Hunting Hitler on the History Channel

[LizzieMaine]

Stalin used his SMERSH agency to keep the specifics of what happened to Hitler's body under cover for a very deliberate reason -- although Zhukov would no doubt have preferred to drive down the Unter den Linden with Adolf's peeled skull for a hood ornament, Stalin wanted to keep the Western powers off balance as the Cold War was taking hold. If they could be encouraged to believe that Hitler was alive, or even just that he *might* be alive, Stalin believed he could use that belief to his advantage in negotiations with the west. A lot of deliberate misinformation was spread thru SMERSH during the late forties toward that end.

FBI documents shouldn't necessarily be taken at face value. The agency under Hoover kept a record of every single bit of odd information its agents gathered, every single rumor no matter how absurd. It's natural that would be hundreds of pages of documents like this about Hitler, because every barbershop magazine and streetcorner loafer in 1946 had an opinion about what really happened to him. Much of the FBI file is merely a collation of this type of fantastic speculation, some of which was given a "just in case" investigation. Hoover may well have believed some of it himself, given his own conspiracy-minded paranoia.

Hitler's entire FBI file, including the postwar rumors about his death, can be downloaded by anyone from the FBI website.

A complete English translation of the SMERSH autopsy report on the male body recovered from the Chancellery garden shell hole, as published by Soviet historian Lev Bezymenski in 1968 is available here. While the usual Cold War caveats apply, it's signficiant, I think, that this document was kept top secret by the Soviet authorites for more than twenty years after Hitler's death. And I can't help but also point out that, according to the autopsy report, that satirical British song about monorchidism was right.

 

[Blackjack]

Stalin used his SMERSH agency to keep the specifics of what happened to Hitler's body under cover for a very deliberate reason -- although Zhukov would no doubt have preferred to drive down the Unter den Linden with Adolf's peeled skull for a hood ornament, Stalin wanted to keep the Western powers off balance as the Cold War was taking hold. If they could be encouraged to believe that Hitler was alive, or even just that he *might* be alive, Stalin believed he could use that belief to his advantage in negotiations with the west. A lot of deliberate misinformation was spread thru SMERSH during the late forties toward that end.

FBI documents shouldn't necessarily be taken at face value. The agency under Hoover kept a record of every single bit of odd information its agents gathered, every single rumor no matter how absurd. It's natural that would be hundreds of pages of documents like this about Hitler, because every barbershop magazine and streetcorner loafer in 1946 had an opinion about what really happened to him. Much of the FBI file is merely a collation of this type of fantastic speculation, some of which was given a "just in case" investigation. Hoover may well have believed some of it himself, given his own conspiracy-minded paranoia.

Hitler's entire FBI file, including the postwar rumors about his death, can be downloaded by anyone from the FBI website.

I have to disagree with you here Lizzie, it was Russia who claimed to have Hitlers skull all these years as proof that he died in the bunker. It was only recently it was proven the skull was female, this is what set this off. I don't disagree with you about the FBI, but this has gone so much deeper. The OSS files, MI6, the Bolivian government, the Catholic Church, France, Belguim, all of this is a big puzzle that no single country had all the pieces for but all had information. The Reich had funneled millions into SouthAmerican banks during the war (fact) there were huge compounds built in the jungle one with what would be considered a very fancy home where Nazi artifacts have been found including medicines that Hitler was known to have taken (fact) there were numerous eye witness accounts of upper level Nazi's meeting there. The pilot who testified he had flown Hitler out of Germany the day before he supposedly died (fact) martin Bormann's neice who still lives in Argentina who they interviewed. The tunnel system that they discovered from the Bunker to the airport. If this is all coincidence, it's the biggest coincidence in history. I would suggest everyone just sit back and watch this show to see what their doing before making a judgment.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The skull fragment is kind of a red herring, no pun intented. It was never the primary means of identification of the body -- as you'll see in the autopsy report, the corpse was identified as Hitler's on the basis of his dental work, which was extensive, specific, and unique. The Soviets had Hitler's dentist in custody, as well as a full set of his dental x-rays documenting the work, and it was thru these sources that they were able to confirm that the body was Hitler's. You might be able to fake bridgework convincingly, but the x-rays went back many years and it would have been well-night impossible to find a "body double" whose jaw configuration and tooth wear were precisely those of Old Nasty himself. Unless Hitler, as part of his escape plan, had his jaws surgically removed and left in the shell hole as a decoy, the evidence points pretty convincingly, to me, to the conclusion that the body the Soviets found was indeed him.

The skull fragment isn't even mentioned in the report, other than an oblique mention that "a part of the cranium is missing." If the fragment was intended to represent that missing piece, it was clearly not recovered at the time that the Soviets collected the body, and this was well known nearly fifty years ago. If the Soviets had prepared this report after the fact as part of a continuing misinformation campaign, one would have expected them to make this fragment an essential part of the documentation, but there is no mention of it, matching what is now known that the fragment was recovered "over a year after" the original recovery of the body.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Everything you need to know about the History Channel
and to think that at one time it was known as the "WWII channel"

Personally, I think the History Channel is run by aliens!

 

[Stearmen]

Then clearly you have NOT been watching this. The war crimes testimonies, the Luftwaffe pilot, the encampment in the jungle, the testimony of the Catholic priests, I could go on and on here. All these countries that turned all their files over to the show hoping they could "figure the whole thing out" And my favorite where Ike himself said Hitler was somewhere in Spain or Bolivia

Let me see if I can get this straight, Hitler went to Argentina after the war, then he went to Hollywood, then to Spain, and retired in Bolivia? I suppose, he could afford to retire with all the money he made in Hollywood playing himself!

 

[Stearmen]

 

[DNO]

As I tried to point out much earlier in this discussion, the skull fragment that is believed to be female was found a year after Hitler's body. As I said before, I suspect there was a plethora of skull fragments lying about in the devastation that was post-war Berlin. The original skull is not in doubt and as Lizzie has pointed out the dental record is quite definitive. This program is a sham and is far, far removed from the real study of history and historical research. "Could've been, should've been, might have been, must've been"...at its worst. The History Channel should be embarrassed...but then again this is the channel that shows Ice Road Truckers.

(By the way, I do watch the show. I really can't explain why...sort of like watching a train wreck, I suppose. And all this nonsense about Nazi networks in Spain and South America...nothing new about this information at all. All old information being newly 'discovered' by this team of sillies.)

 

[Otter]

Stearman, keep up with the programme, he was one of the three stooges in Hollywood!

 

[LizzieMaine]

They used to say that Stalin had the missing skull fragment, and used it as an ash tray, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be true.

The wide penetration of "here's what really happened to Hitler" stories in the years just after the war were part of the general mood of paranoia that enveloped the US in those years. It was also a much more cynical time than nostalgics want to believe it was, which made ripe ground for conspiracy theories. My favorite is the story that Hitler and Martin Bormann both underwent plastic surgery in 1943 in preparation for an escape plan, but were instead promptly murdered at the instance of Goebbels, who placed Hitler's decoy double in power as his puppet, as part of a scheme to negotiate a peace with the West that would allow Goebbels himself to run post-war Germany. Goebbels's men also, the story says, murdered the plastic surgeon and all of his staff, and burned his clinic to the ground to cover their trail, and that's why there's absolutely no evidence to support the story.

Or, how about the story that Hitler actually fled Germany in the late thirties after getting wind of a coup attempt, leaving his double behind to take the heat. Hitler made his way to Hollywood, and under the name of "Bobby Watson" made his living as a Hitler impersonator in movies. I just made that one up -- or did I?

 

[AmateisGal]

Too many people are willing to be duped by conspiracy theories and "what if's?" Because let's face it: it's much more tantalizing to think of Herr Hitler escaping and living on the run than to accept that he shot himself like the coward he was and died underground. That's just not very glamorous.

Hitler died. In the Berlin bunker. In April 1945. Case closed.

 

[Bigger Don]

pursuit of wild geese.

Communists, the Mafia, and Unicorns.

 

[Bigger Don]

Hitler died. In the Berlin bunker. In April 1945. Case closed.

Tru. Many other socialists survived WWII.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Tru. Many other socialists survived WWII.

Indeed. Schicklgruber tried to stomp them all out -- including Gregor Strasser, the only "National Socialist" who actually believed in socialism -- but Little One-Ball, like his followers, obviously wasn't man enough to take on the massed strength of the Untermenschen.

 

[Bigger Don]

Indeed. Schicklgruber tried to stomp them all out -- including Gregor Strasser, the only "National Socialist" who actually believed in socialism -- but he, like his followers, obviously wasn't man enough to take on the massed strength of the Untermenschen.

Schicklgruber? Elucidation, please.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A common derisive name for Der Fuehrer in the Era. It was his father's birth name -- Alois Schicklgruber was the son of an unmarried Austrian woman named Maria Schicklgruber, and was baptized with the Schicklgruber name. Eventually a man named Johann Heidler -- one of three possible fathers to Alois -- had his name added to the boy's birth certificate, and Alois thereafter adopted his surname, eventually changing it to "Hitler."

Had this bit of paperwork not occured, Alois's own son would have been born Adolf Schicklgruber. Der Fueher went to great lengths to bury this embarassment -- in Germany in the early 20th Century a name like "Schicklgruber" was the kind of name that would have been given to a comic rural character, sort of the Teutonic equivalent of calling someone "Clem Kadiddlehopper" -- but it became common knowledge in the US and England by the late 1930s, and was used to great effect by cartoonists and comedians of the time.

"Ist das nicht eine Schicklgruber?
Ja, das ist eine Schicklgruber!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

 

[DNO]

"Ist das nicht eine Schicklgruber?
Ja, das ist eine Schicklgruber!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Not much fun in Stalingrad...." One of Monty Python's best skits!


It just occurred to me that with all the current focus on 'fake news', perhaps we should recognize this program as 'fake history'.

 

[AmateisGal]

It just occurred to me that with all the current focus on 'fake news', perhaps we should recognized this program as 'fake history'.

Indeed! I would be quite willing to peg it as such.

 

[Stearmen]

Here's one for every one on this thread. How many of you would watch a series that traced the hiding places of the real NAZI's that escaped? Like Eichman and Mengele, who managed to stay one step ahead of the Mossad. I think that would be worth watching! Of course, The History Chanel and real history are an oxymoron.

 

[Otter]

@ Stearmen, yes I would watch that; it could make quite interesting viewing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's one for every one on this thread. How many of you would watch a series that traced the hiding places of the real NAZI's that escaped? Like Eichman and Mengele, who managed to stay one step ahead of the Mossad. I think that would be worth watching! Of course, The History Chanel and real history are an oxymoron.

I'd be interested in a documentary on how the US helped Klaus "The Butcher of Lyon" Barbie escape, despite the French having sentenced him to death for war crimes, and how he was a valuable "asset" to the CIC thruout the 1950s and 1960s. For that matter, an exploration of how extensively the US used "ex" SS officers as agents for various purposes in Europe during that period would be fascinating. Christopher Simpson's 1988 study "Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy" would make an excellent basis for such a film.