Did Hitler manage to escape retribution?
Recently, Nick Belantoni’s Hitler Escape film appeared on US screens. According to the author of the film, the Fuhrer of the Third Reich managed to secretly flee from Berlin from the Soviet Army at the end of April 1945, to hide in an unknown direction and escape punishment for serious crimes.of
The film rests on one "discovery" made by Belantoni. He claimed that he was allowed to study the skull, which is stored in the archives of the FSB in Moscow and allegedly belongs to Hitler. He even managed to get the pieces of the skull, conduct their genetic research and find that the skull belonged not to a man, but to a woman. Thus, a new sensation appeared in addition to many old ones. Then Hitler fled to Latin America on a submarine, then this boat was sunk, and a sealed bottle was found in the sea with a note, where it was said that the Fuhrer sank along with this boat, then Hitler was accepted by his double, and the real Fuhrer was supposedly hidden. All of these versions rested on shaky ground.
In Aleksey Pushkov’s “Post factum” from 31 in October, one of the responsible officers of the FSB archive refuted the author’s statement of the named film that he had been given the opportunity to conduct a genetic study of Hitler’s skull and even take his fragments with him. Striking is the fact that the film completely ignored the scientific research and numerous German memories of events related to the end of the Nazi Third Empire and its Fuhrer. The main thing for its creators, obviously, was to break the big sum for the sensation. Such are the grimaces of the film market.
What really happened to Hitler at the end of April 1945? Did he manage to escape from his bunker in Berlin? I have some very interesting evidence to share with my readers on this matter. In the 1960s, I worked as a scientific editor for the "Military-historical magazine" and dealt primarily with the topic of foreign military history. The editors were undoubtedly interested in the history of the end of the Third Empire. In the June 1960 issue of the magazine, my article "The Last Week of Nazi Germany" was published, and in June 1961 another one - "On the Ruins of the Third Empire".
But there was a lack of many reliable facts about the end of Hitler’s stakes. And in 1963, the idea arose to interview the former chairman of the State Security Committee, and subsequently the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, Army General Serov. Decisive for the editors was that at the end of the war he was authorized by the NKVD on the 1 of the Belorussian Front and, of course, was devoted to all the sacraments of the death of the imperial office of Nazi Germany, where Hitler had a bunker.
The editors knew that Serov was removed in 1963 from the post of the head of the GRU in connection with the case of Colonel Penkovsky, bought by American and British intelligence services, and which caused great damage to the national interests of the Soviet Union. Only later it became known that Penkovsky was Serov's favorite and even kept in touch with his family. As a result of this case, Serov was not only removed from his post as head of the GRU, but also demoted to the rank of major general and appointed deputy commander of the Volga Military District for educational institutions.
For the editors of the magazine it didn’t matter what happened to Serov. It was important to get from him a true picture of what happened during the fall of Berlin and the capture of Hitler’s stake. Serov agreed to be interviewed, and I went to meet him in Kuibyshev. That's what he told me.
At the end of the war, he personally received from Stalin the task of creating a special-purpose detachment to capture the fascist leaders in Berlin alive or dead. To carry out this operation, Serov created a detachment of 200 people. 31 April 1945, the soldiers of the detachment came close to the imperial office, where Hitler was heading, and on the night of 2 in May, when the garrison of Berlin surrendered, they were the first to penetrate it.
In the courtyard of the stakes in the crater of a bomb or shell that exploded, they found two burnt corpses - men and women. These were Hitler and Eva Braun. The fact that they really were they was confirmed by the captured captain of the personal adjutant of Hitler's SS Sturmbannführer Otto Gunsche and the personal valet of the Fuhrer Heinz Ling. Gunsch, together with Hitler's chauffeur Erich Kempke, burned both corpses, pouring gas on them from car canisters.
Nearby, the burnt corpses of Goebbels and his wife Magda were also found. The bodies of six of their children, poisoned with incredible cruelty by mother cyanide, lay in a bunker. Found and dead twin Hitler with a shot through the head. The photograph of his corpse, lying in the courtyard of the imperial office, was later widely reprinted in print. The identification of the corpse of Hitler was also confirmed on the basis of his medical book, captured in a bunker.
As Serov said, Hitler’s corpse was soon, at the direction of Moscow, secretly buried for some time in the courtyard of the headquarters of the Soviet army stationed in Frankfurt an der Oder. A table was dug into his grave, and Soviet soldiers played chess and dominoes on it, not knowing who lay beneath their feet. During the Potsdam Conference, Serov asked Stalin and Molotov if they would like to look at Hitler’s corpse. But Stalin, he said, refused.
These are in brief the information about the miserable end of the Führer, which I have drawn from a conversation with General Serov. There is no reason not to trust them. For their accuracy, Serov answered head to Stalin.
Unfortunately, this interview could not be printed. His publication was banned due to the fact that General Serov was in deep disgrace. In the 1965 year, after Khrushchev was removed from power, he was even expelled from the party. Already very much connected him with events in the era of Stalin. There is evidence that he wrote memories. But it is still unknown where they are stored.
Captive Gunshe, Serov said, was ordered to prepare something like a report or memories of life at Hitler’s headquarters. He worked on these memories for many months, being in the Lubyanka in the building of the Ministry of State Security, and as a result he created a work of about a thousand pages in size. It was recreated and the picture of the death of Hitler. Serov said that only Politburo members were allowed to familiarize themselves with these memories, and they read them very readily. For them, their abridged translation has been specially prepared.
Some unknown ways, this option arbitrarily abbreviated by the translator was published several years ago in the Federal Republic of Germany. Someone probably made a lot of money out of it. The publication in Russian of the full version of these memories is waiting for its time. Günshe himself was sent home, and he lived until his death near Bonn. By the way, Hitler Kempke’s personal chauffeur also published his book “I Burned Hitler” back in 1960 in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Thus, there is no reason to believe the hypothesis, as if Hitler managed to escape from Berlin from retribution. His "campaign to the East" ended in a pitiful end in his own den. It is symbolic that his charred corpse was in the hands of the Soviet troops. As for the American film “The Escape of Hitler”, it turned out to be another sensational “film cheap”.
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