Argentina

As people continue to talk about having seen Hitler after his alleged death and new [un]classified documents seem to confirm eyewitness testimonies, a documentary called Revealed: Hitler in Argentina is attempting to set the record straight. In an interview with the "Voice of Russia" the filmmaker Noam Shalev talked about the new pieces of information that can effectively reveal the truth about when and where Hitler really died.

"For many residents living in Argentina around the time of World War II, they have come to understand a different take on Hitler’s legacy. Numerous eyewitnesses have spoken out about seeing Hitler, talking to him, or hearing about him in their region after 1945, the supposed year of his death.

"Then they described their executive consensus of how they met him, how they knew it was Hitler, what they were told from people who knew this person that they saw," Noam Shalev, creator of the documentary "Revealed: Hitler in Argentina" said. A portion of testifiers, who were all unpaid, claimed they had some form of contact with the German dictator.

Indeed, feedback from locals though may not be convincing enough for history buffs and the mass public to accept. However, documented reports from archives in Argentina started to become declassified just one decade ago. Researchers who got a hold of those files found the information impossible to disregard.

"During this 10 years researchers and historians got access to the archives, found many interesting documents from the 30s and from the 40s including up to 45 from which they’ve concluded, that  regardless of eyewitness reports that there is substance to this story," Shalev admitted to the "Voice of Russia".

Reports from the archive also point out that government officials knew that Hitler was laying low within their borders.

The feasibility of Hitler making a last-minute escape from Berlin was apparently accepted by the most senior Soviet officers.

"Overwhelming circumstantial evidence?"

The circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to Hitler's escape. In fact, there seems to be more evidence that Hitler lived, than there is that he committed suicide in the Bunker in Berlin.

On 2 May 1945, the Soviet official newspaper "Pravda" declared:

"The announcement of Hitler’s death was a fascist trick" designed to facilitate Hitler's escape.

On 10 June 1945, the commander of the Soviet Zone in Germany, Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov, stated that Hitler "could have taken off at the very last moment, for there was an airfield at his disposal".

The Soviet commandant of Berlin, Col. Gen. Nikolai E. Berzarin, said:

"My personal opinion is that he has disappeared somewhere into Europe—perhaps he is in Spain with Franco. He had the possibility of taking off and getting away". 

On 30 July 1945, General Alexander Gorbatov, the Soviet military chief of a Berlin occupied by the Allied forces, told the international press that Hitler could "be alive and hidden" in some part of the world.  

After Germany's defeat, Léon Degrelle fled first to Denmark and eventually to Norway, where on 7 May, he commandeered a Heinkel He 111 aircraft, allegedly provided by Albert Speer.

 

The Heinkel He 111 was intended to provide the nascent Luftwaffe with a fast medium bomber.

Perhaps the best-recognised German bomber due to the distinctive, extensively glazed "greenhouse" nose of later versions,
the Heinkel He 111 was the most numerous Luftwaffe bomber during the early stages of World War II. The bomber fared well until the Battle of Britain,
when its weak defensive armament was exposed. Nevertheless, it proved capable of sustaining heavy damage and remaining airborne.
As the war progressed, the He 111 was used in a variety of roles on every front in the European theatre.
It was used as a strategic bomber during the Battle of Britain, a torpedo bomber in the Atlantic and Arctic, and a medium bomber
and a transport aircraft on the Western, Eastern, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and North African Front theatres.

The He 111 was constantly upgraded and modified, but became obsolete during the latter part of the war.
The German Bomber B project was not realised which forced the Luftwaffe to continue operating the He 111 in combat roles until the end of the war.
Manufacture of the He 111 ceased in September 1944, at which point, piston-engine bomber production was largely halted in favour of fighter aircraft.
With the German bomber force virtually defunct, the He 111 was used for logistics.

The plane ran out of fuel, and Degrelle was severely wounded in a crash-landing on a beach in  Donostia-San Sebastián in northern Spain.

On 25 May, Degrelle was quoted as "expressing his belief that Adolf Hitler is alive and is in hiding". A Spaniard who saw him in the hospital said Degrelle had spoken of visiting Hitler in Berlin the day before the Russians entered the city; the Führer had been preparing to escape and was in no mood for either suicide or a fight to the death.

At the beginning of May, Pierre Laval, the former Vichy French prime minister, was flown to Spain aboard a Ju 88. [Franco would expel him, and he would be executed by his countrymen in autumn 1945].

A night flight would not have been particularly dangerous. It would be assumed by all concerned that only Allied aircraft would be in the air by that time and the profile of some German military aircraft was similar to the profile of some Allied aircraft [the Junkers 88 could be mistaken for a 'Mosquito' bomber] so any challenge would be unlikely.

 

The Junkers Ju 88 was a  Luftwaffe twin-engined multirole combat aircraft. Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke [JFM] designed the plane in the mid-1930s
as a so-called Schnellbomber [fast bomber] that would be too fast for fighters of its era to intercept. It suffered from a number of technical problems
during its development and early operational periods but became one of the most versatile combat aircraft of the war. Like a number of other Luftwaffe bombers,
it served as a bomber, dive bomber, night fighter, torpedo bomber, reconnaissance aircraft, heavy fighter and at the end of the war, as a flying bomb.

Despite protracted development, it became one of the Luftwaffe's most important aircraft.
The assembly line ran constantly from 1936 to 1945 and more than 16,000 Ju 88s were built in dozens of variants,
more than any other twin-engine German aircraft of the period. Throughout production the basic structure of the aircraft remained unchanged.

 

It was reported that the Berlin ambassador of Italy’s rump Fascist republic, Filippo Anfuso, had also escaped late in April 1945, apparently aboard a “Croat plane".

In Spain, the Soviet newspaper "Red Fleet" revealed as early as 7 February 1945, that German planes from Stuttgart and other German airports were arriving "every day in Barcelona with Hitlerites".

From Spain, the Nazi agents were moving on to other countries in Europe and especially to South America, bringing with them funds and instructions for the potent Nazi Fifth Columns already operating in the Western Hemisphere.

On 26 April 1945, "Moscow Radio" charged that Spain was receiving Nazi refugees at an airfield on the Balearic island of Minorca.

Quoting Swiss sources, the Soviets said:

"To supervise the business, Gen. José Moscardo, an intimate of Franco … visited Minorca last month. Recent arrivals at the airdrome are the family of [Robert] Ley [head of the German Labor Front] and several Gauleiters".

Ju-290 A-5 aircraft constructor's number was 110178, and served with FAGr.5 [Fernaufklärungsgruppe] with a serial KR+LI from February 1944 until 4 April 1944. It then became 9V+DK from 4 April 1944. "9V" was the serial number used by the Luftwaffe's ultra secret KG200 unit.

The aircraft was then rebuilt at Tempelhof into a civil aircraft in September 1944 with DLH serial D-AITR "Bayern" from October 1944. Why a millitary transport aircraft would be converted to a civillian role during war is noteworthy by itself. It is known to have flown from from Firstenwalde, Czechoslovakia to Barcelona on 26 April 1945 piloted by Flug Hauptmann Paul Sluzalek.

"The aircraft was purchased at the end of the hostilities by Heliodoro Eliorreta; repaired and flown to Madrid in 1950 where it was purchased by the Spanish Air force as 74-23. It was in service until 1952, when it was scrapped".

-- Publicación del Ejército del Aire español: Article from Diario EL PAIS/Jacinto Anton-2006.

Later it became inducted into the Spanish air force. It was withdrawn from service after an accident in the 50s.

A second Ju-290-A6 piloted by I/KG200 constructor's number with unit codes PJ+PS [possibly constructor's number 10185] was flown to Barcelona by I/KG200 Flug Hauptmann Heinz Baur from Hörsching on or after 30 April 1945 for the RHSA. This aircraft is thought to have carried documents flown out of Berlin in April 1945 and VIP passengers according to secret orders Br.BNo.1136/45 from Führungsstab I/Ic issued to I/KG200. 

Whatever the popular image of total Allied air superiority over Western Europe in the last days of the war, in reality it was unnecessary to maintain total surveillance of thousands of cubic miles of sky; the remnants of the Luftwaffe were encircled in an ever-decreasing area. For Allied fighter pilots it was a "target-poor environment"; the very fact that air-to-air encounters were at this point so rare argues that single machines flown by intrepid, experienced, and lucky German airmen could slip across it unnoticed.

Since it is established that  Degrelle was flown all the way from Norway—and according to Friedrich Arthur René Lotta von Argelloty-Mackensen, via Tønder in southern Denmark—to northern Spain as late as 8 May, there is certainly nothing inherently impossible about Hitler having beaten him to it at the end of April 1945.

There is no official record of Degrelle’s plane stopping at Tønder, but details of the flight remain obscure, and it is plausible that it could have landed there to top up its fuel tanks before the long flight south. There is a photograph of Degrelle in Oslo, standing next to a Heinkel with the identification letters “CN” visible on the fuselage.

On 19 June 1945, the "London Daily Express"—under the headline "Is Hitler in Spain?"—described the arrival of a German trimotor aircraft carrying a mysterious passenger who was "saluted deferentially despite his civilian clothes.… His face muffled in a raincoat, the passenger stepped from the plane to the smart Nazi salute of its crew, then took off in a Spanish plane to an unknown destination. The German plane reportedly was dismantled".

-- See also 'Claim Nazi Officials Arrive in Spain', "Telegraph Herald", 21 June 1945

Abel Basti asserts that the Führer managed to flee to Argentina in a submarine after being flown by plane from Berlin to Barcelona, maintaining that the Nazi dictator was embarked on a submarine in the Galician coast, "in all likelihood in Vigo".

"I have at least one Spanish testimony that places him physically in the Cantabrian town of Somo, in an old inn called Las Quebrantas.  A 94-year-old Jesuit, whose family members were friends of the Nazi leader knows the story, and I have witnesses that allude to meetings he had with his entourage at the place where they stayed in Cantabria.

"Hitler was brought by plane from Berlin to Barcelona. The next clue appears in Somo and, according to the documents and testimonies that we have obtained, was embarked on a submarine in the Galician coast. There is the possibility that he left from Vigo or Ferrol, but it is almost certain that he did from Vigo, according to Britain’s MI6".

Vigo, the port of embarkation in the alleged escape of Hitler to Argentina, according to Basti, was during World War II an important supply base for the German submersibles -as can be seen in the famous Hollywood film "Das Boot", directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

U-Boats refueling in Ireland

There is a persistent rumor that one or more [usually more] U-Boats used Ireland as a refuel base in the war. Ireland was neutral for the duration of the war, but tilting somewhat to the Allied side.

There is no evidence of this to have taken place, in fact most data counters this. After so many years a crew member from one of those boats would have spoken up if true.

"There seems to be a good deal of evidence, or at any rate suspicion that U-Boats were being succored from West of Ireland ports by the malignant section with whom De Valera dare not interfere," Churchill wrote.

"If the U-Boat campaign becomes more dangerous we should coerce Southern Ireland".

At a cabinet meeting on 24 October 1939 Churchill argued that the Dublin government should be told that "the use of the ports in Ireland by the Royal Navy was essential to the security of the Empire, and that the present attitude adopted by Ireland in that matter was intolerable". He wanted to seize Irish bases, but Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rejected the idea by warning that this "would have most unfortunate repercussions in the United States".

The help Prime Minister, Eamonn De Valera gave the Germans was to refuse Britain the use of airfields and submarine bases in Ireland which would have set back the U-Boat operations in the Atlantic.

Another neutral nation did allow U-Boats to refuel in at least the port of Vigo, Spain. This was all done very clandestine at night from interned German merchant vessels there.

In the depths of the river estuary, in front of the Cíes Islands, are the wrecks of four Nazi submarines sunk by English aviation.

The journalist Eduardo Rolland figures 37 German submarines, with 1,400 crew, were sunk in waters of the Galician south.  At least eight U-Boats were supplied in Vigo [U-29, U-43, U-52, U-77, U-96, U-434, U-574 and U-575].

Spain allowed resupply of German U-Boats historically on her water. The issue of resupplying U-Boats on Spanish waters was underway already in 1939, with the German Naval Attaché in Spain informing only two days after the invasion of Poland to the OKM and OKW about resupply in Spain being possible.

-- "Economic relations between Nazi Germany and Franco's Spain: 1936-1945",  cited from telegram, German Naval Attaché Menzell in Spain to OKM and OKW, 3 September 1939.

"The activity of the Nazi submarines in the Galician coasts became so intense in the first years of the war that Churchill came to plan an allied landing in the zone of Doniños - an action that was scrapped when they built the code-breaking "Enigma" machine and managed to decipher Nazi submarine fleet messages and the course of submarine warfare was reversed.

"In addition, a document of the British secret services reveals that in those days, a Nazi submarine convoy left Spain, and after stopping in the Canary Islands, it continued its journey to the south of Argentina.

"Hitler and Eva Braun traveled onboard one of these submarines, which later arrived in Patagonia between July and August of 1945, under the de facto President Edelmiro Farrell and later Juan Domingo Perón, then his Minister of War. There is also another important document mentioning that the FBI was looking for Hitler in Spain after World War II".
 

Highlight Films presents: "Revealed: Hitler in Argentina", a new documentary film in production following the theory of Hitler's escape to Argentina.

In 1945, the world was convinced that Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun had committed suicide in a Berlin Bunker, though this theory lacked proper documentation and evidence.

It was not long until flaws in the theory surfaced.

As further historical research was conducted, rumors began to circulate that challenged the suicide theory with claims of Hitler's escape to Argentina - particularly with news of sightings of German U-Boats off the Argentinean coast.

Yet, it wasn't until the recent declassification of certain documents by the Argentinean government and the FBI concerning the post-WWII era that researchers began to take the rumors seriously.

"Revealed" will examine the declassified reports and eyewitness accounts of Hitler's life in Argentina in order to recreate the dictator's final years. In spite of the intense secrecy under which he lived, many saw and even worked for Hitler.

"Revealed" will present the disturbing possibility that one of the world's most evil men was allowed to live out his final years in utter tranquility.

Research: Pablo Weschler

Producer: Noam Shalev

Duration: 60 min

Watch the trailer....

 

Shalev was not alone in his journey of discovering the new chapters of Hitler’s life after the war. Initially, researcher Pablo Weschler came to him with this idea a decade ago, claiming that it was a hot topic in Argentina.

Since 2005, years of devotion has been put into this project because Shalev did not want to release a “half-baked product”. The hour long documentary is set to be released in July 2014. The film crew is scheduled to visit two regions in Argentina this autumn, Bariloche in the south of Argentina and the city of Cordoba in the northern part of the country. Buenos Aires, Germany and Sweden are also to be visited in the coming months by Shalev and his team.

For all the skeptical people who may wish to reject this documentary’s theory, Shalev has some words of wisdom the disbelievers. “Nobody can prove anything because all the factual evidence, especially the one found in Russia was never verified. It can not be verified and for every piece of evidence that was presented, there are at least 10 claims that refute it," he told the "Voice of Russia".

Anticipation though is still building over the documentary, as E-mails flood in from ordinary people who have become fascinated with the possibility of Hitler’s escape. After seeing the trailer for the flick, most people write in from the United States, Argentina, and Chile. Very few reactions about the documentary have come in from Germany and not even one E-mail about the Hitler in Argentina theory has come from Russia. We may never know how Adolf Hitler truly died, or where he resided during his final days. Yet, mountains of documents and scores of people claim the last place Hitler saw before death took him was Argentina.

 

Antony Beevor, who is in favor of the official theory of suicide, writes about an obscure episode that suggests  the corpse of a second Hitler -also with mustache and transverse bangs- was found in the Bunker, which was discarded for wearing mended socks, something that seemed improper for the Führer.

On 2 May 1945, around 9 am,, the first Russian combat troops arrived at the Bunker complex unopposed. They were followed by the Russian search teams of SMERSH, equivalent of CIC of the Allieds.

SMERSH [acronym of Spetsyalnye MEtody Razoblacheniya SHpyonov or Special Methods of Spy Detection, but also referred to as SMERt‘ SHpionam; "Death to spies"] was an umbrella name for three independent counter-Intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially founded on 14 April 1943.

The Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del [The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs] abbreviated НКВД [NKVD] soldiers captured more than 50 officers and men who were still there in the Bunker complex, including Johannes Hentschel, the German-Danish master electro-mechanic for the Bunker complex, who since the field hospital in the Reich Chancellery above needed power and water, had opted to stay even after everyone else had either left or committed suicide during the night.

One search team found an old oak water tank which contained many dead bodies. They pulled out a particular body that resembled Hitler.

The dead man was one of Hitler’s doubles, named Gustav Weler. The Russians mistakenly believed the body to be that of Hitler because of his identical moustache and haircut.

The security personnel in the Bunker, responsible for Hitler’s safety, may have had Weler, a Doppelgänger or Body-double of Adolf Hitler, to camouflage and help Hitler escape, if Hitler decided to take part in a breakout. But, after Hitler’s death, they would have realized that any double if found would be an embarrassment, and therefore disposed of him by shooting in the forehead, in an attempt to confuse the Russian troops.

When Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Klimenko, the leader of one of the search teams, returned to the Bunker the next day, 3 May 1945, he found the body resembling Hitler, displayed prominently in the main hall of the Reich Chancellery. Ignoring the darned socks, worn by the dead man, Klimenko assumed the crucial problem of finding Hitler dead or alive had been solved.

On the following day, 4 May 1945,  Ivan Dmitriyevich Churakov, a Russian soldier, climbed into a nearby bomb crater strewn with burned paper, and saw some partly burnt furry object. He called out to Lieutenant Colonel Alexej Alexandrowitsch Panassow, "There are legs here". They started to dig and pulled from the crater two dead dogs, and digging further they found the burnt bodies of a man and a woman.

At first Klimenko did not even think that the two burnt corpses might be that of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. Since he believed that Hitler’s corpse was already displayed prominently in the Chancellery and only needed to be positively identified, he therefore ordered the newly discovered burnt cadavers to be wrapped in blankets and reburied.

On 5 May 1945, Klimenko while pondering over the finding of the burnt bodies of a man and a woman from the  crater rushed back and had the two bodies exhumed, and transported to Plötzensee Prison. There he was ordered to send them on to the 496th Field Hospital in Buch, a German locality within the Berlin borough of Pankow.

If a historical judgment were made on Hitler's fate, .  As the basis of his alleged death there is only the declaration of a handful of fanatic Nazis....who told the same story.  But there are no experts of the place of the suicide, since no elements related to his death were found. 

There was no murder weapon, no bullets on the walls or ceiling, no corpses in Hitler's office.  Except for a small pool of blood that could not be shown to belong to the German Chancellor.  Nor is there a single testimony that Hitler was seen being shot.  Or a photo of the corpses in the place of the suicide or burning in the supposed funeral pyre.  Several corpses were found in the gardens, some burned, and a couple of them were attributed to Hitler.  But in the forensic tests it was shown that none had the measurements or the physical characteristics of the Chancellor of the Third Reich. 

After the war, Stalin wanted to try Hitler in Nuremberg, and in the American Senate a reward of a million dollars for his head was even offered.  Germany, having no death certificate or corpse, declared him dead in 1956 on presumption of death. 

So for Germany, Hitler was alive from 1945 to that date. During those years, Hitler had the legal status of a person alive, without conviction or prosecution against him. And also, no warrant.

Is Hitler in Hiding?
Army News [Darwin, NT]
4 September 1945

LONDON: Moscow "Pravda" says:

"Hitler is saving his skin by hiding in some form, thus keeping his name off the United Nations list of war criminals for the time being".

Hitler Branded War Criminal
Truth [Brisbane, Qld]
21 January 1945

LONDON: Hitler and the entire German Government are now listed as war criminals.

The semi-official Czech weekly "Czechoslovak" discloses that the Allied War Crimes' Commission so far has listed about 700 persons for trial as war criminals. They include Hitler, the German Government, all military leaders, 229, guards of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. The Czech delegation alone has suggested 400 names and many more are now under discussion.

Some Allied statesmen and lawyers maintain that some Nazis, as politicians, cannot be sentenced for war crimes. Others think that Hitler as head of a State, can claim certain immunity.

The episode mentioned by Beevor of the two bodies of Hitler found in the Bunker obviously suggests the theme of the Führer's doubles, never officially recognized as it would overthrow the acceptance of the official thesis".

Hitler's Refuge
The Northern Miner [Charters Towers, Qld] 
4 September 1944

NEW YORK - Signs that Hitler and other high Nazi officials intend to seek refuge in Spain are reported by authoritative circles here, says the New York 'Herald Tribune's Washington correspondent.

These sources disclose tbat the German Embassy in Madrid is buying a large number of cots and mattresses which are expected to be occupied by distinguished visitors, who will arrive with little or no baggage after a hasty departure from a country not far distant from Spain.

The "Herald Tribune" points out that the reports appear to add significance to the US. Secretary for State, Cordell Hull's statement that the Allies are aware that Hitler may attempt to escape to a neutral country. Diplomatic circles predict that if the Nazis reach Madrid the Spanish Government will permit them to remain, thus creating a crisis between Spain and the Allies. Sanctions might then be enforced against the Franco regime, causing Spain to surrender the Nazis to the Allies.

Hitler Died In U-Boat, Says Bottle Message
The Sun [Sydney, NSW] 
27 November 1946

LONDON — A bottle found on a beach 18 miles from Copenhagen [capital of Denmark] contains a message dated 10 November 1945, stating that Hitler did not did not die in an air-raid Bunker beneath his Chancellery in Berlin on 30 April 1945 [when the Russians were besieging the city, as testified to by the British Intelligence Service], but in a U-Boat while en route from Finland to Spain.

The newspaper "Beriingske Tidende," states that the note said that the submarine collided with a wreck near Gedser lighthouse. The note reads:

"These are the last lines of one of the survivors of the U-Boat 'Nauecilus' in which Hitler was hidden".

The "American Associated Press" reports that the letter was written on a page of the U-Boat's log book and signed Hans Routenburger. The "Reuters" correspondent says the bottle was washed ashore one hundred miles from Gedser lighthouse, which is the area in which the wreckage of a U-Boat was found.

In his 1947 book, "Speaking Frankly", James F. Byrnes recounted a conversation he had with Stalin at the Potsdam Conference on 17 July 1945:

“I asked the Generalissimo [Stalin] his views of how Hitler died. To my surprise, he said he believed that Hitler was alive and that it was possible he was then either in Spain or Argentina.  Some ten days later I asked him if he had changed his views and he said he had not".

Robert Ley, the head of the German Labor Front since 1933, committed suicide while awaiting trial for war crimes at Nuremberg in October 1945. During his interrogation, however, Ley stated that when he last met Hitler in the Bunker during April, the Führer had told him to "Go south, and he would follow".

Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, said much the same about a meeting in the Bunker on Hitler’s birthday, 20 April:

"At that meeting, to the surprise of nearly everyone present, Hitler announced that he would stay in Berlin until the last minute, and then 'fly south'.

Those who argue that Hitler survived the Bunker have three difficulties. First, there is the problem that Hitler had again and again said he would commit suicide at the end. Second, there is the problem of how Hitler could have escaped from Berlin at that late hour with Soviet troops less than a kilometer away. And, third, the difficulty of how Hitler’s new location in the Alps or on the Pampas or on Franco’s private estate in Galicia was kept secret for so many years.

It is perhaps natural to believe that oppressive dictators will die in a similar way that they caused others to die – poetic justice is most satisfying. But strangely, we see it happening only with the second tier of dictators – those who only have national, not international aspirations. So Qaddafi died of bullet wounds, Sadam was hanged. The most important personages do not seem to die from violence or from legal proceedings. Stalin may have been poisoned by  his doctor. Napoleon died on St. Helena. Ivan the Terrible, Oliver Cromwell and Mao seemed to have died naturally. So why would Hitler go against the grain?

His escape to Argentina or Antarctica may not be probable in his physically unhealthy condition.

One possible theory is that Hitler only put on his shaking and other illness symptoms near the end in 1945 so that his staff would get the impression that he was a hopeless physical wreck, totally incapable of escape, and in the event that they were captured [and most were] and the Russians asked: "Did Hitler escape?" they could explain that he was a "wreck" like they saw him so the Russians would not think that he escaped.....After all he was a master of deception.

Also, if he was that ill he was quick enough to jump on tables, jump up from chairs, and wave his arms around in the air while he shouted at the top of his lungs at his staff when he became angry about something. His shaking would suddenly stop!!   

But he may have temporarily escaped to a secret Bunker in the southern mountainous region only he knew of in specific detail. He died there perhaps due to his untreated illnesses. Dental records would be that of his double.

Authority figures in Argentina were not alone. Irrefutable evidence points out that the US government had their eye on Argentina until the late 40s. The FBI, which had posts in Argentina and Washington DC at the time, wrote up reports on their sightings and the existence of Hitler in Argentina from 1945 until 1949.

In the event that Hitler did live on, the burning question still remains—whose charred bodies were actually found.

"Nobody could know but there were so many bodies in the area of the Bunker," Shalev commented.

"Even after carefully looking over the single still photo taken of what appears to be Hitler in the garden, it is hard to admit if it is really him or not.

"If they were taken before, this is a manipulation that even 70 years ago you would not need Photoshop in order to create something like this but it looks weird, it looks strange, it looks out of place," Shalev said about the way the moustache appeared on Hitler’s face.

"Russian soldiers snapping one photo of the body, then quickly burning it sounds odd, to say the least.

"This is one of the biggest achievements of the war and that’s it? Immediately burn the body and finish everything," Shalev commented and said in that situation, something was wrong.

Contends Hitler is Alive
The Courier-Mail [Brisbane, Qld]
4 August 1945

NEW YORK - Hitler is believed to be still alive by one of the few men who is able to identify him — Dr. Robert Kempner, a German criminologist, now an American citizen.

Kempner directed secret service officers who kept Hitler under observation before he attained power. He says that Hitler proved extraordinarily skillful at disappearing. Once he eluded observation for three months.

"What he did once he could do again", says Kempner. "There is no direct evidence that Hitler is dead. Followers who protest that he is dead had left Berlin before he allegedly perished. Their statements, therefore, are worthless as evidence. Even the most ordinary death is seldom without witnesses".

Kempner claims that he could easily identify Hitler's remains. Hitler's right ear, he says, was sharply pointed in a way that criminologists regarded as distinctively criminal. The right thumb was abnormally long, and the jaw distinguished by the recession of the teeth.

Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner, for five years,  from 1928 to 1933, as legal advisor to the Prussian State Police the agency which, under the Nazis, was transformed into the Gestapo, knew Hitler as a political gangster.

"You see," he says, "I knew Hitler as a common felon. And felons don't die easily...I co-ordinated the work of a dozen secret agents who dogged Hitler's footsteps. Even so Hitler managed to give our men the slip when things got too hot for him. He went into hiding in Southern Germany. For three months he eluded every effort of our best men to learn his whereabouts. What he did then, he could do again. He and his organization were born in the Underground, and I have made it their special study. I see no evidence to convince me that Hitler is not living as he has lived before in hiding".

Dr. Kempner sees no credible evidence that Hitler died, as alleged, in the basement of his Reichschancellery: 

"The only evidence consists of statements. Most of these come from members of his entourage who reveal, if their statements are read closely, that they left the scene while Berlin still had an airfield from which they could escape. They left, therefore, before it is claimed Hitler died. So their statements are worthless".

Then there are statements from the Russians that bones were found which "could be recognized as likely those of Hitler". This was contradicted later by statements that nothing had yet been established.

"Even the most ordinary death is seldom without witnesses. Yet are we to believe that the most conspicuous man in the world, who was never without a vast entourage, died unseen like some vagrant in a railroad yard? And that his body was wholly consumed by a hasty fire in a ditch? Have you ever seen how much fire it takes to consume a body to the last bone?"

Listing identifying marks, Dr. Kempner says Hitler, or his body, can be identified positively. He has records, made as a police official, which could settle the question quickly. 

-- The Pittsburgh Press
3 August 1945 

Renewed Search for Hitler
Morning Bulletin [Rockhampton, Qld]
23 October 1945

NEW YORK: The "Philadelphia Record" states that Dr Robert Kempner, a German-born lawyer, formerly adviser to the Prussian State police, is reported to have been sent to Germany to search for Hitler if he is alive, or identify his body if it is found.

Dr Kempner is one of the few anti-Nazis who has a detailed knowledge of Hitler's physical appearance, and even of the structure of his skeleton. He led a squad of secret agents who checked the Nazi leader's activities closely in 1928-33. He went to America in 1939 and recently arrived secretly at Nuremburg.

When he left Washington on the direct orders of White House. Dr Kempner was designated an expert consultant for the trials of war criminals, but his real mission, it is believed, is a direct search for Hitler under American auspices.

Dr Kempner previously stated that Hitler had certain physical characteristics he could never obliterate, including a sharply pointed right ear, an abnormally long right thumb, a jaw with a receding cheek, and an habitual stoop.

WASHINGTON [A.A.P.] 24 October 1945:  The White House knows nothing of a report that a special U.S. agent had been sent to Europe. to search for Hitler. This was  stated yesterday by an official spokesman after a report had been published that Dr. Robert Kempner, German-born lawyer, who was formerly adviser to the Prussian state police. had gone to Germany to search for Hitler. if he is still alive, of to identify his body, if it be found.

If Hitler actually did escape, the lack of communication at the time during the final days of the war could have been an advantage for him. The disorganized chaos which surrounded Berlin may have been the best chance for him to book it out of the country and enjoy the rest of his years in Argentina.

The millionaire La Falda hoteliers Walter and Ida Eichhhorn, had been supporters and friends of the Nazi Party and Hitler since at least 1925, and Hitler would visit them—without Eva—in 1949 at La Falda. The Eichhorns first came to the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in a couriered document from the American embassy in London in September 1945. After reporting what was known of the Eichhorns’ relationship with Hitler, the document ends with a paraphrased quote from Ida Eichhorn:

"If Hitler should at any time get into difficulty wherein it was necessary for him to find a safe retreat, he would find such safe retreat at her hotel  [La Falda], where they had already made the necessary preparations".

Hoover wrote to the American Embassy in Buenos Aires several weeks later, apprising them of the situation.

The relationship between Ida Eichhorn and her "Cousin," as she always called Hitler, went back much further than 1944, though there is some dispute over the date the Eichhorns actually joined the Nazi Party. On 11 May 1935, Walter and Ida were awarded the "honor version" of the Gold Party Badge; fewer than half a dozen of the 905 such badges awarded were given to non-Reich citizens. The Führer sent the Eichhorns a personal congratulatory letter dated 15 May, an unusual extra compliment accompanying the award.

In the letter, which thanked Walter Eichhorn for his services, the Führer used the words "since joining in 1924 with your wife," which seems to indicate that the Eichhorns were among the earliest members of the party. They were also personally given No. 110 of the limited edition of 500 copies of "Mein Kampf" when they first met Hitler at his apartment in 1925—the year the book was published. The Eichhorns saw him again in 1927 and 1929, and thereafter they began to travel more regularly to Germany.

On 2 February 1930 Adolf Hitler sent an extensive letter of six facets to the Eichhorn couple.

In the letter, among other comments, the Nazi chief explained that the National Socialists - who would come to power in alliance with other parties - would administer two ministries, that of Interior and Education, assuring that "whoever possesses these two ministries, and uses all his power without scruple or scruples, I could achieve results never imagined ..."

After providing an extensive report of the German reality, Hitler concluded his letter by saying:

"Dear Mr Eichhorn and my dear lady, I would like to thank you again at this time for the financial help you give me and which takes away and alleviates an important part of my concerns. I know very well what our movement means for you, our work as a whole, and I know that the most beautiful way of thanking you will be the result of our work. Many times I have prophesied things, and I have almost always been right, but I never spoke of the moment of our victory, today I can say it with absolute certainty.

"Dear Mr. Eicchorn, if fate keeps me in health, in two and a half years or three, the German people will have abandoned their humiliation forever. Yours most affectionately, Adolf Hitler".

Hitler's prediction was fulfilled. In January of 1933 he was appointed Iimperial Chancellor [Reichskanzler] and, a year later, on the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, he proclaimed himself leader and imperial chancellor [Führer und Reichskanzler], thus assuming the supreme command of the German State.

The letter quoted forms part of a private collection, in the hands of the heirs of the Eichhorn marriage, which shows the abundant epistolary exchange that the Führer maintained with his German-Argentine financiers.
 

The Eichhorns in Berlin, during a meeting with Hitler when he was already the Führer of Germany

The couple were described by their grandniece Verena Ceschi as "big idealists who were really enthused by the ideas of the Führer, like all Germany at that time, [and] they became great friends".

At their luxurious Hotel Eden at La Falda, when Ida Eichhorn was asked if something could be accomplished, she would say anything was possible, "Adolf willing". On her office wall there was a large photo of Hitler personally dedicated to her. There was also a room in the hotel set up as a shrine to the Führer and always decorated with freshly cut flowers. The Eden’s crockery, cutlery, and linen were stamped with the Swastika, and there were many other pictures of Hitler throughout the hotel. Hitler’s speeches were captured by a shortwave antenna on the roof of the Eden and broadcast on speakers both inside and outside the hotel. The hotel had more than one hundred rooms with thirty-eight bathrooms, central heating, a huge dining and ballroom, an eighteen-hole golf course, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and many other amenities.

Even today, the now semi-derelict Eden shows signs of its former magnificence, which attracted many international celebrities in the 1930s, including celebrated Jewish physicist Albert Einstein and the Prince of Wales. [The prince was crowned Edward VIII in January 1936, but abdicated eleven months later to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson; as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, both suspected Nazi sympathizers, the couple visited Hitler in 1937].

The Eden was the meeting place for many of the Nazi organizations of Córdoba province, and military training was carried out in a camp called "Kit-Ut" on land owned by the Eichhorns. Ida also founded the German School in La Falda in 1940. Its primary teachers had to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler at the German Embassy in Buenos Aires, secondary teachers had to join the National Socialist League of Teachers, and the school provided a complete program of Nazi indoctrination. This devotion to Nazism, which by 1940 applied in almost two hundred German schools in Argentina, persisted—especially in the countryside— despite a 1938 decree by President Roberto Ortiz prohibiting the exhibition of foreign flags or symbols in schools.

The schoolchildren were present at a commemorative ceremony held at the Eden on 17 December 1940, the first anniversary of the scuttling of the 'Admiral Graf Spee'.

Most of the supposedly "interned" crew marched in full uniform and paraded the Nazi flag under the eyes of dozens of Argentine dignitaries and senior members of the military. The parade ended on the hotel’s esplanade, where the Nazi Party marching song, the "Horst-Wessel-Lied," was sung, and there were impassioned pro-German speeches. However, despite the protection of the Argentine police and armed German sailors who were billeted nearby, the Nazi presence in La Falda did not go completely unchallenged. When the Eichhorns decided to raise money by showing Nazi propaganda films to a large audience, members of an anti-Nazi, pro-Allies group called Acción Argentina punctured the tires of the parked cars of the film attendees. Among the attackers was Ernesto Guevara Lynch, father of Ernesto "Che" Guevara—the Argentine Marxist leader and Fidel Castro’s chief lieutenant of the Cuban Revolution.

The Eichhorns continued to organize collections for the Nazi cause, and as late as 1944 they were still transferring tens of thousands of Swiss francs to the Buenos Aires account of Josef Göbbels. However, in March 1945, under intense pressure from the United States, Argentina finally declared war on the Axis powers—the last of the Latin American nations to do so. After this declaration, the Hotel Eden was seized as

"property of the enemy" and—now surrounded by barbed wire and guards to keep people in rather than out—used for eleven months to intern the Japanese embassy staff and their families.

Shortly after the Japanese were repatriated, anti-Nazis in La Falda broke in, pulled down the eagle from the facade of the hotel, and destroyed anything with the Swastika on it. In May 1945, Ida Eichorn told her closest circle that her "Cousin" Adolf Hitler was "traveling". The Eichhorns, shutting themselves away in their chalet a short distance from the hotel, created a network of distribution centers that sent thousands of clothing and food parcels to a devastated Germany. They also helped the network for Nazis who fled to Argentina, and Adolf Eichmann would often visit La Falda with his family. One of his sons, Horst Eichmann —who led Argentina’s Frente Nacional Socialista Argentino [FNSA] Nazi party in the 1960s—married Elvira Pummer, the daughter of one of the Hotel Eden’s gardeners.

The Eichhorns maintained close contact with the Gran Hotel Viena on the shores of Mar Chiquita; they owned a property just 150 yards from the hotel. They would have met Hitler and Eva there while he was convalescing in 1946. Whatever the Nazis’ long-term plans were for the Gran Hotel Viena, they never came to much. After the Hitlers’ second visit in early 1948, the property was virtually abandoned. 

Catalina Gomero was fifteen years old when she went to live with the Eichhorns in 1945. She suffered from asthma and came from a poor family who believed she would have a better life at the Hotel Eden than they could offer her. Although a servant, Catalina was treated by the Eichhorns almost as a daughter. She said that Hitler arrived at their house in La Falda one night in 1949 and stayed for three days; she recognized him right away.

"The driver must have brought him. He was put up on the third floor. We were told to take his breakfast upstairs and … knock at the door and leave the tray on the floor. He ate very well, the trays were always empty. Most of the meals were German".

He had shaved his moustache off. There were usually people in the house all day, but for those three days, the third floor was private.

"Mrs. Ida told me, ‘Whatever you saw, pretend you didn’t.’ One of the drivers and I used to joke, ‘I saw nothing and you saw nothing.’ It was as if it had never happened. It was kept very, very secret".

Hitler left his clothes, including green canvas trousers and a black collared shirt, outside the room, and Catalina would clean and iron them. She took him three breakfasts, three lunches, and three complete teas. On the fourth day she was told he had left. Eight days after the "important visitor" left La Falda, Mrs. Eichhorn told Catalina to pack a picnic lunch. With the chauffeur driving the Mercedes-Benz [a gift from Hitler, and the first one in Argentina],  and Walter Eichhorn seated next to him, the four drove to the Eichhorns’ house on Pan de Azucar Mountain. This brick-and-timber construction had a large radio antenna and was part of the network of Nazi safe houses across the country. Hitler stayed for fifteen days at what the family called "El Castillo", but after that Catalina never saw him again. However, she remembered taking telephone calls from him at the Eichhorn home through operators in La Rioja and Mendoza; she recognized his voice. The calls continued until 1962. 

Gerrard Williams was excited by an the elderly woman called Catalina Gomero whom he believes saw Hitler in La Falda in Argentina. He calls her "the main eyewitness". She worked as a servant for the owners of the luxurious Hotel Eden. We are told Hitler stayed in their nearby home and Catalina waited on him, but –  and this is crucial –  she never saw him. She used to leave food by his door and asked a driver: "Who’s the person in the room?"’ He told her it was Hitler, but she needed to stay quiet.

This is revealed in "Hunting Hitler" when Williams talks to "a local expert" and later stands at the foot of Catalina’s bed and asks about her experiences. She makes no claim that she actually saw Hitler with her own eyes. But Williams asserts, "It’s confirmation from a real human being that Adolf Hitler didn’t die in the Bunker in 1945".

In a separate independent interview using another source –  unconnected with the TV series –  Catalina again made it clear she never set eyes on Hitler:

"No, no, no. We don’t see him. He stayed in a private place. Nobody can see him".

But there’s a contradiction. In the "Grey Wolf" book and film Williams quotes her as saying she did see Hitler. She describes at length what he was like. In the "Grey Wolf" film Catalina claims Hitler "ate the same food as everyone else in the house – typical German meals – sausage, ham, vegetables…"
 
So the world’s most famous vegetarian is no longer worried about his diet, or eating animals?

John Walsh, an FBI agent stationed in Buenos Aires at this time, admitted the difficulties he and his operatives encountered in doing any undercover work in Argentina. Of the Hotel Eden and the Eichhhorns, Walsh said, "We personally did not do surveillance work there. We would have sources that were outside the embassy that would do that. You just can’t walk in and say, you know, that you are looking for something". Walsh said that he and his colleagues came under surveillance by the local police. A number of times when he was out with other agents they would see people who were obviously following and watching them.

The Eden Hotel, famous before the end of World War II as a posh resort for Germans in central Argentina, is now an empty shell managed by the local municipality, which offers tours and is trying to restore it as a museum.

Ambrosio Vicente Farias, 85, recalls driving visitors to the hotel during the Eichhorn era.

"They all spoke German up there. I couldn't understand anything," he said.

"They say Hitler himself visited once incognito".

At the hotel there are two faded sepia group photographs taken on the front steps. In both pictures, taken from different angles, one of the 60 or so faces is blurred beyond recognition. The shadow of a small moustache is just discernible.

"Did Hitler ever come here?" 

"That's what some say," came the answer. 

Facts about the Eden Hotel have blended with fiction in local lore and some townspeople have been reluctant to confront its past. 

Part of it, at least, already has been.

"The local Legend about a Hitler visit is just that: legend," said Hitler expert Professor Sir Ian Kershaw of Britain's Sheffield University.

 

Hitler Dead - Or Was He?
Israeli filmmaker Noam Shalev has evidence that Adolf Hitler may have escaped
Yossi Krausz - Ami
דף הבית > News > Opinion

In the back of a nondescript high-rise in the heart of Berlin, next to a parking lot, is a sign with the legend “Mythos und Geschichtszeugnis— Führerbunker” written across the top. The first part translates as “Myth and Historical Testimony.” The second part refers to the final headquarters of Adolf Hitler, an extensive air-raid shelter and Bunker that once occupied the space where the high-rise now stands. It explains that the nondescript parking lot was the site where one of the most evil people in human history met his end.

On the afternoon of 30 April 1945, with Russian troops already inside Berlin and closing in on him fast, Hitler decided the end had come. He and his companion, Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before, committed suicide by swallowing cyanide pills; Hitler also simultaneously shot himself in the head. Not long after, their bodies were carried up to the garden in front of the Bunker. With the sounds of Russian artillery in the background, they were doused with gasoline by Josef Göbbels and Martin Bormann and set on fire. But the remains were not entirely consumed, and were buried in a bomb crater near the Bunker. The Russians found the bodies and repeatedly disinterred and reburied them in various places to keep their location secret. Eventually, a piece of Hitler’s skull was put on display.

At least that’s what the official version says happened.

H

owever, back in 1945 and in the years immediately afterward, none of this was clear. The Russians played both sides of the issue. At the Potsdam Conference in August 1945, President Truman asked Stalin whether Hitler was dead, and he answered no. But in fact, the Russians were already working on gathering forensic evidence.

A myth to refute is the myth that Hitler, almost by magic, ceased his functioning. How? By suicide!

That is an example of magical thinking. The Allies wanted him out, so he magically committed suicide. How convenient!

The whole suicide story of Hitler rests solely on the concocted testimony of fanatical Nazis, all vigorously trained to guard Hitler's personal secrets, even under the threat of torture and death.

The fabrications were made up as the "witnesses" went along, even changing their own stories. 

When considering the fate of Adolf Hitler, one has to realize that the overwhelming majority of people believe that he committed suicide during the last days of the Second World War. This view is supported by dozens of books written by among others, world-renowned historians. Their views and conclusions are seemingly well supported by circumstances and eye witness accounts.

Indeed, an entire library of books may be filled with eye-witness accounts and so-called proofs of Hitler's suicide. Most of the new printed works are merely rehashed Berlin Bunker testimonies, smoothed out to make a bit more sense, and hopefully convince us by their sheer size of whatever we seriously hope is true.

Just the consideration that there may be another, darker side to the story makes most people, to say it mildly, emotionally uneasy. Just the thought that such a man responsible for the murder of millions, might have escaped unscathed from the rubble of Berlin in 1945 seems hard to swallow. 

Ironically, it was not the evidence provided by Russia that convinced Establishment historians that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin Bunker, on 30 April 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Berlin, shortly after exchanging marriage vows with Eva Braun, but the testimony of the obsessively devoted Nazis who were also present in the Chancellery Bunker when Hitler allegedly killed himself.

Here is where their futile pretence became a matter of imprudence: For they were primarily the very same historians who insisted that the body shown in the annoying Russian photos was a Doppelgänger killed by those Nazis in the Berlin Bunker who wanted to thwart Allied investigators.
 

 

We are therefore expected to believe that after committing the outright murder of a double for the purpose of obstructing justice, the Nazi Bunker guests were nonetheless quite frank and honest in their eye-witness accounts of what really became of Adolf Hitler. These guests would not stop even at murder to perpetrate their Führer's cover-up. Yet the world was totally convinced of their honest integrity and humble desire to satisfy our secret wish that Hitler should not have escaped justice.

One wonders just who it was who made that poor unfortunate up to look like Hitler, laid him out in the Chancellery, surrounded him with finger-pointing Russian soldiers and allowed him to be filmed and photographed. 

-- Anton Joachimsthaler, "The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth" 1996

A report of his own experience by former Colonel Andrey I. Ryžkov:

"Our Corps belonged to the 28th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. We were moved from East Prussia and participated in the battle for Berlin. On the morning of 2 May we, group of officers and soldiers, went to watch Hitler's quarters. We had just arrived, when we found on a simple soldier blanket the corpse of Hitler. Under the supervision of machine gunners and officers we secured the find.

"We carried the body onto the terrace, but because it was still dark there, we took him in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. There we found a portrait of Hitler, which we placed on his chest. A cameraman recorded all. [...] Then the military commander of Berlin, Comrade [Colonel-General] Nikolai E. Berzarin declared on 3 or 4 May that the Hitler's corpse was not found by us, but that this body was clearly a Doppelgänger Hitler.
 
At that time there was constant talk of doubles.

"I remember that in our press were reports to the effect that on the coast of Argentina from a submarine two people had been come out, a man and a woman, and it was generally accepted that this had to be Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun".

In his 1995 book "The Greatest Illusion: The Death [?] of Adolf Hitler," Australian historian Fred C. McKenzie summarizes how Stalin was adamant in his conviction that Adolf Hitler still lived. In August of 1945, Stalin personally accused the British of concealing the real, living Adolf Hitler in their sector of Berlin.

Other Russian officials also said that they thought Hitler might have escaped from the Bunker, fuelling the doubts of the Americans, who went on to conduct many years of investigation into the possibility that Hitler was hiding out in the foothills of the Andes or in a remote part of Argentina.

There were witnesses to Hitler’s death and the cremation of his body, and these witnesses were interrogated.

The story of Hitler's death is one of a man who knew the end was near and was determined to not be captured alive. Supposedly while he was in his Bunker, on 30 April 1945, realizing the Russians were almost upon him, he put a automatic pistol to his head and pulled the trigger while reclining on a couch. The body was then taken outside, put in a pit and set on fire to destroy the evidence. But is this what really happened?

One witness reported seeing a gunshot wound in Hitler's mouth, while others claimed it was near the corner of his eye, some even hinted that Hitler's valet strangled him and forced a cyanide capsule into his mouth. Pick a card, any card. One witness described finding the body of Hitler perched limp next to a dead Eva Braun on an elongated, upholstered sofa. But another found Hitler's corpse sitting alone near a corner, on a chair by himself. Mix and match.

Hitler's one-day marriage to Eva Braun was another sentimental enticement, orchestrated to win our naïve confidence. For only a worm could marry a lovely woman, just to poison her a few hours later. 

The fact that a maid admitted seeing a Hitler look-alike confined to the butler's pantry area was not considered to be of great consequence.

It is suspected that Hitler's double -a Chancellery cook- died from a gun blast to the head in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945.

There were no reported spectators to that shooting. Rumours hint that a SS bodyguard pulled the trigger. Bunker personnel that heard the pistol believed that Hitler had shot himself. But the blood stains found on the couch allegedly did not match his known blood group.

--  "Hitler's Doubles" by Peter Fotis Kapnistos 

Johannes Hentschel, the chief electrician for the Chancellery, and the last person to leave the Führerbunker, declared he never saw a Hitler double. 

However, on 2 May, the Russian SMERSH team found a corpse that certainly looked like Hitler, at the base of a water tower.

They immediately believed they had found the body of Hitler and excitedly photographed the corpse. Their elation was shattered when someone noticed that the corpse was wearing mended socks; that was not the Führer's style.

After their capture, three members of Chancellery did not identify the remains as that of Hitler, and declared they had never seen the corpse before.

There was speculation that Bormann, or possibly Brigadeführer Mohnke, produced the double to mislead the Russians about the location of Hitler's body.

A few days after the photography incident, one unidentified servant declared the body was that of a cook whom he knew intimately, and stated that "the "cook double" had been assassinated because of his startling likeness to Hitler, while the latter escaped from the ruins of Berlin.

-- "The New York Times", 9 May 1945.

A Russian officer on the scene has declared that two Doppelgängers were found - one in a nearby street and another inside the Bunker.  

Yet, Peter Hoffmann. the authority on Hitler's security, doubts that Hitler used Doppelgängers, and David Irving also has found no evidence of this practice.

Noticing the large scale exodus of German leaders from Berlin in 1946, and following Josef Stalin on the matter, Russian Intelligence appeared convinced Hitler had escaped capture by means of a double.

For about a year after their capture, members of Hitler's inner staff, were repeatedly questioned about the use of a Doppelgänger. A few books of popular history kept the yarn going.   

The most prevalent opposing opinion is that the true motive was for Hitler to escape. According to the "Washington Post", the US Office of Censorship intercepted a letter in July 1945 written from someone in Washington. Addressed to a Chicago newspaper, the letter claimed that Hitler was living in a German-owned Hacienda 450 miles from Buenos Aires. The US government gave this report enough credibility to act on it, sending a classified telegram to the American embassy in Argentina requesting help in following up the inquiry.

A number of FBI documents dating from before the end of WWII express an official fear that even if Germany lost the war, Hitler could still escape justice by finding refuge in South America. Other FBI documents dating from after the end of WWII showed that the FBI continued to look for Hitler in South America long after he had supposedly committed suicide in Berlin. For example, three FBI documents dating from the late summer of 1945 suggested that Hitler was living on a ranch in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in western Argentina. Yet another FBI document from February, 1955 mentions an eyewitness who claimed that he had seen Hitler in South America several years earlier.
 

CIA requesting further interviews after a 1955 sighting in Argentina

In fact, the FBI did not close its 700-page file on Hitler until 1970. How can all this FBI activity be explained if Hitler had really committed suicide in 1945?

Will Hitler Escape?
Mystery of Argentine Ranch
Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative [NSW] 
15 July 1940

What will Hitler do when he finds, as he is bound to do sooner or later, that he has lost the war? Will he kill himself, as in Munich he once promised he would? Or will he allow himself to be taken prisoner? Will he be incarcerated on another Elba — another St. Helena? Or will he seek a self imposed exile at another Doorn?

A London correspondent writes:

On the mountain peaks high above Berchtesgaden Hitler has built an astounding retreat, approached only by a single mountain road and a passenger lift. There he might go in the final hours of his fall, to await the verdict of destiny. Even at the last, Hitler's optimism might lead him to think that, he can escape from his enemies and live a life of security.

There is ample evidence to show that the leaders of Nazi Germany already have their escape plans, and laid away some useful nest-eggs against their day of defeat. Defying their own laws against keeping banking accounts outside Germany, they have scattered funds in practically every country in Europe, purchased securities in South America, and even bought ranching lands in the Argentine.

Until 1937, an account in Swiss francs in Hitler's name was actually kept by the Swiss Bank Corporation in Switzerland. Subsequently it is said to have been transferred to London, where it now appears as a deposit in the name of a nominee on the books of a foreign bank.

There is nothing new in this. Even Napoleon had a London banking account.

Not long ago a Buenos Aires newspaper revealed that a large ranch had been purchased for Hitler on the Pampas. An immediate denial was promptly issued by the local German consulate. Shortly afterwards the newspaper carried the field when it actually published a photograph of the lease and signature. It wasn't in Hitler's writing; but it was in that of his chief accountant, Max Amann. And the ranch has ever since merely been run by a German-born manager "for the proprietors".

In 1920 Hitler suggested that Max Amann should become the full-time business manager of the National Socialist German Workers Party [NSDAP]. Amann rejected the offer with the argument that he had secure career prospects and a pension to look forward to at the bank, while employment by the little Nazi Party would mean a substantial cut in salary and an uncertain future. Hitler replied "What good will your pension be if someday the Bolsheviks string you up from a lamppost?" Amann considered the offer for three days before finally accepting the job.

William L. Shirer described Amann as "a tough, uncouth character but an able organizer".

James Pool, the author of "Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power" believed that Hitler had made an excellent choice in Amann:

"Efficient, parsimonious, incorruptible, and without personal political ambition, Amann was exactly the right man for the job. He brought a commonsense business approach to Party affairs".

To ensure against ever being brought to ground by his opponents, Hitler has built up an elaborate system of fortifications. His new Chancellery in Berlin has the biggest bomb-proof cellar in the Reich. Built to hold thousands of men, it Is equipped with hospitals and storerooms. Hitler and his henchmen could live in safety, if they wished, for years on end. Deeper still, a hundred feet below the ground, there is said to be another cellar. Into this, at the last moment, the Nazi chiefs could bolt, slamming steel doors behind them, and escaping through secret tunnels to exits far from the heart of Berlin.

At the exits, so it is said, two powerful cars are always kept waiting, with food, money and jewels, the chief needs of a refugee.

Hitler Mystery Deepening
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate [NSW] 
12 September 1945

LONDON - The mystery surrounding the fate of Hitler is deepening. British Intelligence authorities have issued a warning that a "Hitler legend" is gaining ground in Germany. The renewed search for Hitler or for definite proof of his death is being intensified, according to a report from the Berlin correspondent of the London "Daily Express". Allied authoritics are concerned at reports in certain newspapers that Hitler has been seen recently. These stories are encouraging more rumours, which the occupation authorities are anxious to avoid. Latest Berlin reports link up with the Hamburg theory that Hitler may have escaped in a luxury yacht. A woman who sheltered regularly at the Chancellery and escaped at the last minute says she saw Hitler and Eva Braun alive in the Chancellery shelter. They could have got away after she left, as the end did not come until 24 hours later.

The "Daily Express" correspondent adds:

"British Intelligence authorities know that during that time at least two cars left the Chancellery along a road leading to the coast and along which orders had been given that bridges were not to be blown up. No trace of these two cars has so far been found and nobody has been able to establish who was in them.

On 20 April 1945, with the Red Army at the gates of Berlin, Adolf Hitler's closest assistants urged him to flee to the mountains of Bavaria or Austria to organize the resistance.  But the Nazi leader was determined to stay in the city, and told them that he was determined to commit suicide before falling into the hands of the enemy.  He rejected General Jodl's suggestion to escape by the only road that was not yet in the hands of Russian troops.

Another Berlin woman says a general, whose home is near Hamburg and whose name was never announced in the lists of captured soldiers - went to the Chancellery during the last few hours with a car fuelled for a long journey and also stacked with wine and food. The general declared he was going to Hamburg after calling at the Chancellery. This man was one of Hitler's earliest friends, and some Germans think he may have changed his name and may still be at large in the Hamburg area.

Built into the equipment of Hitler's "Flying Chancellery" his Fock-Wulf plane, there were such embellishments as gold hair brushes and a safe, stuffed with actual cash, or items which might be transformed into cash in time of need.

Along every road out of Berlin, so an enterprising American newshawk discovered, Hitler's chauffeur has planted stores of Petrol. Hitler's super-charged Mercedes sports car is always kept ready.
 

Berchtesgaden itself has been quitted in favor of a more remote house in the mountains, which could not be easily surrounded. It possesses at least one secret entrance, and also enjoys a bomb-proof cellar.

Was Stalin was correct in his statements to his western Allies in 1945, telling them that Hitler [and Eva Braun] were still alive?

Hitler's death, at the end of World War II, assumed to be by his own hand, remains unproven. This assumption was the result of what many conceive as a conspiracy by the Western Powers, bowing to political pressures and to fight Nazism, to come up with Hitler's suicide story. This then would explain Hitler's disappearance from Nazi Germany after Germany's defeat.

By mid-1945, the public was being asked to choose between a proliferating number of escape stories and the suicide theory.

All in all, the evidence supporting Hitler's escape to Argentina is pretty flimsy. And yet, so is the evidence that Hitler died in the Bunker. It rests on testimony provided by fellow Nazis who were fanatical devotees of Hitler. As such, its not hard to imagine they might have lied to help their former Leader.

However, the public was given the impression that only the suicide theory had any evidence to support it and deserved to be taken seriously.

Hitler's chauffeur Erich Kempka evidence not only became the basis for Major Hugh-Trevor-Roper's book, "The Last Days of Hitler", it was also endorsed at Nuremberg as the sole source of reliable information concerning Hitler's demise.

The primary reason Kempka's story won such a positive reception from the Anglo–American authorities was that Kempka was the sole source of evidence that appeared to support the suicide theory.

Kempka also contradicted Soviet claims that Hitler could have escaped.

In his 4 July 1945 interview record, he declared:

"[With a] statement reported to have been made by the Russian Marshall Chukov [sic] that Hitler and Eva Braun could have escaped from the Berlin area by air, I can't agree. On 30 April 1945 and two or three days previous, no one could possibly have left the inner parts of Berlin by air. There was a heavy artillery fire on all the inner parts of Berlin during those days. Neither did I hear about a plane arriving or leaving after 25 or 26 of April 1945".

Unfortunately for Kempka, one of the best-attested events of the last days of the Third Reich is that of a flight piloted by General Robert Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch that arrived in Berlin on the morning of 26 April. The same pair took off from Berlin in the early hours of 30 April. Reitsch herself not only spoke about the two flights on numerous occasions between 1945 and her death in 1979 but also devoted a chapter,  'The Last Journey to Berlin', to them in her autobiography "Flying Is My Life", Putnam's Sons, New York, 1954. The Greim–Reitsch flights were not even the only flights in and out of central Berlin in this period. In her book, Reitsch refers to at least two others.

In the final days of April 1945 there was a huge millitary airlift by the Nazis to fly naval personnel from Baltic garrisons to Berlin to shore up its defences.

Squadron "Mauß" operating Ju-352s from Rostok flew in 476 naval troops on 27 April 1945. Oberfeldwebel Paul Kohler operated Ju-352 G6+EX, another Ju-352 G6+RX was operated by StFw Kurt Becker.

OltZSee Clemens Zuborg recalled after the war witnessing two Ju-352 unloading about 80 sailors at the Reichs Chancellery.
 

During the late spring of 1942, the Junkers-Dessau project office was instructed by the Reich Air Ministry to investigate the possibility of redesigning the structure
of the Junkers Ju 252 transport to make maximum use of non-strategic materials, steel tube, fabric and wood, and replacing the Junkers Jumo 211F engines of the
Ju-252 with Bramo 323R radial engines. The result but was an entirely new aircraft. The 'Herkules' followed closely the aerodynamic design of  the Ju-252 but the wing
was mounted further aft on the fuselage, a new vertical tail was designed, and the semi-circular windows of the Ju-252 were replaced with square windows.
The Ju 352 also had a similar Trapoklappe ["Transportklappe", rear loading ramp] to that of theJu-252, 
allowing the loading of vehicles or freight into the cargo hold while holding the fuselage level.

One of these aircraft received heavy Soviet ground fire stopping two of its three engines and was forced to make a crash landing which miraculously its pilot OFw Herbert Schultz, his crew and passengers all survived.

Hitler's own VIP squadron F.d.F, which had three Ju-52 aircraft, one Ju-290 and two Fw200, all of which kept landing and taking off from the East West Axis, flew Schultz and his crew out of Berlin, back to their unit at Großenbrode on 29 April.

a Ju 52 that had "successfully managed to land" on the Ost-West-Achse on 28 April and then taken-off again was flown by Oberfeldwebel Böhm from II./TGr 3. This was reported by another young Ju 52 pilot from this unit, Uffz. Johannes Lachmund who described events in his 2009 memoir, "Fliegen ; Mein Traumberuf – bis zu den bitteren Erlebnissen des Krieges". Although a pilot Lachmund flew on this sortie as a gunner. Lachmund records that this mission was flown from Güstrow to Berlin with five aircraft to evacuate high-ranking personnel from Berlin, including Ritter von Greim. As Lachmund reports, three of the five Ju 52s had to return after missed approaches, chiefly because the visibility was so poor from the heavy smoke from the fires everywhere on the ground. One Ju-52 was shot-down by the Soviets during the approach.

Lachmund mentions discussions via telephone from the "air traffic control" command-post at the Siegessäule [Berlin's Victory column] between Böhm and the Bunker in the Reichskanzlei. There was apparently some dispute over the passengers to be flown-out, chiefly because Hanna Reitsch wanted to fly out Ritter von Greim herself at the controls of the Arado Ar-96, and not leave Berlin as a passenger on this Ju-52 flight. Eventually, the Ju 52 boarded only a few other wounded passengers but not the VIPs. Because of damage to the 'runway' from shelling, the Junkers transport had only 400 metres in which to get airborne.

Hitler’s personal pilot Hans Baur, promoted by Hitler on 30 January 1945 to SS-Gruppenführer, saw Hitler on the morning of 30 April and offered to fly him out in a Fieseler Storch, but Hitler declined the offer.
 

Given that the evidence from other sources is abundant enough to establish that they actually took place, there is something extremely suspicious about Kempka's assertion that no such flights would have been possible.

The explanation that best accounts for events, therefore, is that Kempka sought to suppress his knowledge of the two flights. When Kempka first gave his story to the Americans in June 1945, he had no reason to believe that they knew anything at all about them. There is a very good reason why Kempka would not have wanted to mention these flights: the cover story—that Greim flew to Berlin to receive instructions from Hitler, who had just made him the new head of the Luftwaffe—is preposterous. Why would Hitler, who was anxious for everyone else to leave Berlin, want someone to come to him? Why would he have been so keen to talk to the head of an almost nonexistent entity?

The official story fails to justify Greim and Reitsch's extremely dangerous flight.

It also does not explain why the pair's flight from the Luftwaffe air base at Rechlin near Berlin to Gatow airport on Berlin's periphery was accompanied by an escort of 30–40 fighter jets—in other words, the extant Luftwaffe virtually in its entirety.

Clearly, the flight had a more serious purpose than we have been led to believe. 

In a striking passage in his memoirs, former Volkssturm member Dieter H. B. Protsch relates an incident that took place in Berlin on 29 April 1945. That day, which happened to be his thirteenth birthday, in the course of searching for food for his family he stumbled upon a basement occupied by several Waffen-SS men operating radio equipment who gave him bread and chocolate:

"After some small talk about the family, they suddenly stopped talking when the radio operator raised his hand to demand quiet. The 'Funker' [Radio Operator], wearing a head set, started smiling and stated that 'der Führer' got his belated birthday present. He explained further that he [Hitler] made it safely out of Berlin, flown out by his personal pilot Hanna Reitsch, Germany's best female test pilot. The report stated that she was flying a small one engine, two or three seater plane, a so-called 'Fiseler [sic] Storch'.

--  Dieter H. B. Protsch, "Be All You Can Be: From a Hitler Youth in WWII to a US Army Green Beret", Trafford Publishing, 2004 

Thus the truth seems to be that, exactly as the Soviets subsequently alleged, Hitler did indeed make it out of Berlin — more or less around the time that the official story tells us that he was still in the Bunker dictating his Political Testament—and that Erich Kempka knew precisely when and how this had taken place, but withheld the information from the Americans.

According to Reitsch, the flight reached Rechlin at about 3.00 am. Here, she states, Greim attended a conference. Then she and Greim flew—apparently using a different aircraft—to Plön, a distance of some 400 miles. Their next destinations were Dobbin, where Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was [Keitel confirms in his memoirs, "In The Service Of The Reich: The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel", ed. Walter Görlitz, Focal Point Publications, London, 2003, that he was at Dobbin this day, thus confirming Reitsch's reliability. He adds the striking information, which Reitsch does not mention, that Himmler was at Dobbin, too].

Lübeck, Plön again ["to see Dönitz"], and finally Königgrätz [in Bohemia, now Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic.

If we assume, that Hitler was present during at least the first of these several stages, we can say that at Rechlin the trail goes cold. If Hitler left Berlin with Greim and Reitsch, then that would account for the series of bizarre events—the marriage to Eva Braun, the writing of the Political Testament, the recurring rages—that have been enshrined in official history as "the Last Days of the Third Reich".

Obviously, Hitler's last days in the Bunker needed to be accounted for and so a lurid series of episodes had to be invented to fill in the yawning gap.
 

 

In a 2007 interview, Rochus Misch, Hitler’s bodyguard, phone operator and courier  said:

"Life in the Bunker was pretty normal. Hitler was mostly very calm".

He said historians, filmmakers and journalists always got it wrong when they described the mood in the Bunker as Soviet forces closed in on Hitler in the final days of the Nazi regime.

"Life in the Bunker was pretty normal. Hitler was mostly very calm. It was much less dramatic than shown by many historians. But there was one disconcerting element: the silence. Everybody was whispering, and nobody knew why. That's why it felt like the Bunker of Death.

Theo Junker, the former Waffen-SS soldier with the Viking division, stated that while he was held at a British POW camp for SS and Waffen-SS in Neuengamme after the war, he met a former SS telephonist in the Führerbunker, who told him that Hitler was basically cool, calm, collected—and very much in command—right up until his last day. Despite all the stress, he never "cracked up".

Baron Freytag von Loringhoven who was the last survivor among the close advisers of the Führer said:

"Hitler could be very aggressive but towards the end he was very controlled. He could be pleasant and even warm. He could be very charming - he was a real Austrian".

Hitler undoubtedly had a magnetic personal appeal. This has been confirmed many times by members of his household - those that knew him best and saw him most often and, crucially, when off-duty - all of whom testified to his immense personal charm; his bourgeois manners, his sense of humour and his caring, avuncular nature towards his secretaries.

On another level, Hitler also had the knack of impressing those who visited him in his headquarters. 

He tended - according to those that met him - to use his striking blue eyes to great effect, holding his gaze on a new arrival to "test" them, for instance.  Hitler proved himself most adept at convincing his underlings of his point of view, not always by ranting and raving [though that also played a part, especially as the war turned against him], but by persuasion. There are countless examples of military men coming to the Führer-HQ urgently seeking to convince Hitler of their opinion, and coming away equally passionately convinced of Hitler's.  

Arthur Kannenberg, Hitler's butler, in an interview conducted at Nuremberg three years after the war by US judge Michael Musmanno, said:

"'Before the end he [Hitler] gave me gold and silver cigarette cases engraved with his name. When he handed them over he said; 'Look after these until we meet again'.

Among the many scenarios detailing Bormann's escape, although it was never given weight in the West, was a statement Josef Stalin made to Harry Hopkins, political consultant and confidant of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and later secretary of state, that Soviet agents reported Bormann's escape from Berlin on 30 April in a small plane and in the company of three men — one heavily bandaged — and a woman. From there, Stalin insisted, his agents traced Bormann to Hamburg, where he boarded a large U-Boat and departed Germany.

Stalin stated

"Irrefutable proof exists that a small plane left the Tiergarten at dawn on 30 April 1945, flying in the direction of Hamburg. Three men and a woman are known to have been on board. It is also indisputably established that a submarine left Hamburg before the arrival of the British troops, taking several passengers, including a woman".
 
-- From a Soviet Intelligence Commission of Inquiry Report, as quoted by James McGovern, CIA agent in charge of researching the post-war survival of Martin Borman.

"Stalin told Harry Hopkins in Moscow that he believed Bormann escaped. Now he went further and said it was Bormann who got away in the fleeing U-Boat. More than that Stalin refused to disclose".

-- William Stevenson, "The Bormann Brotherhood"

British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was reported in early September 1945 to have said British Intelligence received a report of Bormann in Hamburg the night of 1 May, apparently verifying Stalin's assertion that Bormann had been flown to Hamburg, or else how would he have gotten there so fast.

SS General Wilhelm Mohnke, confirmed to the Soviets that Bormann escaped to the Hamburg area with British assistance.
 

Hitler Seen In Hamburg?
The Newcastle Sun [NSW] 
Our Special Representative and Australian Associated Press.
8 September 1945

LONDON: British security police are investigating strong rumors that Hitler has been seen in Hamburg, says the "Associated Press of America" correspondent there.

"A recent broadcast by Martin Bormann, Hitler's Deputy," the correspondent adds, "alleged to have been picked up in Sweden, declared that Hitler was alive and in good health in Germany".

A week ago Bormann, was reported to have been captured by the British authorities.

Hitler's Deputy
Kalgoorlie Miner [WA]
4 September 1945

Herford - Field-Marshal Montgomery's headquarters have officially denied that Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party and successor to Rudolf Hess, is in British hands. The statement added that it is not believed he is held by the Americans either.

Stalin later reiterated his belief, claiming that Bormann was being harbored by the United States government in his escape and continued freedom.  The Allies, led by the United States, refused to give this story credence and ignored Stalin's demands for an explanation, and, in fact, began claiming in defense that the Soviets held Bormann. But Stalin insisted until his death that his was the correct account of Martin Bormann's fate.

Why would Stalin make such a claim? What did he stand to lose if it was true? What value could he gain from such an assertion if he knew it was false? And if it were true, why would the United States discount it out of hand?  These seem to be the obvious questions concerning the matter. But equally important, though much less glaring, are the small questions; the questions about the innocuous details that make up the fabric of Stalin's very specific story.

If Stalin was not telling the truth, why would he include such unique and seemingly contestable details as the fact the airplane carried four people when the only two airplanes capable of using the ad hoc runway in Berlin on 30 April, the Fieseler Fi-156 'Storch' and the Arado Ar-96, were designed to carry only two. Why did he include a woman in the escape party when it would be almost inconceivable that a woman would be on such a desperate and dangerous mission? And why would Stalin assert the escape was continued from Hamburg on a "large" U-Boat?" The Allies were fairly certain that all but two of Germany's largest U-Boats had been sunk during the war, and one of those was in the Pacific. The chances seem slim that such an escape as Stalin described was ever made.

The description of Bormann's getaway boat as a large U-Boat links the escape to the U-234, not just because U-234 was by comparison extremely large, but even more so because it appears to have been the only boat of its mammoth size left in Europe. 

U-234 was originally built as a minelaying, Type XB U-Boat.  These double-hulled, triple-sized U-Boats were designed to seed strategically chosen bodies of water with high-explosive mines. The Allies became so adept at detecting and eradicating these mines before any harm was caused, however, that the Type XB quickly became obsolete.  There was but a handful of Type XBs ever built: U-116 through U-119, U-219, U-220, U-233 and the mysterious U-234.  When the Type XB proved not to have the impact for which it was designed, the boats were refitted as supply vessels for the 'Wolfpack' boats sinking Allied convoys on the battlefront in the Atlantic.

Compared to the Wolfpack boats, however, Type XB U-Boats were huge, more than 1600 tons displacement when surfaced, while the ubiquitous Type VII U-Boats that constituted 75 percent  of Germany's submersible fleet, were 500 tons - less than one-third the size of a Type XB.  The other popular U-Boat, the Type IX, was larger than the Type VII at anywhere from 740 to 1100 tons. But the Type XB was 50 percent larger than even these more common front boats that, combined with the smaller Type VII, constituted almost the entire remaining U-Boat fleet.  Russian observers of U-Boats were probably accustomed to both the Type VII and the Type IX and probably would not have differentiated them by size as out of the ordinary. 

Type XBs, however, were almost unknown. There had been only eight of them made. U-116 through U-220, with the exception of U-219, were all sunk in the year between the first of October 1942 and the end of October 1943. U-219 had fortuitously avoided this fate by being stationed in the Pacific immediately upon commissioning, having left Bordeaux, France on 23 August 1944 for Djakarta, Indonesia, where it arrived on 11 December 1944.

In the South Pacific it was far away from Europe and Bormann and the fierce Atlantic fighting when the war in Europe ended.  When Germany surrendered, U-219, still in the Pacific, was turned over to the Japanese Imperial Navy to continue the war under the flag of the Rising Sun.  U-233 had been sunk before commissioning, leaving U-234 as the only remaining "large" Type XB U-Boat available in Europe at the time of Bormann's alleged escape. 

The Type XIV U-Boat was the only other U-Boat larger than the popular Type IX and comparable in size to the Type XB.  Like the XB, few of these boats were made - only ten - which were all built and operational by the end of 1942.They were designed and used as a refueling boat for the Wolfpack vessels, and, as a result, like the XB, had a very high mortality rate.  The sinking of a single Type XIV shortened the combat patrols of approximately twelve fighting U-Boats, so Allied anti-submarine efforts concentrated on what the German U-Boaters affectionately called their 'Milk Cows'. 

The process of refueling was dangerous, requiring the Type XIV fuel supply boat and its recipient lie still in the water for hours on end during the fuel transfer process.  During this time, both boats were vulnerable to attack, which happened often, at which the panicked crews would quickly detach the umbilicals and both boats would execute emergency dives.  The smaller fighting boat, with its more compact size, greater maneuverability, and with its more disciplined, battle-seasoned crew, would invariably be the first to maneuver out of harm's way, leaving the clumsy behemoth Type XIV at the mercy of the enemy.  It was an easy target. 

None of the Type XIV U-Boats survived to the end of the war, all ten had suffered the fate of the majority of Type XBs by the end of 1943.  The only other large U-Boat built was the Walther U-Boat, the XXI, which was designed and under construction, but not operational, before the end of the war.  

U-234, therefore, was the only "large" U-Boat left in the Reich's fleet that would most closely fit Josef Stalin's escape boat description
 

The actual escape of Bormann as told by Joseph Farrell [citing several sources] involved German U-Boat 234, carrying Uranium 235, a necessary isotope for the Atom Bomb

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The argument is as follows:  The Americans were struggling to gather enough of the necessary ingredients for the atomic bomb through their Manhattan project.  The Nazis had created enough of the isotope to build several such bombs but missed by a few months of being able to mount it on a A-10 rocket [under development] to send it to New York as a deadly greeting card. 

Consequently, one explanation is that Bormann made a deal to trade the Uranium, surrendering it to the Americans in exchange for his freedom.  Another suggests that the Americans and British were most certainly going to protect the U-234 on its mission to help America’s bomb building efforts.

Bormann was well aware of this precious cargo and hitched a ride on the "protected" submarine to Spain, where he holed up for a year, before he moved on to Argentina.

 

A-9/A-10/A-11 Illustration by Wernher von Braun, Fort Bliss 1946

"Erwin K. Oppenheimer maintained that the bomb that was dropped on Japan was of German provenance"

-- Edgar Mayer and Thomas Mehner: "Das Geheimnis der Deutschen Atombombe: Gewann Hitlers Wissenschaftler den Nuearen Wettlauf doch? Die Geheimprojekte bei Innsbruck, im Raum Jonastal bei Arnstadt und in Prague

Hitler had the atomic bomb and transferred it to the Allies, who then threw it on Japan, under a last-minute agreement, when Berlin fell and the defeat of the Third Reich was inevitable.

This statement corresponds to the confession of the Nazi scientist Erwin Oppenheimer, who worked in secret on the real atomic program of Nazi Germany.

After the war, he began to perform duties in the United States along with hundreds of German colleagues who, like him, crossed the Atlantic in the framework of the alliance between the Nazis and the Americans. Living in North America, he decided to tell the truth about the Nazi bomb assuring that the Germans, when they were ending the war, already had the nuclear weapon and not the Americans.

He did so in a small book that was quickly removed from the market by the American authorities.

In it he affirmed that the Nazi atomic bomb on "the twentieth of April [of 1945] was finished" and that "the existing Uranium reserve was immediately used in the construction of four other artifacts".

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in a "Political Testament" written shortly before his death at the hands of partisans in April 1945, stated:

"The wonder weapons are the hope. It is laughable and senseless for us to threaten at this moment, without a basis in reality for these threats. The well-known mass destruction bombs are nearly ready. In only a few days, with the utmost meticulous intelligence, Hitler will probably execute this fearful blow, because he will have full confidence.... It appears there are three bombs - and each has an astonishing operation. The construction of each is fearfully complex and of a lengthy time of completion".”

Mussolini’s mention of three bombs is intriguing because of a statement of a former Russian military translator who served on the staff of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the officer who took Japan’s surrender to the Soviet Union in 1945.

As reported by the German magazine "Der Spiegel" in 1992, Piotr Titarenko had written a letter to the Communist Party Central Committee, in which he stated that the three atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. One of these, dropped on Nagasaki prior to the blast of August 9, 1945, failed to detonate and subsequently was given to the Soviet Union by Japanese officials.

If Titarenko’s account is accurate, this would mean that America had three atomic bombs on hand in the summer of 1945. Yet, a report to Manhattan Project leader Robert Oppenheimer just days after President Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945, stated that not enough enriched Uranium existed to create a viable critical mass for even one atomic bomb.

According to Oppenheimer's account, Hitler's original plan was "to launch a Uranium bomb over London," but then he changed his mind and opted to negotiate with the Allies.

The devastation of London or New York would not have materially altered the course of the war in the spring of 1945. And the retaliation of the Allies would have been unimaginable. Further, high-ranking Nazis, such as Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann, who by war’s end had become the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, realized the war was lost, and used advanced technology as a bargaining chip with the Western Allies. 

In this regard, the Nazi scientist said he does not know exactly how the bomb moved to the United States, but said that was the case when the conflict was coming to an end.

The Uranium weapon dropped on Hiroshima was a German nuclear weapon captured by US forces from an underground facility near Goslar on 26 April 1945. It was flown out of Germany by Col. Charles Lindbergh in a B-24. Lindbergh who at the time was employed as a consultant to the Naval Technical Mission Europe.

Other than addition of the so called California Brake tail fin the device was entirely German manufacture.

Germany had developed a far superior Uranium enrichment project to the Manhattan Project's using Anschutz Mark IIIB Uranium centrifuges and thus overtook the Manhattan Project during 1944.

It was fear of Anthrax attack by Great Britain which inhibited use of nuclear weapons by Hitler. A threat conveyed via the German legation at Lisbon in July 1944 conveyed a threat to Hitler that Germany would be targeted by the first Allied atomic bomb at Dresden.

During July 1944 Heisenberg was visited in Berlin by Maj Bernd von Brauchitsch, Göring’s adjutant, with a report that the German legation in Lisbon had learned of an American threat to drop an Atomic Bomb on Dresden during the next six weeks if Germany did not sue for peace in some way before then". 

 -- Irving, David. "Virus House". 'Abandonment of nuclear research under threat of retaliation by USA via Lisbon to bomb Dresden'

-- Operation "Epsilon" [conversation between Karl Wirtz, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Werner Heisenberg 6-7 August 1945] National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, RG 77, Entry 22, Box 164 [Farm Hall Transcripts].

The USA was anxious about OSS Intelligence reports it had been receiving since 1943 discussing advances in the German Atomic bomb and preparations to use Tabun B nerve gas.

In August 1944, Churchill warned Hitler via Romania’s Marshall Ion Antonescu that the RAF would deliver Anthrax spores all over Germany,  if a single German nuclear weapon was used against the British isles. 

-- Evidence of Anthrax attack threat to force Hitler to abandon nuclear weapons, "Germany and the Second World War", by Bernhard Kröner, Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans Umbreit 

This is also referred to by Dr Paul Harteck in Farm Hall transcripts 6-7 August 1945; also in "Virus House" by David  Irving.

Germany had no antibiotics and would have faced starvation within 2 weeks had Anthrax been used.

The Trinity bomb exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945, was a plutonium bomb. Why then would the United States first drop the "Little Boy", an untested Uranium bomb, on Japan on 6 August 1945?

"A rational explanation is [that] 'Little Boy' was not tested by the Americans because... [t]he Americans did not need to test it, because its German designers already had,” surmised Joseph Farrell.

In that sense,  Erwin Oppenheimere said that "out of a handful of atom scientists and some politicians, everyone believed that the two bombs that crushed Japan in August 1945 were American-made. Actually, as I should find out later, these bombs were Hitler's secret weapon".

Oppenheimer, after the end of the war, worked on the United States nuclear project and in that regard revealed that "the real American bombs, which can be called atomic bombs, were only launched at the beginning of May 1948 in Eniwetok, This happened three years after the terrible nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki [previously to the launch at Eniwetok, they  had been tested in the reef of Bikini, in 1946].

"So while making sure that in 1945 Hitler did not have the bomb, and the Americans instead, the truth was exactly the other way around. And, as if this were not enough, the German atomic bombs fell on Japan, paradoxically the great partner of the Third Reich during World War II", Oppenheimer explained.

-- "The Secrets of Hitler", Abel Basti, Editorial Sudamericana.

A transcript of a top-level call between two military experts, General John E. Hull and Colonel L. E. Seeman, on 13 August 1945, about atomic bomb production in the next few months, reveals that there was one ready to be shipped out to Tinian, in the Mariana Islands where the 'Enola Gay' and 'Bockscar' had flown from, with the main plutonium core about to be shipped from the U.S. at that very moment. According to Seeman, it would be ready for use on 19 August.

Although some aircrew saw "Tokyo Joe" chalked on the bomb’s casing, it was said to be destined for Kokura, the original target for the second bomb, and named "Fat Boy".

On 15 August, however, just as the plutonium was about to be sent to Tinian, news of the Japanese surrender came through and its loading was stopped.
 

A series of totally independent accounts, however, corroborate very well Stalin's unlikely tale. 

-- First, a makeshift runway is now well-known to have been operating in the Tiergarten to service the Führer Bunker during the last days of the war, although at the time of Stalin's comment that knowledge was not so wide spread.  Albert Speer, Hitler's Munitions Minister, described flying into the stop-gap landing strip on the occasion of Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday -celebrated a week before Bormann's mysterious escape- when the Russians were still at the outskirts of Berlin.

 According to Speer, as an airplane prepared to land or take off, a detachment of SS soldiers would light a series of lanterns placed along both sides of the wide avenue that stretched from the Brandenburg Gate to the Reichs Chancellery.  The airplane would use the strip and then the lanterns quickly would be extinguished again.

-- Second, the great German aviatrix, Hanna Reitsch, a contemporary of Amelia Earhart's and close friend of Adolf Hitler, had flown into Berlin only a few days previous to the mysterious escape flight. [Reitsch had in the past received personally from Hitler the Iron Cross [the only woman to do so] both first and second class, for bravely test piloting the flying capabilities of a V-1 rocket, which had been modified with a cockpit.  Now, she had piloted a Fieseler Storch airplane to bring Luftwaffe General Robert Ritter von Greim to Berlin so Hitler could make him the overall commander of the Luftwaffe in place of the recently dethroned Göring.  During the flight into Berlin, von Greim was injured by enemy anti-aircraft shrapnel.

After landing, Reitsch and von Greim were harbored in the Bunker for a few days while von Greim lay in bed recuperating before making the exit flight. Hanna Reitsch recorded in her memoirs that she, with a heavily bandaged General von Greim by her side, flew out of Berlin from the Tiergarten, at dawn on 30 April according to her 5 December 1945 press interview -  exactly the same time Stalin reported the mysterious escape flight took off. 

Then she recorded in her memoirs an odd event.  

Instead of flying to Austria, their intended destination, Reitsch writes how they flew 400 dangerous miles, partly over enemy territory, with the badly injured and very important General von Greim, to Plön, Admiral Dönitz's headquarters.  She gives the reason for this detour as the desire to wish the Admiral a fond farewell.

Such a detour for such a superfluous reason seems remarkably improbable given the desperate state of affairs on the military front and the injuries to General von Greim.  Would not a radio message have done? What if all the remaining German leaders decided to travel to each other in order to wish one another farewell?  There seems to be no indication that Dönitz and von Greim had any special relationship beyond two professionals doing their jobs. 

The reason for the detour seems highly suspect. 

Other reasons were later given for the strange flight deviation, but, despite their outward veracity, when subjected to even minimal scrutiny they seem almost as hollow as the reason Reitsch describes.  The chief assertion is that von Greim was flown to Plön after Hitler had concluded Himmler was a traitor who had begun separate surrender negotiations with the West.

Supposedly von Greim was sent to arrest Himmler.  But the Führer Bunker was in radio contact with Dönitz many times a day and could have had Dönitz make the arrest. The wounded von Greim, with his one-woman retinue, was in far less able condition to arrest Himmler than the healthy Dönitz with his considerable cortege. Dönitz was a strict and efficient military professional with a strong reputation for carrying out his command. Indeed, at the end of the war Hitler entrusted him with the post-war leadership of the entire nation. 

If Dönitz was not capable of fulfilling the order, to send the injured von Greim to enforce the order over Dönitz' head and in his own headquarters, surrounded by the Admiral's full retinue and in the face of Himmler's substantial SS bodyguard, seems unlikely. And if they had, in fact, flown to Dönitz for this purpose, why would not Reitsch have stated so in her memoirs, written many years later?

The order for Himmler's arrest was never a secret - not even at the time it was issued, much less decades later when she wrote her book.  And in the end, when von Greim met with Himmler, he only told the Reichsführer SS that Hitler had denounced him, further suggesting that von Greim was not really sent to Plön to arrest the SS chief.  In short, there seems to be no viable reason why Reitsch and von Greim had flown alone to Plön. 

Stalin's story of the mysterious flight appears to have a strong basis in fact. 

The description of the little group of night flyers is explicit and unique in its observations: a heavily bandaged man, which fits the description of von Greim at the time, and a woman, which would be Hanna Reitsch, probably the only woman in the world one could have expected to see in that circumstance, at that place, at that time

In addition, the escape in a large U-boat identifies itself particularly well with U-234, which had received at least one - and possibly two - radio transmissions from Hitler's Bunker; and which led General Ulrich Kessler to anticipate an important passenger from Berlin. In addition, Captain Johann-Heinrich Fehler appears to have taken U-234 on a convoluted voyage, with each successive twist and turn intended to hide the U-boat's movements and activities.

On the night of 28-29 April, when Hitler ordered Hanna Reitsch to fly out of Berlin with new Luftwaffe commander von Greim, the opportunity Bormann was looking for had arrived.  Bormann quickly succeeded in getting Hitler to order that he should be flown out to Dönitz, as well.  In fact, according to author James P. O'Donnell, Bormann was simply substituted for Hitler in an escape plan Hitler's pilot, Hans Baur, had prepared.  O'Donnell suggested, however, that the original plan, which was never completed, was for Baur to fly Hitler -before Bormann was substituted- out of Berlin, not for Hanna Reitsch to fly him.

Reitsch's and von Greim's impending departure appears to have been a fortuitous opportunity to implement Baur's plan for Bormann to escape with Baur being the pilot.

Two more considerations support the scenario that Hanna Reitsch flew Bormann out of Berlin: 

First, Baur was extremely loyal to Hitler and he was a staunch Nazi to his dying day, and he reported directly to Bormann. Given Bormann's mission to preserve Nazism and the Führer's legacy, all three facts would indicate that Baur did everything in his power to fulfill the order to get Bormann to Dönitz.

Second, despite the order, Baur did not actually fly Hitler or Bormann out of Berlin, he escaped on foot with the others. 

The Führer had not given Bormann final permission to forever leave his service.  Bormann, loyal to the end, would not dream of deserting Hitler if he knew his master might yet need him.

Bormann's uncanny influence over Hitler had worked one final time. 

"Bormann has been given several orders which he must take to Dönitz in person....It is most important that Bormann gets to Doenitz," Hitler told Baur. 

Baur never made any attempt to fly Bormann to Dönitz, although the traditional history suggests the topic was discussed by Göbbels and Baur on 1 May, long after Bormann was gone and a flight out of Berlin was no longer possible.

Given the convergence of the timing of Hitler's order that Bormann travel to Dönitz and Reitsch's admission that she had flown a small plane to Dönitz the morning of 30 April; and, again, Stalin's insistence that Bormann escaped in a small plane at exactly the same time - the weight of the evidence for this scenario too compelling to be overshadowed by any of the historically entrenched but seriously conflicting stories.
 

Noam Shalev was asked a question about a recent case that has similarities to Hitler’s. Does he believe that Osama Bin Laden is really dead?

"Absolutely," he said with a laugh. "I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories. This is my first film not based entirely on facts. That’s why it’s taking us so long. We’re trying to make it as factually verified as we can, without any rumors or theories or ambiguous reconstructions. We’re at a point now where we believe we have enough facts to go on".

Shalev has directed two documentaries and produced eight, including one on the Israeli recovery organization ZAKA. The project on Hitler has been in the works for some time, although several other films of his were released recently.

"We started on it eight years ago. A researcher who was working with me, Pablo Weschler, read about the possibility in a local paper in Argentina, in an article about the wave of Nazis that arrived there in 1945. He pitched the idea to me and I said, 'No way. We only do factual television'. I had never dealt with conspiracy theories. But I decided to start investigating. We found so many cracks in the accepted theory that something seemed wrong".

There have been a number of curious findings in recent years regarding Hitler’s death. For example, in 2009 an American archaeologist from the University of Connecticut traveled to Moscow to take a sample from the skull fragment—complete with bullet hole—that the Russians had put on display as part of Hitler’s skull, allegedly recovered by Russian troops after the fall of Berlin. DNA tests showed that the skull was that of a young woman.

In fact, as soon as he started doing research, Shalev began to turn up other suspicious things as well.

“We hired more researchers in Argentina and Germany and obtained the records from the Nuremberg trials. We learned about the theory that Hitler had already escaped two days before the Bunker was raided. Some of the testimony at the Nuremburg trials seems to confirm that, including the testimony of a Luftwaffe pilot who allegedly took a few people from an improvised landing strip near the Bunker and flew them to Denmark.

“An order had been issued by Hitler the day before to use all of the aircraft at their disposal to secure the corridor between Denmark and Berlin. You think to yourself, That's what Hitler was concerned about that day? Securing a certain corridor that had no strategic value to Germany at the time? It’s weird".

Bornholm, as a part of Denmark, was captured by Germany on 10 April 1940, and served as a lookout post and listening station during the war, as it was a part of the Eastern Front. The island's perfect central position in the Baltic Sea meant that it was an important "natural fortress" between Germany and Sweden, effectively keeping submarines and destroyers away from Nazi-occupied waters. Several concrete coastal installations were built during the war, and several coastal batteries had tremendous range. However, none of them were ever used, and only a single test shot was fired during the occupation. These remnants of Nazi rule have since fallen into disrepair and are mostly regarded today as historical curiosities. Many tourists visit the ruins each year, however, providing supplemental income to the tourist industry.

On 22 August 1943 a V-1 flying bomb [numbered V83, probably launched from a Heinkel He 111] crashed on Bornholm during a test – the warhead was a dummy made of concrete. This was photographed or sketched by the Danish Naval Officer-in-Charge on Bornholm, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen. This was the first sign British Intelligence saw of Germany's aspirations to develop flying bombs and rockets which were to become known as V-1 and V-2.

Bornholm was heavily bombarded by the Soviet Air Force in May 1945. German garrison commander, German Navy Captain Gerhard von Kamptz, refused to surrender to the Soviets, as his orders were to surrender to the Western Allies. The Germans sent several telegrams to Copenhagen requesting that at least one British soldier should be transferred to Bornholm, so that the Germans could surrender to the western Allied forces instead of the Russians. When von Kamptz failed to provide a written capitulation as demanded by the Soviet commanders, Soviet aircraft relentlessly bombed and destroyed more than 800 civilian houses in Rønne and Nexø and seriously damaged roughly 3,000 more on 7–8 May 1945.

On 9 May Soviet troops landed on the island, and after a short fight, the German garrison [about 12,000 strong] surrendered.  Soviet forces left the island on 5 April 1946.

French Professor Paul Rivet, arrested in France in 1942, was sent to Bornholm for forced labour there.

On 15 October 1945, upon his return to Paris he told news reporters that the Germans had an atomic bomb factory at Bornholm, and that the Nazis had an atomic bomb from June 1944 but lacked the means to deliver it to targets.

Other claims say two other things in respect of Rivet's claim: 

1) That it is rumored to have been underground beneath Hammershus Fortress in NW Bornholm

2) That the function of the factory was to incorporate atomic warheads into radio controlled bombs.

A similar report from the OSS in Zürich from November 1944 also cites a forced labourer at the Flottemann factory in Breslau [now Wroclaw, Poland] where the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb are being modified to accept nerve gas and atomic warheads.

"The Flottemann factory in Breslau was modifying standard V-2 and V-1 projectiles for nerve gas and nuclear payloads".

-- "Luftwaffe: the Allied Intelligence Files" by Chris Staerck, Paul Sinnott

"A special nerve gas version of the V-1 [Fi-103 D-1] designed to attack the U.S. was completed in 1944 at a factory in Breslau".

"OSS Report A-44 316, report 5985 of 7 November 1944".   

By inference it is suggested the modified weapons were then sent to Bornholm for equipping with warheads to the V-1, V-2 and other pilotless missiles. 

In "Hitler's Rocket Soldiers", by Barber & Keur pub. Tattered Flag 2011, there is mention of a conversation, overheard by a certain Helmuth Frenk who was employed in testing the V2 and was fairly senior:

" ....Frenk clearly recollected overhearing a most illuminating conversation that took place between von Braun and a visiting dignitary: 'Once by accident, I overheard an exchange between von Braun and a visitor, who asked: 'Why do you not use an atomic bomb in the V2?' With a sneer, von Braun replied: 'Because we do not have one!' 

Who the visitor was is not revealed and the date is also not made clear.

Also within the paragraph, it is also suggested that, "....Frenk never heard of any attempt to use Phosphorus as was sometimes rumoured. Similarly, the use of biological or chemical weapons, as far as he was aware, was simply not considered".

In the book "Unexplained Mysteries of World War Two" by Robert Jackson, there is mention of rumours of an atomic research lab on Bornholm. These rumours were supposedly circulating in Germany in 1944-1945.

A member of the British T-force the English equivalent of ALSOS visited the island two days before the Soviet attack began. T-force would not have an interest in Bornholm without good reason: T-Force was primarily directed to track down targets of German high tech weaponry and nuclear projects.

Bornholm was within one hundred miles of the German rocket site at Peenemünde, and quite close to an alleged atom bomb test site on the small island of Rügen on the Baltic coast close to the port city of Kiel.

In September 1942, Maj Gen Walter Dornberger was given two posts: Co-ordinating the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket development programmes and directing active operations. The first successful test launch of a V-2 was the third test launch on 3 October 1942.

In December 1944, he was given complete authority for anti-aircraft rocket development [Flak E Flugabwehrkanonenentwicklung]. 

In February 1945, Dornberger and staff relocated his headquarters from Schwedt-an-der-Oder to Bad Sachsa, then on 6 April 1945, from Bad Sachsa to Haus Ingeborg in Oberjoch near Hindelang in the Allgäu mountains of Bavaria.

On 2 May 1945, Dornberger, Wernher on Braun, and five other men departed from Haus Ingeborg and travelled through Gaicht Pass and towards the little Austrian village of Schattwald. They met American soldiers who convoyed the group to the Tyrolean town of Reutte for the night.

Other sources place them being arrested by Patton's Third Army on  3 May 1945 near Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Dornberger was interned in the UK at CSDIC Camp 11 where his conversations with other German generals were secretly recorded by the British.

He made a number of comments about the German atomic bomb which remain classified even today.

He also described Hitler's intention to use unconventional warheads on the V-2 rocket.

In conversation with Generalmajor Gerhard Bassenge [GOC Air Defences, Tunis & Biserta] Dornberger said that he and von Braun had realized in late 1944 that things were going wrong and consequently was in touch with the General Electric Corporation through the German Embassy in Portugal, and that he and von Braun had gone to Lisbon to meet two GEC officials to pursue secret surrender negotiations in December 1944.  

C.S.D.I.C Report Entitled G.R.G.G. 341 dated 7 August 1945 [Summary of transcripts PRO file WO.208/4178]
 

V-1 intended for launch from U-Boats offshore from New York

The British 21st Army found a lot of nuclear material at Gardermoen airfield Norway in 1945 and took it out to sea south of Bornholm and dumped it there using a former LST.

He 177 at Gardermoen, Norway 1945

In 1945 the Luftwaffe completed construction of an enormous airfield near Oslo, Norway, capable of handling very large aircraft like the Me 264, the He 177, and the Ju 290 and 390.

In an article for the 29 June 1945 issue of the "Washington Post" a report that originated from 21st Army Group headquarters outlines the frightening discovery that awaited Allied military personnel who came to occupy Norway after the German forces there surrendered.
 

It is known that Heinkel undertook special modifications of its He 177 four engine heavy bomber late in the war, adapting it to carry large atom bombs, radiological bombs, and biological and chemical bombs.

-- Friedrich Georg, "Hitlers Siegeswaffen Band 1: Luftwaffe und Marine: Geheime Nuklearwaffen des Dritten Reiches und ihre Trägersysteme" 

Within the context of the SS atom bomb program and the earlier flight of the Ju 390 from France to New York City in 1944, however, a purpose immediately suggests itself. The loss of France to Allied forces in 1944 deprived the Luftwaffe of its large French airfields. Norway, however, remained in German hands up until their very surrender, and thus constituted the only remaining base of operations available to the Germans for any type of offensive operation against the North American continent.

The presence of such an airfield and its deliberate construction so late in the war also strongly suggests a connection to the atom bomb program in an entirely different way, since its construction would likely have fallen under the jurisdiction of the SS Building and Works Department, which was under the direction of none other than SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler. It is also significant that jurisdiction over all long range aircraft was also in Kammler's hands by war's end, thus linking the precious long-range bombers on the Oslo field to Kammler as well.
 

The Heinkel He-177 was technically built to the Ural Bomber requirements -a long range four engine strategic bomber- however, demands to produce it with dive bomber capability compromised the design. Podding two engines to drive a single propeller led to overheating issues and oil pumps caused oil to foam leading to many in flight fires. The real issue why strategic bombers were not developed earlier was a lack of accurate calculating bomb sights, although that was solved as the war progressed.
 

He 177 V38, was an A-5, whose documented use as a testbed for FuG 200 Hohentwiel ASV maritime patrol radar with flexible MG 131Z nose gun installation, is speculated to have been intended for the installation of an enlarged bomb bay for test purposes, said to be intended for use in the Junkers Ju 287.

A common myth claims V38 was the prototype for a German "Atomic Bomber" [purportedly capable of carrying a fission device as a droppable weapon].
 

Heinkel, He-177 "Griffin" with A He-219A escort

One He 177 was secretly being readied in Czechoslovakia to carry the planned German Atomic bomb towards the war's end.

Its remains were found at Prague's Ruzynì field on V-E Day.

In terms of the He-177, Heinkel developed two versions with four separate engines. These were the He-177 A8 which became redesignated in August 1943 as the high altitude He-277.

It had huge commonality with the He-177 A6 and could be converted from earlier He-177, changing the tail, engines and installing a pressurized cockpit. A short series of seven production aircraft came from the conversion of further He-177 airframes.

These finished He-277 B-5 aircraft were in many ways totally superior to America's B-29 and could  bomb from an altitude of 47,500ft, five thousand feet higher than the best Spitfires could intercept.

Although eight He-177 A6 airframes were converted to He-277 at Rechlin orders were given in July 1944 to stop manufacture and scrap the aircraft. One of those airframes, a modified He 177 ‘Greif’ unit, became a donor fuselage for the Ju-287 V1 jet bomber.

 

Artist's wartime rendering of the He-277 B-5

The Ju 287 V1's tail was that of a Ju 388G and the main wheels came from a Ju 352 transport. The nose wheel came from a crashed or captured B-24 Liberator.

The Ju-287 V1 was test flown through August to October 1944 when test flying suddenly stopped.
 

However, in March 1945, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the 287 programme was restarted, with the RLM issuing a requirement for mass production of the jet bomber [100 airframes a month] as soon as possible. The V1 prototype was taken out of storage and transferred to the Luftwaffe evaluation centre at Rechlin, but was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid before it could take to the air again.

The other derative was the He-177 A-4 which was developed near Toulouse. It had a much longer span wing and different undercarriage plus the “H” tail layout. It was structurally much different from the He-277 with longer range and was intended to be the New York Bomber. It was a proposed high altitude pressurized version, never built under the designation, and later developed into the Heinkel He 274.

With either of these types the problem really was that they were developed too late. By the time they emerged aircrew were scarce and fuel even more so.

History books are silent on the ultimate fate of He-277 survivors

The loss of France to Allied forces in 1944 deprived the Luftwaffe of its large French airfields. Norway, however, remained in German hands up until their very surrender, and thus constituted the only remaining base of operations available to the Germans for any type of offensive operation against the North American continent.

It is known that a project was developed in Norway to fit He-177 airframes with wings developed for the Me-264, the He-274 intended as a high altitude bomber capable of a mission to New York. It had far less parts in common with the He-177 than the He-277. 
 

It is therefore it is unclear whether the gathering of 40 long range 'Heinkel' bombers in Norway by the end of WW2 refers to this He-177 hybrid, or surviving He-277 aircraft or both types.
 

“Then you see what happened with the U-Boats arriving in Argentina. The last boat to arrive is hardly documented, but it is known that it was a big one. There was a lot of movement on the beach to welcome it: Jeeps and wagons and horses".

Shalev says that Argentina is the only place Hitler could have gone, and that his researchers found numerous signs of the massive influx of Nazis after the war. 

"We saw reports from the ’70s and early ’80s that talk about thousands of Nazis. We’re not talking about simple Nazi soldiers. They wouldn’t have been able to get the funds for a fake passport or to travel to Argentina. These were connected guys with money who knew whom to approach for assistance. I know the number is several thousand. I can’t get more specific than that.

"The evidence is especially clear in the Argentinian town of Bariloche, in the south. It’s like a small German colony. You hear German spoken there on the streets and in the restaurants. Of course you can’t mention the word Nazi today. But there are strong neo-Nazi organizations there. In the ’70s the area was a no man’s land, and some of the Nazis were highly respected. 

“Today, when you drive in the small villages along the shore and go into a restaurant or pub, you see so many souvenirs on the wall with Swastikas and German insignia. When you ask people, ‘Where did you get that from?’ they all answer, 'My father found it on the beach in 1945\.

Pablo heard that answer all over. History is alive there because the area has not changed much since 1945. But we have changed, and we are more skeptical now.

A Luger pistol, famous for being used by the Nazis, was found in Patagonia by a group of young residents of El Calafate, who found it casually when they were walking along the beaches of Lake Argentino.
 
The weapon was lying on a desolate beach, almost in contact with the water, in the north margin of the mentioned mirror of water. The pistol, besides being very oxidized, presents an important deterioration due to the erosion suffered during the passage of the years that passed while it was in the open.

The "Parabellum-Pistole", popularly known as "Luger", is a semi-automatic pistol driven by recoil. The design was patented by Georg Luger in 1898 and was produced by the German arms factory Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken [DWM] from the year 1900. The registered factory name for this weapon was "Parabellum". The first to call it "Luger" was its distributor in the US Hans Tauscher. The name Parabellum comes from an old Latin saying: "Si vis pacem, para bellum"[If you want peace, prepare for war]. This weapon, which was manufactured in different models, was used by the German armed forces in both the First and Second World War.
 

 

“When Pablo returned from his first trip, he brought back eyewitness reports and documents from the Argentinian National Archives that had just been declassified. We found a small treasure trove there".

He and his team have been working on it ever since, and crewmembers subsequently made two filming expeditions to the country. Shalev. who owns the production company making the film, is planning to accompany them for a final visit this summer. They will also be traveling to Germany and Scandinavia. He hopes to release the finished product between January and April of 2014—and then let his viewers decide for themselves.

Secrets

The research Shalev is doing is painstaking, gathering historical material of every sort.

“We accumulated every possible clue or forensic result out there. For every theory that came out about Hitler’s remains, Hitler’s dental records, Hitler’s brain, there’s a counter-theory saying it’s false or the results were manipulated. It’s almost impossible to get any clear scientific facts".

But he did find results.

“A few years ago we found quite a treasure online, which disappeared after a couple of days. It was a cache consisting of partially redacted FBI reports, original documents that were sent by Intelligence officers in South America, mostly from Argentina but also from Chile. They reported information they received— both actively from spying and passively from others—and discussed very thoroughly whether or not Hitler was alive in Argentina. They mention discussions between Nazis, both those who arrived in Argentina before the war and those who came at the end. The reports were all sent to Washington and they all received the same reply signed by J. Edgar Hoover. Basically it said, ‘Thank you for your report. We’ll look into it'.

“We have more than 100 reports from Argentina. No one has yet to doubt their validity. We let several historians check them, and no one said they are fakes. We have not yet sent them to the FBI for confirmation, so there’s no formal FBI perspective thus far. When they were approached in the late '40s, they said they had nothing to say".

One of the most important proofs of Hitler’s death has been the testimony of several Nazis who were in the Bunker with Hitler during those last days, such as the female Luftwaffe officer Hanna Reitsch; and Hitler’s bodyguard, Rochus Misch, who is still alive.

But Shalev’s researchers found eyewitnesses of their own—the most important one being the first to claim having seen Hitler in Argentina after 1945:

"She was a maid at the Eden Hotel in Cordoba, Argentina, and I think we’re the only ones who ever interviewed her. In the beginning she was very suspicious of Pablo, but then she started talking and it was impossible to stop her. She is not senile at all. She was 84 at the time of our interview.

"She was very clear that it was Hitler she had seen. She described the circumstances in great detail, how the distinguished guest arrived and how she was given orders she had never received before: You do not approach him; you do not speak to him; you do not look at him. She related her conversations with the staff, including drivers and gardeners at the hotel. She said that everybody knew but they weren’t allowed to mention it, even in passing.

"There were no names. It was just ‘the distinguished guest'. He was put into a private villa that was rarely used, and only then by relatives of the hotel’s owner.

“The hotel was owned by the Eichhorn family of Germany. They were Hitler’s sponsors in the 1933 election for Chancellor and were his financial backbone for many years.

"The man she saw had no mustache and his hair was gray. The features, though, were absolutely his.

"The maid said she knew him very well because all the hotel rooms and dining halls had his picture hanging in them. She saw his picture every moment of the day when she was cleaning".

There are no other living employees of that hotel.

“We interviewed the son of a carpenter who worked there, who also claimed to have seen Hitler; the father had already died. The son gave us his father’s testimony, but it is not really an eyewitness report".

One of Shalev’s researchers is investigating the area in which it is rumored that Hitler lived.

"For the last few years we’ve had an expert historian, whom we call Patrick Burnside, working for us in Argentina. He uses a false name because he is constantly being threatened by neo-Nazis. He’s been doing research on this for 20 years and has discovered amazing things that corroborate the story—as much as you can without actually finding a body".

Why are neo-Nazis threatening him?

"They just don’t want anyone around with conspiracy theories. There are certain areas in Bariloche that you don’t go near. There are several huge ranches there—I’m talking about thousands of square miles. They’re very secluded. Everyone knows they were bought by neo-Nazis in 1945. Everyone knows they used to house fugitives from Nazi Germany.

"We have the names of two specific farms where Hitler supposedly went after the war. When Patrick started snooping around there, he was chased away at gunpoint in one case; in another, he received very specific threats against him and his family. He’s also shown us a lot of correspondence from various organizations and individuals, warning him to stay away"

Unfortunately, one potential source Shalev has been unable to contact is the Russian soldiers who first captured the Bunker and supposedly unearthed Hitler’s corpse.

"It was impossible to track any of them down. We read a few memoirs of some high-ranking Russian officers, and they never mentioned any other possibility besides him dying in the Bunker".

After the War

Why does Shalev believe that the truth of Hitler’s escape may have evaded the Allies?

"It’s understandable, when you look at what was going on in 1945, the mess that existed after the war. No one wanted to deal with it seriously. No one was willing to entertain conspiracy theories.

"As far as we know, the British Intelligence didn’t really invest any effort into discovering what was going on in South America after the war.

"Similarly, no Nazi hunters believed that Hitler was alive. Everyone accepted the official version. No one wrote about it as far as I know, although a lot was written about the use of U-Boats to bring Nazis to Argentina.

"He was never an object of investigation. Wiesenthal and others focused on finding known Nazis and did amazing work. They focused on Eichmann and Mengele… But no one dealt with Hitler.

"When you look back, though, and see all the inconsistencies, you ask yourself why no one wanted to verify his death. Today, everyone would demand to see a videotape or a death certificate or something. But after the war, everyone wanted to believe he was dead and move on.

"There’s a famous picture taken by Russian soldiers outside the Bunker. According to Russian military reports, they poured approximately 500 liters of gasoline on the bodies, set them on fire and then took the picture. If you look at the picture, you see a profile that resembles Hitler with his mustache intact. But nothing would remain of a body except charcoal, even if much less than 500 liters had been used. You wonder why no one checked into it. No one thought it might be a fake".

The British did eventually care enough to have the later Oxford professor of history Hugh Trevor-Roper, investigate Hitler’s death in 1945. Trevor-Roper concluded that he did die in the Bunker.

Shalev says that believing Trevor-Roper’s account requires a certain degree of trust in his sources.

"It’s convincing, assuming you trust the reports of the Russian soldiers or Russian scientists and the source of the dental records. It’s quite impossible today, or even 20 years ago, to look back and conclude that ‘that was that'.

"So many things can't be vouched for. So much of the evidence that was allegedly examined cannot be confirmed today. And the British certainly weren’t going to hunt down leads overseas.

"Argentina was low in their priorities because they simply didn’t have the manpower to chase down his whereabouts".

"The Israelis didn’t run after any rumors of Hitler either", says Shalev.

“I think that’s because they never got any hint or information about him being alive. They pursued leads that had a source. The hunt for Eichmann began with a report from a Jew in Argentina who had heard something and sent the word out to the newly-formed Mossad. In the beginning that was ignored too, by the way. So it’s not that they decided to ignore Hitler. They just had no lead to start with.

"There’s actually one member of the Mossad from that period who is still alive. His name is Rafi Eitan. He was head of the Eichmann operation. We asked him a few years ago and he said he was never involved in anything involving Hitler, and neither was the Mossad".

The Russians, on the other hand, did look into the rumors—for a little while.

"What we hear is that the rumors began to circulate toward the end of July 1945. At the time, no one really cared what was going on in Germany. Everybody accepted that Hitler died in the Bunker. The bad guy was gone; let’s celebrate.

"But in Russia, when the officers started saying that something was wrong with the story, Stalin dismissed it at first as infighting among the generals for the sake of glory and post-war promotions. Then it became serious. And Stalin said some things that seemed like he knew something was wrong, and that they really needed to check into whether Hitler had really died in the Bunker. In later correspondence, from 1948 and 1949, the tone suddenly changed. The Russians decided it was an established fact, that they weren’t going to deal with it anymore, and that there shouldn’t be any more publicity".

The end of evil

Shalev says that there are a few different theories about how long Hitler could have lived after the war if he did indeed escape to Argentina.

"The latest eyewitness reports say 1955. There are also claims and documents postulating as late as 1965. It is known that Hitler had Parkinson’s disease and wasn’t well at the end of the war. In the last films, you can see that he was shaking and could hardly move his hands. It’s very unlikely that he lived another 20 years, even with the best medical treatment".

Shalev says that the maid who allegedly saw Hitler in a hotel in Argentina also saw signs of Parkinson’s.

"She talked about his very rigid way of walking".

The idea that Hitler may have lived on and died a peaceful death is disturbing to many. We asked Shalev for his feelings, as a Jew, about the possibility that such an evil person survived. At first he answered quite matter-of-factly.

"You know, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust weren’t the work of one lunatic who wanted to destroy the world. He had a very well-oiled machine behind him. We’re talking about thousands of people, and multiple levels of control. To say that justice wasn’t done…is not the case.

"You have to understand that after the war there wasn’t much interest in this. Nobody really cared. Everyone wanted to move on. Nevertheless, it’s a question that has to be answered, or at least investigated as thoroughly as possible".

But what does he think Holocaust survivors might feel when hearing that Hitler may have lived to a ripe old age?

"I think there will be a commotion. Almost all of my father’s family died in Treblinka. I’ve produced two films about the Holocaust and this is a subject I relate to in many ways. I’m sure that it’s unpleasant for a lot of people. Of course, if he did survive, it would probably be a tiny measure of consolation that he would have had to witness Germany on its knees and all of the things that happened afterward, such as the establishment of the State of Israel and the fact that the Jewish people lives on. That in itself would have been quite torturous.

"The bottom line is that nowadays we have the ability to verify what happened and finally come to a conclusion. All it takes is money and the joint participation of a lot of people. This money can come from governments or academic bodies, and I wish they would join us in this venture to help give us even better tools than we already have".

But isn’t he taking away the sense of closure that some Holocaust survivors had thinking that Hitler died in despair in an underground Bunker?

"No, I don’t think so," Shalev said. "I think that given the public discussion of Hitler’s fate in 1945, it wasn’t so farfetched that he might have survived. It was in the headlines at the time. Of course, I’d be devastated if I made a Holocaust survivor feel bad.… We want to give closure. He’s definitely dead, whether in a Bunker in Germany or later in Argentina".

At the end of the day, is Shalev convinced that Hitler survived and escaped to Argentina?

"I can’t be convinced because I don’t have a body or final proof. But I believe that the weight of evidence we have is stronger than the weight of evidence for the conventional theory".

His documentary, still a year from release, will have to convince others of that as well.
 

How did Hitler really die?
Hannah Brown
The Jerusalem Post 
29 December 2012

Hitler's last days were not spent in his Berlin Bunker, but in tranquil luxury in an Argentine hotel at least, that's the story that director/ producer Noam Shalev and researcher Pablo Weschler are trying to prove in their upcoming documentary, "Revealed: Hitler in Argentina", set for release next year.

We will never know the truth, Shalev cautions, sitting in the offices of Highlight Films, the video production company he and Weschler run in Bnei Brak. But there is enough evidence to build an alternative theory about what happened to Hitler.

No one believed the Russians' story of Hitler's suicide in the Bunker, says Weschler. As early as the summer of 1945, there were headlines asking, "Where is Hitler?" all over the world.

Will Hitler Return?
Worker [Brisbane, Qld]
Mon 18 June 1945

Although Hitler's body was thought to be one of several found in Berlin recently, statements issued subsequently by Marshal Zhukov and Colonel-General Berzarin. Russian commandant in the once great German capital, have cast some doubt. Marshal Zhukov is reported to have said that a number of corpses found could be Hitler's, but he doubted if any was. Colonel-General Berzarin expressed the belief that Hitler is hiding in Europe — possibly Spain. The latter suggestion was denied by a Spanish spokesman.

The "Where is Hitler?" mystery seems to have deepened as the result of messages that the Nazis still have a radio station which has been broadcasting:

"Hitler will return and Germany will save herself".

One difficulty in confirming the basic facts of Hitler's suicide with his wife, Eva Braun, in the final days of the Allies approach to Berlin, was that the Russian troops did not give access to many forensic investigators. Shalev and Weschler believe that British Intelligence officer and historian Hugh Trevor-Roper's investigation was rushed and unprofessional.

But what inspired them to begin making their film about the evidence they believe leads to proof of Hitler's secret flight to Argentina were recently declassified FBI documents.

"In those days, the FBI, not the CIA, was responsible for South America". explains Weschler.

"And in declassified documents, we see that the FBI took very seriously the possibility that Hitler fled to Argentina".

The FBI set up a special unit to investigate this possibility.

Shalev and Weschler are convinced they have gathered significant evidence that pinpoints Hitler's whereabouts during the years following World War II. Inspired by the book "Hitler's Escape" by Italian journalist Patrick Burnside, they have done their own research as well.

When Burnside published his book, in 1998, he got thousands of E-mails from people coming forward with information, says Shalev. Some of them were crazy, of course, but he had enough information to do more research and write another book.

The manuscript of that book, which will be published next year, was a useful guide for Shalev and Weschler, and led them to a famous hotel.

The Eden Hotel in La Falda, Cordoba [in Argentina] was owned by Ida and Walter Eichhorn, who were close friends of Hitler, explains Weschler.

Hitler sent them a Mercedes Benz as a gift. It was the first Benz in Argentina.

The once-opulent hotel, now in ruins, was the site of lavish parties, and a host of notables, including Albert Einstein, stayed there in the Twenties and Thirties.

The Eichhorns were very vocal in their support for the Nazi party, and made financial contributions.

They also broadcast speeches Hitler's, whenever he spoke on the radio, throughout the hotel. Citing a September 1945 letter from the FBI [one of the documents declassified in the Nineties], Weschler points to the lines that show that the FBI believed that if Hitler got into trouble, he could always find a safe haven with the Eichhorns if he could manage to get there.

Weschler found former employees of the hotel who say they met and waited on Hitler after the war there.

"It was easy for them to recognize him, because his picture was all over the hotel", says Weschler. He says that his research shows that Hitler moved on from the hotel to an isolated rural estate in Argentina, where he lived out his days with Braun and their two daughters, and that he died in the mid-Sixties.

Particularly persuasive evidence, according to Weschler, is DNA testing done in 2009 on Hitler's skull fragments that were recovered from the Bunker.

"They showed that they couldn't have been Hitler's skull because they were from a woman under 40", says Weschler, a finding that was reported in the mainstream press.

"DNA doesn't lie," he says. "The more you look into it, the less credible the official version becomes, and the more plausible an alternative theory seems".

Hotel Eden, La Falda Argentina

La Falda grew up around the hotel, and eventually crowded it out with competition.
Hotel Eden, maintained through the mid-1960s, fell into disrepair and was abandoned. The hotel seems to be still in use as a museum.










 

Nazi Treasure Uncovered: Huge Horde Including Hitler Busts Found in Argentina
A massive horde of Nazi artefacts has been found stashed away in a secret strongroom in a house in Argentina.
By Simon Osborne
Express
20, June 2017

The collection - believed to be the biggest in the country’s history - including busts of Adolf Hitler, magnifying glasses inside elegant boxes with Swastikas and a medical device used to measure head size.

Police said a total of 75 objects were found in a collector’s home in Beccar, a suburb to the north of the capital Buenos Aires.

They are thought to be originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany during World War Two.

One person has reportedly been arrested in connection with the illegal trafficking in works of art.

Along with the Nazi art, ancient Asian and Egyptian objects were recovered along with a variety of fossils.

Raids also were conducted on a warehouse and a shopping centre store to recover the objects.

The horde contained ceremonial knives, trinket boxes, busts of Nazi eagles and rings.

Police chief Nestor Roncaglia said they were hidden behind a false wall.

Head of Cultural Heritage Protection Marcelo El Haibe said: “We assume that these objects were not stolen, but were extracted or expelled from their countries of origin".

He said the investigation was initiated after Cultural Heritage Protection staff noticed objects for sale at the store which appeared to be in breach of UNESCO guidelines.

Is this Hitler’s Secret Argentine Bolt-Hole? Führer’s Loot Found Behind Hidden Doorway
Police in Argentina have found a haul of Adolf Hitler’s personal possessions hidden in a secret room behind a sliding bookcase in Buenos Aires.
By Jon Austin Jon Austin
Express
9 July 2017

"We are reaching out to international experts to deepen the investigation".

Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said: “Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces, they were found with the original photographs that prove this, it was the method by which they could be commercialised, showing that they were used by  the Führer.

"There are photos of him with the objects", he said.

Investigators want to establish how they entered the country.

It is documented that high-ranking Nazis fled to Argentina and other south American countries to escape punishment for war crimes in Europe.

They included Josef Mengele, the SS officer and physician based at Auschwitz.

He was known as the Angel of Death due to twisted experiments he carried out on inmates.

He lived in Buenos Aires for a decade, while other Nazi leaders faced trial.

He died in 1979 in the Brazilian city of Bertioga after having a stroke while swimming.

Last year, the book "Hitler in Exile" by Abel Basti put forward a conspiracy theory that Hitler also evaded justice by fleeing to Argentina, and then onto Paraguay to live under the protection of dictator Alfredo Stroessner.

The book claimed Hitler died on 3 February 1971 in Paraguay, and wealthy families who helped him over the years were responsible for the organisation of his funeral.

Hitler was buried in an underground Bunker, which is now an elegant hotel in the city of Asuncion, it was claimed.

Mr Basti claims another man may have been left in the Berlin Bunker as the Allied forces moved across the German capital leaving Hitler free to escape through a tunnel to the Templhof Airport and into a waiting helicopter to Spain or the Canary Islands before making the journey to Argentina by submarine.

Speaking to "Sputnik", the historian said: "There was an agreement with the US that Hitler would run away and that he shouldn't fall into the hands of the Soviet Union.

"This also applies to many scientists, the military and spies who later took part in the struggle against the Soviet regime.

"In 1973, the entrance to the Bunker was sealed, and 40 people came to say goodbye to Hitler.

"One of those who attended [the funeral], Brazilian servicemen Fernando Nogueira de Araujo, then told a newspaper about the ceremony".

Using declassified FBI documents the historian found a report dated 4 September 1945 which said:

“Argentina kept silent in spite of all the accusations that it became a destination for Hitler, which he reached either flying 7,375 miles from Berlin on the plane, which was built specifically for this purpose, or as a passenger on a submarine".