The Day of Hitler's Death: Even Now, New Glimpses
By STEPHEN KINZER
Published: May 4, 1995
BERLIN, May 3— Fifty years ago this week, with his "thousand-year Reich" in ruins, Hitler committed suicide, ending a life that may have brought more suffering to more people than any other in history.
Because no clearly identifiable corpse was known to have been found, uncertainty about Hitler's fate persisted for years. But in recent weeks, new information has emerged that not only proves conclusively that the Nazi dictator killed himself in his underground bunker, but also illuminates details of the hours immediately before and after his death as well as the way the Soviets disposed of his remains a quarter-century later.
On April 28, Hitler received news that Mussolini had been captured by Partisans, shot and hanged upside-down in a Milan plaza. Determined to cheat his enemies, Hitler resolved to commit suicide, and ordered aides to burn his body beyond recognition afterward.
"My Fuhrer, why don't you go to the troops as a soldier?" his secretary, Traudl Junge, asked him.
"I can't do that," Hitler replied. "None of my people are prepared to shoot me, and I won't fall into the Russians' hands alive."
Hitler awoke early on the morning of April 30 and spoke with his private pilot, Hans Baur, who reported that he had prepared a plane capable of making a long-distance flight. He suggested that Hitler flee to Argentina, Japan, Greenland, Manchuria or Jerusalem, where admirers were supposedly ready to spirit him to a hideout in the Sahara.
Hitler declined the offer, and a few hours later dictated his final testament to Miss Junge.
"During these last three decades, all my thoughts and actions, and my entire life, have been moved solely by the love and fidelity I feel for my people," he said. "This has given me the strength to make the most difficult of decisions, the like of which no mortal has ever made before."
After finishing his dictation, Hitler and his wife of two days, Eva Braun, retired to their sitting room. At 3:30, a shot rang out. Artur Axmann, a Hitler Youth leader, entered the room moments later.
"Adolf Hitler sat on the right side of the sofa," Mr. Axmann recalled in one of several interviews he has given in recent weeks. "His upper body was leaning slightly to the side, with the head slumping down. His forehead and face were very white, and a trickle of blood was flowing down.
"I saw Eva Braun next to Hitler on the sofa. Her eyes were closed. There was no movement. She had poisoned herself, and appeared to be sleeping."
Aides took the two bodies outside, doused them with gasoline and burned them, continuing until they had used about 50 gallons.
In recent interviews, retired Soviet intelligence officers have confirmed what they refused to confirm for years: that they found and identified Hitler's remains. One officer, Gen. Leonid Siomonchuk, who later rose to the rank of general in the K.G.B., told German interviewers that he was present when Hitler's dentist was ordered to examine the corpse.
"At the beginning he was a bit shocked, unable to speak," General Siomonchuk recalled. "Then he said, 'Hitler is dead.' "
A document newly obtained from long-closed archives in Moscow includes an order that Hitler's remains be burned and that the ashes be dumped in the Elbe River.
A part of what may be Hitler's skull, with bullet hole, was removed before the cremation and shipped to Moscow. Before German television cameras, a Russian archivist, Alzha Borkovich, recently unwrapped it and held it in her hand.
"To tell you the truth," she said, "my hand is shaking
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