Fringe and conspiracy theories about the death of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, contradict the accepted fact that he died by suicide in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. Largely stemming from a campaign of Soviet disinformation, most of these theories hold that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, survived and escaped from Berlin, typically asserting that he fled to South America.
In the post-war years, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) investigated related reports and an alleged photograph but did not endorse their veracity. The 21st-century declassification of these files has helped fuel fringe theories, in addition to the revelation that a skull in the Soviet archives purported to be Hitler's actually belonged to a woman.
The claims have received some exposure in popular culture, but are regarded by historians and scientific experts as being disproven by the hard evidence of Hitler's dental remains (including teeth on a mandibular fragment, the only part of his body confirmed) and certain eyewitness accounts.
Origins Prior to Hitler's suicide in Berlin, some dubious sources claimed that the dictator's death would be (or had already been) obscured through the use of a double. In 1944, ahead of , the United States Secret Service imagined several ways Hitler could potentially disguise his appearance to evade capture.
The narrative that Hitler did not commit suicide, but instead escaped Berlin, was first presented to the general public by Marshal Georgy Zhukov at a press conference on 9 June 1945, on orders from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. That month, 68% of Americans polled thought Hitler was still alive. When asked at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 how Hitler had died, Stalin said he was either living "in Spain or Argentina", where the Nazis had escape routes. In July 1945, British newspapers repeated comments from a Soviet officer that a charred body discovered by the Soviets was "a very poor double". American newspapers also repeated dubious quotes, such as that of the Russian garrison commandant of Berlin, who claimed that Hitler had "gone into hiding somewhere in Europe". In October 1945, France-Soir quoted Otto Abetz, Nazi ambassador to Vichy France during World War II, as saying that Hitler was not dead.
The Soviet disinformation has been a springboard for various conspiracy theories, despite the official conclusion by Western powers and the consensus of historians that Hitler killed himself on 30 April 1945.
Forensic evidence
In May 1945, the Soviets found a jawbone fragment (sundered at the alveolar process) and two dental bridges in the Reich Chancellery garden. These were shown to two associates of Hitler's personal dentist, Hugo Blaschke: his assistant Käthe Heusermann and longtime dental technician Fritz Echtmann. They identified the dental remains as Hitler's and Braun's, as did Blaschke in later statements. In 1972, forensic odontologist Reidar F. Sognnaes helped confirm Hitler's dental remains, but later argued that the alleged Soviet autopsy of Braun's corpse did not match her dental records, citing Heusermann as stating that a bridge was designed for Braun but never fitted. Author Hugh Thomas theorized that only Hitler's dental remains belonged to him, which reporter Ada Petrova and Peter Watson dismissed, citing the debunked Soviet autopsy report. In 2017, a team led by French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier reconfirmed Hitler's dental remains, finding that teeth on one of the jawbone fragments were in "perfect agreement" with an taken of Hitler in 1944. The findings of this investigation were reported in May 2018.European Journal of Internal Medicine Charlier stated that "There is no possible doubt. Our study proves that Hitler died in 1945".
At the end of 1945, Stalin ordered a second commission to investigate Hitler's death, in part to investigate rumours of Hitler's survival. On 30 May 1946, part of a skull was found, ostensibly in the crater where Hitler's remains had been exhumed. It consists of part of the occipital bone and part of both parietal bones. The nearly complete left parietal bone has a bullet hole, apparently an exit wound. In 2009, on an episode of History's MysteryQuest, University of Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni examined the skull fragment, which Soviet officials had believed to be Hitler's. According to Bellantoni, "The bone seemed very thin" for a male, and "the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40". A small piece detached from the skull was DNA-tested, as was blood from Hitler's sofa. The skull was determined to be that of a woman—providing fodder for conspiracy theorists—while the blood was confirmed to belong to a male.
Later claims
The first detailed investigation by Western powers began in November 1945 after Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin, had their agent Hugh Trevor-Roper investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. Trevor-Roper concluded that Hitler and Braun died by suicide in Berlin, expanding his report into a book in 1947. In April 1947, 45% of Americans polled thought Hitler was still alive.
In 1946, an American miner and Baptist preacher named William Henry Johnson began sending out a series of letters under the pen name "Furrier No. 1", claiming to be the living Hitler and to have escaped with Braun to Kentucky. He alleged that tunnels were being dug to Washington, D.C., and that he would engage armies, nuclear bombs and invisible spaceships to take over the universe. Johnson was able to raise up to $15,000 (about $ currently), promising lofty incentives to his supporters, before being arrested on charges of mail fraud in mid-1956.
In the introduction to the 1947 American book Who Killed Hitler?, US intelligence officer William F. Heimlich asserts that a one-day investigation of the Führerbunker grounds produced no evidence of Hitler's death. The book itself asserts that Heinrich Himmler introduced a double to the bunker in hopes of keeping Hitler alive. Himmler then purportedly conspired with Hitler's physician to kill the dictator via poison, with Hitler's adjutant Otto Günsche apparently delivering a coup de grace-style gunshot to a corpse at the time of the recorded suicide. The book suggests that, barring further revelations, Hitler's death remained "a mystery without an ending", but argues that the myth of his survival was Soviet propaganda to motivate "Communist totalitarian" forces against "the continuing menace of Fascism". According to historian Luke Daly-Groves, declassified American intelligence files show that certain information from the investigations of Hitler's death was kept from Heimlich "because higher-ranking American intelligence officers were aware that he was attempting to capitalise on sensational rumours". Daly-Groves contends that Heimlich's statements in the 1947 book proved these suspicions to be correct, and that his arguments show that he was not fully informed of the evidence. Historian Richard J. Evans states that Heimlich resented "being side-lined in favour of Trevor-Roper's investigation [and was] ill informed" and that the story about Hitler being murdered on Himmler's orders "has never been taken seriously by historians".
In March 1948, newspapers around the world reported the account of former German lieutenant Arthur F. Mackensen, who claimed that on 5 May 1945 (during the Soviet bombardment of Berlin), he, Hitler, Braun and Martin Bormann had escaped the Führerbunker in tanks. The group allegedly flew from Tempelhof Airport to Tønder, Denmark, where Hitler gave a speech and took a flight with Braun to the coast. In a May 1948 issue of the Italian magazine Tempo, author Emil Ludwig wrote that a double could have been cremated in Hitler's place, allowing him to flee by submarine to Argentina. Presiding judge at the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg Michael Musmanno wrote in his 1950 book that such theories were "about as rational as to say that Hitler was carried away by angels," citing a lack of evidence, the confirmation of Hitler's dental remains, and the fact that Ludwig had expressly ignored the presence of witnesses in the bunker. In his refutation of Mackensen's account, Musmanno cites a subsequent story of Mackensen's, in which the lieutenant allegedly flew on 9 May to Málaga, Spain, when he was attacked by 30 Lightning fighters over Marseille (despite the war having ended in Europe), purportedly killing all 33 passengers except himself.
From 1951 to 1972, the National Police Gazette, an American tabloid-style magazine, ran a series of stories asserting Hitler's survival. Unproven allegations include that Hitler conceived children with Braun around the late 1930s, that he was actually in prime physical health at the end of World War II, and that he fled to Antarctica or South America. Writing for the Gazette, Heimlich claimed that the blood found on Hitler's sofa did not match his blood type. As Richard Evans points out, tabloid magazines such as the Gazette have made a "career" out of sensational stories of Hitler's survival since the war ended.
Reports to U.S. intelligence agencies
FBI documents declassified by the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which began to be released online by the early 2010s, contain a number of alleged sightings of Hitler in Europe, South America, and the U.S., some of which assert that he changed his appearance e.g. via plastic surgery. Richard J. Evans notes that the FBI was obliged to document such claims no matter how "erroneous or deranged" they were, while American historian Donald McKale states that their files did not produce any credible indication of Hitler's survival.
CIA intelligence files and the Colombian conspiracy Declassified files released in 2017 revealed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tracked reports during the mid-1950s concerning Adolf Hitler's alleged presence in Colombia. The core of the investigation stemmed from an October 3, 1955, classified memorandum sent to Washington by David Brixnor, the CIA chief of base in Caracas.This document summarized accounts from an informant codenamed "CIMELODY-3," who detailed claims made by Phillip Citroen, a former SS trooper working for the Royal Dutch Steamship Company.
Citroen maintained that he had been in monthly contact throughout 1954 with an individual who was a look-alike of Hitler residing in Tunja, the capital of Boyacá.The informant stated that the man operated under the pseudonym "Adolf Schrittelmayor" and lived within a local circle of German nationals and former officers who still honored him with Nazi salutes and the title of Der Führer.
Alleged Soviet autopsy In 1968, Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski released his book The Death of Adolf Hitler. It includes a purported Soviet autopsy report which concludes that Hitler died by cyanide poisoning, despite no dissection of internal organs being recorded to confirm this and eyewitness accounts to the contrary. Bezymenski claims that the autopsy reports were not released earlier to discourage anyone from trying to assume the identity of "the Führer saved by a miracle". He further asserts that any gunshot would have been fired as a coup de grâce, most likely by Günsche. He later admitted that he was acting as "a typical party propagandist" and intended "to lead the reader to the conclusion that [a gunshot] was a pipe dream or half an invention and that Hitler actually poisoned himself". The book's claims have been widely derided by Western historians.Multiple sources:
Grey Wolf