Hitler's Final Days in the Bunker

Hitler Survived!
L. C. Vincent

The survival of Adolf Hitler after his alleged suicide, along with his wife Eva Braun, has been a subject newspapers, tabloids, reports, sightings and books since the close of World War II.  Adding fuel to the fire of speculation, the supposed Hitler skull which was acquired from the burnt corpse outside the Führerbunker in Berlin, and which the Russians have been carrying around for decades, was finally forensically identified as that of a 26 year old woman only a few months ago.

The story of Hitler's survival after WWII has attained the status of myth, and well it should, considering the momentous weight which his survival into modern times conveys to those who have any sense of history with even a rudimentary grasp of what Germany under the National Socialists actually fought for and represented.  For those who continue to labor under the simplistic duality of good versus evil painted by the propagandists writing history books for the supposed "winning" side of WWII, let me put it as simply as possible -- you have been been engulfed in a massive lie spoon fed to you since you childhood just as I have been.  That we all have been propagandized and successfully deceived since grade school is a given; yet if you have maintained that same level of ignorance as an adult and still see the world and the Second World War from that same two dimensional perspective, you are truly naïve.

The most recent book released on this subject [“El Exilio de Hitler” -- in Spanish] by Abel Basti has caused a storm of controversy because it tells the tale of Hitler's survival in Argentina into the early 1960's, complete with interviews of people who met, know and socialized with Herr Hitler and his wife.   Moreover,  I can attest that based on my own research into this matter for the past 20+ years, the story is true.
Although official history contends Hitler committed suicide with his newlywed wife, Eva Braun, on 30 April 1945 and their corpses were burned by others in the Berlin bunker, Abel Basti claims proof the story is a fabrication.

This astounding revelation respected Argentine journalist and historian Abel Basti documents in his book, "Hitler’s Exile". He personally visited German compounds surrounded by security and stern-faced guards, interviewed surviving witnesses in villages near the strongholds, and even obtained authenticated photographs of Hitler and Braun during their exile years.

While the book was a runaway bestseller across South America, it’s been suppressed in the United States and the Russian Federation. Those two countries still maintain that Germany’s Führer committed suicide during the last days of World War Two.

Hitler had no desire to survive or remain alive after WWII.  The desire to end his own life was based on his revulsion at the thought of being paraded at some mock military tribunal and publicly executed after the war.  Hitler wasn't afraid of death, but the thought of public mockery in a sham court conducted by the so-called victors of WWII [a prediction which was perfectly fulfilled by the travesty of "justice"' meted out to the vanquished at Nuremberg by the "Allies"] predicated the necessity of him taking his own life.

However, there were those among Hitler's high command who had very different ideas for the survival of National Socialism and Adolf Hitler; primary among them, one Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary.  In the fevered, fetid air of the Führerbunker in Berlin, Martin Bormann gave the orders that both Hitler and Eva Braun were to be drugged, and then immediately placed in a motorcade to be raced out of Berlin on the one road that remained passable.  The witness to this event was a Spanish National Socialist by the name of Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco, and the details of Hitler's escape can be read in the book "Escape from the Bunker" by Harry Cooper, President of Sharkhunters International, the world's premier submarine research society, an organization with over 6000 members in 72 countries whose primary mission is documenting the activities of every nation’s submarine service in World Wars I and II.

As Josef Stalin said at the Potsdam Conference:  "Hitler is not dead.  He either escaped to Spain or Argentina". As it turns out, Stalin was right on both counts.  Hitler escaped to Spain, where he was then taken by U-Boat to Argentina to live out his life until the 1960's.  As a corollary to this story, Hitler remained on the FBI's most wanted list until the 1960's -- apparently no one had told the FBI that he had killed himself in Berlin either.

The question, of course, remains as to why Martin Bormann would go directly against Hitler's wish and dare to drug him and prevent his suicide and as well as the suicide of Eva Braun.  The reason why Bormann dared to do this is revelatory, yet fits in very well with what became of the National Socialist movement after the end of WWII.  To put this into perspective it is necessary to go back to 1943, as the war was beginning to turn against Germany.

Admiral Dönitz, head of Germany's submarine arm of the German Navy, had told a class of graduates not to ever worry about the safety of The Führer -- because The German Navy had built "...an impregnable fortress..." for Hitler near Antarctica.   The fortress they built was actually in Southern Argentina, across a very well guarded lake [although nearly 250,000 Nazis actually populated a secret base in Neu Schwabenland at the end of WWII, but that is entirely another matter...].

During the war, Hitler had a constant nagging suspicion, especially during the Russian campaign, that there was a spy among his very closest advisors and generals.   Many times the Russians had anticipated German movements and attacks, and had prevented German advances and victories. Hitler correctly theorized that the only way such constant anticipation of German tactics could have been repeated and correctly predicted by the Russians was that his High Command hosted a very well hidden spy.

Unfortunately for Hitler and The Third Reich, Hitler never managed to discover that one spy which ultimately cost Germany the loss of World War II.  

That spy was one Martin Bormann -- who the Russians referred to under the code name of  "Werther."

Bormann knew that Germany [due to his duplicity, as well as that of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Germany's military Intelligence and also a spy for the Allies] would lose WWII, but that was immaterial to Bormann.  For he had laid plans for looted German gold and treasure and industry AFTER World War II. 

 Bormann began actively recruiting and creating businesses and industrial concerns as he prepared German industrialists for their survival after the war ['Operation Odessa' was a part of this plan) but -- and this is the critically important point -- Bormann's "vision" of National Socialism had nothing to do with the betterment of the German people, or of any one segment of any nation or country -- he simply used the skeleton of National Socialism as a financial funnel which he intended to use for one reason alone: to enrich himself and others he favored, while dancing upon the corpse of the national ambitions and true social reforms which Adolf Hitler had envisioned.

This is why Bormann dared have Hitler drugged along with Eva Braun and kidnapped from Berlin, to then travel to Spain and Argentina.  Bormann needed Hitler to remain as the figurehead of National Socialism in exile, to act as a cohesive force for the approximately 750 business interests which he had corralled and guided thru the horrors of the Allied victory and the Russian rape of Germany.  After the war, Bormann used Hitler as this figurehead, but the sad reality is that it was Bormann, not Hitler, who made all the final decisions by determining which ones he placed before his Führer upon his desk in Argentina.

As incredible as this story may be to those of you who have never questioned your government's fairy tale about Hitler's death [which is on par and on the same level of truth as the U.S. Government's fairy tale about 19 Arabs hijacking 4 airliners and flying them into the Pentagon and The World Trade Center on 9/11], there is one monumental questions which no one, including the author of the book in question, has even broached.  The question is this:  if the Allies knew that Hitler had escaped [and if you read behind the history books and do the research, it is quite obvious that the security branches of both the American and British governments knew that Hitler had survived, and where he was living], then why did they not go and hunt Hitler down?  Was it simply that they did not want to be embarrassed and admit that Hitler had slipped from their grasp in Berlin?

Perhaps that was one consideration -- but here is the rest of the story. The reason the "Allies" [that is England and America -- these two kept Russia in the dark] never went after Hitler is because a deal was struck, probably through Martin Bormann and Wilhelm Canaris, to give the Allies something they desperately had tried, but failed to achieve:  to build the atomic bomb.

Of course, what I am about to reveal goes completely against all the "truths" you are certain you "know"  because your government has taught them to you [propagandized them to you as "truths"] since childhood, a process which most of the Western World has endured for decades without suspecting anything to the contrary.   However, the true story of America's "creation" of the atomic bomb is not quite the clear path that has been painted in American history books.

The Manhattan Project was the code name for the development of the atomic bomb.  The finest scientific minds of the Allied nations of that era, including the great "genius" Albert Einstein, were pressed into service for the discovery and creation of building a nuclear device which could be used as an explosive weapon against "The Axis Enemy".  While The Manhattan Project utilized the knowledge of thousands of scientists and hundreds of millions of dollars for research into this quest, we are told, at the same time, that Germany's efforts in this direction were supposedly done in the small basement of a church building utilizing a staff of less than a dozen people because there was skepticism, reputedly emanating from the German High Command, that such a device could even be built.

This story of Germany's relatively low interest in the probability of success in building a nuclear weapon is pure, total, utter rubbish.  The quest for the atomic bomb was well funded and well supplied with both money, equipment and personnel.  And Nazi Germany's efforts were not in vain, for although the Allies could properly take credit for creating the first controlled nuclear reaction in a laboratory, the Germans can properly take credit for the explosion of the first atomic bomb in March of 1945, months before a similar explosion first occurred above the desert sands of New Mexico in the United States.

The problem, strange as it may seem to contemplate through the fog of decades of lies and Allied propaganda, is that the Americans, including Einstein, never figured out how to build the trigger mechanism in order to construct a workable atomic bomb.  Without the trigger mechanism to start the uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction which would result in a nuclear explosion, a nuclear bomb could not be built.  Fortunately [for the Americans, and unfortunately for the Japanese] a German scientist had not only worked out the equations for this trigger device; he had also built an actual working model which the Nazis used when they tested and exploded their first successful atomic bomb.

The discovery of this "wonder weapon" did not produce quite the response one would have expected from those blood-thirsty Nazi savages we have been so propagandized to hate.  When the aces of Germany's Luftawaffe learned of this weapon, they were repulsed by its hideous destructive capabilities, and actually mutinied.  Even Hitler was extremely reluctant to utilize an atomic bomb in a combat situation, with concerns about indiscriminate slaughter and long-term nuclear contamination weighing heavily upon his mind.

Hitler and the Atom Bomb

An incurable lung disease brought Otto Skorzeny to Heidelberg in 1975 for medical treatment. There, Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Waldemar Schütz were his last comrades, visiting him before his return to Spain eight days before his death. He told them on this occasion about his visit in the Führerhauptquartier in the autumn of 1944, when the Führer was ill and received him at his bed. The Führer told him that day that Germany had not built the atom bomb, because he did not want to take the responsibility for mankind being destroyed by such a "Teufelswerk":

"Do you know Mr Skorzeny, that the energy which will be freed through the splitting of the atom's nucleus and the additional radioactivity from such a bomb might destroy our planet? .... The effects would be dreadful. Even if one could control the radioactivity and could use atom splitting as a weapon the results would be dreadful. When Dr. Todt visited me I read that the energy set free by such a bomb could destroy the whole of Arizona or make as big a crater as the meteor had caused in Siberia. That means that all life within such an area would be destroyed, not only humans but all life. Animals and plants would not be able to live within a radius of 40 km for hundreds of years due to radiation. That would mean an Apocalypse. No land, no group of civilized people could bear the responsibility for such a slaughter. In battle after battle human beings would destroy themselves if such a bomb were used. Only in remote places like Amazonia and the jungles of Sumatra would people have a chance of surviving such a bomb".

Nevertheless, the incredible irony is that it was Germany's nuclear bombs which ultimately allowed Hitler to remain "undiscovered" for nearly two decades after World War II.  The German High Command made an "arrangement" with America at the end of WWII -- the Germans supplied the Americans with their hidden atomic bombs and trigger mechanisms, and the Americans agreed not to go after Adolf Hitler and friends in Argentina.  This is why one of the most respected nuclear physicists involved in the Manhattan Project,  Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, stated in straight, factual language rather than the metaphorical hyperbole with which his remark was first greeted, that "...America's nuclear weapons were made in Germany".

It so happened that they actually had been made in Germany -- by German scientists. The grand irony is that the two nuclear bombs which the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki [as warnings to Russia, which did not declare "war" on Japan until a week before Japan surrendered to The Allies] were from Germany's arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Now you know the secret -- and the reason -- why America and England never went after Herr Hitler and his SS associates in Argentina. 

L C Vincent argues in his essay on the subject 'Hitler Survived', in "Mystery Train", 7 October 2011] "...that Hitler was spared in a quid pro quo with the Allies over the atomic bomb. In other words, the Germans had already produced the bomb, but contrary to all of the hoopla surrounding the Manhattan Project, the US failed to produce an atomic bomb because it could not design the trigger necessary to detonate the bomb".

Although this theory is not airtight, it has merit, and may well explain why the Allies did not make a full court press to hunt down Hitler. Since it was within their means to do so, it is upon these grounds that Vincent’s theory has plausibility.

"Hitler’s Exile" has been making the headlines since it appeared recently in Spanish bookshops a couple of months after its release in Argentina.  In the book, Basti argues that the Nazi leader did not commit suicide in the Berlin bunker as the official story goes but managed to escape to Patagonia after boarding a German submarine in Vigo in north-west Spain. The biggest revelation of the book is a German secret document in which Hitler appears as one of the passengers evacuated by plane from Austria to Barcelona on 26 April 1945.

According to Basile, the British secret services were aware of a Nazi submarine convoy that left Spain and, after a stopover in the Canary Islands, continued its journey to southern Argentina, where Hitler was allegedly given a new life and identity.

The story is not the first to surface in recent weeks about collusion between Franco’s Spain and the Nazi regime. According to the "La Provincia" daily, the Spanish dictator ordered a large network of military tunnels to be built in Gran Canaria to store torpedoes and other supplies for submarines in anticipation of Spain entering World War II on Germany’s side. 

 

U-234 and U²³⁵

"The traditional history denies, however, that the Uranium on board U-234 was enriched and therefore easily usable in an atomic bomb. The accepted theory asserts there is no evidence that the Uranium stocks of U-234 were transferred into the Manhattan Project... And the traditional history asserts that the bomb components on board the U-234 arrived too late to be included in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Jepan.

"The documentation indicates quite differently on all accounts".

- Carter Hydrick, "Critical Mass: the Real Story of the Atomic Bomb and the Birth of the Nuclear Age"

"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 has also been established that a large submarine left Hamburg before the arrival of the British forces. Mysterious persons were on board the submarine...."

-- 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 Bormann

"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, author "The Bormann Brotherhood"

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.   

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Atomic Bombs Dropped On Japan By U.S. Used Components Bartered From Nazi Germany, Researcher Says Components Were Originally Shipping For Germany’s Ally Japan

A researcher has announced findings that the American atomic bomb program credited with developing the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan to end World War Two, and which resulted in the United States emerging from the war as the most powerful nation on earth, used components developed by Nazi Germany, including enriched uranium, to fabricate the bombs. The revelation counters important aspects of the traditional history of the American bomb project, known as the Manhattan Project. The commonly accepted version of atomic bomb history states the bombs were created entirely by the United States, at a cost of $2 billion and five years of work by a battalion of top scientists, with assistance from Great Britain. While the new evidence does not refute American success initially enriching Uranium — the key component of one of the bombs — strong documentary evidence indicates time pressures, technological delays, and a surprise opportunity to obtain from Germany the needed components that were in short supply in America, allowed the Manhattan Project to complete its bombs in time for the mid-August 1945 delivery deadline.

“What I suspect will shock people the most is it appears the possession of the enriched uranium and other components fell into our hands not by capture, but as part of what may have been clandestine negotiations between top Nazis and key United States military and governmental leaders,” said Carter Hydrick, the researcher who has spent eight years investigating the events. "The agreement appears to have been made in exchange for allowing these fugitives to escape from Europe and receive United States protection while they lived in semi-seclusion for decades after the war," he stated. Hydrick displayed several documents from the United States National Archives and elsewhere to support his historical revision, as well as drawing from previously enigmatic events in the traditional history he contends have long been misunderstood, to show that Nazi Germany was an important source of nuclear bomb components used in the attacks on Japan.

Among the documents are captured Navy cargo manifests from German submarine U-234 that lists 580 kilograms, or 1120 pounds, of Uranium oxide, as well as most of the Nazis latest, and most secret, war-making technologies; including, two fully disassembled Messerschmidt 262 jet fighters, the first jet aircraft used in combat and the only such planes employed in World War Two; the newest silent electric torpedoes; and plans and material to build Germany's feared V-2 rockets. The existence of U-234 and its cargo have long been known, and have been the subject of discussions over whether the Uranium or any other components found on the vessel were used in the war against Japan, but, until now, no connection has ever been proved.

“The first big break was finding a secret dispatch from the Commander of Naval Operations in Washington indicating the Uranium was stored for the journey in cylinders lined with gold,” explained Mr. Hydrick. “Further research showed that gold, which is a very stable substance, was only used to handle Uranium that had already been enriched in order to protect it from contamination by corrosion.” Only enriched uranium is fissile enough to make a uranium bomb. Hydrick explained that, at $100,000 per ounce in 1945 dollars, the enriched Uranium was well worth the investment in gold to protect it. According to Hydrick's sources, gold would not have been used to ship uranium that had not yet been enriched, since the value of raw Uranium did not justify such expense. He cites instances in the United States program when Uranium that had not been enriched was shipped in cloth bags and steel drums with no protection from corrosion whatsoever.

A second, stronger, validation that the Uranium on board U-234 was enriched Uranium came from eye-witness accounts of a crew member of the submarine, who was present at both the loading and unloading of the boat. The crew member reported in two memoirs that the Uranium containers had the label "U235" painted on them just before they were lowered into the submarine. U235 is the scientific designation for enriched uranium. The same crew member reported that United States Navy personnel later tested the supply tubes of the submarine with Geiger counters after it was turned over to the United States and the instruments registered a very high level of radioactivity. Without understanding the import of the U235 designation, the crew member assumed the uranium was left over from Germany's failed, but later highly publicized, plutonium breeding reactor experiments.

"The evidence seems very strong that the Uranium on board U-234 was bomb-grade, enriched Uranium," said Hydrick.

Even if the Uranium was enriched, that does not prove it was used in the Manhattan Project, concedes Hydrick. To prove the two events were related, he presented copies of documents held in the United States National Archives that show relationships between the Manhattan Project and the U-Boat. One of the documents is a secret cable, again from the Commander of Naval Operations, directing that a three-man party had been dispatched to take possession of the cargo from U-234. According to the document, accompanying two Naval officers in an otherwise all-Navy operation was Major John E. Vance of the Army Corps of Engineers, the department of the Army under which the Manhattan Project operated. Additional documents show that a few days following Vance’s arrival, when another accounting of the cargo was made, the uranium had disappeared from the materials in Navy possession. Transcripts of telephone conversations that occurred approximately one week later between two Manhattan Project intelligence officers identify a captured shipment of uranium powder as being in control of, and being tested by, a person identified only as "Vance". It would be an improbable coincidence if they were not talking about the same "Vance" as the officer who visited U-234, and the same Uranium powder captured from that vessel,” suggested Hydrick.

A second connection is also documented between the Manhattan Project and U-234 — which carried eight high-profile military and scientific passengers who were not crew members, along with its deadly cargo, says Mr. Hydrick. “Two of the captured passengers on U-234 had contact with an alleged United States Naval Intelligence officer identified in separate documents by the prisoners, as 'Mr. Alvarez' and as 'Commander Alvarez', Hydrick said. The alleged “Commander Alvarez” appears to have been the personal handler of Dr. Heinz Schlicke, one of the scientific passengers on board U-234, who had now become a prisoner of war. Dr. Schlicke was an expert on high frequency technology such as radar and infra-red technology.

Upon researching the Navy officers and alumni rosters of 1943 and 1945, Hydrick found no entry in the name of Alvarez was recorded in either document. “General Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project, is well documented as having frequently provided military identification to scientists within the Manhattan Project in order for them to operate unimpeded, when necessary, within the military establishment,” said Hydrick. The researcher then points to one of the heroes of the Manhattan Project, Luis W. Alvarez, as the probable identity of “Commander Alvarez,” who he suggests was dressed incognito in Navy uniform to surreptitiously cull information and technological expertise from Dr. Schlicke.

“Luis Alvarez was the scientist on the Manhattan Project who is credited with coming up with, at the last minute, the successful solution for simultaneously detonating the 32 fuses that exploded the second, or plutonium bomb, which was the bomb dropped on Nagasaki,” the researcher said. Before a solution was found for this problem, according to Hydrick, the Manhattan Project had struggled for a year and a half with the dilemma. Hydrick points to documentation from the National Archives showing that Alvarez was the head of a three-man committee tasked with solving the fusing problem.

“Dr. Schlicke had in his personal care while on the U-Boat, a supply of Germany’s newly developed infra-red fuses,” Hydrick continued. “In the national archives there is a secret cable recounting how Schlicke was flown back to the U-234 site by two United States Navy personnel expressly to retrieve those infra-red fuses. These fuses work on the basis of light, and at the speed of light. The evidence strongly suggests, in my view, that Luis Alvarez and “Commander Alvarez” were one and the same person and that Luis Alvarez used Dr. Schlicke’s infra-red fuses to ignite all 32 detonation points on the American plutonium bomb simultaneously at the speed of light, solving the plutonium bomb detonation problem".

As substantiating evidence of the link, Hydrick cites the fact that prior to his assignment in the Manhattan Project, Alvarez worked on high-frequency technology, including radar, the same field in which Schlicke was an expert. “Based on their backgrounds, of all the people in the Manhattan Project who would be expected to interface with Schlicke, if there was an interface, it would be Luis Alvarez,” Hydrick claims. “It is interesting that Alvarez is the one name that shows up as the United States’ counterpart to Dr. Schlicke".

Following the war, Schlicke joined the United States military as a contract worker in the top-secret project, 'Operation Paperclip'. Luis Alvarez went on to win the Nobel Prize for Physics relating to his high-frequency work, and was one of the original proponents for the now widely accepted theory — though greatly maligned at the time of its introduction — that a large meteorite struck the earth eons ago, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs and other profound events in the history of pre-Homo Sapien Earth.

While Hydrick’s revelations regarding the uses of U-234's cargo and passengers will probably cause widespread controversy among historians and World War Two enthusiasts, his proposition that U-234 was intentionally surrendered to United States forces according to a prearranged agreement with top Nazi leaders is certain to bring a storm of debate. “The evidence is not of the compelling, ‘smoking gun’ nature of the documentation proving the link between U-234 and the Manhattan Project. But there is a significant body of circumstantial evidence suggesting some of Hitler’s top men made a deal with our leading intelligence and military people to hand over the U-Boat in return for their freedom and protection. This evidence needs to be further explored," Hydrick says.

That body of circumstantial evidence, according to Hydrick, suggests that Martin Bormann, chief of the Nazi Party, Hitler’s personal manager and secretary, and arguably the most powerful man in the German Reich outside of Hitler, at the end of the war negotiated the control of the U-Boat and its passengers and cargo over to the United States prior to the fall of Berlin in late April 1945. Historians have long argued the claim that Bormann died trying to escape from Berlin on 1 May 1945. The main evidence given for his death was based on eye-witness accounts by Hitler's chauffeur and Artur Axmann, head of the Hitler Youth organization, both of whom maintained strong Nazi convictions and connections until their deaths and, therefore, their motives have been considered suspect. Although neither witness categorically stated they were certain they saw Bormann dead, their account has become the traditional version of Bormann's end. Despite this finding, Bormann was convicted of war crimes in absentia at the Nuremberg trials and a warrant was placed for his arrest that remained in effect for many years, as did a later warrant issued in West Germany in 1967 based on new evidence of his continued survival. Many sightings of Bormann, alive and well, were reported over the three decades following the war. The supposed grave of Bormann's escape partner, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller, was also disinterred in 1963 and found to contain the skeletal remains of three men, none of them Müller.

The traditional history has many holes in it, according to Hydrick. “The presently accepted account says Bormann and Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller attempted their escape together, traveling partially through the subway tunnels around the Reichs Chancellery before they met their deaths in the street fighting. It’s fairly certain they escaped together, but the problem with the rest of the story is that the subway had been flooded by the SS — which, by the way, killed thousands of German women and children who were forced there for shelter when their homes were bombed out. The SS flooded the subway to keep Russian troops from secretly approaching and attacking Hitler’s Bunker through the underground," explained Hydrick. "The subway escape legend appears to be a cover story devised beforehand for later dissemination. It did not take into account the unforeseen flooding by the SS".
 

Wilhelm Mohnke’s account, as told to American author James P O’Donnell, and quoted in his book "The Bunker", Houghton Mifflin, New York 1978, follows Mohnke’s description of the flight from the Reichs Chancellery on the night of 1 and 2 May:

"... This seemed to be the proper moment to question Mohnke about the rumored and, in 1945, disputed Hitler plan [Führerflutungsbefehl] to flood the downtown Berlin subway system.

"Yes [he replied], I have since heard and even read several such lurid accounts. It all belongs to the wilder Berlin mythology of May nineteen forty-five. To my certain knowledge, there never was any such Führerbefehl. I believe the rumor got launched because on 24 April Martin Bormann - possibly on Hitler's orders but more likely on his own - did telephone the BVG [Berlin Municipal Transport Company] people to inquire whether it might be feasible to flood the tunnels as a military measure.

"The experts told him that such a flooding, easy enough to execute, could serve no useful military purpose. The waters in most places would not rise more than a meter above track level. This could not seriously impede troops, but it could panic the several thousand refugees sheltering there. Bormann therefore dropped the plan. When I was being interrogated by the Russians, they too raised this matter. But they soon dropped it, and I gathered that they must have been convinced by the technical argument. There may have been places where water had got in, but the stretch we traversed was as dry and sandy as a desert all the way, even there where we were close to, and below, the Spree level...."

A more logical, objective and credible version of the Bormann escape, according to Hydrick, was reported by Josef Stalin’s intelligence agents. Stalin stated 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 late the night of 29 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.

Several details of these events ring true to Hydrick. For example, it is a well-known fact that while Berlin was being bombed and the Nazi leadership fell into panic or fled, Martin Bormann maintained secret radio negotiations with Admiral Karl Dönitz, the commander of all of Germany’s U-Boats, and had made plans to escape to Dönitz's submarine headquarters. Dönitz at first resisted this effort but ultimately was ordered by Hitler [presumably at Bormann's bidding] to accept Bormann at his headquarters. From this point on, Hydrick concedes, details become sketchy and many disparate accounts are given of Bormann's escape or possible end. But parallels from various, otherwise unconnected, Führer bunker escape stories seem to indicate a probable scenario, according to the researcher.

First, Hitler's good friend Hanna Reitsch, the famous German aviatrix and counterpart to Amelia Earhart, tells in her autobiography how she flew seriously injured German Air Force General Ritter von Greim, whom Hitler had just made Commander of the Luftwaffe, out of Berlin late one night in the last days of the war. Other accounts confirm the flight was made 29 April 1945, the same night Stalin's agents reported Bormann's escape by small aircraft. Reitsch recounts how they flew to Dönitz's headquarters “to make our last visit and farewell to Grand Admiral Dönitz” before flying south to the Austrian/Swiss border — an odd and seemingly careless detour of several hundred dangerous miles with the badly injured and very important General von Greim. “There was something more to that trip than fond good-byes,” insists Hydrick.

Second, a separate, independent account purportedly of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller's escape follows a somewhat similar path, though in it he was flown out of Berlin alone. In this account, Müller was flown out of the German capital late the same night as in Reitsch's tale, in a Fieseler Storch airplane, the same aircraft used in Reitsch's story, under exactly the same conditions Reitsch describes. Müller makes no account of flying to meet Dönitz, but tells a story about flying to the Austrian/Swiss border that is decidedly similar to Reitsch's version.

Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch flew in by Fieseler Fi-156 but flew out on an Arado Ar-96, the "Storch" having been destroyed by Russian artillery fire.

There are obviously discrepencies in these stories, as there are in virtually all accounts of these events; and it is hard to know what is true and what is disinformation, according to Hydrick. But the similarities of the independent accounts set against the observations of Stalin’s informants that three men, one injured, and a woman, flying out of Berlin in a small airplane, seem to paint a compelling scenario. “The description of that little group of night flyers is explicit and unique in its observations,” argued Hydrick, "and yet it adheres in its details, even the unusual ones, with the Stalin account. It identifies Bormann and Müller by name; also 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. The three accounts just seem to interlock too well not to be connected,” insists Hydrick.

Hydrick adds other proof to his escape proposition, as well. The chief radio operator of U-234 describes how, in mid-April, he received at least one message on a high-priority frequency [and probably at least one other coded communique] directly from Hitler's Bunker in Berlin while the U-boat was stationed in Kristiansand, Norway. The order read: “U-234. Only sail on the orders of the highest level. Führer HQ".

"There are many implications here, the main ones being there was some kind of connection and an arrangement made between U-234 and someone at Hitler's headquarters," Hydrick asserted. An order sent to the U-Boat a short time later by Admiral Dönitz seems to be an effort to keep the U-Boat under his command. It reads: “U-234. Sail only on my order. Sail at once on your own initiative.” U-234, the largest U-boat in the German navy, set sail within hours, leaving Kristiansand bearing due south, exactly toward Hamburg, where Stalin's observers reported Bormann boarded the “large” U-Boat in the early hours of 1 May.

There appear to be discrepancies between these accounts, too,” said Hydrick, “like the fact it would normally take a U-Boat only a day to sail from Kristiansand to Hamburg and according to our accounts U-234 left Kristiansand in mid-April and would not have picked up Bormann until May 1.” But U-234 was not heard from again after leaving Kristiansand until 12 May, almost a full month. By then, the U-Boat was only 500 miles northeast of Newfoundland. If the boat was following the course its captain and traditional history said it took headed for Japan, then it was traveling at only 1 1/2 miles per hour. That is slower than a man walks and far slower than a fleeing U-Boat is likely to have traveled,” Hydrick argued.

Hydrick contends that U-234 silently patrolled the North Sea according to prearranged plans with Bormann at Hitler's headquarters, until Bormann was able to negotiate an agreement with Dönitz. As the end of the war drew near, the boat slid into Hamburg harbor under cover of night and picked up Martin Bormann and Heinrich Müller, then continued its voyage, by way of a rendezvous off the coast of Spain to off-load Bormann, and then on to its surrender to United States forces at sea, again under mysterious conditions.

Hydrick asserts that a successful negotiation between Bormann and Dönitz would explain not only the radio transmissions, but it would explain why Dönitz, with no political experience and virtually no political following, and quite to the surprise and puzzlement of leaders worldwide, became Hitler's successor. He also believes that a series of enigmatic events leading up to U-234’s surrender point to an intentional secret capitulation of the boat outside of the parameters of the general surrender orders given on VE Day.

Lastly, he contends a photo taken by a local newspaper photographer at the time U-234 docked on United States shores, shows a mysterious, unidentified civilian prisoner with a remarkable physical resemblance to Heinrich Müller disembarking the Navy ship that carried U-234 passengers from the U-Boat to shore. Hydrick believes the subject of the photo is, in fact, the former head of the Gestapo stepping onto American soil. According to Hydrick, Müller’s mission was to oversee the transferal of the atomic bomb components and other war materials from Germany to the United States and that, in return, Müller, Bormann and many other Nazis received American protection for decades, and continue to receive such protection even up to the present day.
 

The U-196

Beginning in December 1942, the German navy had been requested to make a series of U-Boat sailings to Japan, carrying high-ranking Japanese diplomats and technical information. The Japanese capture of the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian archipelago gave them bases at Jakarta [then called Batavia] and Penang, which greatly increased the operational areas available to their submarines. The 33rd Submarine Flotilla, based at Flensburg, detached a small squadron to these bases, beginning in 1943] They were to combine raiding, with re-supply operations, into the Indian Ocean region under the code name Operation Monsun [Monsoon].

While there were eventually two waves of U-Boats assigned to the operation, it was the second wave, beginning in 1944, in which U-196, a Type IXD2, was despatched. To give some idea of the cargo these boats carried we must return to U-234, which had surrendered to the Americans on 15 May 1945. This boat was assigned to Gruppe Monsun and had been in transit to Kobe, Japan, when the war ended. It carried 75 tons of lead, 26 tons of mercury, 12 tons of steel, 7 tons of optical glass, 43 tons of aircraft parts and plans, 560kg of Uranium oxide and a disassembled Me262 jet fighter.

How was it possible to house a disassembled Me262 in the restricted space within any submarine? Presumably the boat carried only core engine parts and instruments for the Me262. It also carried two Japanese nuclear scientists, who committed suicide rather than face capture by the Americans.

On 23 September 1944, another Gruppe Monsun boat, U-859, also a Type IXD2, was sunk in the Malacca Straits by the Allied submarine 'HMS Trenchant'. She was carrying 31 tons of mercury for the Japanese munitions industry and allegedly a quantity of Uranium oxide. In 1972, a salvage team recovered 12 tons of mercury for the West German government.However, no mention was made of any Uranium oxide recovery from the wreck.

Although U-859 only had a single war patrol from which she never returned, her six month career was highly eventful and carried her halfway across the world and into an entirely different theatre of conflict.

Commanded by Kapitänleutnant Johann Jebsen, U-859 sailed from Kiel for Penang on 4 April 1944, carrying 31 tons of mercury in metal flasks destined for use in the Japanese munitions industry, and [according to some sources] Uranium oxide also destined for Japan. She avoided shipping lanes and during her time in the North Atlantic, remained submerged for 23 hours every day, running on her Schnorchel, surfacing for just one hour per day at 23:00, later reduced to 15 minutes.

Three weeks into her voyage, Jebsen saw a target he could not refuse. The 'MV Colin', formerly an Italian freighter taken over by American authorities and registered in Panama, was slowly steaming unescorted in the North Atlantic following engine failure. Three torpedoes sank her before U-859 went on her way southwards.

The boat's voyage continued smoothly for the next two months, and she rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean without further trouble. On 5 July she was spotted by a Lockheed Ventura aircraft, which swooped down on the boat only to be brought down by the anti-aircraft guns. There were no survivors from the aircraft's crew. One rating of U-859 was killed and one officer seriously injured. [Other sources say the attacking plane was a Catalina anti-submarine-plane].

Her second victim was her most famous, and became one of the most famous treasure shipwrecks of the Twentieth Century. The unescorted Liberty ship 'SS John Barry' was transporting a cargo of 3 million silver one-riyal coins from Aden to Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf as part of an American government agreement with the Saudi royal family; the silver coins had been minted in America for Saudi monarch King Abdul Aziz Al-Saud and were stacked in huge boxes in the hold, and went down with the ship when she was torpedoed about 100 nautical miles [190 km; 120 mi] south of the entrance to the Arabian Sea. A massive salvage operation in 1994 succeeded in retrieving many of the lost coins.

Three days later another unescorted merchantman, the British 'SS Troilus' was also sunk, with six hands drowned.

On 23 September 1944 U-859 was running on the surface, within 23 nmi [43 km; 26 mi] of Penang and the end of her voyage, when she was intercepted in the Malacca Straits by the British submarine 'HMS Trenchant', which had been forewarned of her arrival date and route by decrypted German signals. In difficult conditions with a heavy swell running and a second U-Boat thought to be lurking, Trenchant's commander Arthur Hezlet carried out a snap attack using his stern torpedo tubes, hitting U-859 amidships. The U-Boat sank immediately in 50 m [160 ft] of water with several compartments flooded, and 47 men drowned, including her commander.

Twenty of the crew did manage to escape however, opening the hatch in the relatively shallow sea and struggling to the calm surface. Eleven of the survivors were picked up by 'HMS Trenchant' immediately following the sinking, and the remaining nine were picked up by the Japanese after being adrift for 24 hours and were taken ashore to await repatriation.

In 1972 a total of 12 tons of mercury were recovered from U-859 and brought into Singapore. The West German Embassy claimed ownership of the mercury. The Receiver of Wreck took possession of the mercury, and the High Court of Singapore ruled that "the German state has never ceased to exist despite Germany's unconditional surrender in 1945 and whatever was the property of the German State, unless it was captured and taken away by one of the Allied Powers, still remains the property of the German State..." 

It is clear from the above the Japanese were receiving advanced weapons technology from Germany and the Gruppe Monsun U-Boats were a key link in that programme. If the Allies had not been able to penetrate the German Enigma codes using ULTRA, these U-Boats may well have succeeded in reaching Japan with their Uranium oxide

U-196 sailed from Jakarta on 11 November 1944 and according to Martin Brice, "Axis Blockade Runners of World War II" [1981] was allegedly lost on 30 November 1944, while traversing an Allied minefield. That is 19 days after she sailed, well within the time required to reach North Korea and the Japanese nuclear research facility. Fuel oil became a major difficulty for U-Boats after the 'Brake', a 10,000-ton fleet oiler, was sunk on 15 March 1944, by a Royal Navy destroyer, near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. This meant unrefined oil from Brunei became the only available fuel. Thus, U-196 was likely to have sailed north from Jakarta to refuel before proceeding on the next stage of the journey. Realising the war was coming to an end, and Allied success against the U-Boats was dramatically increasing, Gruppe Monsun was ordered back to Germany, carrying vital strategic supplies.

Operation Monsun effectively came to an end in late 1944. However, as U-234 and possibly U-859 were to demonstrate, the technical aid being supplied to Japan did not stop with Monsun. But how would the Japanese deliver a nuclear bomb, and against what target? It is considered that it would have been by balloon against Iwo Jima or Okinawa. The Japanese had already launched a number of incendiary balloon attacks against the western United States, in an attempt to destroy the northern Californian timber forests. The bomb-carrying balloon, lofted from Manchuria or western Honshu, would have lifted into the very high jet streams travelling east towards the intended target. Once the balloon was in the jet stream it would have been beyond the altitude of Allied aircraft to intercept it. Even a relatively small atomic bomb could have severely damaged most of the US fleet anchored off Okinawa. Such an entirely unexpected blow could have extended the war into 1946, resulting in an armistice or worse, a stalemate, giving the Japanese time to regroup.

It is believed that the surrender of U-234 was a pre-arranged event, just as it’s suspected that the U-196 arrival off Northland was similarly pre-arranged. With the arrival of U-234, the Allies suddenly realised they were in a deadly race against the Japanese to deploy the ultimate war-winning weapon.

U-234 [of 33rd Flotilla] had departed Kristiansand, Norway on 16 Aril 1945, commanded by K L Fehler, bound for Kobe, Japan. It carried 10 German and two Japanese passengers. Cargo was loaded at Kiel in January-February 1945 and the boat sailed. The U-234 entered Plymouth Navy Yard, New Hampshire on 17 May 1945, with 560 kgs of Uranium oxide in gold lined containers. Specific handling instructions were given to Fregattenkapitän Gerhard Falck, the chief technician and Lt Karl Pfaff, second in command of U-234 was responsible for loading the boat. On 24 May 1945, when the Navy began unloading the U-234, there had been no decision to use the atom bomb. On 30 May both the Secretary of State, Stimson, and President Truman were agreed no alternative existed but to do so.

Lt Col John Lansdale, Chief of Security for the Manhattan Project, wrote in 1996 that he “personally handled the disposal of the 10 cases from the U-234". He stated the American military authorities “reacted with panic when they learned what the containers contained".”

In Pfaff’s interrogation report he stated that the cylinders could be safely handled like TNT, but if opened the material became sensitive and dangerous if exposed to air. No nuclear physicist has been able to deliver an opinion as to what the substance in the cylinders was and why it required such extraordinary precautions.

The production of weapons grade Uranium is complex and time consuming. The American Manhattan Project spent from 1942 until August 1945 attempting to produce enough uranium to make just one bomb. Dr Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the American bomb project, stated to a Congressional hearing after the war that it would have been September 1945 before the US was in a position to produce enough Uranium 235 to make their first bomb. The American enrichment process was slow and too inefficient. The arrival of the German submarine U-234 in mid-May 1945, carrying 560 kgs of Uranium 235, an unknown quantity of ‘Xerum 525’ and at least six bomb fuses, allowed the Americans to manufacture and deploy two bombs, by August 1945, against Japan.

The most difficult part in producing a successful nuclear weapon is the fuse. The German approach to achieving a successful detonation was the "implosion" method by which neutrons bombarded the uranium core of the bomb. This had been proven with the dropping of the second neutron bomb [Fat Man] over Nagasaki in August 1945. It was considerably more powerful for its size than the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima a few days earlier. The American bombs all required German fuse units, of which six had been brought out of Germany just days before the end of the war in Europe. Kammler and Dönitz were the only ones who knew where the equipment and scientists were that could produce more fuses. This was one of their most valuable bargaining chips in the immediate post war negotiations with the Allies.

There were a number of U-Boats in transit to locations around the world. U-530 was in transit to Montevideo, Uruguay, U-234 to New York and U-862 in transit from Batavia [Indonesia].
 

U-862 was one of the most travelled of all U-Boats, sailing from Germany in May 1944 with Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Timm in command, and eventually reaching Penang, in Japanese-controlled Malaya, in September 1944. Penang was the base for the 33rd U-Boat Flotilla, code-named Monsun Gruppe [Monsoon Group].

On the way there, she launched a T5/G7es Zaunkönig I acoustic homing torpedo at a tanker. The Zaunkönig came around full circle to home in on U-862. Only an emergency crash dive saved the U-Boat from her own torpedo. She also shot down an Allied Consolidated PBY Catalina aircraft H of No. 265 Squadron RAF on 20 August 1944 and then escaped an intense search for her. She sank several merchant ships in the Mozambique Channel between Africa and Madagascar.

U-862 departed for her second war patrol from Batavia in the Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies in December 1944. She sailed down the west coast of Australia, across the Great Australian Bight, around the southern coast of Tasmania and then north towards Sydney where she sank the U.S.-registered Liberty ship 'Robert J. Walker' on 25 December. She then travelled around New Zealand and entered the port of Napier at night undetected.

This has given birth to an urban legend in New Zealand, where it is said that the captain of U-862 sent sailors ashore at night to steal fresh milk from a farm.

The story about milking sheep was loosely based upon an actual landing by the crew of a merchant raider in WW1 south of Christchurch NZ.

A farmer woke to noises in his barn and chased off some men with German voices. He claimed to have seen them depart the beach near his farm in a longboat. The newly drafted third mate on U-862 KaptLt Heinz Rasner had a history on merchant cruisers and was the likely source of humourous comments by Timm to Air Vice Marshal Sir Rochford Hughes in the late 1950s.

After this U-862 voyaged into the teeth of a southern storm and sailed well under NZ and Australia, back to Djakarta.

Interestingly there were reports of U-Boats off Tasmania when U-862 was close to Sydney and one may have been the U-196.

One of the first references to the possibility of U-Boat operations off Australia appeared in May 1944 in a report written by Kapitänleutnant Siegfried Lüdden of U-188. Lüdden was the first of the Monsoon commanders to return home and he recommended that preliminary reconnaissance of the areas south and west of Australia should be undertaken. In this way, should it be the intention to make a surprise attack with a larger group of boats, the force could operate with a sound knowledge of traffic and defence conditions.

German strategic interest in the Indian Ocean was still concentrated on the tanker and merchant ship routes in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden, so no immediate action was taken on Lüdden's recommendations.

The Japanese, however, still found themselves hard pressed in the Pacific and continued to request even greater German cooperation.

The Head of the Japanese Naval Mission in Berlin, Vice Admiral Katsuo Abe, made several personal representations to Dönitz asking for more U-Boats and suggesting the expansion of their operations to include the Australian area. With the improvement of Allied defences in the western Indian Ocean making targets more difficult, Dönitz finally agreed to the Japanese request.

Dönitz understood that the Australian operation would primarily be for the benefit of the Japanese, but to show further German commitment told Vice Admiral Abe on 26 September that three submarines would now be scheduled to operate in the Australian area.

U-168 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Helmuth Pich, was a Type IXC U-boat of 1140 tons. Pich was one of the most experienced of the Far Eastern commanders, having first arrived in Penang in November 1943. U-862 was a larger and longer range Type IXD2 and had only recently arrived from Europe.

But Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Timm, had already demonstrated his professionalism, sinking one ship in the South Atlantic and another four in the Mozambique Channel on the voyage out.

The third U-Boat was to be U-537, another Type IXC, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Peter Schrewe, which had arrived in Djakarta from the Atlantic in early August.

Due to the difficulty of maintaining German submarines in Japanese bases, the German force was not ready to depart from its bases in Penang and Batavia [Jakarta] until early October. 

 

 Type IXC U-Boat on a long voyage
 - S Burbridge -  

By this time, the Allies had intercepted and decoded German and Japanese messages describing the operation and were able to vector Allied submarines onto the German boats. The Dutch submarine 'Zwaardvisch' sank U-168 on 6 October near Surabaya and the American submarine 'USS Flounder' sank U-537 on 10 November near the northern end of the Lombok Strait.

Because of the priority accorded to the Australian operation, a Type IXD2, Oberleutnant zur See Werner Striegler’s U-196, was ordered to replace U-168. It had arrived in Penang in mid-August after sinking one ship on the voyage from France. The U-196 left Djakarta on 30 November and initially proceeded west to act as a refueling stop for U-Boats returning to Europe. On completion, Striegler's orders directed him to operate off southwest Australia for one month then proceed to Japan for a refit. Problems with the other U-Boats caused the refuelling operation to be cancelled 11 days after U-196 sailed. A recall order was sent, but despite repeated requests by Penang for a position report, U-196 failed to respond. By the end of December, she was presumed lost.

No Allied submarine claimed U-196 as a victim and although it is possible that the U-Boat struck a submarine mine in Sunda Strait, her disappearance remains a mystery.

 

U-862 after it had become the I-502

On 6 February 1945, about 1,520 km [820 nm] south-west of Fremantle, U-862 sank the U.S.-registered Liberty ship, 'Peter Silvester', which was loaded with mules bound for Burma.

When the formal unconditional surrender of German forces in all areas came into effect at midnight on 8 May 1945, U-862 put into Singapore and was taken over by the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 15 July 1945 she became the IJN submarine I-502, but was not used operationally by the Japanese.

The I-502 surrendered at Singapore in August 1945 and was scuttled in the Strait of Malacca on 15 February 1946, thus fulfilling the requirements of the Anglo-American Soviet Agreement concerning the destruction of U-Boats.

The German crew of U-862 suffered no casualties, and some returned to Germany several years after the war. Others who were interned at Kinmel Camp, Bodelwyddan, North Wales, remained in Wales and settled in the neighbouring communities of Rhyl, Rhuddlan and Prestatyn, due to the risks of returning to the Soviet occupied areas of Germany after the war.

There were also some 20 Type XXI U-Boats – the very latest "Electro-boats" – unaccounted for at the end of the war.

All the Monsun Gruppe boats are known to have been carrying "Uranium oxide" or mercury in special containers. Admiral Karl Dönitz, appointed Head of State by Hitler in late April 1945 before he allegedly committed suicide, and SS General Hans Kammler, in charge of the SS nuclear programme, had determined they would spread the remaining nuclear research as far across the globe as practicable, in order to ensure one such site would survive and continue the work suspended by the end of hostilities. Facilities were established in Argentina, Uruguay, North Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

On 8 May 1945, with Germany’s unconditional surrender, Dönitz, the commander of Germany’s submarine force, ordered a number of specialised cargo U-Boats, still at sea, to proceed to foreign ports across the world.

These U-Boats carried Germany’s most secret nuclear research materials and some of their most important scientists and technicians. One such U-Boat – U-196 – is now suspected to have arrived off Northland, near Dargaville, where, with the assistance of the New Zealand government, machinery and personnel were brought ashore, and the submarine was scuttled.

The United States had determined to exclude Britain from the Manhattan Project, immediately after the second bomb was dropped on Japan.

The British government, deeply offended at the American refusal to share further nuclear intelligence and research, would have directed Dönitz to send the U-196 that it was in transit from the Japanese nuclear research facility in Hungnam, North Korea, where Germany had begun a joint nuclear research programme with Japan some time in 1942,  south to New Zealand, which was well away from American forces, by then preparing to prevent the Russians from landing on Hokkaido, the northernmost Japanese homeland island.

Emerging Type XXI U-Boat
- Grzegorz Nawrocki -

It is more than possible the U-196 met with a British supply ship [not the 'Orion' as previously thought] in the Sunda Straits, to receive maps, charts and recognition signal instructions. After refueling and re-provisioning, U-196 would have headed south.

As soon as the U-196 arrived in New Zealand,  in May 1945, the German scientific team would have confirmed the Japanese were close to producing their own fusion bomb. The likelihood of a Russian nuclear weapon being produced soon after the capture of the Hungnam Nuclear Research plant and Japanese scientists, in Korea, became apparent as the Soviet Army prepared to invade Manchuria in June 1945.

Once the British scientific research teams had begun to appreciate the significance of the Kammlerstab expertise, the sky suddenly became the limit…literally. They soon realised the Russians would also possess such a weapon and a general paranoia descended over the military as the scientists began to explore the damage inflicted on Japan by the two bombs.

Britain’s new Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, elected in July 1945, demanded Britain pursue a nuclear weapons programme as soon as possible, to counter the Russian capture of Japanese and German nuclear scientists, which he knew must result in a Russian weapon. Accordingly, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Britain embarked on their own nuclear programme based in Australia and their Pacific territories, as they faced a nuclear-armed Russia and a former ally, the United States, now determined to deny them access to future nuclear research. 

Because of the lack of precise details, one must draw conclusions from the available circumstantial evidence. It was originally believed the U-196 equipment had been brought ashore and set up in a disused dairy factory, having the electrical and water supplies necessary for the project. But as research deepened this appeared unlikely. What the Germans had discovered during the ‘Bell’ operations was the necessity for deep underground shielding from the intense electro-magnetic radiation surrounding the working ‘Bell’. This electro-magnetic field was something not well understood in 1945, even though Tesla had been experimenting with such phenomena since the 1890s. The German technicians understood the extreme dangers associated with the unexpected fluctuations that could occur, and were still perfecting their control technique.

With the problem of shielding large amounts of EM radiation, where could the project be housed? Army Bay, Whangaparoa, seemed the logical place. It was isolated, under complete military control, contained deep ammunition and command Bunkers and an independent electrical system. It also had a radar post to warn of shipping that might stray too close. Just as importantly, it had seawater for decontamination.

Late in 1945 or early 1946, there was an unexplained very large explosion in, or near, Army Bay. Like other, similar events, it was attributed to a sea mine or some such other large explosive device the army may have wished to dispose of. But no such event had been reported. There were several mines detonated off Whangarei Heads during the war, but they were some distance from Army Bay.

What could it have been? Perhaps it was the Army testing Xerum 525, which had been brought ashore, in gold lined cylinders, as part of the U-196 nuclear materials consignment. Xerum 525 is believed to have been part of the "initiator" for the nuclear weapon detonator. It was particularly dangerous to handle once exposed to air. There is New Zealand Archive’s film of a test explosion at Army Bay in 1945, which looks suspiciously like such a test.

During the operation of the ‘Bell’, it required very precise control over the time the unit operated. Most "spins" lasted between one and three minutes, never longer. The reason for this has not been fully explained, but it is assumed the electro-magnetic fields became uncontrollable as the ceramic disc plates accelerated from 5,000 to 50,000 rpm. Very few German manufacturers could meet such specifications.

The run times were monitored with high precision stopwatches both from within and outside the electro-magnetic fields. The Germans noticed a difference between the two readings and immediately recognised they had created a time displacement effect. That is, there was a measurable difference between time measured within the electro-magnetic fields close to the ‘Bell’ and those outside the fields. They also understood, theoretically, they had created an anti-gravity field, although this would have been difficult to measure around the ‘Bell’. What could be achieved by this project were three distinct, yet parallel outcomes. Nuclear fissionable material for the British nuclear weapons programme now hastily moved to Australia and predominantly led by German researchers brought in immediately after the war; a gravitational displacement field project, and, most importantly, an exploration of time dilation fields. Each of these projects could have been hermetically sealed, as they had been by Kammlerstab in Germany and later in America for NASA. It was a matter of compartmentalising the data streams.

Surely there must have been an equally suitable number of other secure locations, even further away from a major city such as Auckland, but there weren’t any located close to what have been called "Ley Lines", vital for increasing the efficiency of these experiments. Hence the reason for the Argentine, Uruguay, Australian and Northland locations. They all occupied a primary Ley Line. So what is a ‘Ley Line’? Ley Lines are those mysterious places on the planet where particularly strong electro-magnetic fields break through the earth’s crust and often cause anomalous physical phenomena such as levitation of rocks and physical effects on humans, such as nausea, vomiting and headaches. Sometimes, only certain species of plants can survive near them. Probably the most famous is Stonehenge in England.

Yet this massive stone structure is not unique. Similar structures exist all over the globe, built by largely unknown civilisations before the dawn of our era. All occupy Ley Lines. The Germans, through the Vril and Thule Societies, had explored this phenomenon since the late 19th century. Both groups attracted some of Germany’s best scientific minds, dedicated to understanding this force of nature. It was from these groups the SS Kammlerstab secretly recruited, to develop the most advanced scientific programmes known to mankind.

Both the Vril and Thule Societies shared a common philosophy, the exploration of the natural forces of the universe. But their most important achievement was to train researchers to look at problems, outside the paradigm of the 1890s. It mattered not if the researcher was a PhD in physics, or a talented amateur, their expertise was considered to be of equal value. Max Planck may have been a brilliant mathematician, but Victor Shauberger, an apparently simple Austrian forester, solved problems of fluid dynamics that had eluded everyone. Even Ernst Heinkel was forced to ask him for his help in completing the design of the Heinkel HS8 jet turbine, after stealing the design concept from Shauberger’s patent covering water turbines.

On 29 August 1945, the British nuclear weapon research programme began after a small, highly secret cabinet committee, GEN163, led by Prime Minister Atlee and six ministers, instructed William G Penny, a highly experienced nuclear scientist, to commence a research programme for the production of a free fall nuclear bomb, based on the American ‘Fat Man’ bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Penny had flown as an observer on the Nagasaki raid and later visited the city to survey the damage. Penny had also witnessed the American Bikini Atoll test, "Operation Crossroads", in 1946, and upon his return to England prepared a report - 'Plutonium Weapon – General Description. It came to the conclusion that as at October 1946, the British could not produce a nuclear weapon without United States assistance. From Penny’s preliminary reports, it was clear the British had managed to gain some understanding of the wartime German bomb research and manufacturing processes, but they lacked the crucial fuse and initiator components. The British government immediately solicited the help of Australia [Thorium, Uranium and bomb test ranges], South Africa [Uranium and various metals] Canada [enriched Uranium] New Zealand (Thorium and bomb fuse design and testing) for what was to become known as "The Empire Bomb Project". Both the French and German governments were likely silent partners in this project, as was the Kammler organisation, after re-establishing itself in Argentina and Uruguay.

The project began by developing a bomb based on the wartime 14,000-pound "Tallboy" bomb, which proved to be so large and heavy it required the introduction of the "V Bomber" force to carry them. As a "free fall" weapon they proved too dangerous for the crews of the Vulcan and Victor to use. It was not until the arrival of the German nuclear weapons specialists from the late 1940s that real progress was made in designing smaller, more reliable weapons. The first operationally successful nuclear weapon, code named "Red Beard", used a warhead with a unique means of implosion, which allowed the overall size of the weapon to be reduced. The 15 kilotonne yield bomb weighed only 1750 pounds, [760 kgs], which at the time was a major breakthrough for a nuclear bomb. It was first tested on 27 September 1956 at Maralinga in Australia. The mushroom cloud rose to a height of 11,430 metres [47,663 feet].

The advent of the jet age in the last months of World War Two dramatically altered the world strategic balance. Suddenly, the world was faced with tactical rather than strategic nuclear weapons, carried by a revolutionary, unarmed, light-weight jet bomber. Now, the post-war British Empire possessed a weapon that could not be ignored by potential military rivals.

In 1956, the RNZAF began taking delivery of 12 "on loan" Canberra B1 jet bombers, while awaiting the delivery of the B2 variants [which were substituted for US A4 Skyhawks]. These B1 were deployed for a "toss bombing" delivery using the Low Altitude Bombing System [LABS], utilizing the Blue Silk Doppler radar system to ensure highly accurate radar altimeter settings for the bomb fuses. Forty-eight bombs were stored at RAF Tengah, in Singapore. British, Australian and New Zealand Canberras regularly deployed to Tengah during the late 1950s, presumably to familiarise crews in the use of "Red Beard". The bombs were never intended for use during the Malaysian emergency, but clearly threatened southern China after the Korean War. All the German scientists brought into Australia after 1945 had the expertise required for the development of this weapon.

The bomb fuse supposedly developed by the U-196 scientific detachment at Army Bay Whangaparaoa, using "Xerum 525", was a key factor in the early development of tactical nuclear weapons following the Americans' rupture of nuclear cooperation after August 1945. Somewhere between Tikipunga in Whangarei, where there are numerous deep mine shafts, and Army Bay, Whangaparaoa, there must have been several ‘Bells’ in operation producing ‘Xerum 525’ and enriched Uranium 235.

Did Adolf Hitler escape from the Bunker after all?
Alan Nothnagle
Open Salon
September 29, 2009

Back when I was growing up, Hitler sightings were a running joke, a semi-comical preview of the Elvis and Jacko sightings that haunt our tabloids today. I still have a vivid memory of one such story in the "National Enquirer". The front page depicted a wrinkled, grizzled ex-Führer hiding out in Argentina. According to the "Enquirer", Hitler had been the driving force behind the recent Falklands War and was now on the run yet again. This came just a couple of years after the appearance of "The Boys from Brazil" starring poor old Gregory Peck as Josef Mengele in the most thankless role he ever let himself get talked into playing.

These sightings finally dried up around 1989, when Hitler passed the hundred mark, and I thought we were well rid of them. But now that new evidence has surfaced challenging the standard version of Hitler's suicide in the Reich Chancellery Bunker in April of 1945, you would be well advised to fasten your seatbelt and prepare for a Hitler sighting renaissance.

The sudden upsurge in online speculation about Hitler’s true fate has been provoked by a  History Channel documentary called "Hitler’s Escape", which was first aired on September 26. It promises to be the scoop of the young century. For the making of the film, American archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni from the University of Connecticut flew to the Moscow State Archive to examine a skull fragment with a bullet hole through it that the Russian government has been publicly claiming belonged to Hitler since 2000. Bellantoni swabbed the bone fragment and had the genetic material analyzed at a laboratory back home in New England. His examination revealed it to be not that of the fifty-six year-old dictator but rather the remains of a young woman. “The bone seemed very thin. Male bone tends to be more robust,” he says. “And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40.” A DNA examination also proved that the skull is female. Did it instead belong to Eva Braun, Hitler’s thirty-three year-old girlfriend and – for some forty hours – his wife, who supposedly died with him in the Bunker? No, Bellantoni says. Eva is known to have died after biting a cyanide capsule.

Were reports of Hitler's Death
"greatly exaggerated"?

Cover of Time Magazine
7 May 1945

Hitler - a man of many graves

Now does this evidence prove that Hitler “escaped” the Bunker and took off for South America, as the "History Channel" would have us believe? Since the TV show’s case rests on the identity of the bone fragment, it is worth taking a look at the story behind it. According to official Soviet reports, on 4 May 1945 the military intelligence agency SMERSH unearthed Hitler’s purported remains on Stalin’s personal orders after seizing the ruins of the Reich Chancellery and examined them at a commandeered laboratory in the town of Buch on the outskirts of Berlin.

These remains included the skull fragment and part of a jaw bone, which the SMERSH pathologists confirmed as belonging to Hitler after interrogating Hitler’s dentist and nurse. The jaw contained glass fragments of the kind one would absorb after biting on a poison capsule.

According to the report they filed on 8 May, Hitler had died of cyanide poisoning and not from a bullet after all. It also claimed that he had only one testicle.

Many Western historians have assumed that both of these statements have little basis in fact and were merely intended to humiliate Hitler in the eyes of the world. SMERSH then buried the Führer’s remains near the eastern German town of Rathenow.

But Stalin still did not believe his nemesis was really dead. In late 1945 Soviet General Bogdan Kobulov began a new investigation. The eyewitness accounts he gathered told that Hitler had shot himself through the head. In early 1946 the Soviets dug up the bones and examined them once more, then took them to a SMERSH base near Magdeburg and buried them a second time. In 1970 KGB boss Yuri Andropov was growing uneasy that the East Germans would come across the remains after they took possession of the base from the KGB and possibly revert to fascism. He ordered the bones unearthed and destroyed in a top secret operation. Special agents placed the bones in Kalashnikov crates and soaked them with twenty liters of gasoline before setting them on fire. They then scattered the ashes across a vacant lot outside the town of Schönebeck. Only the skull fragment was secured and deposited in the Moscow archive.

A dramatic exit

If we choose to believe Bellantoni’s account, the fragment most definitely did not belong to Hitler. But why should it have anyway? Let’s look at what happened in the Bunker in the spring of 1945. With the war as good as lost, Hitler informed his immediate circle that he intended to take his own life rather than to allow himself to be captured by the approaching Red Army and ordered that his body be completely destroyed by fire. He asked physician Werner Haase to try out one of his cyanide capsules on his beloved dog Blondi and then prepared for his own suicide.

According to sworn testimony by witnesses on the scene, Hitler and Eva Braun entered their private quarters in the Bunker on the afternoon of April 30 with strict orders not to be disturbed. Some witnesses heard a shot. Hitler’s SS valet, Heinz Linge, and his private secretary, Martin Bormann, then entered the room to find Hitler slumped on the couch with a bullet wound in the side of his head. Eva Braun also lay dead. A scent of burnt almonds hovered over both corpses, suggesting that both had taken cyanide.

Hitler’s adjutant Otto Günsche joined Linge in wrapping the bodies in blankets and carrying them up into the open air. There they laid them in a shell crater and poured two hundred liters of gasoline onto them. They set fire to the corpses and watched them burn. After the flames had consumed this grueseome offering, all that was left of Hitler and his wife were a few scorched bones that crumbled into dust at a touch of Linge's boot. He and some other men transferred these remains to another crater and covered them over with rubble, stamping it tight.

That is the official version. Heinz Linge died in 1980 and Otto Günsche passed away in 2003. So why not ask a living eyewitness? Well, one such witness has been asked. In fact, he’s been asked and asked. Rochus Misch was Hitler’s personal bodyguard and is alive and unrepentant in Berlin at the age of 92. The Soviets interrogated him for nine years at Lubyanka Prison and at Butyrka military prison in Moscow before finally releasing him to West Germany in 1954. He published his memoirs, "Der letzte Zeuge" [The Last Witness] – based on a series of interviews with a French journalist – in 2008. In an exclusive interview for Salon.com back in 2005, Misch told his version of events to freelance journalist Ida Hattemer-Higgins:

"I was curious. I still don't remember whether it was Linge or Günsche who first opened the door to Hitler's rooms, but one of the two. I was really curious and came forward a few steps. Then somebody opened the second door -  I still don't know who it was, probably Linge. And it was then, as the second door opened, I saw Hitler, dead, lying on a chair. Eva [Braun] on the couch completely clothed. In a dark dress and white, white skin. She was lying back. … Then I was on my way over to the Reich Chancellery, already in the passageway, but I had an uncanny feeling, very scared and uncertain, so I turned around. When I got back they already had Hitler down on the floor. I watched them packing him up, in a blanket. Well, so it went. Then they carried him out, and I went away finally and made the communication to the commanding officer".

A new lease on life?

So did Hitler somehow miraculously escape from the Bunker after refusing all the many opportunities he was offered to do so – including  a dramatic airplane flight out of the besieged city with Nazi flying ace Hanna Reitsch at the controls? And, at age 120, is he still out there somewhere up to his old tricks, advising Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and secretly designing Barack Obama’s "death panels"? Considering how often Hitler’s name pops up in political discourse these days, it sure seems as if he still walks among us. All we have to go on is the sworn testimony of those who were on the scene in Berlin.

So what are we to make of the skull fragment? It may have belonged to Eva Braun after all. Or how about this: Perhaps the SMERSH, faced with an impossible task forced on them by grand inquisitor Stalin himself, simply pounced on the first scrap of human material they could find and swore on their mothers’ lives that it belonged to Hitler in a desperate effort to save their own miserable existence. It’s not as if there weren’t enough skull fragments to choose from in those days.

But how accurate is this entire report in the first place? On the Monday following the History Channel broadcast, a spokesperson for the Moscow State Archive issued a statement that his institution had never heard of anybody called Bellantoni, and no one had taken any samples from any bone fragments. In any case, the spokesperson pointed out, while the Soviet government used to enjoy showing the bone off to guests as a sort of trophy, the Archive itself had never claimed the fragment positively belonged to Hitler. And even Bellantoni admits that the bone "could have been [from] anyone. Many people died near the Bunker".

 

According to a top Nazi, Leon Degrelle, Hitler survived the war and escaped from Germany, as the following news article from 18 June 1945 reported:

Leon Degrelle: Hitler is still alive?

"Leon Degrelle, the leader of the Belgian Nazis, told a Spaniard in San Sebastian [Spain], that Hitler was still alive. The same Spaniard stated that Degrelle claimed he had seen the Führer the day before the Russians arrived in Berlin. Degrelle was convinced that Hitler would not fight to the death or commit suicide, but rather would implement an escape plan, which was kept secret. According to the Spaniard, Degrelle said he was permitted by the Führer to fly to Oslo and to escape to Spain together with the Gauleiter of the city [Josef Göbbels]. According to Degrelle the Gauleiter did not want to escape and would commit suicide. Despite his decision the Gauleiter allowed Degrelle and five other Germans to board a plane and escape to Spain".

This article was published just weeks after the war and Leon Degrelle had just arrived in Spain, were he was protected by the Franco regime. If Leon Degrelle did speak the truth then where did Hitler go? Most historians agree that if Hitler had escaped he would have gone first to Oslo, as Degrelle did. After Oslo the story becomes vague. Some say Hitler travelled on a plane to Spain, others claim he took a submarine to Argentina.

New evidence has come to light that throws further doubt over the well documented facts surrounding the death of Hitler in his Bunker at the end of WW2

A number of sources now make claims that Hitler managed to escape by plane to Spain, where General Franco took him in.

According to Senor Stefan Aceituna, who was one of General Franco’s drivers during 1945 and beyond, he was sent to meet a plane arriving at the Madrid airport on the night of April 30, 1945.

He described the plane as “of German origin” and remembered that it arrived very late, "probably after midnight". Following Franco’s instructions, the passenger, who had no luggage, was transported “directly to the Palace.”

In May of 1945 the East wing of General Franco’s residence in Madrid was sealed off from the rest of the palace and surrounded by a fourteen foot high wall. No explanation of this construction work has ever been forthcoming. The staff assigned to this wing were all fluent in the German tongue.

In May 1945 Franco’s medical staff ordered from Spain’s largest pharmaceutical company a carton of 144 bottles of “Doctor Koster’s Anti-Gas pills.” This order was repeated on a monthly basis until October 1947.

Theo Morell, Hitler’s personal physician had introduced Hitler to the anti-flatulence medication and Hitler had become so addicted to the strychnine base of these pills that he was known to swallow them by the handful.

Suddenly, in May of 1945, General Franco has a need of the identical medication and the need continues unabated until October 1947.

About thirteen miles from the Presidential Palace in Madrid is a medical establishment known as “The Clinico San Carlos.”

At the end of 1947 the director of this clinic, one Dr Victor Vega Diaz, also held the title of “President of the International Association of Cardiologists”. In other words, he was recognized as the world’s foremost heart specialist.

According to Vega Diaz’s personal diary, he received a telephone call from the Presidential Palace in the early afternoon of Wednesday, November 1, 1947 to examine a ‘member of Franco’s gardening staff’. From the way in which the doctor has boldly underlined “From Generalisimmo Franco” it appears obvious that this call was not made by a member of the Palace staff but emanated directly from the Spanish President himself.

Why would the Spanish dictator contact the ‘Hospital Clinico San Carlos’ when the larger, more modern, and much better equipped ‘Hospital Francisco Franco’, named in his honour, was almost twelve miles nearer? Could it be because all previous medical needs of the General himself and the members of his entourage had always, until this day, been catered to by the hospital bearing his name, and that the General did not want any record of Senor Adi Lupus added to his personal file?

Dr Diaz’ diary describes the patient as “between fifty and sixty years of age … in an emaciated condition” His personal files record that he examined a patient ‘in his late fifties or early sixties’ (at that time Hitler would have been fifty-eight years and six months of age) and records that at 3:32 pm he certified the patient’s death from “Cardio Myopathy”, a fairly basic heart attack and it appears that no autopsy was performed. .

At the top of the page, beside the words “Patient Identification” the doctor had written: "Senor Adi Lupus".

Unfortunately the doctors personal notes do not elaborate further and the Clinico San Carlos has relocated since 1947 and if any official hospital records ever existed they are now lost for ever.

Doesn’t it seem illogical to summon the best cardiologist in the world to treat a lowly gardener?

Despite lengthy searches of all cemeteries within reasonable proximity to Madrid, no record can be discovered which documents the burial or cremation of Senor Adi Lupus.

No amount of searching has been able to uncover a document anywhere in Spain which relates to Senor Adi Lupus.

No birth certificate, no marriage record, no tax file or employment history, no registration on an electoral roll. Until 1 November 1947 he appears not to have existed. The only mention of his name is in the notebook of Dr Vega Dias.

Is it no more than coincidence that Lupus is Latin for wolf, the nom-de-plume which Hitler favoured, the title he appended to his yacht [The Sea Wolf], his plane [The Flying Wolf] and two of his Führer headquarters [The Wolf’s Lair and The Wolf’s Den].

He used the pseudonym Mr Wolf when he first met Eva. If it is purely coincidental, then we must apply the same assumption to the Christian name "Adi". This happens to be the form of address used in private by Eva Braun.

 

Did Hitler Survive World War II?
By Wayne Wallace
8 August 2012 Edited 13 November 2013

It was late April, 1945. The formidable Germany army that once cast a shadow over much of Europe and beyond now desperately fought to defend an ever shrinking perimeter around Berlin. Deep inside the Reichstag Bunker, Führer Adolf Hitler considered his options as the situation grew more precarious with each passing hour.  Earlier, Hitler had expressed to his staff his desire to commit suicide on May 5, the date of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death.  However he was informed by SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke that the Russians would most likely make their final assault on May 1, or May Day, a symbolic day for the Russians. After receiving Mohnke’s unsettling information, Hitler prepared to end his life on 30 April.  Or did he?

Confusion In The Bunker

Over the years a vast array of Hitler death and survival theories have continued to provide new generations with a glimpse into the psyche of the man who envisioned world conquest built on genocide. For many years, the Russians claimed to have a skull fragment complete with bullet hole taken from the Hitler burial plot outside the bunker. Josef Stalin even reportedly used it as an ashtray.  However recent testing (2009) has shown the fragment to be that of a woman.  The woman could not be Hitler’s mistress/wife, Eva Braun, because she committed suicide by poisoning. The revelation of the disproven skull fragment reignited interest in the survival theories.

Following the German capitulation, the confusion within the occupying forces and the inability to produce a corpse resulted in rampant stories, rumors and myths as to the whereabouts of the ex-Führer. These tales ranged from the plausible to the ludicrous. The fact the Russians were able to produce at least 20 photographs of fellow Bunker resident Propaganda Minister Josef Göbbels but none of Hitler, only fueled the survival mania.

Escape to Argentina

One of the more plausible Hitler survival theories centered around a daring U-boat escape from Germany. This story is among the most circulated because many of the circumstances related in the story can be documented.  Hitler’s eyebrow raising appointment of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor is a matter of record. Hitler knew Dönitz’s naval position and influence would allow him to facilitate the transport of high-ranking Nazis to South America. It is also a matter of record that on April 29, Hitler ordered the entire Berlin subway system to be flooded from the city’s waterways.  Every subway, that is, except the one that ran near the Reich Chancellery to the Havel River. It was at the river where Hitler is said to have boarded a boat or seaplane for the trip to a waiting U-boat.  It is also documented that Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death” and Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the holocaust, did escape to Argentina in U-boats.

In the book "Bariloche Nazi-Guía Turística", author Abel Basti provides documents, affidavits, photographs and blueprints that essentially amount to a tour guide of escaped Nazi war criminal hideouts including Hitler, Mengele and Eichmann.  No one knows whether Hitler was on one of the U-boats, but despite the denials of an officer on board many people still believed the words from the only official report issued at the time. In his report to Josef Stalin, Russian Marshall Gregori Zhukov stated, “We have found no corpse that could be Hitler’s".
 

Did Hitler Flee to Argentina in 1945? The Truth Examined
Jeri Simpson
14 August 2015

On 1 May 1945, it was reported that Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi army, had committed suicide alongside his wife, Eva Braun, in their Bunker in Berlin. She was noted to have died by cyanide pill and he died with the use of his own gun with a single shot to the head.

Per Hitler’s request, they were to be cremated. Their remains were brought to a nearby courtyard and lit on fire with petrol. The lengthy process did not garner the results of full cremation and their remains were buried nearby.

The news was released around the world with front page headlines. Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and known nemesis of Hitler, requested evidence of their deaths. He sent members from the Red Army intelligence agency, SMERSH, to recover their remains. As the SMERSH unit was relocated, the remains were repeatedly exhumed and reburied.

Pieces of the remains – gunshot-inflicted skull fragments and dental fragments – were used as evidence of Hitler’s demise. The Soviets even had Hitler’s dentist, Hugo Blaschke, confirm that the remains were those of Hitler and Braun.

Abandoned and forgotten in Russian State Archives until 1993, the fragment of skull was put on display in an exhibit, "The Agony of the Third Reich", in Moscow in 2000 along with accompanying images and pieces of bloodstained fabric and wood. Sergei Mironenko, the head of the archive, had no doubt the fragment was authentic.

But it was in 2009 that this evidence was brought into question. Nick Bellantoni, an archeologist and bone specialist from Connecticut, was uncertain about the validity of the samples. According to Bellantoni, “the bone seemed very thin; male bone tends to be more robust. And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40″).

DNA Behind the Samples

Bellantoni was able to take DNA samples, which he brought to Dr. Linda Strausbaugh, at her applied genetics lab at the University of Connecticut. Her results were irrefutable; the skull fragments belonged to a woman. At that point, any historical evidence had been refuted, stirring a frenzy of theories.

Rumors of Adolf Hitler surviving are nothing new. For two years following the reported death, the Federal Bureau of Investigation continued to receive reports of sightings of the Führer. These files were collected over the years and recently declassified.

The files, broken into four parts, contain 742 pages of correspondence regarding suspected sightings of Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun. With the sheer number of reports in the files, it seems that J. Edgar Hoover spent a large portion of his time as Director of the FBI responding to conspiracy theories.

The theories varied. The claims proposed that Hitler had traveled to Switzerland, New York, Colorado, and the most famed of which was Argentina.

The report claimed that Hitler, Eva, and many of their men traveled by a pair of U-Boats to Argentina and were greeted by Argentinean officials. They were believed to be nestled at the foot of the Andes Mountains just north of Buenos Aires, in the town of La Falda.

A second-hand account of a man that was reported given $15,000 [almost $198,000 today] for his assistance was brought to the attention of the FBI. The man claimed he was involved in the Argentinean arrival but was bothered by his involvement and wanted the survival of Hitler to be announced to the proper parties.

It was theorized that Hitler and his camp sought refuge at the Eden Hotel, with known Nazi supporters and hotel owners, Ida and Walter Eichhorn. The FBI pursued the story but found the information provided to be insufficient and they ceased their efforts in the case.

Theory Hitler Faked Death

The theory that Hitler faked his own death is possible. After all, he had an entire army of people who supported him – even people of high stature and political pull. However, the theory of Argentina doesn’t seem to hold water.

None of the individuals who believe they saw Hitler in Argentina have any evidence to prove their accounts. The FBI vault file is retold by a third-party and the man who was supposedly involved never spoke with anyone. His name wasn’t even included – supposedly to protect his identity. The file also claims the man was paid in dollars. However, the Germans used Reichsmark and Argentina had its own Peso.

While sound evidence has proven that the remains did not actually belong to Hitler, there is no reason to believe he escaped to Argentina. The finding more likely indicates that the parties involved did not properly handle the evidence. It is possible that the remains most likely belonged to a young woman that was buried nearby. Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun’s remains may very well be laid to rest alongside the many unidentified men, women, and children that were murdered in the Nazi cause.

That would be an ironic and fitting ending.

 

The Case of the Duplicate Dictator

In this Hitler survival scenario, the Führer uses a look-alike as a stand in during the last days of the Third Reich.  It was a well-known fact that Hitler employed a double, which lent credence and longevity to this theory.  According to a 1997 report, the father of a female Nazi officer named Magda Zeitfeld was an accomplished plastic surgeon in Berlin.  In late 1943, three top-ranking Nazis reportedly made an undercover visit to the doctor to undergo drastic cosmetic alterations.  Zeitfeld stated one of the men was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler was no stranger to cosmetic surgery; he had his nose worked on in 1942. After the German public began to notice his different appearance, the propaganda office issued a statement confirming the Nazi nose job. "Time" magazine also independently confirmed the surgery in an article about Hitler that same year.

Hitler also admitted to using a double. In 1944, after several unsuccessful plots against his life, Hitler was not seen in public. Rumors ran rampant that Herr Hitler had left the country and was living in Spain, Argentina, Japan or Antarctica.  Obviously there are no proven “Führer sightings”.  However, the aforementioned author Abel Basti reports the FBI searching Spain for Hitler in 1947. Logically, the Hitler double theory is not credible because of Hitler’s involvement in the December 1944-January 1945 Battle of the Bulge.  Hitler was intimately involved in the planning, development and launch of the Ardennes Offensive.  He was in contact with his commanding generals every day and his micro-management military style would not include a stand-in for the last major European operation of the war.  If Hitler left a double in charge, it would have been after the Battle of the Bulge, as Germany reeled on its heels.

Was There a Vatican Connection? --- Father Adolf?

If in fact Hitler did somehow manage to make his way to South America, how did he manage to remain undetected for the remainder of his life?  One somewhat fanciful yet popular survival theory suggests the man responsible for millions of deaths spent his final years in the Ecuadorian mountains as a Roman Catholic priest named Father Crespi.

In this scenario, the indomitable Magda Zeitfeld once again plays a pivotal role.   During a trip to Ecuador in 1981, retired U.S. Army colonel Wendell Stephens met a priest in the mountain town of Cuenca. Stephens became convinced Crespi was Hitler but could convince no one, even after describing priceless artwork at the priest’s residence.  Enter Magda Zeitfeld.  Apparently Magda was a recent widow to a friend of Stephens and he was coming to pay his respects to the bereaved wife.  After telling her of his suspicions, she agreed to accompany him on a trip to Ecuador.  Upon meeting Crespi, she also suspected he was the dictator in hiding.  She also claimed to have recognized one of Hitler’s favorite pieces of artwork that used to hang in his office at the Reich Chancellery.

Father Crespi did have an unusual and somewhat mysterious background.  He worked for years at the Vatican, beginning in the mid-1940s and rarely left the walled city.  He had a position as curator of Artwork, which was highly unusual for a simple priest. He spoke fluent Italian, Hitler’s first language.  In 1953 he was transferred to Cuenca, a known Nazi sanctuary. Upon his death in 1993, Crespi was found to have millions of dollars and thousands attended his funeral.

Polar Colony

There are many fanciful Hitler survival theories that are based on little documentable information and should be considered borderline fantasy.  But they do give some insight into the keen interest and curiosity for any information regarding Hitler in the years following World War II.

Hitler in Iceland?
Iceland Review
November 15, 2006 Updated: January 30, 2014

A new history book provides an account that an American soldier along with an Icelandic interpreter searched for Adolf Hitler in Iceland shortly before the end of WWII.

Hitler was believed to be in hiding in the home of Gunnar Gunnarsson, a well known and highly respected Icelandic author, as reported by RÚV.

Gunnarsson was known for his connections to the Nazis during WWII and, on 20 March 1940, was reportedly the only Icelander to ever meet Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

The book "Skáldalíf" (Life of Poets) by Halldór Gudmundsson features the life of Gunnar Gunnarsson and compares him to another Icelandic author, Thórbergur Thórdarson.

Gudmundsson’s book says Gunnarsson’s house was searched twice by allied forces during the war. On the second occasion, 6 May 1945, an American soldier and an Icelandic interpreter knocked on his door in Skriduklaustur, east Iceland.

Gunnarsson evidently did not know why his house was being searched, but later learned from a farmer who lived close by that the American soldier had been looking for Adolf Hitler.

A week earlier a German plane had been spotted flying over the area, dropping something off near Gunnarsson’s house.

The book’s author told RÚV that the theory about Hitler being dropped off in east Iceland was "absurd," but that it says a lot about how people saw Gunnarsson as a person.

This account in Skáldalíf is based on a written testimony given by a man who lived on the farm closest to Skriduklausur.

One of these theories involves Hitler traveling by U-Boat to Antarctica and establishing a German colony there called New Berlin.  This was justified based on the supposed territorial claims from a German expedition in 1938.  The colonists, under the guidance of the Führer, built an underground city and base where UFO technology was advanced.  Eventually, the US got wind of the colony and deemed it such a threat that nuclear bombs were used to destroy it in the 1950s.  Subsequent research of declassified documents indicated that a German contingent near the South Pole was impossible for several reasons.  First, it has been demonstrated that U-Boats could not reach the claimed Antarctic regions at that time.  In addition, despite popular belief and Nazi disinformation, the Germans did not have any type of base in Antarctica during the war. The 1938 expedition was a whaling feasibility voyage.  A 1947 "invasion" by the U. S. Navy was revealed to be a training operation for Arctic operations against the Soviets.  Finally, the nuclear attacks on the German base were actually atmospheric tests done several thousand miles to the north.

As the decades pass, the various Hitler survival sagas have been relegated to the realm of “interesting reading”. We many never know what happened to Hitler during the final tumultuous days of the war.  If he did manage to escape Berlin, it was most likely a combination of the scenarios described here that allowed him to make his way to a semblance of safety.