There is no evidence that Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany, used look-alikes as political decoys during his life, but it has been the subject of speculation. Some stories about his death and replacement by a double were propagated as early as 1939. After capturing Berlin, the Soviet Union claimed that the dictator used a body double to fake his death and escape, which Western scholars regard as disinformation. The Soviets supposedly found a number of similar bodies, with only Hitler's dental remains ever positively identified.
The most prominent evidence of a Hitler double is Soviet footage of a body with a gunshot wound to the forehead, ostensibly found in the Reich Chancellery garden. The Soviets initially thought this body was Hitler's (and later sometimes claimed it was), but dismissed it partly because it was wearing mended socks. Fringe and conspiracy theorists cite the body's existence as evidence that Hitler faked his death.
Background
The 1939 book The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler alleges that the Nazi Party used four people as doubles for Hitler, including the author, who claims that the real dictator died in 1938 and that he subsequently took his place. The book is not remotely reliable, being regarded as farcical even in the year of its release. In 1939, the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), while admitting that the book has "practically no direct evidence of authenticity", defended it by dubiously citing the purported death of Julius Schreck in 1938 as support for Hitler's use of doubles. The NEA claimed that after Schreck had ceased to be Hitler's chauffeur (in 1934), he was riding in the back of a car being driven by Hitler in 1938 when he took a bullet from a would-be Hitler assassin who did not expect Hitler to be driving. The NEA also cited public appearances of Hitler look-alikes in Europe as fueling belief in his use of doubles: one man was photographed in 1935 in Nice, France, wearing a pinstripe suit (said to have been accompanied by two bodyguards and to have caused a commotion) and another in 1936, spotted at the zoo in Vienna, Austria.
On 25 April 1945, Hitler instructed Schutzstaffel (SS) valet Heinz Linge to ensure that his body was burned to avoid falling into Soviet hands, asserting, "They would make a spectacle in Moscow out of my body and put it in waxworks." On 26 April, Stockholm's Free German Press Service circulated a rumor that a Hitler double named August Wilhelm Bartholdy, supposedly a former grocer from Plauen, was called to Berlin to be filmed by Hitler's photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, dying on the battlefield in Hitler's stead. The Germans émigrés stated, "He will act as Hitler's trump card, creating a hero legend around the Führer's death, while Hitler himself goes underground." This prompted a Stockholm journalist to speculate that Hitler's manner of death would most likely be suicide in his bunker. Allied officials cautioned against prematurely accepting presumptions of Hitler's death, noting that it would be exactly what he wanted. By 27 April, the London Star asked,
What could be easier than for the Germans to produce an unrecognizable body and say that it was Hitler's while Hitler himself was making his getaway by plane or submarine?
According to eyewitnesses, Hitler died in Berlin on 30 April, with his dental remains subsequently being positively identified. Additional remains of himself or his wife of one day, Eva Braun, were never provably discovered.
Supporting claims
On 2 May 1945, the day Berlin fell, an official Soviet newspaper declared the German report of Hitler's death to have been a Nazi trick. On 9 May, The New York Times reported that a body was claimed by the Soviets to belong to Hitler. This was disputed by an anonymous servant, who stated that the body was that of a cook who was killed because of his resemblance to Hitler, and that the latter had escaped via a faked death. On 6 June 1945, Western correspondents cited the statements of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov's staff that four bodies resembling Hitler had been found in the Führerbunker, purportedly burnt by the Red Army's flamethrowers; one body was considered most likely to be Hitler's, chemically determined to have died by poison. A few days later, on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's orders, Zhukov presented the official narrative that Hitler had escaped, stating, "We have found no corpse that could be [his]." In mid-1945, a Soviet major told American sources that Hitler had survived and claimed his body was not found burned in the Reich Chancellery garden, stating, "Our experts have established that the man found here didn't look like Hitler at all." Similarly, the British Daily Herald cited a major who was reputedly the first Soviet to enter the garden, where he saw the body of "a double—and not even a good double". During their Soviet captivity, Heinz Linge, SS guard Josef Henschel, and Hitler's pilot Hans Baur were interrogated about whether Hitler escaped by leaving a body double. Baur later told American journalist James P. O'Donnell that although he never saw a double, Hitler's security detail may have kept one or more "on tap" in case Hitler "decided to take part in a breakout ... to camouflage or facilitate his escape". O'Donnell opined that after Hitler's death, any imposter would have been killed to save face.
According to the dubious 1947 American book Who Killed Hitler?, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler previously employed several Hitler doubles as political decoys and knew of one in the Führerbunker. This unnamed double was "about 54" or perhaps younger, been groomed for public functions in the earlier years" when Hitler was healthy; thus, he could not deceive those familiar with the elder Hitler but might fool the public, being able to "pass as Hitler at a distance of fifty feet" by styling his hair and donning a prop toothbrush mustache. He supposedly began appearing in the kitchen by mid-April 1945, known to only a few of Hitler's servants as a helper to his chef, Constanze Manziarly, said to be exclusively aware if he performed kitchen duties. He was not allowed above ground nor seen outside the kitchen except by an SS escort (undercover as a servant) with whom he shared a room in an area "neither visible nor accessible" to other staff. The kitchen servants reputedly pitied the duplicate, sensing that "whatever fate overtook Hitler also would overtake" him. Himmler supposedly had to reckon with the double's existence after hatching a plan to assassinate Hitler via the dictator's physician Ludwig Stumpfegger. Besides Hitler's use of living decoys likely being false, the story about Hitler being murdered on Himmler's orders has, in the words of historian Richard J. Evans, "never been taken seriously".
According to a 8 May 1945 Soviet report, Hitler's body was found on the bunker grounds, bullet-riddled and seemingly beaten before and after death; it was captured in a series of photographs and identified as Hitler by several members of his staff, except for a chauffeur and maid, the former saying it was the body of a staff cook he knew intimately and was apparently killed to help Hitler escape. In November 1945, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a claim that Hitler was living with two doubles in a sub-hacienda complex around northeast Argentina. From 1951 to 1972, the American tabloid National Police Gazette ran stories alleging Hitler's survival, with plots like Stumpfegger employing brain surgery to paralyze the double, switching him or her in for Hitler. In 2017, the Gazette observed that a switch would be noticed by fewer witnesses the later it took place, opining that it was most likely that a body double was planted at the presumptive moment of Hitler's death. Richard Evans notes that tabloid magazines such as the Gazette have made a "career" out of sensational stories about Hitler.
In 1963, author Cornelius Ryan interviewed General B. S. Telpuchovski, a Soviet historian who was allegedly present during the aftermath of the Battle of Berlin. Telpuchovski claimed that on 2 May 1945, a burnt body he thought belonged to Hitler was found wrapped in a blanket. By 1964, Marshal Vasily Chuikov similarly asserted that on 2 May, the Soviets found "a still-smoking rug" containing the "scorched body of Hitler". According to Telpuchovski, this individual had an exit wound through the back of the head and several dental bridges were found next to the body because "the force of the bullet had dislodged them from the mouth", ostensibly from an oral gunshot. In his 1965 biography of Stalin, English Robert Payne claimed that this body was Hitler's, as did Ryan in his 1966 book, The Last Battle, saying the corpse had been found "under a thin layer of earth". According to Telpuchovski, a total of three Hitler candidates had been burnt, apparently including a body double wearing mended socks which he described as being in "remnants". Ryan quotes him as saying, "There was also the body of a man who was freshly killed but not burned."
Film of body double
Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski details the darned-sock-wearing double in his 1968 Soviet propaganda book, The Death of Adolf Hitler, which novelly provided details of Hitler's dental remains while implying they were found in the mouth of a different body. Bezymenski quotes Ivan Klimenko, the commander of the Red Army's SMERSH unit, as stating that on the night of 3 May 1945, he witnessed Vizeadmiral Hans-Erich Voss seem to recognize a corpse as Hitler's in a dry firefighting water tank filled with other bodies in the Reich Chancellery garden. Although Klimenko had some doubts because the corpse was wearing mended socks, he briefly speculated that it belonged to Hitler. On 4 May, Soviet officers had the body double filmed. In the 1982 edition of his book, Bezymenski cites the cameraman behind the footage as saying that the body had been brought inside the Chancellery for identification by Germans, most of whom thought it was not Hitler; the body was then brought outside to be filmed in better lighting.
The footage shows the double with an apparent gunshot wound to the forehead. The right temple is battered and traces of dark liquid appear around the mouth and nostrils, as well as a (potentially fake) toothbrush mustache. Certain upper teeth are visible and a portrait of Hitler sits on the torso. According to Klimenko, later on 4 May, Hitler and Braun's true remains were discovered buried in a crater outside the Chancellery, wrapped in blankets and reburied, then the next day after the double was debunked as being Hitler. A 1945 Soviet television documentary implied the footage showed Hitler, with the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda later saying it was Hitler's double. In 1992, journalist Ada Petrova found the footage in the Russian state archives; the body double had reputedly been identified as Gustav Weler. In their 1995 book, Petrova and Peter Watson opined that 'Weler' may have worked a menial job in the Reich Chancellery and occasionally stood in for Hitler as a political decoy.
Arguments against According to a purported Soviet biography dated January 1946, Gustav Weler was born in Pomerania in 1886 and later lived in Berlin. In 1924, he was sentenced to three years in prison for counterfeiting banknotes. In January 1932 he joined the Sturmabteilung, but was expelled after two months for failing to cut his hair. In 1933–34, due to Hitler's rise to power, the Gestapo summoned Weler and implored him to cut his hair and mustache to keep him from resembling the chancellor; the repeated summons prompted Weler's attempted suicide via illuminating gas. In 1934, Himmler offered Weler 1,000 Reichsmarks to shave, asserting that Weler would "disappear forever" if he continued to resist. He was not a Nazi Party member and in 1944 moved to a village in Bernau, where he was still alive, working as a roofer.