All language subtitles for S01E33 The Two Deaths Of Adolf Hitler.eng

During the years of triumph,

Germans couldn't see enough
of Adolf Hitler -

Germany's saviour.

Germany's greatest statesman.

The greatest general
the world had ever seen.

But as the war turned against Germany,
Hitler disappeared from public view.

And at the last,
the German people knew nothing.

They were told he had died
a hero's death, but that was all.

Nazis, and later the Russians,
concealed what they knew about his end.

The first Westerner
to investigate the affair

was British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.

The controversy began because
Hitler was last heard of in the West

when he made a broadcast
on the 22nd, I think, of April 1945,

saying that he would stay in Berlin.

And when the Russians captured Berlin,

no announcement was made about his life
or death or anything about him.

The body of Goebbels was found
and shown by the Russians.

The body of Hitler was not.

And five months
after Hitler's disappearance,

the Russians accused
the British authorities in Germany

of concealing Hitler and Eva Braun
in the British zone

for ultimate use against the Russians.

This was the last straw which provoked
the British authorities in Germany

to decide to settle this matter

and I was appointed
to find out the facts.

That's the beginning of the controversy.

And of course I naturally consider
that when I had made my report,

on 1 November, 1945,

the controversy should logically
have come to an end.

Why it went on, I can't think,

except for the perpetual
Russian mystification.

(narrator) Yelena Rzhevskaya was
an interpreter with the Red Army unit

which tried to find Hitler.

Dr Faust Shkaravsky
headed the autopsy commission

which examined the body
the Russians found.

Professor Keith Simpson
is a British pathologist

who has assessed the Soviet findings.

Dental expert Reidar Sognnaes
found important new evidence

in a U nited States archive.

Albert Speer, Nazi armaments minister,
saw Hitler often during the war.

Heinz Linge was Hitler's valet
and closest personal servant.

Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge

was with him in the underground
headquarters, the bunker, until the end.

This situation in the bunker
was a fantastic one.

One really can't... An unrealistic one.

One really can't describe how the moods
went on and off like waves.

Sometimes they were all exhilarating

and we were thinking,

"Well, now the Western troops

are coming for release of Berlin."

Goebbels was exclaiming

one of the biggest decisions of the war
that Hitler made.

"He is now determined to...
no more to fight against the West,

only to the East in Berlin,

and this will mean that
the Western powers will join us

in our fight against Russia."

And such things happened
every now and then,

and then a few minutes afterwards
everybody was speaking about suicide.

(speaking German)

(translator) Since Stalingrad,

Hitler's state of health
had been constantly deteriorating.

He dragged one of his legs somewhat
and got a shaking in his arm.

During the last days in the bunker,
this got much worse.

During April, when the report came
through that Roosevelt was dead,

and Truman had said that America's
area of interest was not in Europe,

but in East Asia,

Hitler drew some hopes from this

and clung to it like a drowning man
clutching a last straw.

We spoke about committing suicide

as other people talk about fashions

or about what they have done today.

And so Eva Braun asked
for the best and the painless,

the most painless method
to commit suicide.

And Hitler said,
"That would be cyanide."

"You don't feel anything."

And she said, "Then I would prefer that,
because if I shoot myself,

I would make an ugly impression
when I am dead."

Hitler himself saw no other solution

and no other way out
than to commit suicide himself too.

And so it infected us a little.

It was a most varied theme of our
conversations, how to commit suicide.

It was a little macabre. And then he
gave us capsules, poison capsules.

It was in a brass, in a brass...
like a lipstick.

It looked like a lipstick
in brass... outside wrapping.

And he gave it to Mrs Christian and me
and said,

"l would like to give you
a nice present,

but I think this one
will be of much use for you."

And with a regretting smile,
he gave us this poison.

(speaking German)

(translator) He himself also did not
have the sort of trust he used to have

towards other people,

even, for instance,
towards his own doctors.

I had to give him his eye drops
in the morning.

He maintained that I had
a particularly steady hand.

But I believe that it was more
his mistrust of other people.

Also, when the doctor came
to take his blood,

I had to be there and keep an eye on it.

It became more and more clear
that he mistrusted everybody.

And one day there came one of the men
of the press bureau, press office,

and brought the news.

I think he had heard it by radio
from Reuters news agency,

that Himmler had had negotiations
with Count Bernadotte for capitulation

and Hitler was very upset

because he held Himmler
for his most faithful paladin

and the most reliable one,

and now he saw that also
he had tried to betray him.

He remembered suddenly that the poison
which he had to use for himself

was given to him
from one of Himmler's staff

and he mistrusted that it may affect...

Perhaps Himmler tried a dirty trick

and gave him something that would
only make him unconscious,

so that he could be transported
against his will out of the bunker

and delivered to the enemy.

And to test this,

he ordered a doctor to try to test
this poison capsule on the dog.

I think next to Eva Braun,
this one was next to him.

So he said farewell
and Blondi died very promptly.

(speaking German)

(translator)
The telegram came from Goering,

which said, "Mein Führer".

No longer "My beloved Führer",

but just "Mein Führer".

"l know that you are now totally cut off

and are no longer in possession
of full freedom to command."

"According to the law of succession,
I will now step into your position

and will undertake to represent Germany
both in internal and external matters."

"Yours, Goering."

Hitler was so worked up over this.

He sat in his chair
and could not grasp it at first.

This was added to by Bormann,
who added fuel to the fire somewhat,

so that Hitler then said, "To give me
an ultimatum, that really is the end."

It was sad to see how Hitler
went down and down.

He walked very stooped and bent,
his hand shaking badly,

which he used to put inside his jacket
so that people didn't see it so much,

and his dragging leg.

And this whole mood spread
over all around him.

Nobody knew what they should do
any more.

It came in my mind

that perhaps he always
was the first commander of the army

and the chief of all soldiers,

so it would be more stylish
and more logical

to fight his last battle,
his last fight,

and to die on the honour

and to fall with his soldiers.

But he refused.

"Yes, it would be right,
but I cannot do that

because my health state is too low
and I am so trembling

that I couldn't hold a pistol
and couldn't handle it."

"So.... And I am not sure
that any one of my paladins

would be able to give me the last,
the death shot if I was only wounded,

and I am not willing
to fall in the hands of the enemy,

neither alive nor dead."

(narrator) By April 29, Soviet troops
were fighting inside Berlin.

Hitler began putting his affairs
in order.

He married his mistress Eva Braun,
and then he summoned Traudl Junge

to dictate to her his personal
and political testaments.

Then he began, "My last will."

Then he dictated me
at first his private will

and afterwards his political testimony.

And I must confess that I was...

I was at first in a very excited mood,

because I expected that I would be

the first and the only one who knows,

who is going to know
the explanation and declaration

why the war had come to this end
and why Hitler couldn't stop

and why the development
and why the catastrophe...

I thought, "Now comes
the moment of the truth."

And I was heart bumping
when I wrote down what Hitler said.

But he used nothing new.

He came out with his old phrases.

He repeated his accusations,

his swearing to the enemy

and to the Jewish capitalistic system.

And then he announced,

in the second part
of the political testament,

he announced a new government.

(speaking German)

(translator) The next day,
reports came in,

and it was now clear to him that the
Russians could break in at any moment.

When Hitler said farewell to me,

l... I went to him against him

and he came toward me

and his face was already dead.
It was like a mask.

He looked at me, but I had the feeling
he looked through me,

and he gave me a shake of the hand

and murmured something,
but I didn't understand.

It's... I had not understand
what he said at last.

But Eva Braun was beside him

and he... shook hands to all the others.

She embraced me really heartily
and looked at me with a little sad smile

and said,
"Please try to go out of here."

"Please try to come to Munich again

and give my regards
to my beloved Bavaria."

And then he...

she and Hitler
shut the door and retired

and I had an absolute need
for... for fleeing, and l... l...

I fled these stairs upside
on the next level,

and there I found the children
of Goebbels.

(speaking German)

(translator)
He said farewell to everybody

and I was the last one he came to.

Hitler said to me,
"l have given the order to break out."

"You should break out in groups,
join one of these groups

and try to get through to the West."

Then I asked Hitler,
"For whom should we fight on for now?"

And to that Hitler said in a monotone,

"For the coming man."

I saluted him. He gave me his hand
and I disappeared out of the room.

I was so upset, and for a moment
I didn't know what to do.

I ran over to the bodyguard.

But after a short while, I went back

because I assumed
now it must surely have happened.

Suddenly there was a bang.
There was a shot.

And it was obviously within the bunker,

because the noises of the outside...
shooting,

we know how they sound.

And the little boy of Goebbels,

he noticed and he noticed
that there was another sound.

He said, "Oh, that was a bull-eye...
that was a bull's-eye."

And I thought, "Yes, you are right,
that was really a bull's-eye."

(speaking German)

(translator)
I went into Hitler's workroom

with the former
Reichsleiter Bormann,

and this picture
presented itself to us.

Hitler was sitting
on the left of the sofa

with his face bent slightly forward
and hanging down to the right.

With the 7.65 he had shot himself
in the right temple.

The blood had run down onto the carpet,

and from this pool of blood,
a splash had got onto the sofa.

Eva Braun was sitting on his right.

Eva Braun had drawn both her legs up
onto the sofa

and was sitting there
with cramped lips,

so that it immediately became clear
to us that she had taken cyanide.

I took Hitler by his neck.

Behind me were two other officers
from the Escort Commando.

And so we took Hitler's body

and proceeded with it into the park.

In the park we laid the bodies together,
next to each other

and poured the available petrol
over them.

In the Reichschancellery Park,
there was fire all around it

and there was a draught,

so that we could not set the corpse
alight with an ordinary match.

So I twisted a taper out of some paper
with notes on it,

and Reichsleiter Bormann,

who meanwhile had also come upstairs
with some others,

like Dr Goebbels, Burgdorf and officers,

lit the taper and I threw the taper
onto the bodies

and in an instant
the corpses were set alight.

As regards the burning of the bodies
of Hitler and Eva Braun,

I should like to add that the flames
lit them for about half an hour,

that only the woollen blankets and the
clothes were affected by this and burnt,

and not the body itself.

It was clear to us afterwards that we
should have laid the corpses on them.

Then the bodies
would have been totally charred.

But this was in consequence
of the whole mood.

We couldn't collect our thoughts
any more.

And apart from that, the troops who
should make the break-out with us

were quartered in the Reichschancellery.

If the soldiers had seen

that we were burning Hitler's
and Eva Braun's bodies -

one can't just say Hitler's body -

they would probably not have been
prepared to carry out the break-out.

(narrator) Even before Berlin fell,

a Soviet investigating team had been
given the job of finding Hitler

or his corpse.

lncomplete reports and poor photographs
of their work were eventually released.

This is supposed to be the very spot

where they found the bodies
of Hitler and of Eva Braun.

The Russians never admitted
that Hitler was dead until 1950,

when they produced a film.

They then revealed no details,

although we now know
that they had all the facts.

The details they have revealed
have been revealed in such a form

that it doesn't carry a great deal
of conviction or not full conviction.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) On 4 May,

I saw them lying in the garden
of the lmperial Chancellery

wrapped in a grey blanket.

In fact, on 4 May,

they were discovered in a bomb crater
spattered with earth

by Churakov,
one of the soldiers in our group.

Their bodies were dragged from there to
the garden of the lmperial Chancellery.

(narrator) The bodies were sent
to Dr Faust Shkaravsky

to be autopsied by himself
and his five-man team.

(speaks Russian)

(translator) One should however say
that Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies

were badly charred,

unrecognisably so,
especially that of Eva Braun.

Hitler too was charred, but less so.

From the outside,
one couldn't have said who it was.

You see, the extremities,

that is the ends of the hands
and lower part of the foot,

were completely gone -
they'd been burnt away.

The torso itself was a dark colour,
like some sort of coal.

The crown of the head was
extremely badly burnt in places,

so much so that a lump of skin,
sorry, of bone, had been burnt.

We approached the examination

with the highest degree of care
that it was possible to observe.

Everything that was possible to be seen
from the autopsy we examined,

and then we took samples of fluids

and despatched it all to the
district medical research laboratory,

which was called, as far
as I can remember, cellar 291.

They did the examination

and advised me by telegraph
either one or two days later -

I don't remember the date too well -

that the traces found were either
cyanide or cyanide compounds.

The autopsy for Hitler, for instance,
which they have published,

has never been published
in the original Russian.

It has only been published
in German and English.

It was released in... an unusual way,

in a way which, perhaps unfairly,
seems to deprive it of authority.

(narrator) Here, in Russian,

is Shkaravsky's typed copy
of the autopsy report.

It states, "On the body,
considerably damaged by fire,

no visible signs of severe
lethal injuries or illnesses

could be detected."

"The presence in the oral cavity of the
remnants of a crushed glass ampoule;

the marked smell of bitter almonds
emanating from the bodies

and the forensic chemical test
of internal organs,

which established the presence
of cyanide compounds,

permit the commission
to arrive at the conclusion

that death in this instance was caused
by poisoning with cyanide compounds."

The report also says that "Part
of the occipital vault is missing."

Since this is part of the skull,

some people say it leaves open the
possibility that Hitler was also shot.

I've read the autopsy report. I expect
it's mainly directed by Shkaravsky.

But he had assistance,

and I would regard it
as a very full and searching autopsy.

The postmortem appears to have been
a really searching one

and to have been thorough
by ordinary standards.

(narrator) But was this body Hitler's?

The corpse had only one testicle,

and the body was not as tall
as Hitler was known to be.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) I repeat,
the body was badly charred

and the extremities
were even more charred.

And so, to speak of a difference
of six, seven or even ten centimetres,

to ascertain it accurately
would be beyond our scope.

And this was why we wrote
"approximately" in the end.

And even if in life he measured 1.75 and
in the autopsy he only measured 1.65,

I don't see this
as being anything significant.

A body shrinks when burned and I think
the difference is too small to matter.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) There was indeed
one genital missing,

which we discovered quite by chance,

but it had nothing to do
with the case in hand.

We usually treat
this extremely rare occurrence

by looking in the sperm duct itself.

But it wasn't there.

Then we looked in the lower intestine
regions, but it wasn't there either.

So we came to the conclusion
that it was in fact absent.

To find one testicle only,

which I was amused to see in the report
was found quite by accident -

it doesn't appear to have been
searched for - is not uncommon.

They did search properly, but it's not
uncommon to find only one testicle.

I don't think that's a very important
point of identification.

And we don't know if Hitler
had only one testicle or not.

The ordinary methods of identifying
a dead body as a particular person -

their clothing, papers, documents,

credit cards and things
in their pockets,

the features,
which can be recognised by relatives,

colour of the hair and eyes,

and fingerprints,
if it comes to detail of that order -

are of course destroyed
when the body is subjected to fire.

When it's scorched badly
or is charred,

almost all those things disappear,

and you are left with a study
of what is sometimes nearly a skeleton.

So you can only identify a person
as being male or female,

a certain height and probably
somewhere near a certain age.

The fingerprints will have disappeared.

Now you also, because the teeth tend to
be preserved from fire inside the mouth,

have one other source of information.

The teeth, especially if they include
a lot of detail of conservation,

repair work, of fillings and bridges
and other similar things,

can provide a mine of information
about identification.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) The teeth were so unusual

that their identification would mean
the identification of the corpse.

One should also comment
that in the upper jaw

on the left-hand side, I think -
I don't remember for certain -

well, high up in the left-hand jaw,
there was a smooth file mark.

It was felt that some mistake had been
made in the filing of the dentures

and a stomatologist had filed off
a piece of the bridge.

Taken all in all, we paid
considerable attention to the teeth.

Of course, for those to have any value,
like fingerprints,

you must have records.

You must have a dental surgeon who
has been careful to keep full records,

and you must have photographs
and x-rays.

And it is when you can,

by making careful note of the details
in your dead body,

take these to a dental surgeon,

whom you suspect to have looked after
that supposed body,

by comparing the two and finding
that they do match in detail,

then you can be as certain
as you could with fingerprints

that that is the body of this person
whose records that dental surgeon has.

(narrator) Hitler did have
a personal dentist, Hugo Blaschke.

No one could find him.

So the investigators began
the search for his assistant.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) Käthe Hausermann
was the assistant of Professor Blaschke,

who was Hitler's personal dentist.

In a medical investigation,

her participation was an extremely
important link in the chain

because nobody else could have
determined Hitler's teeth,

which were in perfectly good order,
to such a degree.

And this being the case,

her place in the investigation
was extremely important.

We hardly hoped to find anybody
of assistance

in the destruction and fire of Berlin,

the city which had just been witness
to the fall of the Third Empire.

It was still enveloped in flames.

This city, whose roads
were so wrecked

that our cars couldn't go
to and fro across the town.

In Berlin we literally dug in the heaps
of rubble to unearth her.

One could say that our efforts have been
accompanied by a stroke of luck.

Without her we could hardly have had

such an exhaustively full
and complete proof.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) It was I who,
both as an expert

and as the chairman of the commission,

had to have a long conversation
with Käthe Hausermann.

Her first approach to us
was one of trepidation.

She feared that the Soviet doctors
would treat her badly.

But then told her that I also
was a doctor, just like herself,

interested in purely medical questions
and therefore she could feel at ease.

The table at which I was sitting
had a flask of water, sweets,

Russian cigarettes and cigars on it.

I asked her if she wanted to smoke

and an atmosphere both businesslike
and calm was established.

When I was working during the war,

at the period in question,
1942, '43, '44, '45,

I had several
London bombing bodies to -

the victims of London bombing -
to identify, and we used dental details.

And I wouldn't have thought
of setting out in the mortuary

for identification of a body

without the assistance of
a dental surgeon and his records.

I might myself,
if we were working under difficulty,

as the Russians may well have been
at the 1945 autopsy on Hitler,

I would myself, perhaps, have to make
a photographic and drawing record

of the teeth as I saw them.

But I would certainly
retain those teeth

and see that an expert dental surgeon,
used to dental recording,

saw them later to confirm my findings.

(speaking Russian)

(translator) I suggested that she
should relate all that she knew,

and in those instances where there was
a lack of clarity in what she had said,

I posed her several questions.

When I realised that she really was
acquainted with Hitler's dentures,

that to say
that this was indeed a person

who had dealings with the dentures,

I asked her additional questions.

The team consisted of some
half a dozen army pathologists,

none of whom, even Lt Col Shkaravsky
himself, who was in charge,

none of whom
had special forensic experience

and none of whom, to my knowledge,

had ever had this exercise
to perform before.

They made an autopsy which, from
the record, looked thorough enough,

but they failed to include
in their autopsy

more than a very poor drawing
of the upper and lower teeth

and of bridge work,
which were still lying in situ.

It would not be enough
for a pathologist,

especially if he were doing routine
army pathology, to indulge himself

in what is a special medical
legal exercise of identification

in which he knows,
if he's had experience,

he must use the services
of a skilled dental surgeon,

very often a dental surgeon
whose work has become forensic

or who may have turned over to
forensic identification work entirely.

(speaking Russian)

(translator)
As I talked to Käthe Hausermann,

I sketched the teeth of a human being.

Here's the right-hand side.

Here I sketched the teeth in
the upper jaw and here the lower jaw.

And you can clearly see
the smooth edge of the teeth.

Then I showed this sketch
to Käthe Hausermann

and said that here
I'd found the two steel pins.

But she protested,
saying there had to be three.

It's incredibly poor.
It's a schoolboy diagram.

It shows a nine-tooth gold bridge here.

It even shows in front the little pegs
which were hung on the four,

the left lateral
and a right lateral incisor here.

But really the detail
is very difficult to pick up.

It's small and it's indeterminate,
though I can't say it's inaccurate.

(speaking Russian)

(translator)
And when the conversation had ended,

and I was convinced that she really
did know these teeth well,

I showed her the dentures
which had been extracted from Hitler.

Her first reaction
was one of extreme surprise.

She then realised that our conversation
had not been an abstract one,

that we really had autopsied
Hitler's corpse

and that it had been examined
by Soviet specialists

and that she was confronted
with Hitler's very dentures.

She then became less distraught and we
calmly, dispassionately examined them.

Then she started off
showing me these steel pins,

and when we examined the teeth
in greater detail,

she turned out to be right - there were
indeed three of these pins to be seen.

And here they are pictured on the right.

This convinced the commission,
and more so myself,

that we had indeed
unearthed Hitler's body.

The evidence that I have been involved
with in studying Hitler's remains

is based on three types of observation.

First of all, the Russian
autopsy report, published in 1968,

revealed certain types
of dental bridge work

which are critical for identification
on a body that was destroyed by fire.

N umber two, in the National Archives
in Washington DC,

I was able to study in detail

the interrogation report
of Hitler's dentist,

Dr Hugo Blaschke, who is now dead.

And he described in great detail
the state of his dentition,

his treatment and so forth.

And thirdly, I was very fortunate,
after a considerable search,

to locate five x-rays
which were known to exist

from the British study of Hitler's last
days, but which had not been found.

And I located this in the branch
of the National Archives

in the little town of Suitland
in Maryland.

And I'm showing two of the five x-rays
here taken by the head and neck experts

who treated Hitler
after the assassination attempt.

This picture was taken in September
and this in October.

I want to point out,

though they were taken
at two different times and locations

by two different doctors,
they are from the identical persons,

seeing the very typical fingerprints,
as it were, of the sinus outlines

and very characteristic bridge work

both in this picture
and in that picture.

Lastly, I have prepared a model

which summarises the findings
of the dentist's report,

the x-rays and the Russian findings,

and I believe that this represents the
true state of affairs of Hitler's teeth,

made up here in gold and porcelain.

Among that, this very discoloured
left front tooth here,

which can be seen in some pictures,

although it was camouflaged
most of the time by his moustache,

and the very characteristic bridge work
in the lower jaw as well

and various types of pathology
in his front teeth.

Sognnaes and Ström,
when they drew,

of course by now,
with the assistance of x-rays,

which had been discovered
in Washington,

have absolutely every single piece
of detail in a single diagram,

the diagram in their article.

It shows not only the presence of,
the number of teeth in,

the exact shape of
and attachment of the three bridges,

the nine-tooth in the upper jaw,
the two in the lower,

it shows the remarkable shape and
attachment of the lingual bar bridge

in the right lower jaw
and draws special attention

to the left upper-central incisor,

with its curious Richmond gold crown
and this central translucent face.

I cannot conceive of anybody now
not being utterly convinced

that these are the teeth of Hitler
and that this was Hitler's skull.

There could be, I think,
no conceivable objection.

There is not a single point
which doesn't fit

and there are very many points which do.

It would be impossible, in my opinion,
to recreate this in another individual.

So that I disregard the possibility

of there being a double
that the Russians autopsied.

They did in fact find the body and where
Trevor-Roper suggested it may be found,

outside a bunker in Berlin,
and they autopsied the real Hitler.

The only question which
is still debated, in my opinion,

or can legitimately be debated,

is whether Hitler took poison
or shot himself.

All the evidence that I had in 1945
was that he shot himself.

The Russians have always maintained
that he took cyanide.

I stated in 1945, on the evidence
of one of the German authorities,

that it was possible
that although he had shot himself,

he had also put a poison capsule
in his mouth to make sure.

And that seems to me quite possible.

(speaks Russian)

(translator) A small piece of the skull

of approximately ten by seven
centimetres was missing.

The edge of the missing portion
was charred,

which meant that this was a result
of the burning and not of injury.

I must stress that the brain itself
was well preserved

and that there was no damage
to the brain.

Neither was there damage
to other portions of the skull.

Neither the nasal portion,
the cheekbones, etc.

In a word, there is,

there was no damage at all,

so there is no proof of damage
by firearms.

The only positive things
that emerged from autopsy

are that glass was found in the mouth

and that hydrocyanic acid was detected
by analysis afterwards in the body.

I find this a little surprising if there
was great heat for some time,

as there was - petrol was poured
more than once on the body -

for cyanide evaporates very quickly,
and I'm a little surprised at that.

But glass was found in the mouth.

I think death must have due
to the crushing of a cyanide capsule,

which we know was common practice
among the higher Nazis.

We have to recognise the fact

that all the German witnesses
do bear witness about the shooting.

We can't ignore that. They are just
as good witnesses as the Russians.

The evidence on the Russian side
is the autopsy which they've produced.

But I can't regard it as final,

firstly because they have produced it
in so propagandist a form

that it, to some extent,
cancels itself out.

Mr Bezymenski,
a Russian journalist,

whom the Russians have employed
to publish these documents,

makes it quite clear that he regards
suicide by poison as the death of a dog

and a cowardly death,

and suicide by shooting
as a soldier's death,

and that he is anxious to show that
Hitler did not die a soldier's death,

but a dog's death.

That shows
a kind of political motivation

which rather detracts
from his objectivity.

There is a truly extraordinary passage
in Bezymenski's work

in which, having argued throughout
that Hitler only took a poison capsule,

he then suddenly produces a theory which
has no evidence or probability in it

and is given
as a second-hand speculation,

that Heinz Linge afterwards
shot Hitler when he was dead.

Well, what is the point of this

unless there was some evidence
that Hitler had been shot?

I can't see what is the point
of this speculation,

especially since the Russians had Linge

in their possession
as a prisoner for nine years.

They could easily have established
this fact if it were true

without producing it as a second-hand
speculation ascribed to Linge.

So I think that they,
even in this matter,

the Russians have created mystification

and I think the balance of evidence,

which is what one has to go on
when the evidence conflicts,

that the balance of evidence,

taking account of the fact that the
German witnesses had no reason to lie

and were perfectly objective
in their accounts to me,

the balance of evidence
is that he shot himself.

As regards to the firearm, I find
no evidence of this in the report.

Shkaravsky doesn't find a hole in
the roof of the mouth or either temple.

Part of the skull was missing,
but it commonly is in fire -

it flakes off or is destroyed by fire.

And the brain was in good condition
with no bullet track through it.

I don't think Hitler can have been shot.
Certainly not through the head.