"During the years of triumph," "Germans couldn't see enough of Adolf Hitler " "Germany's saviour." "Germany's greatest statesman." "The greatest general the world had ever seen." "But as the war turned against Germany, Hitler disappeared from public view." "And at the last, the German people knew nothing." "They were told he had died a hero's death, but that was all." "Nazis, and later the Russians, concealed what they knew about his end." "The first Westerner to investigate the affair was British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper." "The controversy began because Hitler was last heard of in the West when he made a broadcast on the 22nd, I think, of April 1945, saying that he would stay in Berlin." "And when the Russians captured Berlin, no announcement was made about his life or death or anything about him." "The body of Goebbels was found and shown by the Russians." "The body of Hitler was not." "And five months after Hitler's disappearance, the Russians accused the British authorities in Germany of concealing Hitler and Eva Braun in the British zone for ultimate use against the Russians." "This was the last straw which provoked the British authorities in Germany to decide to settle this matter and I was appointed to find out the facts." "That's the beginning of the controversy." "And of course I naturally consider that when I had made my report, on 1 November, 1945, the controversy should logically have come to an end." "Why it went on, I can't think, except for the perpetual Russian mystification." "(narrator) Yelena Rzhevskaya was an interpreter with the Red Army unit which tried to find Hitler." "Dr Faust Shkaravsky headed the autopsy commission which examined the body the Russians found." "Professor Keith Simpson is a British pathologist who has assessed the Soviet findings." "Dental expert Reidar Sognnaes found important new evidence in a U nited States archive." "Albert Speer, Nazi armaments minister, saw Hitler often during the war." "Heinz Linge was Hitler's valet and closest personal servant." "Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge was with him in the underground headquarters, the bunker, until the end." "This situation in the bunker was a fantastic one." "One really can't..." "An unrealistic one." "One really can't describe how the moods went on and off like waves." "Sometimes they were all exhilarating and we were thinking," ""Well, now the Western troops are coming for release of Berlin."" "Goebbels was exclaiming one of the biggest decisions of the war that Hitler made." ""He is now determined to..." "no more to fight against the West, only to the East in Berlin, and this will mean that the Western powers will join us in our fight against Russia."" "And such things happened every now and then, and then a few minutes afterwards everybody was speaking about suicide." "(speaking German)" "(translator) Since Stalingrad," "Hitler's state of health had been constantly deteriorating." "He dragged one of his legs somewhat and got a shaking in his arm." "During the last days in the bunker, this got much worse." "During April, when the report came through that Roosevelt was dead, and Truman had said that America's area of interest was not in Europe, but in East Asia," "Hitler drew some hopes from this and clung to it like a drowning man clutching a last straw." "We spoke about committing suicide as other people talk about fashions or about what they have done today." "And so Eva Braun asked for the best and the painless, the most painless method to commit suicide." "And Hitler said, "That would be cyanide."" ""You don't feel anything."" "And she said, "Then I would prefer that, because if I shoot myself," "I would make an ugly impression when I am dead."" "Hitler himself saw no other solution and no other way out than to commit suicide himself too." "And so it infected us a little." "It was a most varied theme of our conversations, how to commit suicide." "It was a little macabre." "And then he gave us capsules, poison capsules." "It was in a brass, in a brass..." "like a lipstick." "It looked like a lipstick in brass... outside wrapping." "And he gave it to Mrs Christian and me and said," ""l would like to give you a nice present, but I think this one will be of much use for you."" "And with a regretting smile, he gave us this poison." "(speaking German)" "(translator) He himself also did not have the sort of trust he used to have towards other people, even, for instance, towards his own doctors." "I had to give him his eye drops in the morning." "He maintained that I had a particularly steady hand." "But I believe that it was more his mistrust of other people." "Also, when the doctor came to take his blood," "I had to be there and keep an eye on it." "It became more and more clear that he mistrusted everybody." "And one day there came one of the men of the press bureau, press office, and brought the news." "I think he had heard it by radio from Reuters news agency, that Himmler had had negotiations with Count Bernadotte for capitulation and Hitler was very upset because he held Himmler for his most faithful paladin and the most reliable one," "and now he saw that also he had tried to betray him." "He remembered suddenly that the poison which he had to use for himself was given to him from one of Himmler's staff and he mistrusted that it may affect..." "Perhaps Himmler tried a dirty trick and gave him something that would only make him unconscious, so that he could be transported against his will out of the bunker and delivered to the enemy." "And to test this, he ordered a doctor to try to test this poison capsule on the dog." "I think next to Eva Braun, this one was next to him." "So he said farewell and Blondi died very promptly." "(speaking German)" "(translator) The telegram came from Goering, which said, "Mein Führer"." "No longer "My beloved Führer", but just "Mein Führer"." ""l know that you are now totally cut off and are no longer in possession of full freedom to command."" ""According to the law of succession, I will now step into your position and will undertake to represent Germany both in internal and external matters."" ""Yours, Goering."" "Hitler was so worked up over this." "He sat in his chair and could not grasp it at first." "This was added to by Bormann, who added fuel to the fire somewhat, so that Hitler then said, "To give me an ultimatum, that really is the end."" "It was sad to see how Hitler went down and down." "He walked very stooped and bent, his hand shaking badly, which he used to put inside his jacket so that people didn't see it so much, and his dragging leg." "And this whole mood spread over all around him." "Nobody knew what they should do any more." "It came in my mind that perhaps he always was the first commander of the army and the chief of all soldiers, so it would be more stylish and more logical to fight his last battle, his last fight," "and to die on the honour and to fall with his soldiers." "But he refused." ""Yes, it would be right, but I cannot do that because my health state is too low and I am so trembling that I couldn't hold a pistol and couldn't handle it."" ""So...." "And I am not sure that any one of my paladins would be able to give me the last, the death shot if I was only wounded, and I am not willing to fall in the hands of the enemy," "neither alive nor dead."" "(narrator) By April 29, Soviet troops were fighting inside Berlin." "Hitler began putting his affairs in order." "He married his mistress Eva Braun, and then he summoned Traudl Junge to dictate to her his personal and political testaments." "Then he began, "My last will."" "Then he dictated me at first his private will and afterwards his political testimony." "And I must confess that I was..." "I was at first in a very excited mood, because I expected that I would be the first and the only one who knows, who is going to know the explanation and declaration why the war had come to this end and why Hitler couldn't stop" "and why the development and why the catastrophe..." "I thought, "Now comes the moment of the truth."" "And I was heart bumping when I wrote down what Hitler said." "But he used nothing new." "He came out with his old phrases." "He repeated his accusations, his swearing to the enemy and to the Jewish capitalistic system." "And then he announced, in the second part of the political testament, he announced a new government." "(speaking German)" "(translator) The next day, reports came in, and it was now clear to him that the Russians could break in at any moment." "When Hitler said farewell to me, I..." "I went to him against him and he came toward me and his face was already dead." "It was like a mask." "He looked at me, but I had the feeling he looked through me, and he gave me a shake of the hand and murmured something, but I didn't understand." "It's..." "I had not understand what he said at last." "But Eva Braun was beside him and he... shook hands to all the others." "She embraced me really heartily and looked at me with a little sad smile and said, "Please try to go out of here."" ""Please try to come to Munich again and give my regards to my beloved Bavaria."" "And then he... she and Hitler shut the door and retired and I had an absolute need for... for fleeing, and I..." "I..." "I fled these stairs upside on the next level, and there I found the children of Goebbels." "(speaking German)" "(translator) He said farewell to everybody and I was the last one he came to." "Hitler said to me, "l have given the order to break out."" ""You should break out in groups, join one of these groups and try to get through to the West."" "Then I asked Hitler, "For whom should we fight on for now?"" "And to that Hitler said in a monotone," ""For the coming man."" "I saluted him." "He gave me his hand and I disappeared out of the room." "I was so upset, and for a moment I didn't know what to do." "I ran over to the bodyguard." "But after a short while, I went back because I assumed now it must surely have happened." "Suddenly there was a bang." "There was a shot." "And it was obviously within the bunker, because the noises of the outside..." "shooting, we know how they sound." "And the little boy of Goebbels, he noticed and he noticed that there was another sound." "He said, "Oh, that was a bull-eye..." "that was a bull's-eye."" "And I thought, "Yes, you are right, that was really a bull's-eye."" "(speaking German)" "(translator) I went into Hitler's workroom with the former Reichsleiter Bormann, and this picture presented itself to us." "Hitler was sitting on the left of the sofa with his face bent slightly forward and hanging down to the right." "With the 7.65 he had shot himself in the right temple." "The blood had run down onto the carpet, and from this pool of blood, a splash had got onto the sofa." "Eva Braun was sitting on his right." "Eva Braun had drawn both her legs up onto the sofa and was sitting there with cramped lips, so that it immediately became clear to us that she had taken cyanide." "I took Hitler by his neck." "Behind me were two other officers from the Escort Commando." "And so we took Hitler's body and proceeded with it into the park." "In the park we laid the bodies together, next to each other and poured the available petrol over them." "In the Reichschancellery Park, there was fire all around it and there was a draught, so that we could not set the corpse alight with an ordinary match." "So I twisted a taper out of some paper with notes on it, and Reichsleiter Bormann, who meanwhile had also come upstairs with some others, like Dr Goebbels, Burgdorf and officers, lit the taper and I threw the taper onto the bodies" "and in an instant the corpses were set alight." "As regards the burning of the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun," "I should like to add that the flames lit them for about half an hour, that only the woollen blankets and the clothes were affected by this and burnt, and not the body itself." "It was clear to us afterwards that we should have laid the corpses on them." "Then the bodies would have been totally charred." "But this was in consequence of the whole mood." "We couldn't collect our thoughts any more." "And apart from that, the troops who should make the break-out with us were quartered in the Reichschancellery." "If the soldiers had seen that we were burning Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies - one can't just say Hitler's body - they would probably not have been prepared to carry out the break-out." "(narrator) Even before Berlin fell, a Soviet investigating team had been given the job of finding Hitler or his corpse." "lncomplete reports and poor photographs of their work were eventually released." "This is supposed to be the very spot where they found the bodies of Hitler and of Eva Braun." "The Russians never admitted that Hitler was dead until 1950, when they produced a film." "They then revealed no details, although we now know that they had all the facts." "The details they have revealed have been revealed in such a form that it doesn't carry a great deal of conviction or not full conviction." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) On 4 May," "I saw them lying in the garden of the lmperial Chancellery wrapped in a grey blanket." "In fact, on 4 May, they were discovered in a bomb crater spattered with earth by Churakov, one of the soldiers in our group." "Their bodies were dragged from there to the garden of the lmperial Chancellery." "(narrator) The bodies were sent to Dr Faust Shkaravsky to be autopsied by himself and his five-man team." "(speaks Russian)" "(translator) One should however say that Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies were badly charred, unrecognisably so, especially that of Eva Braun." "Hitler too was charred, but less so." "From the outside, one couldn't have said who it was." "You see, the extremities, that is the ends of the hands and lower part of the foot, were completely gone - they'd been burnt away." "The torso itself was a dark colour, like some sort of coal." "The crown of the head was extremely badly burnt in places, so much so that a lump of skin, sorry, of bone, had been burnt." "We approached the examination with the highest degree of care that it was possible to observe." "Everything that was possible to be seen from the autopsy we examined, and then we took samples of fluids and despatched it all to the district medical research laboratory, which was called, as far as I can remember, cellar 291." "They did the examination and advised me by telegraph either one or two days later " "I don't remember the date too well - that the traces found were either cyanide or cyanide compounds." "The autopsy for Hitler, for instance, which they have published, has never been published in the original Russian." "It has only been published in German and English." "It was released in... an unusual way, in a way which, perhaps unfairly, seems to deprive it of authority." "(narrator) Here, in Russian, is Shkaravsky's typed copy of the autopsy report." "It states, "On the body, considerably damaged by fire, no visible signs of severe lethal injuries or illnesses could be detected."" ""The presence in the oral cavity of the remnants of a crushed glass ampoule;" "the marked smell of bitter almonds emanating from the bodies and the forensic chemical test of internal organs, which established the presence of cyanide compounds, permit the commission to arrive at the conclusion that death in this instance was caused by poisoning with cyanide compounds."" "The report also says that "Part of the occipital vault is missing."" "Since this is part of the skull, some people say it leaves open the possibility that Hitler was also shot." "I've read the autopsy report." "I expect it's mainly directed by Shkaravsky." "But he had assistance, and I would regard it as a very full and searching autopsy." "The postmortem appears to have been a really searching one and to have been thorough by ordinary standards." "(narrator) But was this body Hitler's?" "The corpse had only one testicle, and the body was not as tall as Hitler was known to be." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) I repeat, the body was badly charred and the extremities were even more charred." "And so, to speak of a difference of six, seven or even ten centimetres, to ascertain it accurately would be beyond our scope." "And this was why we wrote "approximately" in the end." "And even if in life he measured 1.75 and in the autopsy he only measured 1.65," "I don't see this as being anything significant." "A body shrinks when burned and I think the difference is too small to matter." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) There was indeed one genital missing, which we discovered quite by chance, but it had nothing to do with the case in hand." "We usually treat this extremely rare occurrence by looking in the sperm duct itself." "But it wasn't there." "Then we looked in the lower intestine regions, but it wasn't there either." "So we came to the conclusion that it was in fact absent." "To find one testicle only, which I was amused to see in the report was found quite by accident - it doesn't appear to have been searched for - is not uncommon." "They did search properly, but it's not uncommon to find only one testicle." "I don't think that's a very important point of identification." "And we don't know if Hitler had only one testicle or not." "The ordinary methods of identifying a dead body as a particular person - their clothing, papers, documents," "credit cards and things in their pockets, the features, which can be recognised by relatives, colour of the hair and eyes, and fingerprints, if it comes to detail of that order - are of course destroyed when the body is subjected to fire." "When it's scorched badly or is charred, almost all those things disappear, and you are left with a study of what is sometimes nearly a skeleton." "So you can only identify a person as being male or female, a certain height and probably somewhere near a certain age." "The fingerprints will have disappeared." "Now you also, because the teeth tend to be preserved from fire inside the mouth, have one other source of information." "The teeth, especially if they include a lot of detail of conservation, repair work, of fillings and bridges and other similar things, can provide a mine of information about identification." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) The teeth were so unusual that their identification would mean the identification of the corpse." "One should also comment that in the upper jaw on the left-hand side, I think - I don't remember for certain - well, high up in the left-hand jaw, there was a smooth file mark." "It was felt that some mistake had been made in the filing of the dentures and a stomatologist had filed off a piece of the bridge." "Taken all in all, we paid considerable attention to the teeth." "Of course, for those to have any value, like fingerprints, you must have records." "You must have a dental surgeon who has been careful to keep full records, and you must have photographs and x-rays." "And it is when you can, by making careful note of the details in your dead body, take these to a dental surgeon, whom you suspect to have looked after that supposed body, by comparing the two and finding that they do match in detail," "then you can be as certain as you could with fingerprints that that is the body of this person whose records that dental surgeon has." "(narrator) Hitler did have a personal dentist, Hugo Blaschke." "No one could find him." "So the investigators began the search for his assistant." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) Käthe Hausermann was the assistant of Professor Blaschke, who was Hitler's personal dentist." "In a medical investigation, her participation was an extremely important link in the chain because nobody else could have determined Hitler's teeth, which were in perfectly good order, to such a degree." "And this being the case, her place in the investigation was extremely important." "We hardly hoped to find anybody of assistance in the destruction and fire of Berlin, the city which had just been witness to the fall of the Third Empire." "It was still enveloped in flames." "This city, whose roads were so wrecked that our cars couldn't go to and fro across the town." "In Berlin we literally dug in the heaps of rubble to unearth her." "One could say that our efforts have been accompanied by a stroke of luck." "Without her we could hardly have had such an exhaustively full and complete proof." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) It was I who, both as an expert and as the chairman of the commission, had to have a long conversation with Käthe Hausermann." "Her first approach to us was one of trepidation." "She feared that the Soviet doctors would treat her badly." "But then told her that I also was a doctor, just like herself, interested in purely medical questions and therefore she could feel at ease." "The table at which I was sitting had a flask of water, sweets," "Russian cigarettes and cigars on it." "I asked her if she wanted to smoke and an atmosphere both businesslike and calm was established." "When I was working during the war, at the period in question, 1942, '43, '44, '45," "I had several London bombing bodies to - the victims of London bombing - to identify, and we used dental details." "And I wouldn't have thought of setting out in the mortuary for identification of a body without the assistance of a dental surgeon and his records." "I might myself, if we were working under difficulty, as the Russians may well have been at the 1945 autopsy on Hitler," "I would myself, perhaps, have to make a photographic and drawing record of the teeth as I saw them." "But I would certainly retain those teeth and see that an expert dental surgeon, used to dental recording, saw them later to confirm my findings." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) I suggested that she should relate all that she knew, and in those instances where there was a lack of clarity in what she had said," "I posed her several questions." "When I realised that she really was acquainted with Hitler's dentures, that to say that this was indeed a person who had dealings with the dentures," "I asked her additional questions." "The team consisted of some half a dozen army pathologists, none of whom, even Lt Col Shkaravsky himself, who was in charge, none of whom had special forensic experience and none of whom, to my knowledge," "had ever had this exercise to perform before." "They made an autopsy which, from the record, looked thorough enough, but they failed to include in their autopsy more than a very poor drawing of the upper and lower teeth and of bridge work, which were still lying in situ." "It would not be enough for a pathologist, especially if he were doing routine army pathology, to indulge himself in what is a special medical legal exercise of identification in which he knows, if he's had experience," "he must use the services of a skilled dental surgeon, very often a dental surgeon whose work has become forensic or who may have turned over to forensic identification work entirely." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) As I talked to Käthe Hausermann," "I sketched the teeth of a human being." "Here's the right-hand side." "Here I sketched the teeth in the upper jaw and here the lower jaw." "And you can clearly see the smooth edge of the teeth." "Then I showed this sketch to Käthe Hausermann and said that here I'd found the two steel pins." "But she protested, saying there had to be three." "It's incredibly poor." "It's a schoolboy diagram." "It shows a nine-tooth gold bridge here." "It even shows in front the little pegs which were hung on the four, the left lateral and a right lateral incisor here." "But really the detail is very difficult to pick up." "It's small and it's indeterminate, though I can't say it's inaccurate." "(speaking Russian)" "(translator) And when the conversation had ended, and I was convinced that she really did know these teeth well," "I showed her the dentures which had been extracted from Hitler." "Her first reaction was one of extreme surprise." "She then realised that our conversation had not been an abstract one, that we really had autopsied Hitler's corpse and that it had been examined by Soviet specialists and that she was confronted with Hitler's very dentures." "She then became less distraught and we calmly, dispassionately examined them." "Then she started off showing me these steel pins, and when we examined the teeth in greater detail, she turned out to be right - there were indeed three of these pins to be seen." "And here they are pictured on the right." "This convinced the commission, and more so myself, that we had indeed unearthed Hitler's body." "The evidence that I have been involved with in studying Hitler's remains is based on three types of observation." "First of all, the Russian autopsy report, published in 1968, revealed certain types of dental bridge work which are critical for identification on a body that was destroyed by fire." "N umber two, in the National Archives in Washington DC," "I was able to study in detail the interrogation report of Hitler's dentist," "Dr Hugo Blaschke, who is now dead." "And he described in great detail the state of his dentition, his treatment and so forth." "And thirdly, I was very fortunate, after a considerable search, to locate five x-rays which were known to exist from the British study of Hitler's last days, but which had not been found." "And I located this in the branch of the National Archives in the little town of Suitland in Maryland." "And I'm showing two of the five x-rays here taken by the head and neck experts who treated Hitler after the assassination attempt." "This picture was taken in September and this in October." "I want to point out, though they were taken at two different times and locations by two different doctors, they are from the identical persons, seeing the very typical fingerprints, as it were, of the sinus outlines" "and very characteristic bridge work both in this picture and in that picture." "Lastly, I have prepared a model which summarises the findings of the dentist's report, the x-rays and the Russian findings, and I believe that this represents the true state of affairs of Hitler's teeth, made up here in gold and porcelain." "Among that, this very discoloured left front tooth here, which can be seen in some pictures, although it was camouflaged most of the time by his moustache, and the very characteristic bridge work in the lower jaw as well" "and various types of pathology in his front teeth." "Sognnaes and Ström, when they drew, of course by now, with the assistance of x-rays, which had been discovered in Washington, have absolutely every single piece of detail in a single diagram, the diagram in their article." "It shows not only the presence of, the number of teeth in, the exact shape of and attachment of the three bridges, the nine-tooth in the upper jaw, the two in the lower, it shows the remarkable shape and attachment of the lingual bar bridge" "in the right lower jaw and draws special attention to the left upper-central incisor, with its curious Richmond gold crown and this central translucent face." "I cannot conceive of anybody now not being utterly convinced that these are the teeth of Hitler and that this was Hitler's skull." "There could be, I think, no conceivable objection." "There is not a single point which doesn't fit and there are very many points which do." "It would be impossible, in my opinion, to recreate this in another individual." "So that I disregard the possibility of there being a double that the Russians autopsied." "They did in fact find the body and where Trevor-Roper suggested it may be found, outside a bunker in Berlin, and they autopsied the real Hitler." "The only question which is still debated, in my opinion, or can legitimately be debated, is whether Hitler took poison or shot himself." "All the evidence that I had in 1945 was that he shot himself." "The Russians have always maintained that he took cyanide." "I stated in 1945, on the evidence of one of the German authorities, that it was possible that although he had shot himself, he had also put a poison capsule in his mouth to make sure." "And that seems to me quite possible." "(speaks Russian)" "(translator) A small piece of the skull of approximately ten by seven centimetres was missing." "The edge of the missing portion was charred, which meant that this was a result of the burning and not of injury." "I must stress that the brain itself was well preserved and that there was no damage to the brain." "Neither was there damage to other portions of the skull." "Neither the nasal portion, the cheekbones, etc." "In a word, there is, there was no damage at all, so there is no proof of damage by firearms." "The only positive things that emerged from autopsy are that glass was found in the mouth and that hydrocyanic acid was detected by analysis afterwards in the body." "I find this a little surprising if there was great heat for some time, as there was - petrol was poured more than once on the body - for cyanide evaporates very quickly, and I'm a little surprised at that." "But glass was found in the mouth." "I think death must have due to the crushing of a cyanide capsule, which we know was common practice among the higher Nazis." "We have to recognise the fact that all the German witnesses do bear witness about the shooting." "We can't ignore that." "They are just as good witnesses as the Russians." "The evidence on the Russian side is the autopsy which they've produced." "But I can't regard it as final, firstly because they have produced it in so propagandist a form that it, to some extent, cancels itself out." "Mr Bezymenski, a Russian journalist, whom the Russians have employed to publish these documents, makes it quite clear that he regards suicide by poison as the death of a dog and a cowardly death, and suicide by shooting as a soldier's death," "and that he is anxious to show that Hitler did not die a soldier's death, but a dog's death." "That shows a kind of political motivation which rather detracts from his objectivity." "There is a truly extraordinary passage in Bezymenski's work in which, having argued throughout that Hitler only took a poison capsule, he then suddenly produces a theory which has no evidence or probability in it and is given as a second-hand speculation," "that Heinz Linge afterwards shot Hitler when he was dead." "Well, what is the point of this unless there was some evidence that Hitler had been shot?" "I can't see what is the point of this speculation, especially since the Russians had Linge in their possession as a prisoner for nine years." "They could easily have established this fact if it were true without producing it as a second-hand speculation ascribed to Linge." "So I think that they, even in this matter, the Russians have created mystification and I think the balance of evidence, which is what one has to go on when the evidence conflicts, that the balance of evidence," "taking account of the fact that the German witnesses had no reason to lie and were perfectly objective in their accounts to me, the balance of evidence is that he shot himself." "As regards to the firearm, I find no evidence of this in the report." "Shkaravsky doesn't find a hole in the roof of the mouth or either temple." "Part of the skull was missing, but it commonly is in fire - it flakes off or is destroyed by fire." "And the brain was in good condition with no bullet track through it." "I don't think Hitler can have been shot." "Certainly not through the head."