Why Did the Soviets Hide Hitler's Death?

Soviet investigators had obtained convincing evidence of Hitler's death, yet official Moscow statements presented a different account to the world.

According to Ambassador Arjan, while the destroyed Berlin was burning in May 1945 in the inflammation of the end of the war, the final fate of Adolf Hitler was unraveled not in political documents, but in the complexity of his dental restorations. A narrative of the moment when Peshwa's medical assistants, by identifying his teeth among the debris, sealed the end of the Third Reich.

But at the same time as the Soviet investigators were compiling their findings, Moscow was raising doubts in its public statements about whether Hitler was really dead or not. Why did the power that captured Berlin hide the evidence confirming the fate of the Nazi leader?

Hitler died on April 30, 1945 [10 May 1324], in the underground bunker of the Peshwa (Furrbunker), located in the complex of Reich Chancellery buildings in the center of Berlin; When the Soviet forces were approaching the city. His staff moved the bodies of Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, to the garden, doused them with gasoline, and burned them.

After the occupation of this place by the Soviet forces, a part of the investigation was entrusted to SMERSH; Soviet military counterintelligence organization whose name was an abbreviation of the Russian phrase "death to spies".

According to the Soviet version, investigators found the charred remains of a man and a woman in the outer area of the shelter and performed an autopsy. Identification of teeth became the most solid part of their research.

"They take the remains to their field headquarters, do an autopsy, remove the remains of the teeth, and immediately look for Hitler's former dental nurse and his dental technician," Sharples says on the HistoryExtra podcast.

These two witnesses were Kete Heuserman and Fritz Echtman. Their knowledge of Hitler's crowns and other distinctive dental procedures provided investigators with vital evidence; More tangible evidence of physical and mental similarity between a burned corpse and a photograph.

But evidence collected within an intelligence agency was not necessarily shared with allies or even other Soviet officials.

"The Soviets have this evidence, but their official position to the public is always, 'No, we haven't found anything,'" Sharples explains.

In practice, Soviet statements were not the same. Reports that the body had been identified were followed by denials. On June 9, Marshal Georgy Zhukov publicly announced that they did not have an identified body and raised the possibility that Hitler had escaped. The Soviet speculations about the possibility of Hitler's presence in Spain were also met with the official denial of the Spanish government.

Why was ambiguity about Hitler's death beneficial to the Soviet Union?

This deliberate ambiguity was politically beneficial for the Soviets. Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union had fought against a common enemy, but after the fateful developments of the Yalta Conference, their alliance was already strained over the future of Europe in the post-war era. Raising the possibility that Hitler was still alive and well could have implicated other countries and strengthened the argument that the Nazi threat still warranted vigilance and vigilance. Historians have therefore interpreted Stalin's handling of the evidence as partly an attempt to bolster his position in the post-war negotiations.

For Western investigators, the immediate consequence of this situation was that they had to reconstruct how Hitler died without access to the strongest physical evidence. In June 1945, witnesses in British and American custody began to describe the cremation. Erich Kempka, Hitler's driver who provided the gasoline, was one of these witnesses.

"They will be questioned separately and then, in late June, they will both be in front of reporters," Sharples said of Kempka and one of the guards who witnessed the cremation.

"They're telling their story, and this is the first real testimony that we have from people who can say, 'Yes, he's dead. Yes, we saw his body being disposed of,'" he continues.

However, without access to dental records for cross-corroboration, eyewitness accounts were insufficient to end all doubt. Did Hitler's staff agree on a fictitious narrative? Could the witnesses distinguish what they had seen from what others had told them?

British military intelligence commissioned historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to investigate Hitler's death. He sought out witnesses, compared their accounts, and reconstructed the events inside the shelter. On November 1, 1945, in Berlin, he announced the result of his investigation: Hitler had committed suicide.

"It's not necessarily the whole truth by any means," says Sharples. This is what was unfolding in the public arena."

Behind the scenes, Soviet investigations continued. In May 1946, investigators from the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police, returned to the shelter after further questioning detained witnesses. They obtained pieces of the skull from the garden of the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler's body was cremated. One of these pieces seemed to have a bullet hole.

"Once again, this evidence was not shared with other countries," says Sharples.

In the 1950s, this secrecy became more difficult to maintain. Among the Germans returning from Soviet captivity, there were people from Hitler's crew and entourage who had seen the consequences of his death up close.

"They were his personal butlers or close advisers," says Sharples. They were the same people who were assigned to burn his body. So, not only did they see his body, but they touched it and dealt with it."

During the judicial proceedings in Germany, the testimonies of these people and other witnesses were gathered to officially confirm Hitler's death. The investigation of the Berchtesgaden court finally led to the issuance of an official verdict announcing his death in 1956. Also, information about the identification of Hitler's teeth was gradually released, making it clear that Soviet investigators had access to evidence that their Western counterparts were unaware of.

Then in 1968, Soviet journalist Lev Beziminsky published The Death of Adolf Hitler, which included an autopsy report and previously withheld documents.

"The tone of the book is very promotional," says Sharples. The bulk of the book is a laudatory account of the Soviet war effort, and Hitler's autopsy report is included among these materials.

This book confirmed the recovery and examination of the remains of the bodies; But its emphasis on cyanide poisoning also challenges the Western narrative that focused on the bullet wound.

According to Sharples, this interpretation had an ideological purpose. Soviet narratives portrayed poison as a weak and feminine way of dying, thus trying to take away the image of Hitler dying like a soldier by firing his own pistol. These perceptions reflected the sexist preconceptions of advertisers, not distinctions based on forensic evidence.

As a result, Western doubts were related to both the findings and the way they were presented. It was difficult to evaluate the evidence that was published selectively and in the form of an overtly political narrative, without considering the motives of their publishers.

Carolyn Sharples interviewed Charlotte Wasper on the HistoryExtra podcast. To listen to the full conversation, visit this link.

James Osborne is the Senior Content Producer at the HistoryExtra website.