An Ordinary Guy, Operation Saponify. Andrew Gilbrook
Hitler
By early 1945, Germany was on the verge of total military collapse. Occupied Poland had fallen to the advancing Soviet Red Army, who had crossed the River Oder to capture Berlin. German forces had recently lost to the Allies in the Ardennes Offensive, with British and allied forces, mainly Canadian, crossing the Rhine into the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr. American forces in the south had captured Lorraine and were advancing northwards. German forces in Italy were withdrawing north, as they were pressed by the American and Commonwealth to advance across the River Po and into the foothills of the Alps.
Hitler retreated to his Führerbunker in Berlin on 16th January 1945. It was clear to the Nazi leadership that the battle for Berlin would be the final battle of the war in Europe. Some 325,000 soldiers of Germany's Army were surrounded and captured on 18th April, leaving the path open for American forces to reach Berlin. By 11th April the Americans crossed the River Elbe, 62 miles to the west of the city. On 16th April, Soviet forces to the east crossed the River Oder and commenced the battle for Berlin on that side. By 19th April, the Germans were in full retreat, leaving no front line. Berlin was bombarded by Soviet artillery for the first time on 20th April, which was also Hitler's birthday. By the evening of 21st April, Red Army tanks reached the outskirts of the city.
At the afternoon situation conference on 22nd April, Hitler suffered a total nervous collapse when he was informed that the orders he had issued the previous day to counterattack had not been obeyed. Hitler launched a tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his commanders which culminated in a declaration that the war was lost. Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself. Later that day, he asked his SS physician about the most reliable method of suicide. It was suggested the "pistol-and-poison method" of combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring learned about this and sent a telegram to Hitler asking for permission to take over the leadership of the Reich following Hitler's 1941 decree naming him as his successor. Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann convinced Hitler that Göring was threatening a coup. In response, Hitler informed Göring that he would be executed unless he resigned all of his posts. Later that day, he sacked Göring from all of his offices and ordered his arrest.
By 27th April, Berlin was cut off from the rest of Germany. Secure radio communications with defending units had been lost; the command staff in the bunker had to depend on telephone lines for passing instructions and orders, and public radio for news and information. On 28th April, Hitler received a BBC report, the report stated that Heinrich Himmler had offered to surrender to the Western Allies. The offer was declined. Himmler had implied to the Allies that he had the authority to negotiate a surrender, and Hitler considered this treason. That afternoon, Hitler's anger and bitterness escalated into a rage against Himmler. Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest.
By this time, the Red Army had advanced to the Potsdamer Platz, and all indications were that they were preparing to storm the Chancellery. This report and Himmler's treachery prompted Hitler to make the last decisions of his life. Shortly after midnight on 29th April, he married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Hitler then hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife, after which he took Secretary Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament.
On the afternoon of 29th April, Hitler learned that his ally, Mussolini, had been executed by Italian partisans. The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress had been strung up by their feet. The corpses were later cut down and thrown into the gutter, where they were mocked by Italian dissenters. These events may have strengthened Hitler's resolve not to allow himself or his wife to be made a spectacle, as he had earlier recorded in his testament. Doubting the efficacy of the cyanide capsules distributed by his SS physician, Hitler ordered a test on his dog Blondi, who died as a result. Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for less than 40 hours. By 01: 00 on 30th April, it was reported that all of the forces on which Hitler had been depending to rescue Berlin had either been encircled or forced onto the defensive. At around 02: 30, Hitler appeared in the corridor where about 20 people, mostly women, were assembled to give their farewells. He walked the line and shook hands with each of them before retiring to his quarters late in the morning, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the bunker.
Hitler, two secretaries, and his cook then had lunch, after which Hitler and Braun said farewell to members of staff and fellow occupants, including Bormann, Goebbels and his family, the secretaries, and several military officers. At around 14: 30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's study. Several witnesses later reported that they heard a loud gunshot at approximately 15: 30. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, opened the study door with Bormann at his side. Linge later stated that he immediately noted a scent of burnt almonds, which is a common observation in the presence of cyanide.
Hitler's adjutant entered the study and found the two lifeless bodies on the sofa. Eva, with her legs drawn up, was to Hitler's left and slumped away from him. Hitler was bent over, with blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with his pistol. The gun lay at his feet and Hitler's head was lying on the table in front of him. Blood dripping from Hitler's right temple and chin had made a large stain on the right arm of the sofa and was pooling on the carpet. According to Linge, Eva's body had no visible physical wounds, she had died by cyanide.
Following Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, the two bodies were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were to be burned with petrol.
The Soviets shelled the area in and around the Reich Chancellery on and off during the afternoon. SS guards brought over additional cans of petrol to further burn the corpses.
The first inkling to the outside world that Hitler was dead came from the Germans themselves. On 1st May, a Hamburg radio station interrupted their normal program to announce that Hitler had died that afternoon, and introduced his successor, President Karl Dönitz. Dönitz called upon the German people to mourn their Führer, who he stated had died a hero defending the capital of the Reich. Hoping to save the army and the nation by negotiating a partial surrender to the British and Americans, Dönitz authorised a fighting withdrawal to the west. His tactic was somewhat successful, it enabled about 1.8 million German soldiers to avoid capture by the Soviets, but it came at a high cost in bloodshed, as troops continued to fight until 8th May.
On 4th May, the thoroughly burned remains of Hitler, Braun, and two dogs were discovered in a shell crater by SMERSH commander Ivan Klimenko. They were exhumed the next day and secretly delivered to the SMERSH Counter-Espionage Section of the 3rd Assault Army. Stalin was wary of believing Hitler was dead and restricted the release of information to the public. By 11th May, part of a lower jaw with dental work was identified as Hitler's. Details of the Soviet autopsy were made public in 1968 and used to confirm the remains as Hitler's in 1972.
In early June 1945, the bodies of Hitler, Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six Goebbels children, Krebs, Blondi and another dog were moved from Buch to Finow, where the SS guard who buried Hitler re-identified his remains. The bodies were reburied in a forest in Brandenburg on 3rd June, and finally exhumed and moved to the SMERSH unit's new facility in Magdeburg, where they were buried in five wooden boxes on 21st February 1946. By 1970, the facility was under the control of the KGB but was scheduled to be returned to East Germany. Concerned that a known Hitler burial site might become a neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains that were buried there in 1946. A KGB team was given detailed burial charts and on 4th April 1970 secretly exhumed the remains of 10 or 11 bodies. The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed, and the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.
For politically motivated reasons, the Soviet Union presented various versions of Hitler's fate. When asked in July 1945 how Hitler had died, Stalin said he was living "in Spain or Argentina". In November 1945, Dick White, the head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin, had their agent Hugh Trevor-Roper investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. His report was published in 1947 as The Last Days of Hitler. In the years immediately after the war, the Soviets maintained that Hitler was not dead, but had escaped and was being shielded by the former Western Allies.
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