Questions About the Death of Adolf Hitler

By the end of April 1945, German army's defeat was apparent. The Russians were literally knocking at the doorsteps of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Hitler had wed his long time mistress, Eva Braun a couple of days back on 28 April. On April 30, the Fuhrer and his wife, not wanting to be captured alive by the Russian army, made their plan to end their lives, known to close aides. Hitler ordered that their bodies then be burnt.

The Russian army upon capturing the bunker found two badly disfigured bodies on May 4. They initially thought that they were the bodies of Hitler and Braun. They had them buried. A former Red Army Officer, Lev Bezymenski claims that the Russians realized that they were mistaken and conducted autopsies on these bodies. The reports of the autopsies revealed that there were no bullet wounds and that deaths were caused by cyanide. The finding was kept a secret, as Stalin did not want any Nazi sympathizer to exploit the situation. Stalin remained silent about the issue. The West assumed that Hitler had shot himself.

Some five decades later, the soviets made public the photos of Hitler' body before it was buried. It is assumed that the Red army took the photos. However, who actually took the photos- Reich leaders or Russians? Some historians believe that the photos were not of Hitler but that of his double. The Reich leaders were trying to convince the world that the Fuhrer had indeed killed himself, when actually he had escaped from the bunker, that Hitler's double (or doppelganger) Gustav Weber was shot on the forehead.

According to another version, the doppelganger was an Actor by Andreas Kronstaedt. Some say that the man was Julius Schreck, who was Hitler's driver and had a striking resemblance to the Fuhrer. The doppelgangers were trained to speak, walk, and behave like Hitler, but they could not match his charismatic presence. Goebbels, it seems, had engaged six doppelgangers of Hitler to ensure his security.

There are loose ends to the theory that Hitler shot himself dead. First, there are variations in eyewitness accounts. Some say they saw a gunshot wound at the corner of the eye, while others in the mouth. Second, the bloodstains on the sofa do not match the Fuhrer's blood group. Then there was a claim by Magda Zeitfeld, a German double agent working for the Allies, that her father and brother were eliminated after her father had performed plastic surgery on the Fuhrer. The bodies of the dictator and his wife were exhumed in 1970 by the KGB, burnt completely and the ashes strewn irretrievably in the Elbe. Perhaps, the tooth will never be known.