Hunting Hitler Read online

  Copyright © 2014, 2017 by Jerome R. Corsi, PhD

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Rain Saukas

  Author photo credit Jerome R. Corsi, PhD

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1864-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1873-9

  Printed in the United States of America.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: The Hunt for Hitler Continues

  Introduction to Second Edition

  Chapter 1: Scientific Proof Hitler Escaped Germany

  Chapter 2: The Hitler Suicide Cover Story

  Chapter 3: “Where is Adolf Hitler?”

  Chapter 4: Allen Dulles, the OSS, the Vatican, and the Nazi Ratline

  Chapter 5: The Escape to Argentina

  Conclusion: Who Helped Hitler Escape?

  Index

  Introduction

  THE HUNT FOR HITLER CONTINUES

  What really happened in the bunker during the last days of the war in Europe, while the Soviets were invading Berlin?

  —Abel Basti, Hitler’s Escape (2011)1

  Everyone knows Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot in his underground bunker on April 30, 1945.

  As Russian troops neared the bunker’s location in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, fighting an urban battle street-by-street, Hitler preferred suicide to being captured and put on display as one of the most notorious mass murderers in history.

  Everyone knows Hitler’s death involved a double-suicide, as Eva Braun, his mistress and long-time female companion, married Hitler in a simple ceremony in the bunker before she too took her life by biting down on a cyanide capsule.

  Seated on a couch in Hitler’s private chambers in the underground bunker, Eva Braun died first, but she died as the bride of her beloved Führer.

  Their bodies were taken, as Hitler had commanded, outside the bunker and doused with gasoline to be cremated in a shallow trench dug for that purpose in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, right outside the secret entrance to the bunker below.

  The Russian army, in liberating Berlin, came across the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun; hurriedly, the Russian army buried the charred remains in a secret location in Berlin, keeping the bodies safe until the cessation of hostilities permitted their safe transport to Moscow.

  Who would dare be silly enough to think Hitler escaped Berlin to run away to a safe haven such as Argentina?

  Anyone who questions that Hitler died by suicide in his bunker in the closing hours of World War II in Europe is by definition considered a “conspiracy theorist”—a polite way of claiming the doubter is a proverbial nut-case.

  But in recent years, the world has come to see that the scientific proof offered for decades by the Russians to back this politically correct version of Hitler’s demise is deeply flawed.

  Moreover, the cover-up story, concocted and published in 1947 by Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, then a British 32-year-old history graduate student who had worked during World War II as a British military intelligence officer, turned out to be inconsistent in several major aspects of the story with other arguably authoritative accounts of Hitler’s demise.

  The hunt for Hitler continues

  The research and analysis presented here will make a scientific case that no proof exists or has ever existed that Hitler died in Berlin as recounted in Trevor-Roper’s official version of events.

  Examining the now-declassified FBI and US military intelligence files, a compelling case can be made that US investigators suspected from the beginning that Hitler had escaped, but were willing to go along with the Trevor-Roper story for political reasons.

  The point of this book is that hunting Hitler must continue until the weight of scientific evidence proves one way or the other whether Hitler died by suicide in the bunker on April 30, 1945, or if he escaped, to die elsewhere.

  Hunting Hitler, the world’s most notorious mass murderer, an international criminal whose crimes against humanity and the law of nations have never been adjudicated, must continue until we know the truth.

  History should not rest until the Hitler chapter is closed, not with politically convenient lies, but with the truth.

  With the truth in hand, steps can be taken to adjudicate blame, not just for the unspeakably horrendous crimes Hitler committed, but also for the inexcusable crimes committed by those who helped Hitler escape.

  Just exactly how did Hitler die?

  The major problem with the story that Hitler and his mistress committed suicide is that it doesn’t hold up under a few pointed questions:

  • “What? Did Hitler take a cyanide capsule or did he shoot himself?” the skeptic asks. “Or did he do both, biting down on the glass capsule containing the cyanide and then shooting himself in the head second, to make sure he killed himself one way or another?”

  • “How about Eva Braun? Did she shoot herself, or did Hitler accept the gentleman’s responsibility by shooting her to spare her the indelicate task of ending her own life with a bullet to the head?”

  • “Where was Eva Braun sitting when she died, to Hitler’s right or left? If she was sitting on Hitler’s left, did Hitler shoot her in the right temple? Or the left temple, if she was sitting on Hitler’s right?”

  • “Or did Hitler just watch Eva take her cyanide capsule, waiting to make sure she was dead, before he killed himself?”

  • “Where did Hitler shoot himself? In the center of his forehead, or was that too awkward for holding the pistol and squeezing the trigger? Or did Hitler simply put the pistol in his mouth to blow his brains out through the back of his head? If the latter, how did he pull the trigger? With one thumb or two thumbs?”

  • “Or if Hitler shot himself in the temple, did he shoot himself in the right temple or the left temple? Shooting himself in the center of the forehead was equally problematic to shooting himself in the mouth. How did Hitler steady the pistol against his forehead, especially if he used both thumbs to pull the trigger?”

  • “If Hitler had Parkinson’s disease, how did he steady his hands enough to be sure he didn’t miss, either in shooting himself or in shooting Eva Braun?”

  The truth, as we shall see in the next few chapters, is that we know nothing for certain regarding how Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. The official narrative has Adolf Hitler shooting himself in the mouth after watching Eva Braun die of cyanide poisoning, but how did that narrative come to be established, especially since there is no physical evidence authenticating how either died?

  Then, there are a score of questions about the immediate aftermath of the double-suicide. Did Hitler and Eva lock themselves away in one of the bunker’s personal rooms to commit their final acts? If so, how did others in the bunker get in to recover their bodies (or to make sure that the suicide attempt hadn’t somehow been botched)?

  Who heard any shots that were fired,
and how did those in the bunker gain entrance if the room had been locked by Hitler and Eva Braun to make sure they were not interrupted in the act of killing themselves?

  How were Hitler and Eva’s bodies discovered? Did eyewitnesses in the bunker immediately carry the bodies outside to be cremated, or did eyewitnesses in the bunker hold some sort of viewing or service for the newly wed and even more newly deceased Führer and his bride?

  As we shall see, the truth is that we have no authoritative account of the discovery and disposal of the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun after committing suicide, as the several available accounts conflict on many important details.

  Where are the photographs of the Führer in death?

  Truthfully, none of these questions can be answered beyond a reasonable doubt in part because no one actually saw Hitler pull the trigger or Eva Braun swallow the cyanide capsule. The bodies of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were never recovered or preserved for positive identification, and there are no photographs of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun’s joint suicide.

  Within hours, the Russians rejected the one photograph supposedly showing Hitler in death as nothing more than one of Hitler’s many doubles.

  To all but the most gullible, the photo of Hitler with a bullet hole in the center of the forehead looks nearly as contrived as the tattered Hitler outfit stained by food droppings that the double is wearing at the time of death, to say nothing of the double’s darned socks, and the fact that the double’s corpse was measured at three inches shorter than Hitler.

  Looking at the death of the Hitler double, we wonder if he knew this would be his ultimate fate? Who told him that now was the moment duty called for him to stand in for Hitler not at some silly parade or public event, but in the dissimulation of the Führer’s last moment—a moment the double was expected to live out to its last nasty shot good bye.

  But then, what was the point of murdering a Hitler double if Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun actually did commit suicide? Why not just take some photographs of the real deal to prove to the world that Hitler and his mistress were dead, allowing the visual evidence to end the controversy over how they died?

  As this book will demonstrate, the truth is that when the Russians entered Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were gone. Neither were ever captured, and their bodies were never found.

  When the Russians burst into the bunker, Hitler and Eva Braun were simply missing.

  Exactly what happened to them has been a mystery since April 30, 1945, the date the two reportedly committed suicide.

  Since that day, the whereabouts of Hitler and Eva Braun have remained a mystery, despite official protestations that they killed themselves and their bodies were burned before the Russians arrived at the Hitler bunker in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

  The story of Hitler’s marriage and suicide: an elaborate cover-up?

  Certainly, the eyewitnesses to Hitler and Eva’s suicides would have left authoritative accounts, maybe even signed affidavits attesting to the fact that they saw the Führer and his bride not only in their final moments of life, saying a tearful goodbye to the remaining few faithful yet with them in the bunker, but also in death.

  But when we seek the eyewitness testimony, we find the personal accounts to be as disappointing as the one remaining photograph of the sad Hitler double with the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, dead with his mouth open as if the body were in a long snore, or perhaps just gasping for his last breath.

  The truth is that supposed eyewitness accounts to Hitler and Eva Braun’s final hours conflict in many important details, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the eyewitnesses freely added fiction, sometimes masked as supposition or educated guesses, to fill in details where their memories were incomplete.

  As we shall see, a close reading of the various supposedly authoritative accounts of Hitler’s final days differ in many important aspects, including: Who was with Hitler in his final hours? What did Hitler say and do?

  In the final analysis, a thoughtful reader begins asking whether the eyewitness accounts could have been entirely fabricated to cover up a truth no one at the time wanted to acknowledge. Could Hitler have escaped?

  Are the discrepancies in the eyewitness accounts explainable because eyewitnesses told military intelligence officers what the officers wanted to hear? Or were the eyewitness accounts intended from the beginning to be artful lies to protect the Führer who had escaped, taking with him the loyalty of the die-hards he left behind?

  Where is the proof that Hitler didn’t escape?

  These are the questions I have been asking since I was a child, being born a year after the war in Europe ended and growing up in the 1950s.

  Somehow, it seemed that if Hitler had died on April 30, 1945, the facts surrounding his death should have been easy to prove.

  All too convenient was the explanation that the United States lacked the proof because the Soviets liberated Berlin and the Soviets absconded with Hitler’s remains back to Moscow before the United States and its allies, including the British and the French, had a chance to demand proof from the Soviets that Hitler was dead.

  However, it now appears that not only did Stalin and the Russians doubt Hitler was dead, but that those doubts were also shared by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was at that time the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces who won World War II.

  If both Stalin and Eisenhower had doubts about Hitler’s demise, then how did the double-suicide story become the official narrative? And to such an extent that to dispute whether Hitler might have escaped was a question no serious or mature adult would dare ask in public?

  I decided to write this book when international news broke that credible DNA testing proved the skull the Russians had claimed was Hitler’s since the end of World War II was actually that of a 40-year-old woman.

  The story of that DNA testing is where the first chapter of this book begins.

  ______________

  1 Abel Basti, El Exilio De Hitler: Las pruebas de la fuga del Führer a la Argentina (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sudamericana, 2012), p.19. Title in English: Hitler’s Escape: The Proof of Hitler’s Escape to Argentina.

  Introduction to Second Edition

  HUNTING HITLER

  By Jerome R. Corsi

  Feb. 14, 2017

  My decision to write Hunting Hitler in 2014 was prompted by two developments.

  First, in 2009, the History Channel broadcasted a documentary entitled Hitler’s Escape that showed the investigations of Dr. Nicholas Bellantoni, the state archeologist for the state of Connecticut, who was given permission by the Russian Federation State Archive to examine the fragments of Hitler’s skull that presumably had been preserved by Russian military authorities since the end of World War II.2

  DNA analysis proved the “Hitler skull” in the Russian archives belonged to a forty-year-old woman. Watching this DVD, I began to suspect Allied political and military authorities in 1945 did not want to admit they had allowed Hitler to escape. Instead, politically correct authorities of that day preferred instead to invent a lie, canonizing the Hitler suicide story as the official version to avoid explaining their malfeasance to their citizens back home who were demanding justice for horrendous crimes Hitler had committed against humanity.

  Still, there was no documentary evidence available in 2009 to distinguish an argument that Hitler had escaped from the “conspiracy theory” derisive true believers of official history were certain to heap on anyone daring to argue that General Eisenhower and the allies, including the Russians, had failed to capture Hitler to bring him to trial as the Nazi regime collapsed in April 1945.

  Second, in 2014, nearly seventy years after the end of World War II, the FBI finally decided to release, several hundreds of pages of yet redacted archive files regarding Adolf Hitler at the end of the war.

  “In the aftermath of Germany’s surrender in 1945, western Allied forces suspected that Hitler had committed suicide but did
not immediately find evidence of his death,” declares the FBI website releasing the Hitler records from the FBI vault. “At the time, it was feared that Hitler may have escaped in the closing days of the war, and searches were made to determine if he was still alive. FBI Files indicate that the Bureau investigated some of the rumors of Hitler’s survival.”3

  This was a startling statement in that conventional wisdom since 1947 has been consistent with The Last Days of Hitler, an internationally bestselling book written by Major H. R. Trevor-Roper, a British army military intelligence officer who concluded that Hitler and his longtime mistress Eva Braun committed a double-suicide in the Berlin Bunker on April 30, 1945, immediately in the aftermath of their belated marriage ceremony.4

  The idea that a psychotic genocidal mass murderer like Adolf Hitler would end his life so pitifully had always seemed to me far-fetched. In 2014, it was startling to learn the FBI had hidden away for seven decades contemporary documents proving the US Department of Justice had conducted an extensive search for Hitler, with the highest levels of the FBI having credible information that the suicide story was a cover for the truth and Hitler had escaped.

  Reading these newly released documents for the first time in 2014, I recall contemplating that Hitler’s escape was a convenient way for the Allied political and military authorities in 1945 to avoid an embarrassing trial that might have revealed the failure of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia to stop Hitler before he invaded Poland when evidence was beginning to become available that Hitler and his minions were putting into place the first official steps of the horror we know today as the Holocaust.

  Over a period of several months in 2014, I conducted an exhaustive search in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, for additional evidence showing the US government at the end of World War II had suspected Hitler escaped. To my surprise, I found extensive files documenting US military suspicions in the immediate aftermath of Nazi Germany’s surrender that the Hitler suicide story was nonsense. I uncovered files that suggested US military intelligence invented for Trevor-Roper the story he would tell in his bestselling book, despite top US military officials (including General Eisenhower) knowing there was no definitive evidence that could prove Hitler was dead.