THE TRUTH ABOUT HITLER’S CHILDREN
By BOB HARTFORD
Sensational Discovery That Der Fuehrer Was a Father
Intelligence agents investigating reports that Adolf Hitler is still alive might well take a tip from the Bible, which advises:
“And a little child shall lead them.”
Not one child but two might lead them straight to the vanished Fuehrer and solve for all time history’s most baffling mystery.
For the Police Gazette has learned that Hitler and Eva Braun actually had two children, a boy and a girl. This was Hitler’s most carefully guarded secret and it was kept so well that it has never before been made public.
Here, as a Police Gazette exclusive, are the inside facts and previously-unpublished photographs from Eva Braun’s personal album of Der Fuehrer’s family.
These are the most important clues in the mystery of Hitler’s disappearance—a mystery which has baffled the best Intelligence agents of America, Britain, France and Russia.
The mystery goes back almost 12 years to the May Day when Russian troops crashed into Hitler’s last known hiding place, a concrete-and-steel bunker beneath Berlin’s Reichschancellery, and found the tyrant’s cupboard was bare.
Outside, in the bomb-leveled garden, lay the charred remains of Propaganda Minister Paul Goebbels, his family and numerous high Nazi officials. The funeral pyre was impressive. But the bodies of Der Fuehrer and Eva Braun, his long-time mistress and bride of a few hours, were not among them.
Since then, though a German court has declared Hitler legally dead and at least a dozen of his aides have sworn they saw his body, the rumors persist that Hitler lives.
This is the true story behind those rumors—
Eva Braun was a slim, trim, blue-eyed blonde of 19 when she met Hitler at Salzburg in the early 1930s. She was then working as secretary to Heinrich Hoffman, Hitler’s personal photographer.
Had Eva Investigated
Adolf was impressed with the Bavarian beauty, but before he made any advances he had her investigated—a typical Hitler precaution even in affairs of the heart.
He learned she was the daughter of a Munich school teacher, that she had two sisters and that she was a typical “girl of the people,” as he liked to refer to her in later years.
He wined and dined her handsomely and she was strongly attracted to the dark, stormy man with the strange dreams of glory and the passionate power to accomplish them. Soon Eva left her job at Hoffman’s studio, at Hitler’s suggestion, and toured Germany with him as he went from one secret Nazi party meeting to another.
As the party grew and strutted into the open, Hitler’s fortunes skyrocketed. He gave Eva jewels, furs, a Mercedes sports car, then a villa in Munich, a short drive from his palatial mountain fortress at Berchtesgaden.
Then she moved in with him, but their secret life became a public scandal that not even the clubs and guns of his goose-stepping Gestapo could suppress.
Eva got a diamond-encrusted engagement ring and wedding gifts, but no wedding. Hitler felt that the German people preferred a single man as their national idol. Besides, the creeping shadows of war and the pressure of world affairs made him forget Eva’s wishes.
The cheers of the mobs, the screams from the gas chambers and concentration camps drowned out the chimes of wedding bells.
Eva grew more and more depressed. In 1935, she wrote in her diary:
“The weather is gorgeous and I, the mistress of the world’s greatest man, have to sit at home alone, looking through a window. He has so little understanding and still makes me appear distant when his friends are around. Well, one makes one’s own bed … I guess it really is my fault, but it is just one of those things for which one likes to blame someone else.”
Hitler also liked to look out the windows of his Berchtesgaden retreat and the swank Berlin apartment he and Eva shared. When he saw an attractive fraulein—or even an attractive young frau—passing by, he often would send out his valet or one of his bodyguards to invite her in “for a cup of tea.”
Eva was never invited to these intimate “tea parties.” Nor did she mention them in her diary, though she certainly knew about them. She was content in the knowledge that amorous Adolf always returned to her.
Another excerpt from the diary reveals a note of desperation.
“I have just sent him a letter, one that is decisive for me,” she wrote. “Will he consider it as important as I do? Well, we’ll see. If I don’t get an answer by tonight, I’ll take my 25 pills and lie down peacefully.
“Is it a sign of the terrific love of which he assures me that he hasn’t spoken a kind word to me for three months? Agreed that he’s been busy with political problems, but have not things eased off?”
Apparently, Eva received an answer to her letter, for she didn’t swallow the deadly pills.
She attempted suicide in 1936, however, after Hitler forced her to submit to an abortion. She made another suicide try in 1937 following a similar operation. This time, she left a note saying she no longer wished to live as Hitler’s mistress “without the joy of raising a family.”
Apparently these incidents changed Hitler’s outlook on offspring.
He began escorting Eva to Berlin social events and parties and introduced her to his closest associates. In 1938, she vanished from public. When she again moved into the Berchtesgaden palace in 1940, she was accompanied by two small children—a girl, about 1 1/2, and a 6-month-old baby boy.
Hitler told his intimates that the children belonged to one of Eva’s friends.
Outwardly, Hitler’s friends pretended to believe the little boy and girl were the children of one of Eva’s friends, but they couldn’t miss the change which fatherhood made in Der Fuehrer.
A Proud and Loving Papa
He was with the babies constantly during his moments of relaxation. He showered them with hugs, kisses and expensive presents. He played with them as often as he could and tucked them in bed at night.
To his credit, it can be said that the power-crazed butcher was a proud and loving papa.
When World War II erupted to full force and Hitler had little time for his tots, he invited Nazi bigwigs like Martin Bormann and Dr. Goebbels to bring their own youngsters to play with the babies in the Berchtesgaden nursery, guarded by hand-picked SS men with tommy guns.
This nursery probably was the most peaceful spot in Germany during that fateful time.
In April, 1945, while Russian tanks were forming a ring of steel and flames around Berlin, Hitler sent two of his most trusted aides to Berchtesgaden for the children. They brought the youngsters safely to a Salzburg monastery and the good monks took them in, never learning the true identities of the little fugitives.
In the days before the bright lights of glory went out forever for Adolf Hitler, his underground bunker was the scene of two gay parties.
The first was on April 20, 1945, when he celebrated his 56th birthday.
As Russian shells rocked the seven-foot thickness of steel-enforced concrete above their heads, the guests drank coffee and champagne. Hitler drank cup after cup of tea. Eva Braun proposed a birthday toast. “Faithful to the end,” was the party’s theme.
The end came 10 days later—and with it the second party.
At midnight on April 29, a small group of Hitler fanatics gathered in the map room of the bunker to see Eva Braun’s wish finally come true. She and Hitler were married by Gauleiter Walter Wagner, who read the civil ceremony and saw that the names were properly signed on the civil register.
Witnesses included Hitler’s deputy, Martin Bormann; Dr. Goebbels, Mrs. Goebbels and Hitler’s personal valet, Heinz Linge.
The ceremony was over by 12:07 a.m., April 30, and the champagne corks popped a last defiance to the thunder of shells outside.
A few hours later, German General Hans Krebs was dispatched to the headquarters of Russian Field Marshal Gregory Zhukov. His mission was to attempt to negotiate the surrender of Berlin
.
Krebs told the Russian commander that Hitler had married Eva Braun and that bride and groom then had committed suicide.
“What!” exclaimed Zhukov in understandable surprise. “Hitler got married and then killed himself? Why did he bother getting married if he was going to commit suicide?”
“He married Fraulein Braun so their children would be legitimate before they died,” replied Gen. Krebs with a straight face.
Zhukov rejected Krebs’ terms and demanded unconditional surrender. Tired and dejected, Krebs returned to the Reichschancellery bunker. Russian tanks followed within a few more hours. The first Red officers on the scene searched the empty bunker and hunted for Der Fuehrer among the bodies in the garden.
Hitler’s valet, his personal pilot and several other aides were captured. All of them swore that Hitler put the muzzle of a 7.65 Walther pistol in his mouth and blew out his brains a few seconds after his bride swallowed a capsule of poison and died sitting beside him. The “witnesses” said the bodies were burned with gasoline, then buried in a shell hole in the garden. But no such corpses ever were found.
After an intensive search and investigation, Marshal Zhukov informed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander:
“We have found no corpse that could be Hitler’s. Hitler had good opportunities of getting away. He could have taken off at the very last moment for there was an airfield at his disposal.”
Also among the missing was the mystery man, Martin Bormann. Hitler’s valet claimed Bormann tried to escape in a Nazi tank which was blown up by Red artillery fire but, once again, there was no proof.
Intelligence officers began unearthing reports that Adolf and Eva were parents. In a few days, Allied agents found the monastery near Salzburg. But the children were gone. No one knew where they were or who had taken them.
Then, on June 10, 1945, a British agent reported he had undisputable proof that the children were spirited out of Germany to a hideout in Sweden a week before Germany’s collapse.
From Sweden, they were taken to Lisbon, Portugal, the agent said.
Portugal had been a good friend to Nazi Germany and had declared a day of nationwide mourning when Hitler’s “death” was announced. Lisbon had been a nest of Nazi spies during the war and many top Nazis fled there afterwards.
On November 15, 1945, US Army intelligence agents found the family albums of Hitler and Eva Braun. The albums and a treasure in cash and gems were buried in a secluded spot on the outskirts of Frankfort-on-Main.
Photos of Children Found
As soon as they looked through the dozens of candid photos, the agents knew they had struck pay dirt. Here were the first pictures of Hitler and the children. Copies were sent to undercover agents throughout the world and the secret search shifted into high gear.
Undercover agents tracked the children through a number of towns and villages in Portugal. At times, the trail looked hot but it wound up at a dead end. The children had been taken out of Portugal, purportedly bound for Argentina.
Today, in South America and Africa, wherever friendly nations have sheltered fleeing Nazis, the hunt continues without letup though it has been 12 years from the day when Hitler “died.”
For the searchers are convinced that when they finally find the missing children—a girl now about 19, a boy about 17—they’ll learn what happened to Hitler and Eva Braun.
“HITLER IS MY FATHER”
by JOHN KERNEY
Shapely, blue-eyed Maria Lorento—whose Spanish-sounding name contrasts sharply with her blonde German looks—has made the sensational claim that she is Adolf Hitler’s daughter.
“I am certain Hitler was my father,” said Maria, who is living in a luxurious apartment in a fashionable section of Buenos Aires. “I have placed a claim at the Argentine Foreign Office to a fortune that Hitler deposited in this country. I feel that it rightly belongs to me.”
The Police Gazette has verified the fact that more than $20,000,000 was deposited in Argentina by the Nazis in 1944. It is known that a large portion of it was Hitler’s personal fortune.
Whether or not her claim is upheld, Maria’s story throws new light on the once closely guarded private life of the swaggering dictator who planned to conquer the world.
Several things have convinced Maria that Hitler was her father. Certain influential Argentinians have quietly told her so. There is an amazing resemblance between her and Hitler. And then there are memories of her childhood—a period of mystery and intrigue—and a series of odd incidents and coincidences that could only be explained if her father was indeed the once all-powerful Fuehrer.
Added to this is her strong physical resemblance to Hitler.
But apart from any evidence that Maria may produce to support her claim—the claim itself is not as fantastic as it sounds.
Hitler’s private life was always a closely kept secret. He believed the German people preferred a bachelor as their national idol, and so he remained single until the last fateful hours before defeat, when he married Eva Braun, his long-time mistress, in a simple, dramatic ceremony. So it was commonly believed that Hitler had no children.
But in March 1957, the Police Gazette obtained and published for the first time photographs and personal memoirs from Eva Braun’s private album. Those pictures prove that Hitler had at least two children—a boy and a girl.
Now comes Maria Lorento’s claim—and in view of the evidence in Eva’s album plus other facts now known about the stormy romance between Eva and the Fuehrer, Maria may provide another link in the mysterious story of Hitler’s private life.
Although there is proof that Hitler had children, their fate is as mysterious as that of the Fuehrer himself. They disappeared without trace. So did Hitler on that May Day thirteen years ago when Russian troops burst into his last known hiding place, a concrete-and-steel bunker beneath Berlin’s Reichschancellery, and found the cupboard bare.
Maria Lorento bears a striking resemblance to Hitler—the man she claims is her father.
The story that Maria now tells is typical of the mystery and intrigue that surrounded most of Hitler’s private affairs in the last years of his orgy of power.
Her first clear childhood memory is of living in the household of a post office employee named Ramon Lorento, in Balboa, Spain.
“I was quite young at the time,” she says. “The Lorentos treated me as one of their own children.”
But Maria gradually became aware that something strange was going on. She noticed that, while the Lorentos were typically Spanish in appearance, she was not.
And then there was a mysterious Englishman named William Adams.
Adams visited the Lorento family periodically, and Maria soon realized he was something more than a casual friend. At the end of each visit he would give money to Maria’s “father,” and he seemed to have some kind of authority over the Spanish postal official. His financial contributions and his quietly conducted conferences with the elder Lorentos seemed to have some connection with Maria.
“Soon after the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936,” recalled Maria, “Adams made a very special and hurried visit. Soon afterwards I was told that I was being sent to live with an aunt in France.”
Although she did not know it at the time, this was obviously a move by some mysterious guardian to get Maria out of the war area and into a place of safety.
Before Maria left, her “mother” handed her a bag which, says Maria, contained “a very large sum of money in silver coins and bills.”
And then, with a parting hug, the Spanish woman whispered to the girl: “Someday you will learn your true identity.”
Maria realized soon after reaching her “aunt” that the woman was not her aunt at all. At first the girl thought of going to the police, but then she remembered that she had been shipped out of Spain without papers. She decided that going to the police would only involve her in more trouble.
Shortly after her arrival in France Maria was sent to the Notr
e Dame de la Misericorde convent in Bergerde, near the large city of Bordeaux.
Time passed uneventfully until the outbreak of World War II. Then Maria had a call from the French police, and she had to reveal the fact that she had no papers.
The gendarmes, however, showed no surprise at this. They seemed to have some secret knowledge of her parentage. They told her roughly:
“We did not expect you to have papers because we know you are a German spy.”
They grilled Maria for several days, and then allowed her to return to the convent. But she was kept under strict surveillance.
The next momentous event in Maria’s life was the collapse of France. The Germans swept through the country and set up regional headquarters nearby. Again the police chief at Bordeaux sent for Maria—but this time she noticed a vast change.
Again some hidden hand had moved to shield her from the perils of war.
“I was overwhelmed with courtesies. I felt that this was the result of direct instructions from the German Command,” said Maria.
Maria was to return to Spain, and the police chief arranged with the Spanish Consul at Toulouse to grant her a passport. The Consul himself offered to escort Maria to Madrid. There she was introduced to a family who persuaded her to go with them to Argentina.
In Buenos Aires several people have approached Maria and told her that she is Hitler’s daughter—and they have told of the large sums of money the Nazi dictator sent to Argentina for investment.
Secret documents seized by the Allies show Hitler sent $20,000,000 for deposit in South America.
Over a year ago, Maria wrote to the Argentine Foreign Office giving her life history and laying claim to Hitler’s fortune.
“I was interviewed by the authorities,” she says. “But nothing was done despite my legitimate claim.”
One other thing has since happened that Maria believes indicates that her claim is valid.
Hitler Is Alive! Page 13