in our sector. I left the cellar and went into the street in order to see him, or get a look at him. The commander of the battalion, Oberstleutnant Graf von Raiffenstein, received a report from Lt. Kurt Uhlik, who was leading Company 5, that there was continuous artillery and trench mortar fire outside in front of the tank barricade, which was stationed in the subterranean passage to the zoo.
Spaeth continued the narrative, pointing out that Hitler ignored the fact that it would be dangerous to approach the tank barrier.
Hitler ignored the warning and walked to the dangerous spot, and was, according to general opinion, wounded together with a number of SS leaders. I saw that there was considerable excitement and hubbub at the tank barricade. I was called shortly thereafter and saw the following: Hitler was lowered to the floor in cover. A shell fragment, about 10 cm long and 8 to 10 mm wide had pierced the uniform, went through his chest, and entered the lungs on both sides. It was no use to do anything. I took a few first aid bandages, which I had with me, and bandaged him. During this time Hitler groaned continuously. He was not fully conscious. To relieve his pains, I went back to my collecting station to get some morphine, and gave him a double strength injection.
The Russian shelling made it impossible to move Hitler to a safe shelter, Spaeth described, making it clear he knew Hitler would die.
After I had pronounced the Führer dead, and informed the SS leaders of this fact, I was released and went back to my work. I had one of the soldiers take a sheet to the spot where Hitler had died. The soldier came back with the sheet, and informed me he had been told the sheet was not needed, as the corpse would be destroyed. According to the reports of two other soldiers, which were handed to me about two hours later, the body of Hitler had been blown into the air by the surviving SS leaders with two three-kilogram charges. Whether or not this is so, I cannot say, because the building was hit continuously by artillery fire, and one detonation could not be distinguished from another.94
Whether this version of Hitler’s death failed to advance because it was considered incredible, too fantastic to be believed, or because the suicide story had more depth and witnesses, is unknown. Clearly, it wasn’t possible for both versions of Hitler’s death to be true. Spaeth’s signed deposition was produced in both German and English versions and accompanied by a hand-drawn diagram where Spaeth indicated precisely where he was claiming Hitler had been hit by the artillery fire. Spaeth concluded his deposition by making clear the Soviet army had held him captive at the Prisoner of War Hospital at Potsdam. “During my stay in the hospital, myself, the medical personnel, and other officers were interviewed by a Russian captain,” Spaeth concluded his deposition. “We stated at the time that Hitler died in action, [I] made a sketch and reported the same as above stated.”95
The Hitler marriage and will
One additional factor may have influenced the choice of the suicide story as the preferred version of Hitler’s death. The eyewitnesses in the Führerbunker described how Hitler in the last days took two steps that indicated he was preparing to die: First, he signed his last will and testament, and second, he married Eva Braun, but only after Eva Braun agreed to die with him in Berlin. That the most notorious mass murderer at the end of his life should entertain such mundane sentiments as the desire to tie up loose ends of his genocidal and criminally immoral life by writing a will and marrying his mistress seems decidedly out of character. Still, the point of the story appears to be to set the Hitler and Eva Braun double-suicide story in an emotional context. Less suspicious critics would therefore be led along to think the double-suicide had been preceded by Hitler and Eva Braun taking end-of-life steps to somehow legitimize a longtime love relationship that had been hidden from the general awareness of the German people.
If the marriage ceremony and the last will and testament were fabricated, very possibly the goal was to add an element of sentimentality to Hitler’s last days in order to make his suicide more believable to ordinary citizens worldwide. Somehow, the Nazi propagandist positioning of Hitler for public consumption could easily have calculated that having Hitler marry Eva Braun would achieve the same emotional impact upon the German people as had been accomplished before the war with the many photographs taken showing Hitler greeting children with a smile or portraying him as a loving master of his various German shepherd dogs. A skillful propagandist such as Goebbels would have appreciated the message subtly communicated by the contrivance: Hitler may have caused the deaths of more than fifty million in World War II, but he liked children and was kind to his dogs, so in the end he also married the woman he loved.
On May 16, 1945, Lieutenant General Lucien K. Truscott, commanding the Third US Army and the Eastern Military District, announced that, after a long search, Third Army intelligence officers had found a signed copy of Hitler’s will, witnessed by Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf. Additionally found was an original marriage license between Hitler and Eva Braun, witnessed by Goebbels and Bormann. In making the announcement, Truscott noted that Hitler’s will expressed “Hitler’s wish that he and Eva Braun, whom he married when she volunteered to share his fate in the besieged Berlin, should be cremated ‘immediately at the place where I have done the greatest part of my work during the twelve years service for my people.’” Truscott noted Hitler’s reference was apparently to the Reich Chancellery. Truscott allowed the US military to make public that part of Hitler’s will in which he blamed Jews for the start of World War II. In the last will and testament, Hitler raved: “It is not true that I or anybody else in Germany wanted the war in the year 1939. It was desired and provoked entirely by those international statesman who were either of Jewish origin or who worked in the Jewish interests.”
There is considerable evidence that the Hitler will was forged and the marriage ceremony with Eva Braun never happened. Surgeon Hugh Thomas in his 1995 book, The Murder of Adolf Hitler, noted the lack of independent verification that Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun ever took place. “There has been surprisingly little argument about Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun, allegedly carried out by Walter Wagner, gauleiter of Berlin, on 29 April, in the map room in the Bunker, in front of Bormann and Goebbels as witnesses,” he wrote. “This paucity of argument is despite the claims of several, including Hanna Reitsch and General Robert Ritter von Greim, that the marriage ever took place.”96 Hanna R
eitsch was a renowned German aviatrix who was awarded the Iron Cross for her heroism flying in World War II. She is known to have made a daring landing in Berlin and visited Hitler in the Führerbunker, and to have met with him shortly before the fall of Berlin. General Robert Ritter von Greim, a German Field Marshal and army pilot who was reputedly Reitsch’s lover, was the passenger accompanying Reitsch in the daring Berlin landing. Supposedly, after visiting with Reitsch and Ritter von Greim, Hitler ordered Reitsch to fly herself and Greim out of Berlin, a feat accomplished by taking off from a Tiergarten strip near the Brandenburg Gate cleared for that purpose. Reitsch narrowly managed as the Soviet Third Shock Army advanced. Russian soldiers watching Reitsch’s plane lift off from Berlin were at the time convinced they had just witnessed Hitler’s escape.
Hugh Thomas is equally skeptical over the authenticity of Hitler’s last will and testament. He was especially critical that Trevor-Roper had accepted the document as authentic based on expert scrutiny of the signature and the testimony of Frau Gertruad Junge, Hitler’s secretary, who had typed the documents. “Since the fiasco of the Hitler Diaries, the public has become skeptical about the abilities of handwriting experts and historians, but there are pointers which suggest that it was Goebbels who either invented, dictated or altered the final version of the will, as the language is so similar to his own,” Hugh Thomas wrote. “The signature [Hitler’s]—no more than a squiggle—could have been genuine, a good forgery or even a bad forgery—there was, and is, no scientific way of telling.”97
Hitler double
In the garden outside the Führerbunker
Berlin, May 2, 1945
Soviet army propaganda film, 1945
Hitler double, close-up view
In the garden outside the Führerbunker
Berlin, May 2, 1945
Soviet army propaganda film, 1945
Hitler double
In the garden outside the Führerbunker
Berlin, May 2, 1945
Soviet army propaganda film, 1945
Hitler double
In the garden outside the Führerbunker
Berlin, May 2, 1945
Soviet army propaganda film, 1945
Declassified US Army Counter Intelligence Corps report detailing information Hitler had escaped to Argentina
September 25, 1945.
Source: Record Locator 319, Entry (A1) 134-B, Personal File Name, “Hitler,” Boxes 295-297, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Detailed view:
Declassified US Army Counter Intelligence Corps report detailing information Hitler had escaped to Argentina
September 25, 1945.
Source: Record Locator 319, Entry (A1) 134-B, Personal File Name, “Hitler,” Boxes 295-297, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Letter from John Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, addressed to the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Subject: Hitler Hideout in Argentina,” dated November 13, 1945, p. 1.
Source: FBI Records: “The Vault,” Adolf Hitler, Part 1, vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler.
Letter from John Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, addressed to the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Subject: Hitler Hideout in Argentina,” dated November 13, 1945, p. 2.
Source: FBI Records: “The Vault,” Adolf Hitler, Part 1 vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler.
Detailed view:
Letter from John Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, addressed to the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Subject: Hitler Hideout in Argentina,” dated November 13, 1945, p. 3.
Source: FBI Records: “The Vault,” Adolf Hitler, Part 1, vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler.
Full-page view:
“Ike Believes Hitler Lives,” The Stars and Stripes,
Monday, October 8, 1945, p. 8
Detailed view:
“Ike Believes Hitler Lives,” The Stars and Stripes,
Monday, October 8, 1945, p. 8
Edward L. Saxe, Major, GSC, Chief, Operations Section
“SUBJECT: Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Adolf Hitler”
October 9, 1945, p. 1.
Source: Record Locator 319, Entry (A1) 134-B, Personal File Name, “Hitler,” Boxes 295-297, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Edward L. Saxe, Major, GSC, Chief, Operations Section
“SUBJECT: Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Adolf Hitler”
October 9, 1945, p. 2.
Source: Record Locator 319, Entry (A1) 134-B, Personal File Name, “Hitler,” Boxes 295-297, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Detailed view:
Edward L. Saxe, Major, GSC, Chief, Operations Section
“SUBJECT: Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Adolf Hitler”
October 9, 1945, p. 1.
Source: Record Locator 319, Entry (A1) 134-B, Personal File Name, “Hitler,” Boxes 295-297, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
German U-Boat U-530 arrives, Mar del Plata, Argentina, July 10, 1945
Ahora, July 14, 1945
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
US Naval Attaché, Military Intelligence Division, “German Submarine Surrenders to Argentine Navy,” July 18, 1945, p. 1.
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
US Naval Attaché, Military Intelligence Division, “German Submarine Surrenders to Argentine Navy,” July 18, 1945, p. 2.
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
US Naval Attaché, Military Intelligence Division, “German Submarine Surrenders to Argentine Navy,” July 18, 1945, p. 3.
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Detailed view:
US Naval Attaché, Military Intelligence Division, “German Submarine Surrenders to Argentine Navy,” July 18, 1945, p. 1.
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Mug shot of Commanding Officer Oberleutnant (Lieutenant Junior Grade) Otto Wermuth, 25 years old
U-530, Mar del Plata, Argentina, July 12, 1945
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Mug shot of Commanding Officer Oberleutnant (Lieutenant Junior Grade) Otto Wermuth, 25 years old
U-530, Miami, Florida, August 1945
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Personal effects of Commanding Officer Oberleutnant (Lieutenant Junior Grade) Otto Wermuth, 25 years old
U-530, Mar Del Plata, Argentina,
Arrow indicates German-Spanish dictionary
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Mug shot of Executive Officer Oberleutnant (Lieutenant Junior Grade) Karl Felix Schuller, 21 years old
U-530, Mar del Plata, Argentina, July 12, 1945
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-19
45, Box 23, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Mug shot of Commanding Officer Oberleutnant (Lieutenant Junior Grade) Heinz Schäffer, 24 years old
U-977, Miami, Florida, September 1945
Source: Record Locator 38, OP162, Interrogations and Documents from U-Boats 1945-1945, Box 39, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
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77 Glenn B. Infield, Hitler’s Secret Life: The Mysteries of the Eagle’s Nest (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), p. 278.
78 James P. O’Donnell, The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Group, op.cit., p. 11.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid., p. 12.
81 “After the Fall: Photos of Hitler’s Bunker and the Ruins of Berlin,” featuring photographs taken by Life magazine’s William Vandivert, life.time.com, no date, http://life.time.com/history/adolf-hitler-bunker-and-the-ruins-of-berlin-1945/#1.
82 “Statements of Erna Flegel, R.N., Red Cross Nurse from the Training School ‘Markisches Haus’, Scharnhorststrasse 3, Born 1911,” found in Record Locator 319, Entry (A1) 134-B, Personal File Name, “Hitler,” Boxes 295-297, National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, College Park, Maryland.
83 “Subject: Transmittal of Information (HITLER, Adolf),” signed Sydney Jurin, Operations Officer, Headquarters US Forces European Theater, Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment 970, Region III, APO 757, Dec. 1, 1945, Found in Record Locator 319, NARA, loc.cit. Capitalization in original.
84 “Subject: Whereabouts of HITLER, his mistress, EVA BRAUN, AND HIS ADJUTANT, Gruppenführer HERMANN FEGELEIN,” 307TH Counter Intelligence Corps, Headquarters Seventh Army, Becknang, Germany, Oct. 13, 1945, and the attached “Excerpts from statements made by the Fegeleins to Hirschfeld,” Found in Record Locator 319, NARA, loc.cit. Brackets inserted for clarity.