Frau Traudl Junge, one of the secretaries present, recalled that Hitler’s eyes,
“seemed to be looking far away, beyond the walls of the bunker.”
At about three P.M. on April 30, members of Hitler’s entourage heard a single shot from their leader’squarters.Some time later, Hitler’s valet, SS Sturmbannfuehrer Heinz Linge, and an orderly emerged with ablanket-covered body. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, head of the Nazi Party and the mostpowerful man in the Reich after Hitler, followed with the body of a woman.The corpses were carried up to a garden area, placed in a shell crater, and burned with gasoline.However, these remains were never found, reportedly due to the constant shelling.By evening, a Soviet flag was flying atop the Reichstag.It appeared that Hitler and his Third Reich were finished.
THE ESCAPE OF ADOLF HITLERIt was well known and publicly reported that Hitler often made use of doubles, men who closelyresembled him, for use at certain public presentations. Pauline Koehler, a maid at Hitler’s Berghof inBerchtesgaden, insisted that she knew of at least three men who doubled for Hitler.Did Hitler make use of one fi nal double in the bunker?After all, the few persons who testified that he was dead were ardent Nazis who were eager to pleasetheir captors—whether Russian, British, or American—with accounts of the leader’s death. Was thestrange execution of Eva Braun’s brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein, due to his knowledge of Hitler’sescape plan with the use of a double?Fegelein had left the bunker but protested when captured by an SS search party that he planned toreturn. He was later shot by a firing squad in the chancellery garden for desertion.Yet, days earlier, Hitler had urged others in the bunker to flee.“Get out! Get out!” he cried. “Go to South Germany. I’ll stay here. It is all over anyhow.”Why make Fegelein the exception?Evidence that Fegelein was privy to secret knowledge comes from Kristina Reiman, an actress whomet with Fegelein in Berlin on April 27.She told author Glenn B. Infield,“He was very worried. We had several drinks together and he kept repeating that there were twoHitlers in Berlin.... I thought he was drunk. Just before he left me, however, he said that if the fuehrerever discovered that he, Fegelein, knew his secret, Hitler would kill him.”
To fake Hitler’s death would have been simple.A Hitler double could have been secreted into the bunker any time prior to his reported suicide. AfterHitler got Eva to take poison—or a dead duplicate Eva brought in—the double, dressed in the
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THanks for this.