DID HITLER DIE IN BERLIN OR ELSEWHERE?                                      

There have been many theories proposed that Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator didn’t die in Berlin in April 1945 but instead, he died in South America, in the Antarctic and even on the moon. Of course, these theories are pure nonsense. And yet, there are many fools that gobbled up these stupid theories like they were popcorn—they couldn’t get enough. They still want more.

Many of these fools believe that Hitler was also in a submarine that took him and other senior Nazi leaders to South America. There was such a submarine that took senior Nazi leaders to South America but Hitler wasn’t in it.

To add to the confusion about where Hitler died was when the version of Hitler's demise turned out to be a baldfaced lie. At 10:20 p.m. on the day after Hitler's suicide, a German admiral addressed the country by radio. He announced somberly that Hitler had died a few hours earlier, fighting "at the head of his troops."

He actually died in his quarters in the bunker in the centre of Berlin when the Soviet (Russian\) soldiers were closing in on him. I will get to that further in this article.

This sad fantasy was recounted in the book The Death of Hitler, whose authors noted that it was believed by much of the world. A doctor even testified in a deposition that he had tried to save the wounded leader: "A shell fragment had pierced the uniform, went through his chest and entered the lungs on both sides," he told a court. "It was no use to do anything." That statement and the book is pure unadulterated drival.

Inevitably, the notion of Hitler the war hero was shown to be a hastily conceived fraud, but the Nazis and their conquerors didn't exactly make it easy for the public to learn the truth. Imagine how the German populace would react knowing that their brave soldiers were dying while fighting for their homeland and at the same time, their leader took the cowardly way out and shot himself in the head in the comfort of his living quarters.              

Hitler had demanded in his will that the Soviet forces about to overrun Berlin not be allowed to defile his corpse.

Before I go further, I will tell you what really happened on that fateful day when Hitler committed suicide in the Bunker.  I will quote from Volume Two of my Memoirs. Two thirds of what is written in the books of my Memoirs are historical events that took place during my lifetime. I spent years researching these events (five hours a day for six days every week) to make sure that the events as I wrote about are accurate.

As an aside, while Hitler was alive during his last days in 1945, I was ten and a half years of age.

In Volume Two of my Memoirs titled WHISTLING IN THE FACE OF ROBBERS and beginning on page 173 and ending on page 188, I explain to my readers, the last days of Hitler’s life. Please note that the text in my Memoirs doesn't quite look like it does in this article but the words are identical. 

While Hitler was in the Fuerurebunker, he looked haggard, stone-faced and extremely agitated. He even threatened to shoot Morell, his doctor. News came to him in the early afternoon that the Soviet forces had broken through Berlin’s inner defences and were inside Berlin’s northern suburbs. He twice left the conference room and went to his private quarters down the hall. He had also learned that General Steiner’s attack against the Soviets that he had impatiently waited for didn’t take place at all. This is when he snapped. He ordered everyone out of the conference room except generals Keitel, Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf. Even for those in the bunker who had long experienced Hitler’s furious outbursts, his tirade at this particular moment thundered through the bunker as he screamed at the generals in the conference room. “I have been betrayed by those I trusted.” He verbally attacked the long-standing treachery of the German army. Then he said, “Even the SS are lying to me.” Then he said, “Steiner hasn’t attacked as I ordered. His troops will not fight.” General Jodl told Hitler that the munitions and fuel would shortly run out.                                                                                                 

Hitler slumped into his chair and as his voice fell into a whimper, he said, “The war is lost.” Now there was an understatement if there ever was one. His generals were dumbstruck. After a few moments had passed, he said softly, “I have decided to remain in Berlin. I will lead the defence of Berlin.”                                                                    

The generals in the room were aghast. They knew that Hitler was incapable of fighting himself and there was the risk that he would be wounded and fall into the hands of the Soviets. The generals begged him to change his mind and flee Berlin and move his headquarters to Berchtesgaden before it was too late. They told him that the troops could be withdrawn from the western front and deployed east to fight the Soviets. That in my respectful opinion was a stupid suggestion. The Soviet army was far too entrenched into Germany for any remnants of the German army to send the onrushing Soviets packing.                                                                                                 

Then Hitler replied, “I can’t do that. Everything is falling apart anyway.” He paused and then said, “Goering could do it.” That suggestion was even more stupid than the one given to him by the generals in the room. Goering was a nonentity by then. His air force was no longer functioning and he had no experience in commanding armies and his reputation as a drug addict was renown. And as one of Hitler’s generals said, “No soldier will fight for the Reich Marshal.” Hitler screamed, “What do you mean fight? There isn’t much more to fight for. It is a matter of negotiations. The Reich Marshal can do that better than I can.”                                                                                  

After having said that, his face being a deathly pallor, he left the conference room and went to his private quarters. As far as he was concerned, his dream of being the leader of a powerful fatherland was doomed. He called his secretaries and dietician into his quarters and told them that all was hopelessly lost.  He told them that they should get ready to leave the bunker and that a plane would fly them south within the hour. His secretaries told him that they would not leave him and Hitler’s lover, Eva Braun said the same thing.                     

Meanwhile urgent phone calls were made from Admiral Donitz and Himmler but neither could persuade Hitler to escape from Berlin. Goebbels who was at Ribbontrop’s office also phoned Hitler and later went to the bunker. After meeting with Hitler, Goebbels announced to the others in the bunker that he and his family were going to move into the bunker so that they could be with Hitler. Gobbels and Hitler had always been close friends and Hitler trusted Gobbels probably more than any of his other cronies. On the other hand, when Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister arrived at the bunker, Hitler refused to see him.Obviously, Ribbentrop had outlived his usefulness to the Reich.                                                                                              

As far as others in the bunker saw it, Hitler was abandoning the German people when they needed him the most. I don`t quite see it that way. There really wasn`t anything he could do anymore to save Germany. He was like a drowning man whose ship had sunk beneath him and had sucked him and everyone around him into the depths of the sea.                                                                                                    

Field Marshall Keitel decided to travel to General Wenk`s 12<sup>th</sup> Army headquarters which was at Potsdam west of Berlin. When Keitel phoned Hitler and told him that he had arrived at Wenk’s headquarters, Hitler was overjoyed. He then ordered that all available troops be sent to Wenk. There really wasn’t anything that Wenk could do to protect Berlin by then so Keitel left Potsdam and flew to Fürstenberg which is 75 kilometres (47 miles) north of Berlin. Keitel was generally regarded as a weak officer who had little tactical military experience so being out of Hitler`s presence, it is doubtful that he could have done anything constructive to save the Third Reich.                                                                                                       

Meanwhile, Hitler ordered Schaub, his personal assistant to remove all the papers that were in his private safe and burn them in the garden outside. He then ordered General Jodl to make sure that the High Command of the Wehrmacht was transferred to Berchtesgaden which is 48 miles (77 km) southeast of Munich.  I don’t think that he realized that Keitel was in Fürstenberg at that time which was some considerable distance from Berchtesgaden.                    

Hitler had contacted Admiral Donitz the previous night to order all Donitz’ sailors to go to Berlin to assist in keeping the Soviets from capturing it.  One can easily surmise that by now, Hitler was grasping at straws to keep afloat when all the time, he was already submerged below the surface of the raging sea above him.                      

Telegrams were sent to Himmler and the Luftwaffe high command to send their remaining reserves to aid in the reinforcement of Berlin. Hitler thought that by saving Berlin from the Soviets, the latter could be lured into falling into Wenk’s trap to the west of Berlin but Wenk’s so-called trap wasn’t primed nor would it ever be by then.                     

In 1944, Hitler was inwardly convinced that his enemies would overrun Germany so he created the Morganthau Plan that would destroy all of Germany’s industry, railway lines, power stations and even bridges so that the Allies wouldn’t be able to make use of them when they overran Germany. He knew that such an action would reduce the status of Germany to an agricultural nation. Few of his closest followers really approved of such a plan and one of his followers, Albert Speer was aghast at the order he had been given to carry out the Plan. For this reason, unknown to Hitler, Speer hindered Hitler’s orders to carry out the Plan.                                                                                          

On the afternoon of the 23^rd of April, Albert Speer flew to Berlin and after his plane landed on Brandonburg Gate (a wide boulevard close to the bunker) he went straight to the bunker to meet Hitler. He knew he would be in trouble with Hitler since he had refused Hitler’s orders to destroy the German factories, power houses and railway lines. He admitted as much to Hitler when he met him in the bunker. Hitler forgave him since he really liked Speer and was aware that Speer had done much for him while he was the Minister of Armaments. Hitler asked Speer if he should stay in Berlin or fly to Berchtesgaden. “Mien Fuhrer,” he began. “It would be better to end your life as Fuhrer in the Reich capital than in your weekend house.” (the Berghof—mountain farm)                                                                                          

Not long after Hitler’s meeting with Speer, there was a flurry of excitement in the vestibule. A telegram had arrived from Goering, which Bormann hastily brought to Hitler. In the message, Goering said; “My Fuhrer: General Koller today gave me a briefing on the basis of communications given him by Colonel General Jodl and General Christian, according to which you had referred certain decisions to me and emphasized that I, in case negotiations would become necessary, would be in an easier position than you in Berlin. These views were so surprising and serious to me that I felt obligated to assume, in case by 2200 (10:00)) o’clock no answer is forthcoming, that you have lost your freedom of action. I shall then view the conditions of your decree as fulfilled and take action for the wellbeing of Nation and Fatherland. You know what I feel for you in these most difficult hours of my life and I cannot express this in words. God protect you and allow you despite everything to come here as soon as possible. Your faithful Hermann Goering.”                                       

Goering wasn’t actually wrong in this proposal as he was merely asking Hitler whether, in keeping with the decree on succession, he should assume the leadership of the entire Reich if Hitler remained in Fortress Berlin and had no more control of the armed forces.                                                                                    

It was obvious that Goering believed or at least wanted to believe that Hitler being surrounded by the Soviets and for this reason, Hitler was no longer in a position to lead Germany as its fuehrer.  

Of course, he had to have known that Bormann would make hay with that message and use it to denounce Goering. At first, Hitler responded to this news with the same apathy he had shown all day long. But Bormann’s theory was given fresh support when another radio message from Goering arrived. It read: “To Reich Minister von Ribbentrop: I have asked the Fuehrer to provide me with instructions by 10 p.m., April 23. If by this time it is apparent that the Fuehrer has been deprived of his freedom of action to conduct the affairs of the Reich, his decree of June 29, 1941, becomes effective, according to which I am heir to all his offices as his deputy. If by 12 midnight April 23, 1945, you receive no other word either from the Fuehrer directly or from me, you are to come to me at once by air. (Signed) Goering, Reich Marshal.”         

This was the fuel Bormann needed to burn his arch rival. “Goering is engaged in treason!” he exclaimed excitedly. “He’s already sending telegrams to members of the government and announcing that on the basis of his powers he will assume your office at twelve o’clock tonight, mein Fuhrer.”                                                

Bormann had at last managed to rouse Hitler from his lethargy. An outburst of wild fury followed in which feelings of bitterness, helplessness, self-pity, and despair mingled. With flushed face and staring eyes, Hitler ranted as if he had forgotten about the presence of his entourage.                                          

Hitler screamed, “I’ve known it all along. I know that Goering is lazy. He let the air force go to pot. He was corrupt. His example made corruption possible in our state. Besides he’s been a drug addict for years. I’ve known it all along.”  

                                                  

Hitler immediately stripped Goering of his rights of succession. Savouring his victory, Bormann drafted the radio message and in it, he accused Goering of high treason to Hitler and betrayal of National Socialism. The punishment would be death. The message to Goering went on to say that Hitler would exempt him from further punishment if the Reich Marshal would promptly resign all his offices for reasons of health. 

      

    

Then, with startling abruptness, Hitler lapsed back into his apathy: “Well, all right. Let Goering negotiate the surrender. If the war is lost anyhow, it doesn’t matter who does it.” That sentence expressed Hitler’s contempt for the German people. As far as he was concerned, Goering was still good enough for the purposes of capitulation. But no further message was sent to Goering and subsequently, Goering agreed to the terms sent to him by Bormann. But later in the evening, Goering who was staying at his home next to the Berghof, was surrounded by SS guards and placed under house-arrest. I don’t know who gave the order.         

While the Führer slept, the Battle of Berlin raged in the streets above him, with the Germans fighting fanatically to defend every inch, just as Hitler hoped they would. Above all, they tried to knock out the Russian T34 tanks now rolling toward Hitler. A Russian tank driver recalled: “There were a lot of Panzerfausts (anti-tank grenade launchers) in Berlin. They were in every basement. Mostly the operators were old men or boys.”                                                                                           

By morning, four of his remaining military adjutants realized that their führer intended to self-destruct so they asked him for permission to leave the bunker, on the excuse that they wanted to check on the status of a relief column supposedly being led by General Wenck. Hitler granted their requests.                                   Hitler also took this opportunity to give his Luftwaffe adjutant, Colonel Below, one last Führer message to be hand delivered to the Army High Command. In that message, Hitler said; “The people and the armed forces have given their all in this long and hard struggle. The sacrifice has been enormous. But my trust has been misused by many people. Disloyalty and betrayal have undermined resistance throughout the war. It was therefore not granted to me to lead the people to victory. The Army General Staff cannot be compared with the General Staff in the First World War. Its achievements were far behind those of the fighting front. The efforts and sacrifices of the German people in this war have been so great that I cannot believe that they have been in vain. The aim must still be to win territory in the East for the German people.” unquote                                                                         

It is beyond my understanding how he could possible believe that Germany was still capable of encroaching onto Russian soil with the Soviet army mere blocks from the bunker and his armies in disarray. There is no doubt in my mind that his message was the ravings of a mad man. Thus the last official message of the Führer contained both a final insult of the Army leadership along with a repetition of the Lebensraum theme for the East.                   The next morning, Speer met Hitler and shook his hand and told him that he was leaving the bunker. Hitler replied stiffly, “You’re going then. Goodbye.” Whatever respect Hitler had for Speer, he certainly didn’t love him as a friend by that time in their lives.                                                                                           

After this crisis, Hitler had reached the end of his strength. He dropped back into the weary tone that had been characteristic of him earlier that day. For years he had overtaxed himself by micro managing the operation of the war which would have better been left to his generals.  For years, he had been mustering that immoderate will of his. He had thrust himself and others into the ever-boiling cauldron of defeat. Now he no longer even had the energy to conceal his condition. He was giving up.  As far as he was concerned, Germany could go to hell.                             

Unbeknown to Hitler, in contrast to Goering’s cautiousness, Himmler took a much bolder approach. At the very moment that Hitler was reading Goering’s telegram, Himmler was secretly proposing the surrender of all German troops in the West to General Eisenhower. Himmler had traveled to the city of Lübeck in northern Germany to meet with Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler's idea was to have Bernadotte contact General Eisenhower regarding the surrender in the West, while at the same time Germany would continue fighting the Russians in the East, soon to be joined by the Americans and British. With Himmler playing a key role in this new German-American-British alliance. It could result in Himmler being the leader of post-Hitler Germany, or so he hoped. Of course, the Allies and Soviets would never permit that to happen considering just how evil Himmler was. As to be expected, his proposal got him nowhere. By now, Himmler's name, and that of the SS organization he headed, was already synonymous with the term ‘mass murder’.                                                                                   

Meanwhile, the German military forces continued to deteriorate. On Wednesday, April 25^th, Russian and American soldiers greeted each other face-to-face at Torgau on the Elbe River, seventy-five miles south of Berlin, effectively severing Nazi Germany in two. The next day, Russian artillery fire made the first direct hits upon the Reich Chancellery buildings in Berlin and the grounds directly above the Führerbunker. By Friday, April 27^th, Russian bombardment of the Reich Chancellery buildings had reached its peak with numerous direct hits, causing Hitler to send frantic telegrams to Field Marshal Keitel demanding that Berlin be relieved by Keitel’s now non-existent armies.                            

For Hitler, the worst blow of all came the next day when BBC news radio reports concerning Himmler's surrender negotiations were broadcasted from London and picked up by Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. According to eyewitnesses in the bunker, Hitler “raged like a madman” with a ferocity never seen before when informed of the betrayal by Himmler who had been at his side since the beginning, earning the fond nickname Der Treue Heinrich (The Faithful Heinrich) through years of murderous, fanatical service to his Führer. Now, Hitler wanted to have him shot.Unfortunately for Hitler, Himmler was by that time far out of Hitler’s reach. But Himmler’s personal liaison with Hitler was not so lucky. SS-General Hermann Fegelein who was already under suspicion, having been nabbed the day before trying to sneak out of Berlin in civilian clothing. He was arrested at his home and taken to the bunker. His sister-in-law, Eva Braun begged Hitler to spare his life but Hitler refused her pleas. Fegelein was taken up the stairs to the garden and summarily executed by an SS guard with a machine gun.  

                                                            

In the meantime, advance units of the Red Army had smashed through the German defenses in Berlin and were only a few miles away from the bunker. Hitler was informed that there was perhaps a day or two left before the Russians arrived at his doorstep.                                                                                    

On April 27^th the Italian dictator, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were stopped by communist partisans Valerio and Bellini of the Political Commissar of the partisans’ 52^nd Garibaldi Brigade, Urbano Lazzaronear at the village of Dongo at Lake Como (years later I visited that lake) as they headed for Switzerland to board a plane to escape to Spain. During this time Clara's brother was posing as a Spanish consul. After several unsuccessful attempts to take them to Como, they were brought to the town of Mezzegra. They spent their last night in the house of the De Maria family.                                                                                                            

Walter Audisio was the communist partisan commander who was reportedly given the order to kill Mussolini by the National Liberation Committee. When Audisio entered the room where Mussolini and the other fascists were being held, he reportedly announced, “I have come to rescue you!  Do you have any weapons?” They didn’t. He then had them loaded into a car and driven a short distance. When they arrived at the gated entrance of an estate, Audisio ordered, "Get down"; Petacci hugged Mussolini and refused to move away from him when they were taken to a spot to the left of a square pillar where the iron gate was hinged. Petacci was taken to the opposite pillar and Audisio struggled with her to prevent her from returning to Mussolini. During the tussle, two shots were fired into her chest. Petacci fell down dead. Just then Mussolini opened his jacket and screamed, “Shoot me in the chest!” Audisio complied and shot him in the chest. Mussolini fell but did not die and was breathing heavily. Audisio moved closer to the fallen dictator and fired one more bullet in his chest. The 17 members of Mussolini's entourage were also shot by a firing squad later that same day towards nightfall.                                                                                                   

On the 29^th of April, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3:00 am, they were dumped on the ground. The piazza had been renamed Piazza Quindici Martiri in honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there. After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meat hooks from the outside roof of an Esso gas station. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. Hanging their bodies by their feet was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse. One woman who lost her son in the war fired her pistol at the body of Mussolini. Fascist loyalist, Achille Starace was captured and sentenced to death and then taken to the service station at the Piazzale Loreto and shown the body of Mussolini. Starace, who once said of Mussolini “He is a god,” He saluted what was left of his leader just before he too was shot. The body of Starace was subsequently hung up next to the body of Mussolini alongside the bodies of other dead fascists and Mussolini’s lover.  The service station has been long gone.             

After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by Domenico Leccisi and two other neo-Fascists. Missing for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy—the Duce's body was finally found in August, 1946 hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia, just outside Milan. Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently charged with concealing the corpse, though it was discovered on further investigation that it had been constantly on the move. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, his birthplace.                              

When Hitler learned of Mussolini’s death, he reconciled himself to defeat, and began preparations for his own death. However there was something he wanted to do before he committed suicide. That was to marry Eva Braun as a reward for her ceaseless devotion, during a relationship in which she had spent nearly all of her time at Berchtesgaden waiting for him to show up. Although Eva Braun was in love with Hitler, he rarely acknowledged her in public or introduced her to his high-powered visitors. She spent hours swimming, shopping and grooming herself. There is no evidence that the relationship between Hitler and Eva Braun was anything other than a normal one. The pleasures that she provided him were those of domesticity and relaxation rather than eroticism which otherwise interested him immensely in the past. Perhaps because of her real admiration and devotion to him was the reason why he chose not to subject her to some of his weird sexual activities he had indulged in with other women earlier in his life.                                     

They were married in a brief ceremony about an hour past midnight, early Sunday, April 29^th, with Goebbels and Bormann in attendance. Everyone was then invited into the Führer's private quarters for a wedding breakfast featuring champagne and fond reminisces by Hitler of better days gone by, followed by a bitter accounting of the recent betrayal by his two oldest comrades. Those who listened were moved to tears. Shortly thereafter, Hitler excused himself, bringing along his staff secretary, Traudl Junge, to whom he dictated his last will along with a two-part political testament. 

                                                                                        

In his Will he left his possessions to the Nazi Party and also revealed his fate: “I myself and my wife in order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulation choose death. It is our wish to be burnt immediately on the spot where I have carried out the greatest part of my daily work in the course of twelve years' of service to my people.”                                                                

Both she and Hitler looked very pale. By the time April 1945 arrived, Hitler’s health had deteriorating quickly. His left arm often shook as a result of Parkinson’s disease.  His skin was sallow and his face was puffy. Because of the July 20^th 1944 assassination attempt against him, his eardrums had been damaged. His eyes were often filmed over. He suffered from intense stomach cramps during moments of crisis. He was taking Benzedrine and cocaine-laced eye drops to get him through the day and barbiturates to help him sleep at night. His diet certainly didn’t help him since being a committed vegetarian and paranoid about being poisoned, he was only eating mashed potatoes and thin soup while he was living in the bunker.                                                                               

When Dr. Ernst Gunther Schenck, an SS doctor arrived at the fuhrer-bunker on April 21, 1945, he was shocked when he saw the physical state that Hitler was in. Prior to him receiving an order to go to the bunker, he only remembered what he had seen of Hitler in Newsreels and photographs in newspapers. Hitler didn’t look at all like he looked years earlier. He was surprised to see the way Hitler moved about the bunker. He was walking with a slow, halting shuffle, dragging his left foot behind him and grabbing hold of a stationary object every few steps for support. Hitler’s head, his arms and the entire left side of his body trembled and jerked uncontrollably. Because of the jerkiness of his hands, he couldn’t sign his name on official documents any longer and it was for this reason that he used a rubber stamp. Previously, he always shaved himself out of fear that a barber might deliberately cut his throat. Now in 1945, his trembling hands made shaving himself impossible. Eating was difficult because of his trembling hands so he ended up spilling his food down the front of his uniform. He had an aide push a chair up to Hitler as he was approaching a table and then Hitler plopped down into it.  

           

Hitler’s mental state had deteriorated as well. His thinking was muddled and confused, and he had trouble remembering past events. His emotions went back and forth like a ping pong ball between long bouts of irrational jubilation even when events didn’t justify it being joyous. He would also go into fits of screaming in an uncontrollable rage against his underlings, irrespective as to whether they were generals or simply Hitler’s aides.

                                                                                         

At this particular time in Hitler’s life and including many years going back to 1936, Hitler’s personal surgeon was the quack, Dr. Theodor Morell. He as a physician was sloppy and careless with his patients. On one occasion, he used a cloth to wrap around a patient’s arm after Morell had just wiped off a table with it. He would also use the same needle on other patients without sterilizing it first.

                                                                           

 In addition to serving Hitler as his personal physician, he also served on the board of directors of a pharmaceutical called Hageta. When Hitler met Morell at a Christmas party in 1936, he told Morell about his gastrointestinal problem. Morell jumped at the opportunity to ingratiate himself with Der Fuherer (The Leader) by telling him that he could cure his ailment with anti-gas pills and a drug his firm manufactured called Mutaflor. Let me tell you what the ingredient in Mutaflor was. Brace yourself. Here it comes. Its active ingredient was live bacteria taken from a culture of the fecal matter (shit) of a Bulgarian peasant. The theory of the manufacturer was that digestive problems were caused when healthy bacteria that live in the intestinal tract are killed off or crowded out by unhealthy bacteria that supposedly bring about an unhealthy digestive tract. Mutaflor would supposedly cure the patient of his gastrointestinal ailment by re-introducing the live beneficial bacteria from the peasant’s fecal matter into the patient’s gastrointestinal system and subsequently make him well. The legitimate doctors in Germany thought of this so-called cure as pure (forgive me for the pun) crap.                                                      

Hitler had suffered from gastrointestinal problems since he was a child and despite the quack’s treatment of Hitler, he continued to suffer from the ailment. In fact, it even got worse as the years progressed into the 1940s and right to the end of his life. Years after Hitler began taking those pills every day, the gas in his intestines continued to build up to such an extent, he was constantly farting and worse yet, he was generally suffering from painful cramps and diarrhea. It got so bad that when he felt an attack coming on, he would leap out of his chair and head for the nearest toilet and on many occasions, he didn’t return to the table. His violent farting attacks were the reason why Hitler became a vegetarian. I don’t know why he thought that being a vegetarian would help him because it didn’t. Even increasing the fiber in his diet was no real help to him since his ailment was probably brought about by some other cause. I think I know what was causing his painful cramps in his belly. It seems that the quack also gave him pills that included strychnine which is commonly used as rat poison. The ingestion of strychnine (which is a fatal drug) causes extremely painful cramps in the victim before he dies. Admittedly, the amount of Strychnine in Morell’s pills were extremely minute. Also another of the quack’s pills included a substance called, Belladona, otherwise called Deadly Nightshade. This will bring about extreme excitement, hallucinations and eventually a coma and death if ingested in a large quantity at one time. By the time the 1940s arrived, Morell was giving Hitler 63 different pills and Hitler was ingesting up to 150 pills a week,                   

The doctors and the other members of Hitler’s entourage really despised Morell. He was with Hitler everywhere that Der Furherer went even though Hitler had two other doctors with his entourage.                                      

 When Hitler would go into his lengthy monologues after his meal, those sitting at the table were expected to remain awake, even if it was during the early hours of the morning. However, Morell would fall asleep and if you looked up close to his eyeballs, only the whites of his eyes could be seen and because he wore thick glasses, his eyeballs looked as if you were looking at them through the bottoms of coca cola bottles. His hair was always greasy and he always had dirty fingernails.  He was also a farter just as Hitler was which made Hitler happy because then no one at the table could decided which one of the two actually farted. And while Morell was eating at the table, he constantly burped and grunted no differently than hogs at a trough. And to make matters worse, he rarely took a bath which then caused his body odour to waft around the room not unlike a poisonous gas seeking its victims. It was his propensity to fart and belch in polite company that was enough to clear the room. When others of Hitler’s entourage complained to him about the terrible scent emanating from Morell, Hitler said on one occasion, “I do not employ him for his flagrance, but to look after my health.” Speer, Hitler’s armament minister said of Morell, “He has an appetite as big as his belly and gives not only visual but also an audible expression of it.”                                                                                 

And now back to the bunker. For the wedding ceremony, Eva wore a dark-blue silk dress under a grey fur cape. Eva Braun was much more than a dumb blonde reading romance novels and watching films. She had spent most of her life waiting for someone like Adolf Hitler to appear in her life and now that they were married, she had agreed to share his fate. She would be with him forever. It was Hitler's wish that she should be with him in death as she had been for so many years in life. Shortly before his suicide, Hitler said of his companion, “Miss Braun is, besides my dog Blondi (German Sheppard) the only one I can absolutely count on.” Actually, he could count on and did count on Josef Goebbels.                                                                                        

The ceremony behind closed doors lasted less ten minutes. Hitler and Eva were were married by a low ranking Nazi official, Walter Wagner who had been brought into the bunker on short notice. Imagine if you will the uneasiness that the official felt when he asked the mandatory question he was required by law to ask bride and groom. “Are you a Jew?”                                                

What both Eva Braun and Hitler didn’t know at that time was that she had Jewish DNA in her blood in which its source went back several generations. This was determined in 2014 when scientists took DNA from a hair that was found in her hairbrush at the Berchtesgaden. Further, there had been a persistent rumor that Hitler was part Jewish. Maria Schicklgruber was Adolf Hitler's paternal grandmother. She was working as a household cook in the town of Graz. Her employers were a Jewish family named Frankenberger, who had a 19-year-old son. Maria had sex with him and she subsequently gave birth to Alois, Hitler’s father. The Frankenberger son was allegedly Alois's father and Hitler's grandfather. That would make Hitler one-quarter Jewish. When Hitler learned of this, he made sure that it was kept as a secret.         

The two official witnesses were Bormann and Goebbels. Bormann opened the door again while Hitler and Eva were signing the licence. When Eva Braun started signing her name as Braun, she realized her mistake, then scratched out the letter B and signed the register as Eva Hitler. Hitler then kissed her hand. The wedding register was signed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Thirty minutes later, Bormann, Goebbels and his wife, Hitler’s secretaries, Christian and Junge, Generals Krebs and Burgdorf, Colonel von Below, Otto Gunsche and Hitler's dietician Manzialy got together to celebrate the happy occasion with a wedding breakfast. Hitler only stayed with them for half an hour before withdrawing to his study accompanied by Traudl Junge, his secretary to dictate his private and political wills. In one of his two Wills, he said in part;       

 “As I did not consider that I could take responsibility during the years of struggle, of contracting a marriage, I have now decided, before the closing of my earthly career, to take as my wife that girl who, after many years of faithful friendship, entered of her own free will, the practically besieged town in order to share her destiny with me. At her own desire, she goes as my wife with me into death. It will compensate us for what we both lost through my work in the service of my people” unquote.                  

   Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for fewer than 40 hours. When Traudl Junge reached the age of 81, in 2002, she died in a Munich hospital.               

Even though Hitler’s hope of military improvement in Berlin was hopeless, visitors to the bunker were amazed that Hitler was still able to work himself up into a megalomaniacal frenzy in which Berlin would be saved and the Nazi dream fulfilled. While in one of those moods, Hitler would pore over maps, moving pins to represent military units that either didn’t exist anymore or if they did, they had already been captured by the Soviets.                         

Hitler finally came to the realization that his dream of a powerful Third Reich had crumbled just as the buildings around him had and that there was nothing left for him but a quick death.              

I wonder if at that moment he thought about the time when the Allies invaded Normandy and he referred to them at that time as dummkopfs (stupid people). Well by now he was aware that his dream of world power was shattered by the dummkopfs he sneered at.                                                                                 

 Linge, Hitler’s valet later quoted Hitler as saying, “You must never allow my corpse to fall into the hands of the Russians. They would make a spectacle in Moscow out of my body and put it in waxworks.” Linge also recalled Hitler's bizarre sense of humour. He would laugh at Eva Braun's lipstick on a serviette and then say, “During wartime, lipstick is produced out of dead bodies.”  Even Hitler’s mean streak extended to Eva Braun.                                           

After saying farewell to his generals, the Goebbel family (who were still in the bunker) and then doing the same for his personal staff, Hitler and his wife entered their private quarters and they both sat on the couch in his office. Each of them had a cyanide capsule in their mouths and moments later, they both bit into them. Hitler then shot himself in the temple with his gold-plated handgun. Hitler had known that the capsules would kill them because earlier he had his pet dog, Blondi, forced to take one and the dog died within moments. Hitler chose to shoot himself right after he bit into the capsule because he knew that although the cyanide capsule would be fatal, death would be instantaneous with a bullet in his brain. 

                                          

A minute after Bormann and Goebbels heard the shot, they entered the room. The body of Eva Braun was leaned backwards. She had pulled her legs under herself and then took the poison. The body of Hitler was leaning partly to one side. In Hitler's temple there was a bullet wound the size of a coin and two streams of blood were running down his cheek.  On the carpet, next to his right foot, lay a 7.65mm Walther pistol and next to his left foot was a 6.35 mm Walther.  Hitler was still wearing his grey tunic, a white shirt with a black tie, black trousers, black socks and black leather slippers The dictator died at the age of 54. When told of the news of Hitler's death, Stalin remarked, “So that's the end of the bastard. Too bad it was impossible to take him alive.”                                                                                       

Is it possible that before Hitler killed himself, he began reminiscing his early days when he would stand on a podium and listen to thousands of his troops yelling HEIL HITLER! HEIL HITLER! (Hail Hitler) Was he also remembering the days when leaders of other nations cowered under his gaze when they were visiting him in the Bergof?                                                 

There can be no doubt that conditions in Hitler's bunker during the fall of Berlin were vile. Accommodation was cramped, the air was foul and Russian artillery units were constantly shelling what remained of the Chancellery building above. But, following the death of Hitler, one minor aspect of life improved for those left in the bunker. The Fuhrer was violently opposed to smoking and no one had dared to smoke while he was still alive. But, with Hitler dead, his staff all lit up in an attempt to calm their shredded nerves.                                                                                    

Meanwhile, Hitler's aides acted swiftly to carry out his wishes once he and Eva Braun had committed suicide. Aides carried the couple up to the Chancellery garden, where they were laid side-by-side. Earlier in the day, Hitler's adjutant, Otto Gunsche, had ordered 200 litres of petrol to be sent to the garden. Since the Russians were tightening their grasp around Berlin, only 180 litres could be found. It was enough. Petrol was poured over the bodies and they were set alight. The mourners didn't linger long beside the burning bodies. A Russian bombardment began, forcing the group back down into the bunker after giving their leader a swift Hitler salute.That was the fate of a megalomaniac who dreamed of being master of all of Europe, Russia, the Middle East and all of Africa. Now all he would be master of was the shallow hole in the grounds outside of the bunker where his body and that of his wife were being slowly consumed by the fire.                                     

It wasn’t until 2012 that I learned that Hitler who had that very short mustache under his nose actually seriously considered shaving it off. I shaved it off by using PhotoShop on a photograph I had downloaded from the Internet. You wouldn’t recognize him if you saw that picture of him without his mustache. He looked like an angry middle-aged man.                                                                  

His political testament recited familiar themes first stated in his book Mein Kampf back in 1925. In addition, he blamed the Jews for everything, including the war. He cited the extermination threat he had made on January 30, 1939, followed by a veiled reference to the gas chambers, labeling them a “humane means” of making the Jews atone for the guilt of causing the war. In actual fact, the Jews had nothing whatsoever to do with starting the war. Hitler and he alone was the one who ordered the attack on Poland (1939) and later stupidly declared war on both the United States and Russia in 1941.                                                                                          

In the second part of his political testament, he expelled both Göering and Himmler from the Nazi Party and appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor, not as Führer, but as President of the Reich. Dönitz was to preside over a government with Goebbels as Chancellor and Bormann as Party Minister.                   

Back inside the bunker, with the Führer now gone, people lit cigarettes, a practice Hitler had forbidden in his presence. Next, they began to organize themselves into groups to flee the bunker and hopefully escape the Russians. Fleeing that area of Berlin would be extremely difficult since the area of the bunker was more or less surrounded by the Soviets.                                                 

For Joseph Goebbels, life without Hitler was not worth living for himself, his wife and their six young children. On Tuesday, May 1^st, Magda Goebbels was sobbing as usual while wondering what was going to happen to herself and her six  children, Helga, 12, Hildegard, 11, Helmut, nine, Holdine, eight, Hedwig, six and Heidrun, four—all names starting with the letter H in honour of Hitler.  Later at around 4:00 pm, she asked Dr. Helmut Kunz, a dentist to kill her children by poisoning them. He had become a trusted friend of Hitler after being wounded in the field and transferred to a desk job in the Reich's Chancellery and then to the bunker. He had previously escaped from the bunker after Hitler died but Frau Goebbels had him tracked down and when he was returned to the bunker, she threatened him with death if he didn’t do what she asked him to do. Hitler was no longer around to help him anymore and yet he still refused to do the terrible deed. She then called on Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger, a physician close to Heinrich Himmler. He was the one who would eventually murder the children. I don’t know if he injected them with the poison or placed poisoned capsules in their mouths but he began with the eldest daughter first, then the son, then the remaining daughters. It took around ten minutes before all of the six children lying on their beds were dead.                        

At 8:15 p.m., Goebbels arose from the table, put on his hat, coat and gloves and, taking his wife's arm, went upstairs to the garden. They were followed by Goebbels's adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann. While Schwägermann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot. Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison (cyanide). Schwägermann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it properly himself. One SS officer later said they each took cyanide and were immediately thereafter shot by a SS trooper. Another report said they were machine-gunned to death in the garden. It is difficult to find the real methods of the deaths of Goebbels and his wife since there are no survivors left and only various versions of their deaths remain. However they died, and were then cremated along with the bodies of their children some distance from the bodies of Hitler and his wife. Their macabre remains were discovered by the Russians the next day and filmed, with the grotesquely charred body of Goebbels becoming an enduring symbol of the legacy of Hitler's twelve-year Reich. The Battle of Berlin ended on May 2^nd. 

Bormann was extremely agitated and only thought he had in his mind was to get out of the bunker. Bormann escaped from the bunker just as the Soviet troops were about to surround it.                         

When Bormann escaped from the bunker it was initially believed that his body was found a few blocks away. However, years later, rumours surfaced that he was later seen alive in South America. It is conceivable that he managed to escape the clutches of the Soviets. It has been said that he escaped to Argentina in 1948 and lived there with the assistance of President Peron’s regime. He later moved to Chile and southern Bolivia then back to Argentina. He was 74 on June 17^th, 1974.  He would obviously be dead before the end of the Twentieth Century. In any case, During the Nuremberg trials, he was tried and later convicted and sentenced to death in abstentia                                                                                              

What I wrote in my Memoirs gives you some idea as to how Hitler died in Berlin.      

One of the myths about his escape from the Soviets closing in on him was that he escaped through a tunnel that led him out of Berlin.  That is utter nonsense. I have seen the plans of the bunker and there was only one exit. It was also the entrance to the bunker. It was on the northeast corner of the bunker. If a tunnel ran from that corner, the exit of the tunnel would have placed him right in the middle of the soviet soldiers. If the tunnel went north.  south or west, he would have been captured by the Soviets as they had by then completely encircled the city and far beyond that.

Once the Soviets were confident that they held Hitler’s remains, they went to great and secretive lengths to ensure it never fell into the hands of another army, nation, or other  people. As a result, Hitler’s body did not stay in a single resting place for long since over the course of the following years, his remains changed locations three times.

It began in June 1945 the Soviet organization SMERSH took Hitler’s corpse to a forest near Rathenau, a German town. They buried it there but dug it up just eight months later. Hitler’s remains then traveled to Magdeburg, where the Soviet Army was stationed, and were reburied there alongside those of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, the Goebbels family members, and Eva Braun. There, Hitler’s body remained for 25 years. n 1970, the Kremlin ordered the Soviet outpost at Magdeburg closed and the land returned to the East German government. However, the Soviets didn’t want to turn over the land with Hitler still buried within it because they worried that, if discovered, neo-Nazis and others might turn the site into a shrine. It was time for the Soviets to make Hitler’s body disappear once more – this time, it would be for good.

Uri Andropov, head of the KGB, ordered agents to get rid of Hitler’s remains and ensure they would never be found. Under Andropov’s orders, KGB officer Vladimir Gumenyuk chose a secret spot in which to place Hitler’s body for eternity. Gumenyuk and three other KGB men pitched a tent over the burial site, disinterred Hitler’s remains, and carried them into the nearby mountains while disguised as fishermen. Upon arriving at a stream, the men lit a fire, tossed Hitler’s already burned remains upon it and burned all that was left once more.

Somewhere along the way, though, the Soviets kept what they believed to be a few pieces of Hitler’s body. These remains were brought back to the USSR, hidden in a cardboard box, and untouched until 1993, which the Russian state archives announced that they had found pieces of Hitler’s skull.

Though Russian officials still claim to this day that the skull fragments are all that remains of Hitler’s body, many countries disagree – both French and United States forensic experts tested these remnants and argued that they belong to a young woman.

The grave in which Adolf Hitler’s body was placed has long been sought after by historians, by scientists, and by conspiracy theorists. Yet the man who truly knows what happened to Hitler’s remains is Gumenyuk, the only surviving member of that Soviet KGB team who carried the remaining ashes of Hitler to their final resting place in a forest in which they were then scattered and carried by the wind alone.

In reality, there is no real way to know exactly where Hitler’s ashes lay today after the many decades that have since passed. All that is left of him are some small skull bones and pictures and terrible memories of that terrible dictator by those of us who were alive when he was alive and those of us who are still alive.