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Hitler's Final Days in the Bunker

Did Adolf Hitler escape from Berlin in 1945?

Adolf Hitler's Third Reich ended in Berlin on 30 April 1945

Thunder reverberated from a storm of Russian artillery that was bombarding the ruined capital. The day before, along with the incoming shells, came particularly bad news for the Füehrer, who by this late date in World War II was confined to his underground Bunker beneath the Reich Vhancellery.

Hitler had learned that two days earlier his Axis partner, Italy's Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, had been captured by paramilitary Italian resistance fighters. Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed and their bodies were left hanging from lampposts in a Milan piazza. This news was especially worrisome to Hitler because only hours earlier he had married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony inside the Führerbunker.

Hitier had previously vowed never to be captured alive, and reiterated to his entourage that neither he nor his new bride would be made a "spectacle, presented by the Jews, to divert their hysterical masses". He made obvious preparations for the end of his reign. He handed out poison capsules to his remaining female secretaries and had Blondi, his favorite Alsatian dog, poisoned.

Dictating a last will, he stated, "I myself and my wife— in order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulation— choose death".

He ordered that their bodies be burned immediately. But Hitler, decorated World War I soldier and hardened political fighter, made it clear that he and his philosophies would not leave the world stage quietly.

He added, "From the sacrifice of our soldiers and from my own unity with them unto death will in any case spring up in the history of Germany the seed of a radiant renaissance of the National Socialist movement and thus of the realization of a true community of nations".

Hitler then passed along a line of his entourage, mostly women, and shook their hands while mumbling inaudibly.

Frau Traudl Junge, one of the secretaries present, recalled that Hitler's eyes, "seemed to be looking faraway, beyond the walls of the Bunker".

At about three P.M. on 30 April, members of Hitier's entourage heard a single shot from their leader's quarters.

Some time later. Hitler's valet, SS Sturmbannführer Heinz Linge, and an orderly emerged with a blanket-covered body. Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, head of the Nazi Party and the most powerful man in the Reich after Hitler, followed with the body of a woman.

The corpses were carried up to a garden area, placed in a shell crater, and burned with gasoline. However, these remains were never found, reportedly due to the constant shelling.

By evening, a Soviet flag was flying atop the Reichstag.

It appeared that Hitler and his Third Reich were finished.

The Escape of Hitler

It was well known and publicly reported that Hitier often made use of doubles, men who closely resembled him, for use at certain public presentations. Pauline Köhler, a maid at Hitier's Berghof in Berchtesgaden, insisted that she knew of at least three men who doubled for Hitler.

Did Hitler make use of one final double in the Bunker?

After all, the few persons who testified that he was dead were ardent  Nazis who were eager to please their captors— whether Russian, British, or American— with accounts of the leader's death. Was the strange execution of Eva Braun's brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein, due to his knowledge of Hitler's escape plan with the use of a double?

Erich Kempka claimed that on 27 April 1945 Hermann Fegelein contacted him with a strange request:

"Hermann Fegelein, phoned me to ask if I would put at his disposal two vehicles for a reconnaissance. Moreover he would be grateful if I would do him a personal favour. He wanted me to take care of a briefcase with important files belonging to the Reichsfuhrer-SS and himself. He would hand it to me personally towards ten that evening in the Führerbunker. It was essential to keep it safe and in the event that the enemy entered the Bunker, the briefcase was to be hidden where it could never be found, or should be destroyed. Under no circumstances must it fall into enemy hands.

"As I had been on familiar terms with Fegelein for years and he enjoyed Hitler's fullest confidence as Eva Braun's brother-in-law, I had no hesitation in agreeing to his request. I had really no idea at that moment that my willingness to be of assistance to him was putting my own life in danger. A short while afterwards Fegelein left the Reich Chancellery with two vehicles I had had repaired. They were the last survivors to remain serviceable from my once great vehicle fleet. To my great surprise the two automobiles were returned thirty minutes later, although without Fegelein. The drivers told me that he had got out in the Kurfürstendamm district to proceed on foot".

Fegelein had left the Bunker but protested when captured by an SS search party that he planned to return. He was later shot by a firing squad in the Chancellery garden for desertion.

Yet, days earlier. Hitler had urged others in the Bunker to flee.

"Get out! Get out!" he cried. "Go to South Germany. I'll stay here. It is all over anyhow".

Why make Fegelein the exception?

Evidence that Fegelein was privy to secret knowledge comes from Kristina Reiman, an actress who met with Fegelein in Berlin on 27 April.

She told author Glenn B. Infield:

"He was very worried. We had several drinks together and he kept repeating that there were two Hitlers in Berlin.... I thought he was drunk. Just before he left me, however, he said that if the Führer ever discovered that he, Fegelein, knew his secret. Hitler would kill him."

To fake Hitler's death would have been simple.

A Hitler double could have been secreted into the Bunker any time prior to his reported suicide. After Hitler got Eva to take poison— or a dead duplicate Eva brought in— the double, dressed in the Führer's clothing, could have been shot, a poison capsule placed in his mouth, and left to be covered by Bormann and retrieved by the unsuspecting valet Linge.

Hitler could have then passed from the study through his living quarters to a small conference room containing a stairway to the garden above.

Hitler had instructed Linge to wait, "at least ten minutes before entering the room."

While Linge and others from the entourage waited in the hallway outside Hitler's study, the Führer's party and an armed SS escort could have made their way to a secluded spot to await darkness.

Under the cover of night. Hitler could have moved along Hermann Göring Strasse, then cut across the Tiergarten to the Zoo Station near Adolf Hitier Platz. From there, they could have followed the rail lines to the Reichssportfeld and crossed the Scharndorfestrasse to the Piechelsdorf Bridge, a short walk to the Havel River, where a Ju-52 floatplane would have been waiting to fly the Führer out.

Indeed a Ju-52 pontoon plane had landed on the Havel the previous night, at the radioed request of someone in the Führerbunker. It took off that same night. Author Infield has suspected this was a practice run for the following night.

Once away from Berlin, an airplane could have taken Hitler almost anywhere in territory not under direct control of the Allies— Switzerland, Spain, or any number of other friendly locations.

But did this happen?

Conventional history says that Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Bunker— end of story, despite tantalizing tidbits of information that have surfaced since the war.

On 17 July 1945, during the Potsdam Conference, Soviet leader ]osef Stalin reportedly told U.S. president Harry S. Truman that Hitler did not commit suicide but probably escaped.

Years later, the Russians produced photos purporting to be of Hitler's dead body, which contradicted their earlier accounts that the bodies of HitIer and his mistress had been immediately burned.

Today, while Hitier's fate may be intriguing and undoubtedly will be argued for years, it is immaterial, a moot point. What is certain is that Hitler's legacy— National Socialism— lives on.

The history of how the Nazis, armed with advanced technology and the greatest hoard of treasure in history, were able to escape justice at the end of World War II is perhaps the greatest untold story of the twentieth century.

From the days of Lyndon B. Johnson to those of George W. Bush, there has been talk of "Amerika" turning "fascist." Most people, this author included, dismissed this as radical rhetoric. Unfortunately, as shall be seen, this might not be so far from the truth.

The Germans were defeated in World War II... but not the Nazis. They were simply forced to move. They scattered to the four corners of the world. Many of them came to the United States and penetrated what President Dwight D. Eisenhower termed "the military-industrial complex."

They escaped with the loot of Europe as well as rocket science and even more exotic technologies. Some of this technology was so advanced that it remains classified in U .S. government files even today.

Both Nazi science and ideology were brought to America in the aftermath of World War II with the aid and assistance of the very same self-styled globalists who created National Socialism in the first place.


- Jim Marss, "The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America"

Edward Stettinius, U.S. secretary of state, speaking at an inter-American conference in 1945, warned that the Nazis would attempt "to escape the consequences of their crimes. We must be constantly on the alert for the flight into this hemisphere of Nazi funds and Nazi underground leaders who will seek to find a refuge here for an ultimate comeback".

Adolf Hitler Escape from Berlim in 1945  - The Facts and the Doubts

Over the years the disclosure of some facts, the publication of some works of credible and reputable researchers with access to the alleged forensic evidence saved by the Russians  opened the door on the theory that Adolf Hitler did not in fact died in Berlin in 1945. In fact the official version of events leaves many doubts as to its veracity.

On 2 May, the last German defenders of Berlin capitulated before the Soviets. The Red Army entered the Bunker where the Hitlers had been in retreat since 17 January. They found the charred bodies of Josef Göbbels, his wife Magda and their six children who had been poisoned. In the same place, the corpse of a man with a mustache, made the soldiers believe that it was Hitler. A detailed observation, concluded it was a lookalike .., and thus arose the suspicion that Hitler had fled, eliminating his double.

Doubts about the death of Hitler would last for decades. Two charred bodies were buried and found in a crater three feet from the door of the Bunker. Secret autopsies were done to the bodies that were supposed to be those of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who would have committed suicide after getting married. The obscure operations of the Soviets and the omission of facts, created doubts about the death of Hitler. For over a decade the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] undertook a hunt around the world, chasing false information that said that Hitler was living with a new face in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Colombia, and further investigated the hypothesis, Argentina. Unaware of autopsies, Stalin himself believed that the Nazi leader was alive. The final conclusions would only end with the Soviet Union in 1991, presenting secret documents to the world.

In 2000, the top of a skull, attributed to Hitler, was the attraction of an exhibition held in Moscow to commemorate the 55 years since the end of World War II. Some historians have doubted the authenticity of the skull, which they said could only be confirmed through DNA analysis. Legends, lies, obscure facts.....The death of Hitler was a disappointment for the Allies, who had no visible body of the dictator for public viewing. Hitler's death left many suspicions that the man who for decades had become the most feared and powerful in the world could still be alive.

There always have been doubts as to Hitler's alleged suicide in his Bunker in Berlin on 30 April 1945. The most authoritarian doubter was the Russian Dictator Josef Stalin who was convinced that Hitler escaped to Spain in April of 1945. A serious and well researched book by Ron T. Hansig entitled 'Hitler's Escape" in makes a very convincing case that Stalin was correct in his statements to his western Allies in 1945, telling them that Hitler [and Eva Braun] were still alive. One of Hansig's starling revelations is, that the man present in the last days of April inside the Bunker was, in reality a double of Hitler.

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.

Even if one takes the submitted Russian report on Hitler's autopsy at face value, there still remains the fact that there was no trace of the corpse of Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress and later wife. This alone disproves the double-suicide theory now part of German history.

Based on the well-documented revelations, this book can rightfully be called "the biggest detective story of the twentieth century".

It is almost certain that the story of the death of Adolf Hitler is a hoax.

If in fact Adolf Hitler managed to escape from Berlin in 1945 a question apears, HOW? 

The Evasion Tunnel
 
In fact there is a real possibility there was an escape route in the underground of Berlin, integrating Germaniaproject [Project for the World's great new capital to be raised after the final great victory of the Reich],

Part of this project were several tunnels coming in and out from Berlin that would integrate massive highways,  these tunnels would reach 8,000 km in extent and there are news of that at the date of fall of Berlin  about 800 km had already been built, making an excellent escape route.

The 1996 film "The Empty Mirror" shows Hitler in the underground Bunker where he and his clan of loyal backers strive to outlast the destruction of the Third Reich. It is a fictional drama set within the scope of a delusional fantasy; that attempts to explore a psychotic scenario surrounding Adolf Hitler. He interacts with others, among them children, to whom he shows his Welthauptstadt Germania, saying that it was to be made for them.

From 1934 on, the city planners and architects of the Third Reich were building large representative structures, wherein the extent of the underground levels surpassed all previous buildings. A typical example was the extension of the Reich Bank with its three underground floors and the largest safe in Germany. Also the Tempelhof airport, then the biggest building in the world, has in addition to an underground train connection, over 4.3 kilometres of traversable supply canals wherein the entire infrastructure of the building is housed.

In order to prepare Berlin for the 1936 Olympic Games, construction began in 1934 on a north-south tunnel of the S-Bahn. For this large project, the new rulers were able to make use of plans from the 1920s. The project was also used successfully for propaganda purposes, in that with one stroke thousands of workers were able to be employed, who dug the trench more or less by hand. Slogans like: "We thank the Führer that we are building here” were hung above the construction site

The network of subway and city transit line tunnels could be used for covered movements by both friendly and enemy troops. In case of necessity they could be blocked at various points by setting off explosive charges that had already been planted. In the course of the battle the city transit line tunnel under the Landwehr Canal was blown up, after which it filled with water. It could not be determined at whose orders this measure was carried out. With the blowing up of the Ebert Bridge [east of the Weidendamm Bridge] the city transit line tunnel there was also destroyed, although this was apparently unintentional. Because of these and other explosions, water flowed into large parts of the subway and city transit line tunnels in the heart of the city.
 
It could not be proven that any appreciable loss of life resulted from the flooding of these tunnels, but it can be seriously doubted that it was justified by military necessity.
 
The tunnel leading from the Zoo railroad station [Bahnhof Zoo] to Ruhleben was heavily used by troops and civilians trying to break out toward the west.

Does Secret Tunnel discovered under Berlin prove Hitler Survived WW2 and fled Germany?
Could Adolf Hitler have fled the ruins of Berlin to live out his days in South America? The theory is being taken seriously for the first time after the shock discovery of a secret tunnel beneath the German capital.
By  James Rampton
Express 
13 October 2015 

A major eight-part documentary series draws on newly declassified FBI files and makes startling discoveries which suggest Hitler may not have died in his Bunker at the end of the Second World War after all. Instead, the programme ventures, he could actually have been spirited out of Berlin under the noses of the invading Soviets.

Then, having travelled on a U-boat from Spain, he may have spent the rest of his life plotting the rise of the Fourth Reich at a secret compound in the Argentine jungle.

On an exclusive tour last week of the tunnel network Hitler had built under Berlin, the "Express" found out more about the astounding claims.

And in the process of filming 'Hunting Hitler, which starts on the "History Channel" on Monday, November 2, the producers have made a discovery that may change the way in which Hitler’s demise is viewed by historians.

They have found a false wall in a Berlin subway station which could have facilitated the Führer’s escape 70 years ago.

The programme makers describe the discovery of the wall as their “Eureka moment”.

Last year, the FBI declassified 700 confidential documents. These indicate that perhaps the greatest war criminal in history may not have committed suicide in the “Führerbunker” but instead fled to South America as Nazi Germany collapsed.

A secret memo from FBI director J Edgar Hoover declared that:

"American Army officials in Germany have not located Hitler’s body, nor is there any reliable source that will say definitely that Hitler is dead".”

In the aftermath of the war, many experts wondered if the Führer had faked his death and the US Army even mounted a clandestine operation tosearch for him in Spain.

Armed with cutting-edge technology and these newly released FBI files, 'Hunting Hitler’s 'team of renowned investigators approached this like a cold case.

In Berlin last week, the "Express" met the investigators, including Bob Baer, an ex-CIA veteran, the model for George Clooney’s character in the 2005 film "Syriana" and one of America’s most elite intelligence officers; Tim Kennedy, a top US special forces operative who was part of the unit tracking Osama Bin Laden after 9/11, and Sascha Keil, a German historian from the Berlin Underworlds Association.

The producers have found out that there was a mass Nazi exodus from Tempelhof Airport on 21 April 1945, the day after the last recorded public sighting of Hitler.

On that date, eight planes were apparently loaded with the Führer’s personal effects.

The expert team on 'Hunting Hitler' initially worked out that the Nazi leader could have made it from his Bunker to the airport almost entirely underground, except for the final 200 yards.


Hideout Found - Hitler Missing
Daily Mercury [Mackay, Qld]
10 May 1945

LONDON: While combing the ruins of Berlin for traces of Hitler and other Nazi leaders, Russians to-day discovered Hitler's vast underground headquarters; but it failed to yield up their bodies, reports the "American Press" Moscow correspondent.

The entrance to the hideaway was through a concrete tower in the courtyard of the Chancellery. The hideout consisted of several floors comfortably furnished and equipped with electric lifts. Tunnels connected the headquarters with all government buildings and exits miles from the Chancellery.

Rumours have long circulated of a hitherto unknown tunnel connecting this final 200 yards from a nearby subway station [once known as U6 and now called Luftbrücke] to the airport. And now, using a state-of-the-art sonar device regularly employed by the US military in their manhunts, the team investigating the mystery of Hitler’s possible evasion have unearthed that tunnel.

This provides the “missing link” from what was the U6 subway station to Tempelhof and could have allowed the Führer to escape without being captured above ground by the marauding Soviets.

Tapping the false wall in the subway station to prove its hollowness, Jason Wolf, the show-runner on 'Hunting Hitler,' recollects the moment they made this massive breakthrough in their investigation.

He says:

"It was a Eureka moment. We were looking for the tunnel when Sascha suddenly went rogue down the subway. He knocked on the wall and it sounded hollow. We brought out the sonar and confirmed it was a false wall.

"We looked at each other and went, 'Holy cow!'

The Escape by Aircraft
 
It search for means of escape from Berlin at the end of the war comes the mysterious flight out of Berlin in a light aircraft of German pilot Hanna Reitsch who flew a small plane in and out of Berlin, so even at the end of the Reich it was possible to escape from Berlin.

Hanna Reitsch spent three days in the Bunker just before Hitler's supposed suicide. On 30 April, she flew out with the newly appointed Chief of the Luftwaffe, General Robert Ritter von Greim, whose orders were to mount a bombing attack on the Russian forces who were now approaching the Chancellery and the Führerbunker. 

Reitsch or another pilot would undoubtedly have been someone who could have removed Hitler out of Berlin....there were at least four excellent pilots in the Bunker on the last days, three of them disappearing forever during the fall of Berlin.

Many researchers say that Hanna Reitsch took off downwind in a Arado At 96, from the Tiergarten adjacent to the Führerbunker in Berlin on 30 April 1945, then flew Hitler and Eva Braun to Norway, where they joined a flotilla of submarines that sailed to Argentina or the Antartica.

Others believe she took them to Jugoslavia, then under the military governorship of Sepp Dietrich, head of the Waffen SS, who arranged for their secure tenure in that country, whence they left for Argentina in 1947.

Up to six Ju-352, two Ju-52, two FW200, and two Ju-290 flew marine reservists into central Berlin from 25-29 April 1945.

A floatplane Ju-52 and BV-138 flying boats from a KG200 seaplane base at Rügen also landed at Havel See up to 30 April 1945 evacuating VIPs and the wounded. 

Hanna Reitsch wrote a letter to her brother during her internment mentioning how as she was about to depart Berlin that she saw a Ju-52 with engines running at the East West axis runway near the Reichs Chancellery. Two Fw200 condors and one Ju-290 9V + BK, of F.d.F also flew missions in and out of Berlin up to the very last moments. Flights were also flown to Tutow airfield and Gatow.

The last land plane out of Gatow with passengers was a Ju-352, Stkz KT + VJ flown by ObLt Schultz  on the morning of 29 April after Hitler's wedding. There is a suggestion that other aircraft got in after this but none waited for passengers to fly out.

There are conflicting accounts by witnesses to Hitler's wedding that it happened before midnight on 29 April and before Reitsch departed Berlin, yet Reitsch denied all knowledge of the wedding. The Marriage certificate stated the wedding happened on 29 April, yet at least four witnesses said the wedding happened before the 29th.

 

The People Who Swear Hitler Is Alive
Adolf and Eva died in a suicide pact in Berlin… right? Not if you believe 70 years of rabid conspiracy theories.
April 30, 2015 
By: St. John Smythe
In: Other News

Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide 70 years ago—or so theywould like us to believe.

Of all the Nazi conspiracy theories [buried gold sunken in Austrian lakes; jungle hideaways; U-Boats filled with treasure off the coast of New Zealand], the most pervasive and indefatigable Legend is that the fascist lovebirds survived the war and lived the rest of their lives in peaceful South American retirement. The origins of these rumors lie in the fact that, though scholars agree Hitler and Braun carried out a suicide pact in an underground Bunker, their remains were never publicly and formally identified. If they had made a daring escape as Berlin fell, say, the next stop would have been to Latin America, which was rolling out the red carpet for fleeing Nazis. These fictions needed almost no time to marinate. They were spurred on by top officials in both the Nazi and Allied forces, and spread virulently in the West’s postwar confusion.

“Nazi Envoy Says Hitler Still Alive,” the Associated Press blasted in 1945, with two quotes from a German diplomat promising the leader’s imminent return. Such assertions and sightings were so pervasive that the Federal Bureau of Investigation began actively looking into them.

Last year, the FBI declassified more than 700 pages of tips and investigations into the possibility that Hitler survived the war. Included in the trove were hundreds of typed and handwritten notes to the FBI, government memos attempting to verify the claims, and J. Edgar Hoover’s replies.

"According to [retracted], he was one of the four men who met Hitler and his party when they landed from two submarines in Argentina approximately two and one-half weeks after the fall of Berlin,” one report said, conveying descriptions of the heavily guarded ranch where Hitler, who had shaved off his mustache, was supposedly hiding out.

Another person swore Hitler had taken to hiding in plain sight and was residing in Manhattan, the ideal city for anonymity. A Maryland resident was convinced the two had shared a table at lunch in 1946 ["looked like he had been in confinement for sometime"].  Another informant claimed Hitler was being treated in Spain for a “nervous condition". And then there is the bold report that included a letter, translated from German and postmarked with German stamps, which was supposedly from Hitler himself.

"[When] I was informed that my body and that of my wife had been covered with naphtha and burred [sic] in the Chancellory [sic] garden. I could not help smiling for at this we were many kilometers south west of Berlin on our air journey to Argentina,” the fraud Führer boasted. [The man who turned this letter in was dubbed by the FBI "a psychopathic case"]. But other tips were apparently worthy of follow-up. "His letter is coherent and it is not known whether or not he is a psychopathic", an evaluation of another epistle reads. The FBI trove ends in 1947, but the theories were only just getting started.

Seventy years after the war’s end, dozens of historians, journalists, documentarians, and other conspiracy-inclined hobbyists are still peddling their wares as Hitler hunters. Like a mustachioed Carmen Sandiego, Hitler candidates have been popping up across the globe for years. Then, with a simple overlay of the signature facial hair and comb-over, or with some clever aging tricks, the believers declare a match. The theories range in delusional intensity—one claims Hitler was hidden in an Antarctic base—but the idea of a South American retirement remains the most popular. Many Nazis did flee into the welcoming arms of South America after the war. Argentina, in particular, offered a safe haven, and rumors abounded that the highest levels of Nazi leadership had made a successful escape there. Most famously, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were granted refuge by Juan Perón, Argentina’s president at the time, who dispatched rescue voyages to Europe after Germany fell to retrieve the war’s losers from capture.

"[A]rgentina is teeming with unmolested Nazi war criminals,” journalist Johannes Steel wrote in a 1945 investigation.

No matter how absurd, theories of Hitler’s survival rarely fail to make international headlines. In 2014, the British tabloid "Express" proffered a grainy, virtually face-less photo of an older Caucasian man with the headline, "he INCREDIBLE picture that 'proves' Adolf Hitler lived to 95 with his Brazilian lover". Citing a new book called "His Life and His Death" by author Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias, the article outlines the argument that the Führer spent his last years in a small town in Brazil, going by the name Adolf Leipzig.

Last year also gave us "Hitler in Argentina", which promised to "change the history you were taught in 5th grade". It was the second book about Hitler’s certain survival by author Harry Cooper, who is classified as a neo-Nazi by watchdogs at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Four years earlier, there was "Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler".

Two British journalists made similar claims about Hitler’s escape, alleging that he settled in Patagonia and fathered two children with Braun. When a local journalist claimed they had stolen his theory, it pitted the three in a Hitler survivalist-off. Since the 1960s, the Russians have claimed that bones they extracted from the Eagle's Nest [sic - should be Chancellery] after the war were Hitler’s. They took samples and then reportedly burned the rest of the corpses. The original jawbone they recovered apparently matched the records of Hitler’s dentist, the investigators said. But in 2009, DNA tests on what was thought to be Hitler’s skull turned out to belong to a younger woman.

Even those who believe Hitler survived the war’s end concede he must be dead today—unless the fountain of youth also turned up in his jungle hideaway. But new theories of cross-ocean Nazi infiltration are robust as ever. In March, Argentinian archaeologists revealed they were investigating claims that newly-discovered buildings had been used as Nazi Bunkers. But a closer look found that the stories were blown out of proportion, blowing the lid off a Nazi hideout. “That was just speculation on my part,” the lead investigator told the "Guardian" after dozens of articles ran with the claims. "The press picked it up and magnified it".


Reports that archaeologists were examining stone buildings in the Argentinian jungle seemed to give new life to a Second World war myth. Here’s the real story. 
"Nazi hideout" in the jungle: why the discovery is more fiction than fact
Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
23 March 201

As Soviet tanks rolled into Berlin in the spring of 1945, Adolf Hitler and his new wife Eva Braun escaped from their underground Führerbunker through a secret tunnel.

Behind them, they left the bodies of two doubles murdered to fool the Allies into believing that the Nazi leader had taken his own life rather than admit defeat.

By the time victorious Red Army troops entered the bunker, Hitler was on board the last Luftwaffe plane to fly out of Europe, heading south on the long journey that would eventually take him to Argentina.

Or at least that’s the story.

Ruins found in remote Argentinian jungle "may be secret Nazi hideout".

The idea that senior Nazis escaped the collapse of the Third Reich to live out their days in the sweltering jungle of South America has long been a staple of fiction and “counterfactual” alternative histories.

This weekend, however, reports that archaeologists were examining three recently discovered stone buildings in the jungle of Argentina’s northern Misiones province seemed at last to provide evidence that the notion could have a base in fact.

“Apparently, halfway through the Second World War, the Nazi air force devised a secret project of building hideouts so that the highest-ranking Nazis could escape after their defeat – inaccessible sites in the middle of deserts, in the mountains, on a cliff or in the middle of the jungle like this,” Argentinian archeologist Daniel Schavelzon told the Buenos Aires daily "Clarín" on Sunday.

Schavelzon, who finances his digs with contributions from private funders, told the newspaper that he believed the ruins he was exploring in Teyú Cuaré national park were exactly that: a bolthole for Nazis on the run.

But the truth is a little more mundane. For a start, the dilapidated buildings were not recently "discovered" – they have actually been open to the public for decades, along with other ruins which date back to the 17th and 18th century settlements established by Jesuit missionaries – and which give the region its name. Not far from the "Nazi" site are the remains of San Ignacio Miní, a Baroque monastery which is one of the area’s most-visited tourist attractions.

At least 10 years ago, the local tourist board erected a sign on the path to the Teyú Cuaré site, saying that the ruins were originally part of a Jesuit site.

Below that, the sign makes the astounding claim: "In the 1950s they were refurbished and inhabitated by Hitler’s most faithful servant, Martin Bormann".  

The idea that Hitler’s deputy somehow escaped to Argentina is an integral part of the Nazis-in-South-America myth, and a key element of Ira Levin’s novel "The Boys from Brazil" and the 1978 movie of the same name.

The Bormann story is based on files sold by Argentinian police officers to Hungarian historian Ladislas Farago in the 1970s, but those files are widely held to be fakes. In 1998, DNA tests showed that bones recovered in Berlin were Bormann’s, confirming reports that Hitler’s secretary had been killed while fleeing the Bunker on 2 May 1945.

In an interview with the "Guardian", Schavelzon admitted that evidence linking the Teyú Cuaré ruins to a supposed Nazi safe haven plan is slim.

"There is no documentation, but we found German coins from the war period in the foundations", he said.

But does a handful of old German coins provide sufficient proof of a secret Nazi hideaway plan in northern Argentina?

"That was just speculation on my part", Schavelzon said. "The press picked it up and magnified it".

And the discovery of Second World war-era German coins in Misiones seems less surprising when you consider that Argentina has long been a destination for European immigrants, and that the country’s population includes about 3 million people of German descent.

One of the largest and oldest German communities is in the northern province of Misiones, founded by a large influx of German immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century.

Argentina did, of course, give refuge to some of the worst Nazi criminals, including Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

Thousands of former SS officers and former Nazi party members were welcomed with open arms by Argentina’s then-president Juan Perón, who sent secret missions to Europe to rescue them from Allied justice between 1945 and 1950.

But they settled in comfortable suburban homes outside Buenos Aires, like the cozy chalet Eichmann lived in with his family at 4261 Chacabuco Street in the middle-class northern suburb of Olivos, where many other Nazi officers also settled.

Not in the steamy, damp, pre-Amazon jungles of northern Argentina.


Uki Goñi is the author of "The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina"

 

Soviet Autopsy: Hitler Died But His Double Escaped
By Peter Fotis Kapnistos, Special Contributor, GovernmentSecrets.com

First published in 1968, “The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives,” by journalist Lev Bezymenski was the means by which the Soviet Union chose to inform the world of the findings of the Russian medical team that performed the autopsy on Hitler’s corpse in 1945. [The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev decreed an invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crack down on resistance to Soviet occupation and dissension from Communism]. Why were the findings of Hitler’s autopsy kept secret for so many years?

Notable among the Soviet autopsy findings was the claim that Adolf Hitler was missing a testicle. Lev Bezymenski had been described variously as a Soviet journalist, an historian, and an Intelligence officer [a member of Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s staff].

What really happened, said Bezymenski, was this: On 2 .May 1945, Lt. Col. Ivan Klimenko, a Soviet counter-Intelligence officer, led a group of men to the Chancellery in Berlin after hearing reports of burned corpses, said to be those of Hitler and the mistress he married the day before his death, placed in wooden boxes where they were found by Soviet Intelligence officers half-buried in a shell crater near the Berlin bunker.

A private, Ivan Churakov, climbed into a crater strewn with burned paper and saw legs sticking out. The Russians dug into the crater and found the bodies of a man and woman and two dogs.

Detailed study of their teeth [both bodies had a number of false teeth] and interviews with their dentists proved that the bodies were those of Hitler and Eva Braun. The principal forensic pathologist of the Soviet Forensic Commission was Dr. Faust Shkaravski who performed the autopsy on the two newly recovered bodies.

The autopsy reports noted that part of Hitler’s cranium was missing, and that Eva Braun had suffered splinter wounds. But the Soviets attributed Eva Braun’s injuries to fragments from Russian shells exploding in the Chancellery gardens as the bodies were burning. The body of Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels was also found in the gardens.

One of Hitler’s bodyguards later independently pointed out the crater as Hitler’s burial place. After the findings of the autopsies were reported to Moscow, Bezymenski wrote, the corpses were “completely burned and their ashes strewn to the wind”. [Associated Press, 13 August 1968]

But there were reservations and cloudy remarks on why none of the material had been previously released. [Bezymenski’s 1968 storyline was obviously published only after careful study in Moscow of testimony and grim photos]. Quite puzzling was the claim that Adolf Hitler was missing a testicle. None of the doctors that examined Hitler had ever reported on the rather conspicuous condition of monorchism. Observers also cast doubt on why a piece of Hitler’s cranium was reported missing — it was the segment supposedly providing evidence that there was no bullet hole in Hitler’s skull [i.e., his death was by cyanic compounds].. It was rumored Stalin used the piece as an ashtray.

In 1968, Bezymenski said that Hitler’s corpse was cremated and the ashes scattered in 1945. But in a 1992 report that appeared in the "Sunday Express", Bezymenski alleged, “the corpse had been buried and unburied on several occasions before finally being burned in 1978”.

Still, the most confusing fact was that Soviet leader Josef Stalin often claimed the Führer had escaped the Berlin Bunker with the help of British military Intelligence. If Stalin knew that Hitler’s burned body had been found, why did he go on spreading reports of the Führer’s escape?

Lev Bezymenski claimed that the autopsy results were kept in reserve “in case someone might try to slip into the role of the Führer saved by a miracle”. Otherwise stated, Stalin “knew” that the real Adolf Hitler was dead. But he also presumed that Hitler’s double had escaped with the backing of western security forces. Conceivably Stalin kept special facts in reserve because he believed Hitler’s Doppelgänger was a treacherous British agent.

In 2010, alleged “remote viewer” Sean David Morton infuriated the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by having more than 100 investors suppose that he could predict the market. He also mulled over Hitler’s rescue. According to a 1997 report by Morton:

“A female Nazi Intelligence Officer named Magda Zeitfeld offered her services to the United States Government. She worked in Berchtesgaaden, and was apparently one of Germany’s top Iintelligence agents. She had been sending the Allies information since the spring of 1944, acting as a double agent, because the SS she worked for had murdered her father and brother, under very mysterious circumstances. Her father had the biggest plastic surgery clinic in Berlin. He was a pioneer in the field, and well financed by the Nazis, due to their obsession with physical perfection, and was doing a landmark business. He pioneered and specialized in implanted facial prosthetics, using highly advanced silicates to build up weak jaws and noses to fit the German fashion of chiseled strength.

“Three men, exceptionally high level Nazi officials, were brought to her father’s clinic under a veil of extreme security and secrecy in the fall of 1943. Her father and brother were required to drastically alter the appearance of each of the men. Two weeks after the ‘Men’ left her family’s clinic, and sufficient time had passed to be sure there was no need to go back for follow up treatment, the hospital was raided and the entire staff, including both Magda’s father and brother, were brutally murdered, and the clinic was burned to the ground, files and all. Magda knew that it was the Nazi’s who had done this, in fact it was a division within the SS for whom she worked.”  [Sean David Morton, 1997]

According to Morton, two of the men were Martin Bormann and Adolf Hitler. Just as Himmler aimed to do, the Führer would fly from Berlin as a member of the clergy.

That Hitler did undergo some sort of nasal surgery [rhinoplasty] was stated in a 1942 Time magazine article about the German leader. His plastic surgery was referred to by United Press Central European manager Frederick C. Oechsner, and in the Office of Strategic Services’ Hitler Source Book.[Aleister Crowley reportedly underwent nasal surgery several times, changing proportions of his nose as photos prove].)

In his 2014 book “Hunting Hitler,” Jerome R. Corsi said Hitler made his way to Argentina with the help of U.S. Intelligence agents that had been secretly working with the Nazis since 1943. Allen Dulles, then an agent of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the predecessor agency to the CIA, was communicating secretly with top Nazis from his office in Bern, Switzerland, Corsi said. Corsi presented documentary evidence that Allen Dulles’ wartime mission in Switzerland included helping Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, to funnel billions of dollars of Nazi ill-gotten financial gain out of Germany and invest in the U.S. and Argentinian stock markets to provide a financial cushion to survive in hiding after the war.

Hidden away in the National Archives, Corsi found a U.S. naval Intelligence report written 18 July 1945, by the Naval Attaché in Buenos Aires who notified Washington there was reason to believe U-530 had landed Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in the south of Argentina before the submarine journeyed on to surrender at Mar del Plata. [“Shocking evidence Hitler escaped Germany,” WND, 5 January 2014]

“Recently released FBI documents are beginning to show that not only was Hitler and Eva Braun’s suicide faked, the infamous pair might have had help from the director of the OSS himself, Allen Dulles… In a Los Angeles letter to the Bureau in August of 1945, an unidentified informant agreed to exchange information for political asylum”.

“The Argentinian government not only welcomed the former German dictator, but also aided in his hiding… The informant went on to not only give detailed directions to the villages that Hitler and his party had passed through, but also credible physical details concerning Hitler… Further proof comes in the form of architect Alejandro Bustillo who wrote about his design and construction of Hitler’s new home, which was financed by earlier wealthy German immigrant.”.

With all of the newfound evidence coming to light, it is possible and even likely that not only did Hitler escape from Germany; he had the help of the international intelligence community. Released FBI documents prove that they were not only aware of Hitler’s presence in Argentina; they were also helping to cover it up. [Lisa Pattrick, “Historians Lied: Hitler Did Not Die In Germany,” Top Information Post, 12 February 2014]

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

According to another 2014 book, the evil dictator fled to Paraguay, via Argentina, before settling in a small town in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias, who wrote “Hitler in Brazil – His Life and His Death,” claimed that contacts within the Vatican guided the Führer. The Nazi-hunting author held agrainy photo that “proved” Hitler did not die in his bunker and escaped to Brazil where he lived to the ripe old age of 95. The man at the center of the controversial claim was pictured, two years before his death in 1984, posing with his black girlfriend. Hitler is said to have used the assumed name of Adolf Leipzig and was known to the 12,000 locals in Nossa Senhora do Livramento as “the Old German.”

Conspiracy theorists have long argued Hitler escaped from Germany and fled to South America, following Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. This theory became the center of a 2013 row when a journalist in Argentina accused two British authors of plagiarism.

Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan claimed in a 2011 book “Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler,” that the Führer fled with his mistress Eva Braun to Patagonia and had two daughters before dying in 1962 aged 73. The book was later made into a film. The Argentine journalist Abel Basti accused the British pair of using his research to verify points made in the book, a charge Williams and Dunstan denied.

The claims about Hitler’s life in Argentina were ridiculed by historian Guy Walters, who described them as “2,000 per cent rubbish” when the book came out. He added: “It’s an absolute disgrace. There’s no substance to it at all. It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research.”

Academics in Brazil have also rubbished the theory Hitler lived and died in Nossa Senhora do Livramento. Candido Moreira Rodrigues, a history professor at Mato Grosso’s Federal University said: “There’s nothing new in people who claim to be historians coming up with the most far-reaching theories about Hitler supposedly living in south America and subsequently dying in one of the countries in this region.”

Tens of thousands of Nazi fugitives escaped after the war, including the notorious Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. Investigators probing Hitler’s demise were hampered by the lack of any physical evidence for his death. “Fantasists were given added ammunition he didn’t die in his Berlin Bunker when 2009 DNA tests on skull fragments found near the bunker and believed to be his, turned out to belong to a woman.” [Gareth Morgan, “The INCREDIBLE picture that ‘proves’ Adolf Hitler lived to 95 with his Brazilian lover,” Express, 24 January 2014]

“Pan’s Labyrinth” [Spanish: El laberinto del fauno, “The Labyrinth of the faun”] is a 2006 Mexican-Spanish dark fantasy film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. In fascist Spain of 1944, the reflective youthful stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but charming fantasy world set against grim reality in Franco’s Republic.

The fishing boats go out across the evening water
Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border
The wind whips up the waves so loud
The ghost moon sails among the clouds
Turns the rifles into silver on the border
[Al Stewart, “On The Border,” 1976]

Colin Forbes’ novel “The Leader and the Damned” [1984] retraces the last two years of a world at war, following the story of a British wing-commander who knows too much and a German secretary who knows much more. After 13 March 1943, records show a drastic change in the Führer’s behavior and personality. Working from the premise that Hitler was murdered in 1943, and replaced by a look-a-like, this story reinterprets the events that took place from 1943 to 1945. At the center is Martin Bormann — and his plan to make use of Hitler’s double in an attempt to stop anti-Nazi generals seizing power.

In his 1995 book “The Greatest Illusion: The Death? of Adolf Hitler,” Australian historian Fred C. McKenzie summarized how Stalin was staid in his confidence the Nazi dictator still lived. In August of 1945, Stalin personally accused the British of sheltering the fugitive Führer in their sector of Berlin. Of similar note was “Hitlers Double: Tatsachenroman” published in German in 1997 by Walter Laufenberg, an award winning German author who wrote and published several novels.

The Soviet Forensic Commission autopsy findings aimed to show that the real Adolf Hitler did in fact die in 1945, and that his corpse was burned in the Berlin Chancellery garden. It was Hitler’s double or political decoy that Stalin assumed had escaped with the help of British Intelligence. To understand the consequence of this statement, we ought to focus on what is considered to be the fastest growing crime in the modern world — identity fraud. Innocent people have actually incurred criminal charges created by their imposters. Jail time has even been the fate of some.

The irrational fear of “the devil looking for a soul to steal” is a meandering reference to identity theft. After the U.S. Civil War, identity fraud was a frequently occurring problem in the American south: “It has always been a question how far fanaticism or imposture could go; and to what extent credulity might be exercised. It has always been a question, how much real crime may be mixed with sincere, but mistaken piety, and how far the human character is susceptible of being at once a knave and a dupe; a sincere dupe, and at the same time, an operator on the credulity of others”.

In the year 2000, the Identity Theft Resource Center, in San Diego, estimated that more than 700,000 Americans had their personal information used illegally. In one dodgy case of identity theft, the criminal, a convicted felon, not only incurred more than $100,000 of credit card debt, obtained a federal home loan, and bought homes, motorcycles, and handguns in the victim’s name, but called his victim to taunt him — saying that he could continue to pose as the victim for as long as he wanted because identity theft was not a federal crime at that time — before filing for bankruptcy, also in the victim’s name.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks in America, authorities were not sure they had the real names of some of the airplane hijackers. It was established that September 11 was a case of multiple identity fraud. One of the men named as a terrorist reportedly telephoned US officials from Arabia to protest that he was not killed in a hijacked airplane, but that his “identity had been stolen” by the terrorists.

In 2002, the US Attorney General ordered federal prosecutors nationwide to speed up investigations and trials of people accused of “stealing identities”. The rapidly growing crime of identity theft was a “key catalyst” behind the funding of terrorist groups like al-Qaida, a Washington law enforcement official said in 2002. “Terrorists use stolen credit cards, passports and Social Security numbers to pay for their operations and create false identities to hide behind,” Dennis Lormel, chief of the FBI’s financial crimes unit, told a Senate subcommittee. [David Ho, Associated Press, 10 July, 2002]

Recognizing the serious nature of “identity fraud” and the long-term ramifications to its victims, the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998 criminalized fraud in connection with the unlawful theft and misuse of personal identifying information, regardless of whether it appears in or is used in documents.

In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly said: “We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler’s death. Many people believe that Hitler escaped from Berlin”.

New questions were being asked that various British Intelligence envoys wanted to write off. Were “Hitler’s doubles” automatically guilty of at least accessory to murder, even if no evidence was presented? Could a political decoy be held accountable because his presence as a double at a site of a mass murder was enough to implicate him in the murders that were carried out there?

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” [1890] is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde. The story tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian [whimsically] expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than he. Dorian’s wish is fulfilled, and when he subsequently pursues a life of debauchery, the portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging. Dorian realizes his wish has come true — the portrait now bears a subtle sneer and will age with each sin he commits, while his own appearance remains unchanged. Dorian Gray will not age for 18 years.

“Rejuvenation: How Steinach Makes People Young,” by George F. Corners appeared in 1923. The book, with an introduction by A. S. Blumgarten, was about the research of Viennese-born Dr. Eugene Steinach, who was famed for his theories of human rejuvenation through gland surgery. The book attracted the interest of Sigmund Freud. “George F. Corners” was the pen name of George Sylvester Viereck, who would be branded as “the soul of Hitler propaganda.”

In 1900, Dr. Eugene Steinach discovered that “hormones” were the mainsprings of life. Viereck’s book on Dr. Steinach pointed out the eugenics interests of the Nazi party. Medical experiments such as vasectomies and organ transplants on concentration camp prisoners were part of a Nazi quest to increase human longevity.

Jefferson Medical College performed the first donor artificial insemination in the 1800s, on the wife of a Quaker. When the Firstborn of the Illuminati came to power, he called for science to extend the human lifespan by fifteen years. The upper limit on the number of times cells can divide [Hayflick limit] does not go over 120 years in the oldest known human. But Eugene Steinach’s theories sparked world interest in hormones as a kind of fountain-of-youth principle to revitalize older men.

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley was published in 1932. The novel is set in London of AD 2540, and foretells developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine to profoundly change society. It is a dystopian [anti-utopian] world in which a totalitarian government controls society by the use of science and technology.

It can produce thousands of virtually identical human embryos. Sleep-teaching modes are used to train children the morals of the World State, where no one has visible signs of aging. The State makes successful efforts to remove strong emotions, desires, and human relationships from society.

“Huxley’s novel seems, in many ways, to prophesize the major themes and struggles that dominated life and debate in the second half of the twentieth century, and continue to dominate it in the twenty-first. Through its exploration of the pitfalls of linking science, technology, and politics, and its argument that such a link will likely reduce human individuality, 'Brave New World' deals with similar themes as George Orwell’s famous novel '1984". [SparkNotes]

In October 1930, Aldous Huxley dined with the “drug fiend” occultist Aleister Crowley in Berlin. “The Doors of Perception” 1954] is a short book by Aldous Huxley detailing his mind-expanding experiences when taking mescaline.

In November 1921, Dr. Harry Benjamin, a New York endocrinologist, returned from Vienna, where he had investigated the work of Dr. Eugene Steinach, Director of the Biological Institute of the Academy of Sciences in that city, and was authorized by Dr. Steinach to report his findings to the medical profession in the United States. The report was said to be the first authentic communication on Steinach’s discovery to be placed before the medical fraternity in the United States by an American who studied under Dr. Steinach. [Dr. Steinach received six nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physiology].

He developed the “Steinach operation,” or “Steinach vasoligature,” the goals of which were to reduce fatigue and the consequences of aging and to increase overall vigor and sexual potency in men. It consisted of a half- [unilateral] vasectomy, which Steinach theorized would shift the balance from sperm production toward increased hormone production in the affected testicle. “By the Steinach method the patient does not receive the gland secretion of a monkey or any foreign substance, but his own glandular activity is revived and strengthened.” Steinach used X-Rays on women, did testicular transplants, and conducted experiments in testes secretion, now known as “testosterone.”

“Clinical cases which Dr. Benjamin said had come under his personal observation showed that senility and premature senility had been influenced by the operation. He told of cases where men whose memory was beginning to fail had found their memory restored, their sight strengthened and had gained weight as well as physical and mental vitality after the operation. The growth of pigmented hair was another effect of the operation, he said”.

“Dr. Benjamin sounded a warning ‘against too great an enthusiasm and against raising too many hopes,’ recalling that Dr. Steinach’s own words were ‘that within modest limits the process of becoming senile can be influenced'.

“Dr. Benjamin was of the opinion that the Steinach discovery was one of the most scientifically founded, as well as one of the most promising applications of endocrinological principles. By proper application he felt the discovery would be of great benefit to the individual as well as to society". ['Dr. Harry Benjamin Reports Successful Treatments Under Eugene Steinach’s Method', "The New York Times", 20 November 1921]

 

The Zombie Myth of Hitler's Escape
By Horus Alas

As far as conspiracy theories go, one of the most pervasive is the idea that German Chancellor Adolf Hitler escaped from his Bunker in Berlin in 1945 as Soviet troops were fighting their way through the besieged capital of the Third Reich.

It’s been speculated for years that Hitler fled to South America and faked his death at the end of World War II. The recently-released JFK assassination files breathed new life into the theory, as it was discovered CIA operatives were interested in claims that Hitler was alive in Colombia in 1955.

A photo from these CIA documents originally taken in 1954 purports to show the former German chancellor posing for a portrait in Colombia with an associate. An accompanying report states that a CIA agent using the alias “CIMELODY-3” was contacted by “a trusted friend who served under his command in Europe and who is presently residing in Maracaibo [Venezuela].”

The report goes on to explain that CIMELODY-3’s friend was in contact with Philip Citroen, a former German SS trooper, who in Septber 1955, “stated to him confidentially that Adloph [sic] Hitler is still alive. Citroen claimed to have contacted Hitler about once a month in Colombia on his trip to Maracaibo…”

The report claims the other person in the photo with this supposed Hitler to be Citroen, and to have the following information written on the backside: “Adolf Schrittelmayor, Tunga, Colombia, 1954.”

According to rumored Intelligence in the report, Citroen alleged Hitler to have left Colombia for Argentina sometime around Jan. 1955. Citroen purportedly also claimed, “inasmuch as ten years have passed since the end of World War II, the Allies could no longer prosecute Hitler as a criminal of war.”

In this same memo, the Acting Chief of Station at the CIA’s Caracas Bureau refers to these claims as a “fantastic story”. Even so, the dispatch was forwarded to CIA headquarters as well as bureaus in Bogotá, Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Maracaibo, Venezuela.

At the onset of the Cold War, one imagines CIA station chiefs expending much energy to separate patently false intel claims from ones that merit consideration. That this memo was passed higher up along the chain of command to headquarters proves it was at least a topic of interest.

Still, reactions from CIA brass veered towards the skeptical. The "Miami Herald" reports that in a follow-up letter from Washington dated November 1955, Iintelligence chiefs argued, “It is felt that enormous efforts [spent trying to confirm the rumors] could be expanded on this matter with remote possibilities of establishing anything concrete. Therefore, we suggest that this matter be dropped.”

Theories of Hitler’s supposed survival and escape to South America have proven enduring enough to write entire books about. Argentine journalist Abel Basti produced one such text rife with speculation, titled, “Tras los pasos de Hitler,” which conjectured about the former dictator’s potential travels through Colombia en route to Argentina.

These theories are so popular in part because contemporary Soviet accounts of Hitler’s death are spotty.

Curt Mills of  "The National Interest" reports that Soviet authorities claimed to have at least partial remains of Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun. Their bodies were said to have been cremated upon discovery by German staff in Hitler’s Bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery building, and Soviet officials claimed to possess a jaw fragment supposedly belonging to the late Führer.

In 2009 however, forensic scientist Nick Bellatoni of the University of Connecticut was granted permission to examine the Russian-held fragment with a team of scientists. They concluded that it couldn’t belong to Hitler, instead identifying the remains as belonging to a woman aged between 20 and 40 years old. The German dictator was 56 years old in 1945.

Shadowy accounts of the demise of the Third Reich’s high command have fueled speculation of a Nazi exodus to South America for years.

Still, an anonymous source within the Department of Defense told "The National Interest" that the likelihood of senior Nazi officials including Hitler escaping to South America hovered at around five percent.

“While suspicious and out of character the KGB story is much simpler and more plausible than [Hitler] living for years in South America,” the source said.

One imagines that if you were a mass-murdering dictator fleeing a collapsing regime, you might try to disguise yourself to avoid capture by foreign governments.

That the recently-declassified photo shows a man who bears a clear resemblance to Hitler undercuts the possibility of these claims being true. As early as 1944, the United States Secret Service distributed images of how Hitler might attempt to disguise himself if he evaded capture. Disguise would have been the logical, plausible course of action.

Though there isn’t much by way of concrete evidence, we do have eyewitness accounts that Hitler shot himself through the eye in his Bunker as Red Army soldiers were closing in.

Conspiracy theorists will no doubt continue to have a field day with any possible circumspect evidence alleging Hitler’s survival after World War II. But all things considered, these myths, like the horrendous war criminal who inspired them, should simply be allowed to die.