With the bunker left in the general disarray as described by O’Donnell and seen in Vandivert’s photographs, there is no indication whatsoever of a bloody suicide having taken place in the rooms of the Führerbunker.
US hunt for Hitler begins
Almost immediately after the fall of Berlin, US military intelligence organized a mission to hunt for Hitler. An examination of the declassified papers currently in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, reveal that US military intelligence from November and December 1945 was on the verge of concluding that Hitler had escaped.
The file, for instance, contains a statement dated Berlin, Nov. 23, 1945, made by Erna Flegel, a registered nurse with the Red Cross, who worked during the Battle for Berlin in the hospital created out of the Reich Chancellery for wounded SS troops. In the last few days before the fall of Berlin, Flegel was in the Führerbunker regularly to draw needed supplies from the first-aid room underground. She claimed in her statement to have seen Hitler, as well as Goebbels and his family, in the last few days. “At the end we were like a big family,” she wrote. “We were Germany, and we were going through the end of the Third Reich and of the war, concerning the outcome of which we had hoped, up to the end, for a favorable and tolerable issue.” Flegel made it clear that she learned on April 30, 1945, that Hitler was dead. She stated as fact that Hitler’s body was burned in the garden of the Reich Chancellery.82
Remarkably, US military counter-intelligence attached a transmittal form dated Dec. 1, 1945, sending Flegel’s statement to the commanding officer, Headquarters Region III, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps, US Army, in Berlin. The attachment noted, “The writer of this document implies the belief that the two caskets contained the bodies of HITLER and his mistress, BRAUN. No evaluation of this ‘belief’ can be ventured by this office.”83 That US military intelligence would not vouch for the authenticity of a Red Cross registered nurse’s statement that Hitler and Eva Braun were dead was an important statement that they lacked proof. That US military intelligence would discount the nurse’s statement suggests a conclusion either that those claiming to be eyewitnesses to Hitler’s last days in the Führerbunker had been deceived or were lying outright.
As early as October 1945, a US military field intelligence report clearly stated that family close to Eva Braun were making statements suggesting they had positive and reliable information that Hitler had escaped. A US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) report dated Oct. 13, 1945, filed in Becknang, Germany, reported on an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Hans Fegelein, the parents of SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, a Nazi officer in the Waffen-SS who had married Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl Braun, and was a trusted member of Hitler’s inner circle. According to the CIC field report, Hans Fegelein told US military intelligence investigators, “I think I can say with certainty that the Führer is alive. I have received word through a special courier.” The report goes on to detail the further assertions Hans Fegelein made in the interview:
“Believe me, the Führer is sure to return.”
“I got a message through a special messenger. That was not while the war was still in progress. That was not before the death of the Führer was announced, either; it was later, after the capitulation, after his death had already been announced, that I got this message by special courier. My son hinted that he is with the Führer and that the Führer is still alive.”
“Yes, I am positive of it, for my son Hermann sent me a courier after the capitulation.”
“Yes, at this time they were still in Germany. The courier told me that Hermann [Fegelein] had said to say, ‘The Führer and I are safe and well. Don’t worry about me; you will get further word from me, even if it is not for some time.’ This man, and SS Strumbannführer, also said that on the day when the Führer, Herman, and Eva Braun left Berlin—I think with [Hans] Bauer, Hitler’s pilot—there was a sharp counter-attack in Berlin in order to win a flying strip where they could take off.”84
Also remarkable in this report is that official Nazi public reports had announced that Hermann Fegelein—despite his close relation to Hitler as the brother-in-law of Eva Braun—had been shot for desertion on April 28, 1945, two days before Hitler and Eva Braun’s supposed dual suicide. According to the official Nazi story, Fegelein had been found in civilian clothes trying to escape Berlin. When he was apprehended by Nazi troops, Hitler was furious at Fegelein’s disloyalty and had him executed. Here, US military intelligence, by reporting the above statements of Fegelein’s father, was suggesting Fegelein’s death might have been staged to cover up the role Fegelein played in helping Hitler and Eva Braun escape.
Walter Werner Hirschfeld, a former German SS officer working for the 307th Counter Intelligence Corps at Headquarters Seventh Army and the military intelligence officer who questioned Hans Fegelein, found the statements hard to believe. Consider the following exchange:
Hirschfeld: “But that all sounds so unreal. Even many SS officers state that the Führer is dead and his body was burned.”
Hans Fegelein: “Don’t let yourself be taken in by propaganda. They are all trusted and true SS men who have orders to make these statements. Dönitz (Admiral, Chief of Fleet; took over government after death of Hitler was announced) probably got orders to make such statements.
And again:
Hans Fegelein: “When I spoke of a courier before, I was referring to the Scharführer or Oberscharführer [General Hermann] Reincke. The latter left Berlin by plane the night before Berlin fell, bringing with him the possessions of my son, Hermann. He brought from my son word that my son and the Führer were safe and sound, and that he, my son, would arrive in Fischhorn (near Zell am See, Austria) the next day.”
And again:
Hans Fegelein: “The Strumbannführer of whom I have told you, whose name I did not ask and therefore do not know—in any case he did not belong to my son’s staff, nor to the Führer’s staff, for then I surely would have known him—appeared in Fischhorn on the day of the capitulation or the day after, and he told me that the Führer and my son Herman had traveled or flown out of Berlin.”
“According to what the Strumbannführer told me, they fought to clear a place from which the plane could take off. Don’t let yourself be taken in by rumors; they are saying that my son was shot on orders of Hitler because he was found running around in civilian clothes. That is nonsense. I know positively that the Führer would never have done such a thing. Do not be taken in by those other rumors either, which state that the Führer and Eva Braun poisoned themselves and were burned in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. None of that is true.
Hans Fegelein advised US military intelligence, “Keep your eye on South America.”85
Hirschfeld: “Where in South America could the Führer be, then; that wouldn’t work, they would certainly be recognized.”
Hans Fegelein: “It would work, all right; and they have methods of getting there. There were certainly plenty of submarines available. I think the Japanese also helped. They had once planned to go to Japan.
Hirschfeld: “But now Japan is also defeated.”
Hans Fegelein: “Yes, they must have considered that, and decided against it for that reason. Yes, you are right; they are in Argentina.”86
The documents accompanying the interview with Hans Fegelein make clear that US military intelligence believed he had received the message he described and that Fegelein’s account was considered credible.
Intelligence reports: Hitler in Argentina
On September 25, 1945, John V. Lapurke, a special agent in the US Counter Intelligence Corps in Austria, filed a highly credible report that Hitler had escaped to Argentina. The first two points of Lapurke’s report explain how the information was developed in Austria:
1. On 25 September 1945, GLOCKEL Walter, Personnel Director of the Steyr Auto Works, Steyr, Oberoesterreich, informed this Office that he met Fredrich VON LEON, a former director of the Mauser Arms Works, Berlin, Germany, on 20 September 1945 in Steyr, Bezirk S
tery. VON LEON told GLOCKEL that he had heard from a friend of his in Berlin that ADOLF HITLER is now a guest of one EICHHORN, living on a farm called LA FALDA, in Argentina. HITLER’s host, Señor EICHHORN is an Argentinian of German Descent and is an ardent admirer of Nazi philosophy. EICHHORN is alleged to be an intimate friend of HITLER.
2. According to VON LEON’s story, ADOLF HITLER reached Argentina by a German submarine and while on route to Argentina, a famous plastic surgeon remolded HITLER’s facial features.87
As we shall learn in Chapter Five, Walter and Ida Bonfert Eichhorn were long-standing friends of Adolf Hitler, dating back to 1923 and the famous Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Germany, that ended with Hitler being arrested and charged for high treason, with his conviction resulting in 264 days of incarceration in Landsberg Prison, where he wrote his famous autobiographical polemic Mein Kampf. After Hitler ascended to be Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Eichhorns, when visiting Germany from Argentina, were frequently honored by Hitler as lunch guests. The intimacy of the friendship is evidenced by the frequently told story that the Eichhorns opened their checkbook to Hitler as he struggled through the criminal process following the failed Hitler-led Nazi insurrection in 1923.
At the end of World War II, the FBI joined US military intelligence in the search for Hitler. The FBI website, in declassifying the FBI records in “the vault” regarding Hitler, notes: “In the aftermath of Germany’s surrender in 1945, western Allied forces suspected that Hitler had committed suicide but did not immediately find evidence of his death. At the time, it was feared that Hitler may have escaped in the closing days of the war, and searches were made to determine whether he was still alive. FBI files indicate that the Bureau investigated some of the rumors of Hitler’s survival.”88
A letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, dated Nov. 13, 1945, makes it clear that the FBI had credible information that Hitler had escaped to Argentina with the help of Walter and Ida Bonfert Eichhorn. Hoover’s letter began by disclosing that the Strategic Services Unit of the War Department reported to the FBI on Oct. 23, 1945, information concerning the possibility of a “Hitler Hideout” in Argentina. Hoover’s letter detailed the following points from the Strategic Services Unit investigation:
One Mrs. Eichhorn, reported to be a reputable member of Argentinian society and the proprietor of the largest spa hotel in La Falda, Argentina, made the following observations:
a. That even before the Nazi Party was founded, she made available to Goebbels her entire bank account which, at the time, amounted approximately to thirty thousand marks, which money was to be used for propaganda purposes;
b. That she and her family had been enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler since the Nazi Party was founded;
c. That this voluntary support of the Nazi Party was never forgotten by Hitler and that during the years after he came into power her friendship with Hitler became so close that she and members of her family lived with Hitler in the same hotel on the occasion of their annual visit to Germany;
d. That if Hitler should at any time get into difficulty wherein it was necessary for him to find a safe retreat, he would find such safe retreat at her hotel (La Falda) where they had already made the necessary preparations.89
The highly specific nature of the intelligence information presented here and the fact that the letter was authored by J. Edgar Hoover himself attests to the credibility the FBI gave the report. The general impression is that while the FBI could not prove Hitler was in Argentina, J. Edgar Hoover wanted to put the US Embassy in Buenos Aires on alert because the FBI suspected he was in Argentina and wanted the US Embassy personnel in Buenos Aires to know where to look to find him. Hoover’s letter proves the FBI had taken the tip about Walter and Ida Bonfert Eichhorn seriously enough to investigate their background and alert the US Embassy in Buenos Aires to be on the watch for these two particular Argentinian citizens. Hoover, typically very cautious, would surely only write a letter like this if he believed the information conveyed was of sufficient seriousness that he had no choice but to hand off the lead to the appropriate US officials in a position to take action.
Eisenhower, “Hitler escaped”
On Monday, October 8, 1945, the US military newspaper The Stars and Stripes published a shocking statement by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. The short piece, published in a separate box buried in the middle of a report on pending war crime charges to be brought against Nazi Rudolph Hess and baseball scores from the United States, ran with a headline, “Ike Believes Hitler Lives.” The short piece was datelined from London on October 7, 1945. It read: “There is ‘reason to believe’ that Hitler may still be alive, according to a remark made by Gen. Eisenhower to Dutch newspapermen. The general’s statement reversed his previous opinion that Hitler was dead.”90
The evidence is that US military intelligence in the Counter Intelligence Corps, the FBI, and even the top commander of the US military in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, all had reason to doubt the official story that Hitler and Eva Braun had died in the Führerbunker on April 30, 1945. Still, the cover-up story that Hitler and Eva Braun died in Berlin ultimately gained acceptance to the point where today the story is the only politically correct version of Hitler’s demise not derided by professional historians. How did Trevor-Roper’s account become authoritative, despite the obvious inconsistencies between the various eyewitness accounts we saw amply documented in the last chapter?
Trevor-Roper’s “facts”
Among the declassified US military intelligence papers on file at the National Archives are a handwritten and typed version of Trevor-Roper’s narrative summarized by Major Edward L. Saxe, who is identified as “Chief, GSC,” in the US Army General Services Center, in Germany. It appears Saxe was tasked with preparing for comment and approval Trevor-Roper’s major findings before he completed his manuscript, leading to the publication of his book, The Last Days of Hitler, in 1947. Saxe’s memo is dated October 9, 1945, representing a time span of only eight days after the US Army first issued orders asking for US military yet in the field in Germany to cooperate with Trevor-Roper’s investigation.
In the author’s preface to the first 1947 publication of his book, Trevor-Roper notes that the idea for his investigation dated to September 1945, when General Dick White, at that time the commander of British military intelligence, invited Trevor-Roper to undertake the study.91 Saxe’s draft of Trevor-Roper’s proposed findings, dated October 9, 1945, suggests Trevor-Roper took less than a month to complete a study in which questions have remained open even to today. In this short time between some unspecified date in September 1945, when Trevor-Roper accepted the assignment, and October 9, 1945, when Saxe could write a memo summarizing Trevor-Roper’s conclusions, we are to believe Trevor-Roper went into the field to locate eyewitnesses, conducted his interviews, and had enough time to draw conclusions. The hastiness of Trevor-Roper’s study suggests the main points of his conclusion could possibly have been derived even before he accepted the assignment.
The first sentence of Saxe’s summary makes it clear that Trevor-Roper’s major conclusions were carved in stone after only three weeks. Saxe wrote:
A detailed investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Adolf Hitler has been conducted by Major Trevor-Roper, acting on behalf of the Counter Intelligence War Room and British Army of the Rhine and assisted by this Division. This investigation, which has been underway for three weeks, has included examination of practically all evidence available in the US, British, and French Zones of Occupation.92
As noted in the previous chapter, Trevor-Roper’s investigation had to have been shortened when he realized the Russians would not allow him to question the Führerbunker eyewitnesses in prison in Moscow, and the Americans appeared willing to share with him only written transcripts of the interviews US military intelligence had conducted with the Führerbunker eyewitnesses in US captivity.
Saxe acknowledged in his second point that Trevor-Roper’s investigation “as a whole is not yet considered to be complete, owing to the difficulties involved in locating all available witnesses.” Yet, in the next sentence, Saxe asserts that Trevor-Roper has carefully cross-examined several unnamed “material witnesses,” permitting him to have established “sufficiently” what were listed as the following facts. Among those facts were:
• That on the night of 29 April, Hitler decided to commit suicide on the following day. He took leave of his servants at 0230 hours on 30 April and preparations were made for the destruction of his body and that of Eva Braun on the morning of 30 April.
• That on 30 April at 1430 hours Hitler took leave of his personal staff in the bunker and almost immediately afterwards shot himself while in his private room. Eva Braun committed suicide at the same time, probably by poisoning.
• That the bodies were then carried out of the bunker and burned, as arranged, in the garden.
As a key eyewitness, Saxe cited Hitler’s chauffeur, Erich Kempka, whose testimony we previously discussed as being highly suspect. Saxe admits the stories Trevor-Roper was relying upon being accurate eyewitness testimony were “all fragmentary”. But Sax insists these fragmentary stories “form a consistent pattern which has been checked by detailed cross-examination.” Saxe does not consider the possibility that the witnesses were giving fragmentary accounts because they were relating a cover story made up by the witnesses to hide the truth that Hitler had escaped. In concluding, Saxe admitted the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun “have not, of course, been identified.” Yet he asserted, “It is to be noted that certain alternative stories which have gained currency since the fall of Berlin have been examined and have been found to rest on no valid evidence.”
Hunting Hitler Page 7