Fringe andconspiracy theories about the death ofAdolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, contradict the accepted fact thathe died by suicide in theFührerbunker on 30 April 1945. Largely stemming from a campaign ofSovietdisinformation, most of these theories hold that Hitler and his wife,Eva Braun, survived and escaped fromBerlin, typically asserting that he fled toSouth America.
In the post-war years, the United StatesFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) andCentral 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 thehard evidence of Hitler's dental remains (including teeth on amandibular fragment, the only part of his body confirmed) and certain eyewitness accounts.
Prior toHitler's demise in Berlin, some dubious sources claimed that the dictator's death would be (or had already been) obscured through the use ofa double. In 1944, ahead ofD-Day, theUnited States Secret Service imaginedseveral ways Hitler could potentially disguise his appearance to evade capture.[1]
The narrative that Hitler did not commit suicide, but instead escaped Berlin, was first presented to the general public by MarshalGeorgy Zhukov at a press conference on 9 June 1945, on orders fromSoviet leaderJoseph Stalin.[2] That month, 68% of Americans polled thought Hitler was still alive.[3] When asked at thePotsdam Conference in July 1945 how Hitler had died, Stalin said he was either living "in Spain or Argentina",[4] where the Nazis hadescape 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".[5] In October 1945,France-Soir quotedOtto Abetz, Nazi ambassador toVichy France during World War II, as saying that Hitler was not dead.[6][7]
TheSoviet disinformation[8][9] 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.[10][11][12]
In May 1945, the Soviets found a jawbone fragment (sundered at thealveolar process)[13] and twodental bridges in theReich 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.[14][15][16] In 1972, forensic odontologistReidar F. Sognnaes helped confirm Hitler's dental remains,[17] 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.[18] Author Hugh Thomas theorized that only Hitler's dental remains belonged to him, which reporter Ada Petrova andPeter Watson dismissed, citing the debunked Soviet autopsy report.[19][a] In 2017, a team led by French forensic pathologistPhilippe Charlier reconfirmed Hitler's dental remains, finding that teeth on one of the jawbone fragments were in "perfect agreement" with anX-ray taken of Hitler in 1944.[20] The findings of this investigation were reported in May 2018.[21] Charlier stated that "There is no possible doubt. Our study proves that Hitler died in 1945".[22]
At the end of 1945, Stalin ordered a second commission to investigate Hitler's death,[23] in part to investigate rumours of Hitler's survival.[24] On 30 May 1946, part of a skull was found, ostensibly in the crater where Hitler's remains had been exhumed.[25][26] It consists of part of theoccipital bone and part of bothparietal bones.[27] The nearly complete left parietal bone has a bullet hole, apparently an exit wound.[25][27][b] In 2009, on an episode ofHistory'sMysteryQuest,University of Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni examined the skull fragment,[30] which Soviet officials had believed to be Hitler's.[31] According to Bellantoni, "The bone seemed very thin" for a male,[32][c][d] and "thesutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40".[30] A small piece detached from the skull wasDNA-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.[30][31][32][34][e]
The first detailed investigation by Western powers began in November 1945 afterDick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin, had their agentHugh 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.[35] In April 1947, 45% of Americans polled thought Hitler was still alive.[3]
In 1946, an American miner andBaptist preacher named William Henry Johnson began sending out a series of letters under thepen name "Furrier No. 1", claiming to be the living Hitler and to have escaped with Braun toKentucky. He alleged that tunnels were being dug toWashington, 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 (over $240,000 in 2025 currency), promising lofty incentives to his supporters, before being arrested on charges ofmail fraud in mid-1956.[36]
In the introduction to the 1947 American bookWho Killed Hitler?, US intelligence officerWilliam F. Heimlich asserts that a one-day investigation of theFührerbunker grounds produced no evidence of Hitler's death. The book itself asserts thatReichsführer-SSHeinrich 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 adjutantOtto Günsche apparently delivering acoup 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".[37][38][f] 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".[39] 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.[40] HistorianRichard 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".[41]
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 theSoviet bombardment of Berlin), he, Hitler, Braun andMartin Bormann had escaped theFührerbunker in tanks. The group allegedly flew fromTempelhof Airport toTønder, Denmark, where Hitler gave a speech and took a flight with Braun to the coast.[42] In a May 1948 issue of the Italian magazineTempo, authorEmil Ludwig wrote that a double could have been cremated in Hitler's place, allowing him to flee by submarine to Argentina.[43] Presiding judge at theEinsatzgruppen trial at NurembergMichael 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.[44] In his refutation of Mackensen's account, Musmanno cites a subsequent story of Mackensen's, in which the lieutenant allegedly flew on 9 May toMálaga, Spain, when he was attacked by 30Lightning fighters overMarseille (despite thewar having ended in Europe), purportedly killing all 33 passengers except himself.[42]
From 1951 to 1972, theNational Police Gazette, an Americantabloid-style magazine, ran a series of stories asserting Hitler's survival.[45] Unproven allegations include that Hitler conceived children with Braun around the late 1930s,[g] that he was actually in primephysical health at the end of World War II, and that he fled toAntarctica orSouth America. Writing for theGazette, Heimlich claimed that the blood found on Hitler's sofa did not match hisblood type.[47] As Richard Evans points out, tabloid magazines such as theGazette have made a "career" out of sensational stories of Hitler's survival since the war ended.[48]
FBI documents declassified by the 1998Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act,[49] which began to be released online by the early 2010s,[50] 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. viaplastic surgery.[51][52][53] Richard J. Evans notes that the FBI was obliged to document such claims no matter how "erroneous or deranged" they were,[54] while American historian Donald McKale states that their files did not produce any credible indication of Hitler's survival.[55]
In 1968, Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski released his bookThe Death of Adolf Hitler. It includes a purported Soviet autopsy report which concludes that Hitler died bycyanide poisoning, despite no dissection of internal organs being recorded to confirm this and eyewitness accounts to the contrary.[56][57][58] 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.[57] He later admitted that he was acting as "a typicalparty 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".[56] The book's claims have been widely derided by Western historians.[59]
The 2011 bookGrey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by British authors Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, and the 2014 docudrama film by Williams based on it, suggest that a number ofU-boats took certain Nazis andNazi loot to Argentina, where the Nazis were supported by future presidentJuan Perón, who, with his wifeEvita, had been receiving money from the Nazis for some time.[60] As reported claims received by the FBI stated, Hitler allegedly arrived in Argentina, first staying at Hacienda San Ramón (east ofSan Carlos de Bariloche),[6] then moved toa Bavarian-style mansion at Inalco, a remote and barely accessible spot at the northwest end ofNahuel Huapi Lake, close to theChilean border. Eva Braun supposedly left Hitler around 1954 and moved toNeuquén with their daughter, Ursula ('Uschi'), while Hitler allegedly died in February 1962.[60] The book passingly asserts that Bormann gave the U.S.Office of Strategic Services stolen art and military secrets in exchange for Hitler's life.[60]: xxx [61]
This theory of Hitler's flight to Argentina has been dismissed by historians, includingGuy Walters. He has described Dunstan and Williams' theory as "rubbish", adding: "There's no substance to it at all. It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research."[62] Walters contended that "it is simply impossible to believe that so many people could keep such a grand scale deception so quiet," and says that no serious historian would give the story any credibility.[63] Historian Richard Evans has many misgivings about the book and subsequent film. For example, he notes that the story about Ursula or 'Uschi' is merely "second-hand hearsay evidence without identification or corroboration".[64] Evans also notes that Dunstan and Williams made extensive use of the unreliable bookHitler murió en la Argentina (1987) by Manuel Monasterio, who later admitted including made-up "strange ramblings" and speculation.[65] McKale notes thatGrey Wolf repeats many claims made over the preceding decades which are implied by remote association, stating that"[w]hen one has no factual or otherwise reliable proof, one resorts to associating... with something else or to using hearsay and other dubious evidence, including unnamed or unidentified sources."[66]
On theHistory Channel seriesHunting Hitler (2015–2018), investigators (including Gerrard Williams) cite declassified documents and interview witnesses which allegedly indicate that Hitler escaped from Germany and travelled to South America byU-boat.[67] He and other Nazis then allegedly plotted a "Fourth Reich". Such conspiracy theories of survival and escape have been widely dismissed.[68][69][70] Contradictorily, in 2017 the series was praised by the tabloid-styleNational Police Gazette, which historically was a supporter of the fringe theory, while calling on Russia to allow Hitler's jawbone remains to be DNA-tested.[45][h] After being featured on the series as an expert on World War II, authorJames Holland explained that "[I] wasvery careful never to mention on film that I thought either Hitler or Bormann escaped. Because they didn't."[72]
The survival narrative caused a minor resurgence in Nazism during theAllied occupation of Germany.[5] In spite of the disinformation from Stalin's government[8][9] and eyewitness discrepancies, the consensus of Western historians is that Hitler killed himself on 30 April 1945.[10][11][73][74][75] Some explain the limited forensic evidence as due to the burning of the body to near ashes.[76][77][i] In his 2020 book, Richard Evans dismissed all survival stories of Hitler as "fantasies",[66] although he cited the debunked Soviet autopsies as evidence that Hitler's body was found.[79] Evans wrote:
For some on thefar right it seems inconceivable that [Hitler] would have died such a cowardly and ignominious death. ... In some cases, the proponents of Hitler's survival have strong links to theneo-Nazi scene, or betrayAnti-Semitic beliefs, or are involved withwhite supremacy organisations in the US that regard Hitler as an inspiration for their activities. ... Some fringe groups purveying various forms of 'alternative' knowledge, such asoccultists orUFO enthusiasts, seem to think that associating their beliefs with Hitler will gain them attention. So in some versions of the survival myth, Hitler's escape was achieved by occult means, or involved his travelling to a secret Nazi flying saucer base beneath the Antarctic ice.[80]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)| Politics | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events | |||||
| Places of residence |
| ||||
| Personal life | |||||
| Personal belongings | |||||
| Perceptions | |||||
| Family |
| ||||
| Other | |||||
