Hitler's Final Days in the Bunker

The Last Year in the Life of Josef Göbbels
Sunday Times [Perth, WA]
19 August 1945

Supplement to "The Sunday Times"

"This is of piece of history lifted from the rubble of Germany", says Ronald Mckie from Berlin. "I have no proof of its accuracy but every reason to believe it. The woman who gave me these facts said, 'As a journalist I would like to write this story myself, but I may never be allowed. The next best thing ts to give it to a journalist'.

BERLIN: This story of the last year of the life of Dr. Josef Göbbels was given to me by Frau Inger Haberzettel, an English-speaking German journalist. She was a member of Göbbels' personal staff. It is probably the first report of its kind. I have set it out as she told it to me.

"On 1 May 1945, in the Reich Chancellery air-raid shelter," she said, "Göbbels said to me, 'Hitler is dead, and I will follow him tonight. You have no duty to me now. Everybody can do what he likes'.

"Later he added: 'Frau Göbbels and I have decided to take poison, but the children don't know. My doctor has prepared an injection'.

"Göbbels didn't speak much that day, and Frau Göbbels was passive and quiet. Then Göbbels said, 'Now you can go. Your work is done. Good- bye'. Then we shook hands.

"That night, in the early hours of 2 May, Göbbels' doctor went to the apartments in the shelter. I never knew his name, and don't know what became of him He first injected the 6 children with poison. I don't know what kind. Then Frau Göbbels and Dr. Göbbels lay down side by side, and he injected them, the wife first. Then he left.

"That was how Göbbels and bis family died".

Dark, thin-faced Frau Haberzettel stopped talking. This picture she gave was the end of Hitler's Propaganda chief. But the story really began in September, 1944, when Göbbels asked for an expert on foreign news from DNB, the German official news agency, and Frau Haberzettel, who had just returned from Finland, was selected for the job. She started work at Göbbels' house in Hermann Göring Strasse in the centre of Berlin, on 3 October 1944. She lived and worked there from then on. Her job was to make a summary of the most important foreign news, and take it personally to Göbbels, so that often she saw and talked with him many times a day.

"I lived and worked in that house until Frau Göbbels' family moved to shelters in the Reich Chancellery, on 24 April 1945, and I stayed at the Chancellery until 2 May, when, with other members of the staff, I escaped the Russians through secret passages under the Chancellery and streets".
 

"Frau Göbbels called him 'Pappa'. He called her 'Süssing' [Sweet Woman]. They were fond of each other and, great friends even though they lived such different lives.

"There were many women, particularly artists, in Göbbels' life, but none in the last few months. Frau Göbbels was a clever, cultured woman, who talked much of music, and sang, but I never heard her mention politics.

"The doctor's mother lived with the family, and I last saw her on 23 April. [One rumor was that old Frau Göbbels escaped to the country before the end].

"Göbbels was heavily guarded by security men, and even his Staff, who were always watched, couldn't enter the house without special passes and being searched by 3 or 4 men.

"Dr. Göbbels often worked from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., writing his Propaganda, with the assistance of 2 journalists. He never left his house in daylight, but once or twice a week drove to the front lines at night".

"Did Hitler try to escape from Berlin?" I asked.

"No, but I'm sure Hitler and Göbbels had plans to escape, but left it too late," Frau Haberzettel said. "I know that Hitler, in middle April, ordered a special train to take Göbbels and 50 members of his staff to Bavaria.

"Hitler intended to leave as well to continue the fight in the south, but at the last minute he decided to stay in Berlin, and when Göbbels heard this, he said to me, 'I'll stay with my Führer'.

"Göbbels once told me my boat was ready to go to Japan, and when I said, 'You can't live in the hands of your enemies,' he replied, 'There are islands in the world which nobody can find'.

"Tm sure that even at the last a plane was ready to take Hitler and Göbbels away, because soon after Göbbels had told me that Hitler was dead, a liaison officer between Hitler and Göbbels, a man trusted implicity by both, came to Göbbels and, in my presence, said, 'My aeroplane is ready'. Unfortunately I didn't hear Göbbels' reply".

"Did Hitler or Göbbels ever consider negotiating peace?"

"Hitler, no; but Göbbels, yes. During the attack on Berlin, Göbbels tried to contact the Russians. On 23 April he sent an emissary with a white flag to the Soviet commander of troops fighting in the Wilhelmstrasse offering to hand over to them the body of Hitler dead or alive. Naturally Hitler knew nothing of this".

"You said that Göbbels was a great friend of Hitler. Could you explain this betrayal?"

"I don't know the result of this negotiation and could never understand it or Göbbels' motive, because he was devoted to Hitler. It may have been some kind of trick perhaps to gain time to get Hitler away.

As the Nazi Reich lay in its death agonies, Göbbels offered to play Judas to his master, Adolf Hitler, and take over the leadership of a reorganized German Government which would conclude an armistice with the Soviet Union. This was revealed to journalists on 23 July 1945 by Lt.-Gen. Peter Kosenko, Chief of Artillery in Col.-Ge. Nikolai Berzarin's Fifth Russian Striking Army, which played the lion's part in storming Berlin to Allied correspondents. It was the first time that any had been given a complete picture of the savage battle for Hitler's capital by senior Russian officers who themselves took part in the fighting.

At midnight on 30 April 1945, with fighting for Berlin at its fiercest, a small group of Nazi officers under a flag of truce presented themselves to the Soviet H.Q. in the southern part of the local Gestapo H.Q. in Friedrichstrasse. Their senior officer said he came from General of Artillery Hellmuth Weidling, Commander-in-Chief of all German forces in Berlin, who had authorized him to ask for an armistice between the Russian Government and a German Government under the leadership of Dr. Göbbels.

No mention was made of what would become of Hitler, but the inference was that he had already left Berlin, was dead, or would be handed over to the Russians, alive or dead, if they agreed to this suggestion. In this connection it is interesting to recall that Göbbels was always reckoned as the leader of the "Eastern" wing of the Nazi party, which favoured reconciliation with Russia and switching all Germany's resources against the Western Allies.

The answer of the Soviet High Command was immediate and uncompromising; "Unconditional surrender – or else..." The Germans returned to their lines and all that night and the next day the battle raged. During the night of May 1, Hitler's Chancellery was finally stormed after bloody hand-to-hand fighting, and with the first light of 2 May, General Weidling broadcast an order to all German troops in the Berlin area to lay down their arms.

General Kosenko said there was no evidence whatever to prove conclusively that Hitler was in the Chancellery during the final battle.

He was certainly not there when  Maj.-Gen. Vladimir Antonov troops came in. Aircraft had been seen taking off from Charlottenburger Chaussee during the last days, but nobody could identify the type or say who were the passengers.

According to  Marshal Georgy Zhukov, on 30 April 1945 "....a small plane took off at dawn at the Tiergarten runway with three men and a woman on board".

Zhukov added: "It is also indisputably established that a submarine left Hamburg before the arrival of the British troops, taking several passengers, including a woman".

Did a long-range U-Boot enter the port of Hamburg between the morning of 1 May and the dawn of 4 May, since the Second British army did not enter the city until 4 May?.

The riddle of Hitler's fate remained unsolved.
 

"Göbbels once told me he was prepared to fly to Moscow to offer all Europe to Stalin if Germany were spared. At this time he said, 'It would be better for Germany now if Russia took all Europe. It's not too late for Germany. We must go another way'.

"You said Hitler was ill. Did you ever see him?"

"No; but after the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944, Hitler was never the same. He was ill, and getting worse. His memory was upset, and Göbbels told me one night that the Führer had suddenly said, 'I'll have my breakfast now'.

"Göbbels and Bormann, the chief of the party at the Chancellery, had many talks, and planned that if Hitler died the world should never know it. They decided that Hitler should 'always be living for the German people, because nobody can take the place of Hitler'.

"How powerful was Göbbels?"

"Göbbels may have stayed in the political background a lot, but he was one of the most powerful men in Germany, and in the last few months he and Himmler were struggling for power. Göbbels disliked Himmler intensely, and often said, 'Himmler is not intelligent'. He said he distrusted Himmler, who was fighting for his own personal power, and not for Hitler or Germany".

"When did you first hear of Hitler's marriage?"

"One of my most interesting days with Göbbels was 20 April, when Hitler telephoned that he had married Eva Braun. It was a great surprise to everybody, particularly Göbbels. There was no official marriage. Hitler merely told Göbbels that he had 'declared himself married'. We knew that Hitler lived with women, that he had several girls at Berchtesgaden, but few seemed to know about this young girl. Only close friends of Hitler, and their personal staffs, knew of Hitler's associations with her, because the German people generally believed he had nothing to do with her sex, and this was a myth deliberately fostered by Hitler's friends".

"Do you believe Hitler is dead ?"

"Yes, but many others believe the contrary. One of these is a German opera singer named Kalkun, who was a close friend of Hitler and Göbbels. He believes that at the end Hitler, who was a former Roman Catholic, returned to the Church and was helped to escape by priests to a monastery somewhere in Europe.

"Kalkun told me he is convinced that Hitler is in a monastery, but I don't believe his theory".

"Give me a picture of Göbbels".

"He was vain, because he wouldn't employ anyone taller than himself, and, with great dexterity, he walked slightly side-ways whenever he could so that his club foot wouldn't be noticed".

"I've heard that he believed in astrology. Is that true?"

"Yes, very much so. I remember the day Roosevelt died. I had news ready for Göbbels when he returned from the front very late at night. He read the announcement, smiled, and said, 'Bring a bottle of the best champagne, and bring me the telephone, for I will speak with my Führer.'

"When Hitler's deep voice came on the line, Göbbels said, 'Now the turning point has come, lt is written in the stars that the turning point will come in the second part of April. Now it is 13 April, and it's a Friday. The second part begins today'.

"What was he like with his family? Was he fond of his children?"

"Yes, very. He wouldn't allow his children to be educated in the Nazi way, because he was bitterly opposed to the Nazi system of education and the idea of Hitler Youth. He hated the idealised Nazi Youth type, and often said, 'I am against educating a type. I'm for individualism'.

"He educated his children himself, and wouldn't let them wear uniforms or go to school. Once he sent them to school for a while, merely to find out first-hand what they were taught. "The children's library was full of English books, literature, and history, for Göbbels believed in the English type of education. His 16-year-old son Harold spoke English, and was like an English boy.

"Göbbels, as I saw him in those 6 months and almost to the end, was a gay, friendly man, who, above anything, liked the society of intelligent, cultured people.

"He had only one great, almost pathological, hate -the Jews- only one great love -music, art, and literature- and only one great overriding, fanatical belief - Hitler".

On 10 May 1945, a spokesman for the Red Army staff stationed in the ruins of Berlin declared peremptorily to Allied journalists rushing from all sides: "No corpse could be identified as Hitler's". 

On the 26th of the same month, Stalin himself told Harry Hopkins [who was Roosevelt's gray eminence during the war]: "Hitler has escaped and is hiding".  He reiterated on 6 June, saying before the same interlocutor: "I am convinced that Hitler is alive". 

On 9 June, during a press conference, Marshal Zhukov [leader of the occupation forces in Germany] added: "We have not identified Hitler's body, who may have flown from Berlin to the last. The condition of the runway allowed him to do so".

Marshal Zhukov meant the famous avenue "Unter den Linden" on which the pilot Jürgen Bosser on 26 April, had succeeded by a tour de force, to land without damage an Arado-96, which had on board General Ritter von Greim.  The general was accompanied by Hanna Reitsch, the unsurpassed virtuoso of glider sailing and test pilot.  After staying at the Bunker until 29 April, von Greim and Reitsch managed to leave Berlin as they had come, and, according to Marshal Zhukov, the following day,  30 April, "A small plane took off at the dawn of the Tiergarten with three men and a woman on board".  Zhukov added: "It is also indisputably established that a submarine left Hamburg before the arrival of the British troops, taking several passengers, including a woman". 

Von Greim and Reitsch flew in by Fi-156 'Storch,' that was destroyed on the ground by Russian shellfire, but flew out on an Arado Ar-96. 

Hanna Reitsch recorded in her memoirs that she, with a heavily bandaged General von Greim by her side, flew out of Berlin from the Tiergarten, at dawn on 30 April 1945, according to her 5 December 1945 press interview.  In testimony to Captain Robert F. Work, Chief Interrogator on 8 October 1945, regarding the 'Last Days of Hitler', the departure from the Bunker is stated as after 1:30 am on 30 April 1945.

The hypothesis of the departure of Hitler and Eva Braun aboard this small plane which, according to Marshal Zhukov, would have taken off from the Tiergarten at the dawn of 30 April 1945 is contradicted by the concordant testimonies of the nurses of the Bunker, as reported by Roger Depley.

On 1 May, at 10:30 pm, they were all supposed to learn that Hitler wished to bid them farewell, for they thought he had left several days earlier  for an unknown destination.  Hitler received them in the company of Professor Ludwig Stumpfegger, his personal surgeon. 

This same collective testimony at the same time invalidates all the declarations under which Hitler would have killed himself on 30 April. 

On the other hand, the possibility of fitting a long-cruise submarine into the port of Hamburg between the morning of 1 May and the dawn of 4 May could possibly be retained, since the second British army had not entered the city on the 4th.

From 9 June, 1945, the Soviets had intimated to Allied officers through Colonel-General Berzarin that it might well have been that Hitler found refuge in Spain, placing himself under the protection of General Franco.  Conversing the next day with General Eisenhower, Zhukov said: "Our soldiers have found no trace of Hitler's corpse". 

On 17 July, receiving US Secretary of State James Byrnes, Stalin insisted: "The careful investigations of our investigators failed to find traces of Hitler's remains, and no positive proof of his death".  Going further, the seven members of the commission concluded their report by saying: "Hitler is not dead, he fled".
 

 Excerpt from Jorge A. Ricaldoni "Los Lobos de Roma"

Hitler, desperate for the East and West to come to him, decided to reside in the Chancellery's Bunker in the winter of 1945, from which he encouraged the Germans on the radio. The Bunker had Telefunken radio receivers that could only tune two or three official stations and were the only ones allowed and legal in the German territory. By then, the Third Reich was disintegrating. Its generals were killed one by one or taken prisoners and the SS had disappeared, most of them escaping to Austria. By late April the Soviets had already entered Berlin and were struggling, house by house, to the center of the city, where the Chancellery was.

On 22 April 1945, Hitler sent almost everyone out of the situation room and stayed with Göbbels and Krebs, Keitel, and Jodl. The more fanciful historians and the few surviving Germans close to Hitler, claim that he entered into a state of hysteria, ranting against his generals, accusing them of having betrayed him and that Germany would disappear because of such traitors and cowards. Some witnesses also tell he had symptoms of having suffered a heart attack, which in official history were described as "tremors".

According to the witnesses, Hitler consulted physician Werner Haase about an absolutely reliable method of suicide. Haase suggested to him to take a dose of cyanide followed by a bullet in the head through the mouth.

There are suspicions that Haase replaced the cyanide capsules with powerful narcotics, without Hitler knowing.

Heinrich Himmler, who was not in the Bunker, was negotiating on his own account  a peace treaty with Count Folke Bernadotte, president of the International Red Cross. Hitler regarded this as a betrayal of Himmler, but since Himmler was not at hand, ordered Hermann Fegelein, who was Himmler's representative in the Bunker, killed. That situation definitely broke Hitler, who, by what witnesses describe, suffered a second heart attack. So Dr. Haase decided to sedate him strongly.

The Russians claimed they had found the remains of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun.

The CIA, was instructed the same, but it happened Josef Stalin, meeting with James Byrnes, who was the American Secretary of State, during the Potsdam conference on 17 July 1945, shouted in his face, furious "Hitler is alive. Escaped to Spain or to Argentina". The accusation was followed by a silence, and then Stalin implicitly accused the Western Allies of being ideologues of the Nazi leader's flight. In June 1945 General Georgy Zhukov, one of the leaders of the Red Army, was already furious because he was sure that Hitler had been flown to avoid the siege of the Red Army. CIA data, on the other hand, clearly stated that no German aircraft had taken off from Berlin since 23 April 1945, which meant that Hitler had been moved by an Allied or an unidentified aircraft.

LONDON, 30 April 1945—Russian tanks have smashed into the Tiergarten, Berlin's Central Park, converted into an underground fortress, the Nazi-controlled Oslo radio said today, and Moscow reports said the fall of the capital was imminent.

Russian radar reported a light aircraft leaving the vicinity of the Tiergarten in Berlin on the morning of 30 April, the day on which Adolf Hitler committed suicide

The English did their own research on the subject and left it to Hugh Trevor Roper, who had served as counter-Intelligence officer of MI6. Roper, after several interviews with people close to Hitler, came to the  "strict" and therefore "official" conclusion of the suicide and no longer talked about the subject with Josef Stalin.

The official story was that Hitler had married Eva Braun on 29 April 1945, and they both committed suicide the next day in the Chancellery's Bunker, their bodies then burned in the building's gardens by their followers inside a bomb crater.

Taking into account that a human body takes up to 30 hours to burn and must be aided by copious fuel, as estimated by the forensic expert Franco Vilanovam, what other evidence was there?

When Stalin died in 1953, the Russians officially reported that they had the remains of Hitler and that they had been identified by the dental pieces. Then the alleged corpses of Hitler, Eva Braun, Josef Göbbels and his wife were buried under a barracks in Magdeburg. As the controversy resurfaced from time to time, in 1970 the remains were exhumed, incinerated and the ashes were thrown into the sea so that they would not become objects of pilgrimage and worship.

In the 1990s the Russians publicly displayed what was supposed to be the last trace of Hitler's skeleton, and that being irrefutable evidence, they would end the rumors. However, when Western experts reviewed part of the skull at the request of the "History Channel", they determined that it belonged to a woman between 20 and 40 years. They were definitely not the remains of Hitler.

The Hungarian-Argentine Ladislao Szabo had already claimed in 1947, in his book that "Hitler is Alive", that Hitler had managed to escape from Europe by submarine but that after passing through Mar del Plata went to an Antarctic base of the Germans. Then Captain Manuel Monasterio, under the pseudonym of Jeff Kristenssen, so as not to compromise the Navy, gave his version that is the one that comes closest to the possible. The other theory of interest is of the Italian Patrick Burnside, that gave the numbers of the submarines involved. They were joined by two Britons, Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, with "Gray Wolf" and the most fundamental researcher, the Argentine Abel Basti, with "The Exile of Hitler" and other publications.

What is believed today as possible and acceptable is that Martin Bormann and Heinrich Müller, who was the head of the Gestapo, had made arrangements with Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower and Eugenio Pacelli, alias Pius XII.

The United States was more afraid of Russia than of Germany as enemies. Hitler could tell them, if necessary, an enormous amount of war related secrets about Russia. It was feared that Russia would re-arm and continue its advance on Europe; Hitler replaced in Germany, supported by the Allies, would stop or definitively defeat the Russian bear. The third fear was that they feared they would not be able to recover a divided Germany and that another Weimar republic would ensue that would sink a weak Western Europe. Hitler, sedated, could be an amalgamator of the Pan-Germanic will with his magnetism, so he was a secret weapon to be guarded carefully.

Already in 1943 the Axis was in retreat by the intervention of the United States and the Russia, and the victory of the Allies was almost taken for granted. Martin Bormann, Hitler's right-hand man, conceived the "Aktion Feuerland" which means "Project Land of Fire", and offered to negotiate with the Allies the escape and "disappearance" of Hitler, Eva Braun and himself. He intended to carry the Nazi treasure from the invasions of the occupied countries. The destination would be Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, a place that considered secure and similar to the native Bavaria of Hitler. In return for this safe conduct, he promised sensitive information about the advanced Nazi secret weapons and secret settlements of the investigators and technicians so that the United States could recruit them before the Soviet Union. The other element, in order to escape through the Mediterranean was the immediate surrender of the million men of the Wehrmacht who still fiercely fought in Italy.

Obviously France, Italy, Holland and Denmark opposed allowing Germany to take their treasure.

Against the opposition of the previous owners, Martin Bormann, resorted to the intimidation of threatening to dynamiting the galleries of the mines where they were hiding the thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis and representing the best of European culture since its inception. He also let slip that the Reich already had almost ready long-range V2-style missiles, capable of attacking the east coast of the United States, simultaneously arriving at Washington, New York and Boston. If the negotiation advanced, he promised to immediately deactivate those missiles.

Bormann's interlocutor was Allen Dulles who headed the headquarters of the European OSS center in Switzerland, which was the Office of Strategic Services, the United States Intelligence service during the war, which was the origin of the CIA. Dulles recruited agents from all European countries, but especially the downtrodden Nazi diplomats.

The big problem, for many years and up to the present, is a confrontation with the Soviet Union and its new satellite countries, or now Russia. Dulles was a genius in negotiating with Bormann the possibility of adding the German technology to the anti-communist cause.

Hitler, already defeated, could still become an Ally of last resort. Stalin was an enemy far more fearsome than Hitler.  For many generals, Hitler was the guarantee to stop the Soviet advance. Bormann agreed that Germany would receive aid for the reconstruction of Germany and the protection of the United States against the Soviet Union, a pact that remains.

In 1947 Dulles was the first civilian director of the CIA, who did not pursue a quest for Hitler in South America, unlike the FBI whose agents were detained and deported by Argentina and Brazil.

Apparently from the Bunker went tunnels of the Berlin subway to the vicinity of an airstrip that was operable, where waiting was an  Arado Ar 234 'Blitz' jetliner, unidentified and painted green like the American bombers, which could not be reached in speed, much less in height by the Soviet MIG fighters. It was piloted by Hannah Reitsch and landed in the military airport of Guidonia, 50 kilometers from Rome. 

Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bormann were driven by Italian light armor, with a pair of senior generals from the United States and Great Britain, and were housed on the fourth level of the Castel Sant'Angelo which was closed as a museum during the war. Guards occupied the terrace of the fifth level where  reinforced Italian anti-aircraft batteries were placed, and on the fourth and third level were American and British elite troops.

Since 1277, the castle is connected with the Vatican City by a fortified corridor, called Il Passetto, about 800 meters long. Hitler walked several times through Il Passetto with his guards to meet with the mediator, Pius XII where they had endless discussions of the conditions. 

Vatican diplomacy, Sodalitium Pianum and L'Entità, negotiated with Francisco Franco in Fuencarral-El Pardo, to convince the Argentine military to receive Hitler in Tierra del Fuego or a similar place. As well, the Allies offered to Franco, as a strong incentive, a guarantee of forgetting his support of the Axis, if he accepted that Hitler would temporarily hide on Formentera Island, south of the island of Eivissa in Spanish territorial waters, where the English would take care from Gibraltar so that there were  no unpleasant surprises from the Soviets. Franco accepted because he was much more concerned with his own fate than with Spain.

Hitler and his entourage were taken, as a first step, to the Tiber, where there was a fast flat-bottomed boat of the US Navy was waiting. They waited for a night without a moon and high tide, and wearing American uniforms,  they were taken to the beaches of Fiumicino. There they boarded  a boat with their belongings, and thus transited, into  the sea, to a German submarine that took them to Formentera.

In Spain, Hitler was protected by Franco, while Martin Bormann arranged some matters with Perón, who by that time was already the strong man of Argentina. Pius XII and Perón had a tremendous mutual dislike, so everything was triangulated by the Francoist diplomacy that had an open and clear friendship with Perón.

Argentina had sent enormous amounts of wheat, meat, and food to the bled Spain of the Civil War. None of the former Overseas Provinces of Spain was as generous as Argentina.

From Formentera they went on a Spanish gunboat to the Canary Islands and boarded the U-518 submarine that left them near Mar del Plata after long days of travel. Hitler's entourage toured Mar del Plata, and spent the night in the city of Necochea, but these places, in the middle of the summer, did not seem safe to the German Intelligence agents in charge of the security of Hitler. The German submarine U-530 picked them up again and took them to Patagonia by entering the Parrot Cove, in the Golfo Nuevo, Province of Chubut, where it was to meet U-977 and U-518.

Golfo Nuevo, has very protected waters, still and with great tides that affect the superficial waters a lot, and in its interior, it resembles a huge flat boat, with 159 meters of depth in its central part, with cliff on the coast. This bottom is ideal for submarine settlement. The other peculiarity is that it has three large valleys or submarine canyons in the extreme west of the zone and another one on the mouth, which allowed, the concealment of several submarines simultaneously. It is believed that there were ten German submarines simultaneously there at that time.

The waters, at the bottom of the cove, are extremely cold, becoming 2^° and even less, refracting the echoes of the sonars of that time.

Hitler's guards, some scholars claim that the 'Graf Spee' sailors guarded Hitler, but that crew had been confined to the province of Cordoba,  and other acolytes made arrangements with the National Territory of Neuquén. Finally Hitler's entourage moved to the Inalco peninsula, on the Victoria Island of Lake Nahuel Huapi, not far from the Chilean border. 

Argentina was one of the last countries to declare war on the Axis. Martin Bormann transferred funds to Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile for over 6 Billion Dollars in 1943, equivalent to 84 Billion today. Buenos Aires allowed the entry of German scientists, who developed nuclear engineering, aeronautics, missile and much of the pharmaceutical and metallurgical industry.

The investigators Dunstan and Williams stated that Hitler made several trips. One of them to Laguna Mar Chiquita, in Córdoba, where a German doctor treated him for the after-effects of the 20 July 1944 bombing. On that occasion he would have been in La Falda to visit the Eichhorns, a German couple who had contributed money to the Nazi cause from the start. His impunity was such that there are FBI reports, of Hitler having been seen it in Rosario, in La Cumbrecita, in Córdoba, in Villa General Belgrano. They could also have been Hitler's doubles.

There are no agreements, when and where did Hitler died; some claim in 1962 in Córdoba and others in 1971 in Paraguay, under the protection of Stroessner. Anyway, he must have been well guarded since the Mossad and Simon Wiesenthal did not find him.

If this story were confirmed, all the fury of the Jews would not go to the United States or Argentina but to the Church because everything would have come to light.

Heinz Linge: An hour after the cremation, Else Krüger, Bormann's secretary, went back down into the Bunker and told me: "The two bodies were very badly burned, only Hitler's head was destroyed, the essence was absorbed by the covers and the soil".

Hans Baur: At 3 o'clock in the morning, one of Rattenhuber's men came to him, announcing that Hitler's body and his wife had been burned to the ground and that the ashes were buried in a shell hole.

Harry Mengershausen : At the end of May 1945, the Russians showed me Hitler's corpse, the flesh and skin were darkened and burnt, but the shape of the face remained perfectly recognizable.
 

Hitler bloodstained suicide sofa fabric auctions for $16,000

A swatch of bloodstained fabric, taken from the sofa on which Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide, was auctioned in the US. The 6 x 3.5 inch piece sold for $16,000 on 19 February 2015 at Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland, surpassing its $15,000 high estimate.

A combination of its grisly nature and strong provenance helped the lot to its excellent showing.

On the afternoon of 30 April 1945, just two days after being married, with the Russian army closing in on Berlin, Braun and Hitler retired to his personal study. There they were later found by Hitler's close associates, lying dead on the sofa. Braun had taken a cyanide capsule, Hitler had killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

The fabric was taken by a US army colonel, who entered Hitler's Bunker in the days after the Nazi leader's suicide.

As well as a macabre memento from the last moments of the Führer, the sofa also offers the opportunity for DNA testing.

"As no blood relics of Hitler's have ever been offered publicly, a DNA test would conclusively put to rest rumors of body doubles, flight to Argentina, and other theories of an escape from Berlin," says the auction house.

The item has undergone a Kastle-Meyer blood test, which demonstrated the presence of haemoglobin.

A rare and unusual Artefact from the place where Hitler was to kill himself by gunshot on 30 April 1945, accompanied by a Copy of assigned letter. by Billingsby, Two Pages, Berlin, 14 July 1945, to his Mother and Father, on the Printed Stationery of Hitler's Chancellery ["Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP"]

Billingsby writes, in part:

"I am very pleased to say we are getting along much better now. We have got rid of the bugs alright....Last night our company arranged a trip sight seeing into Berlin.  Me and about 20 of our fellows went....We visited the place where Hitler spent the last few hours. The Hitler Chancelery [sic] A most wonderful building I have ever seen. The Russians are keeping guard over it but they allowed us in to inspect the inside. We found quite a lot of usefull [sic] stuff. I gathered quite a lot of tbe old boys writing paper....You will see a bit of German on the top. The whole place has caught a most severe battering. Most of the place is all ruins....I can tell you the Coventry people can certainly rest assured that those German Swine were repaid with a little interest for what they did to them....I am sending you a little of Materials out of the Chancelery [sic] The bit of green off his Sette [sic] and the other bit off his Chair out of his sound proof Room".

Billingsby's reference to removing the present swatch from Hitler's "Sound Proof Room", must clearly be taken as a reference to the Führerbunker where Hitler was to commit suicide. Billingsby's further comment in his letter in regard to visiting the place where "Hitler Spent the Last Few Hours" reinforces this.

International Autograph Auctions' Autograph Auction July 2015
Saturday, 18 July 2015
Estimate: £400 - 500 each
 

Lot 918: [Hitler Adolf]: (1889-1945) Führer of the Third Reich 1934-45. A Small [2.5 X 0.5] Swatch of Gold Coloured and Patterned Upholstery Fabric removed from a Chair in Adolf Hitler's Führerbunker by Sapper Billingsby Of No. 2 Platoon, 672 Army Company In July 1945 and sent home to his Parents. 

Lot 919: [Hitler Adolf]: (1889-1945) Führer Of The Third Reich 1934-45. A Small [2 X 1] Swatch of Green Coloured and Patterned Upholstery Fabric removed from a Sofa In Adolf Hitler's Führerbunker by Sapper Billingsby Of No. 2 Platoon, 672 Army Company in July 1945 and sent home to his Parents.