Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

the KGB from a plot of land near a garage in Magdeburg, and burnt. The remains had, it was said, been buried there along with those of Eva Braun, the Goebbels family, and (probably) General Hans Krebs in 1946 and were now to be exhumed because of the danger of discovery through building work on the site. (See ‘Hitlers Hollenfahrt’, Der Spiegel, 14/1995, 170–87, 15/1995, 172–86; also Norman Stone, ‘Hitler, ein Gespenst in den Archiven’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 April 1995; Alexander Lesser, ‘Russians wanted to sell “Hitler skull” story’, Jerusalem Report, 11 March 1993; ‘Kremlin “secretly burned Hitler’s remains”’, Guardian, 4 April 1995; ‘Secret of Hitler’s ashes revealed in Soviet archive’, New York Post, 27 January 2000.) The Soviet evidence was most extensively examined in Petrova and Watson, and was also the subject of a BBC TV documentary, optimistically entitled ‘Hitler’s Death: The Final Report’, in April 1995. Apart from the jawbone, however, the only additional alleged remains of Hitler that have come to light are part of a skull discovered in 1946 (which has never been conclusively identified as Hitler’s). It is unclear how this skull related to the remains purported to have been found in May 1945 and exhumed — presumably headless — in Magdeburg in 1970. If, of course, the Soviets never had Hitler’s body in the first place, the post-Cold War revelations of the disposal of his remains have no standing. Whichever remains they buried in Magdeburg then dug up and burnt, it is unlikely that they were those of Hitler. In any event, the matter is chiefly of relevance to interpretations of Soviet post-war actions rather than to a study of Hitler’s life.

2. Joachimsthaler, 334.

3. Joachimsthaler, 335.

4. Joachimsthaler, 339, 346–7, 349.

5. Joachimsthaler, 356–7; Galante, 162 (Gunsche).

6. Joachimsthaler, 274–6; Trevor-Roper, 238–9.

7. Joachimsthaler, 280–81.

8. Joachimsthaler, 277–8.

9. Joachimsthaler, 281 –3.

10. Domarus, 2250 and notes 250, 252; Joachimsthaler, 282–3.

11. Trevor-Roper, 240–41.

12. Joachimsthaler, 284–5; see also 278–80.

13. Trevor-Roper, 241–3; Reuth, Goebbels, 613–14; Irving, Goebbels, 531–3.

14. See Joachimsthaler, 350.

15. Trevor-Roper, 243–7; Lang, Der Sekretdr, 340–50, 436–40. The skeletons were uncovered during work on a building site in 1972. It was possible to identify Bormann and Stumpfegger with almost total certainty through dental records and pathological examination.

16. Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende 1945, 101. And see Doenitz, Memoirs, ch.22.

17. DZW, vi.748–58.

18. Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende 103.

19. DZW, vi.775–8; Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende, 103.

20. Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende, 107–8.

21. Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende, 178–9 (Dok.19); KTB OKW, vi, 1478–84.

22. KTB OKW, vi, 1482.

23. The signing took place according to western European time at 11.16p.m. on 8 May; according to central European time (German summer time) at 0.16a.m. on 9 May (Domarus, 2252, n.259).

24. KTB OKW, vi, 1485–6; Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende, 180–81 (Dok.20).

25. KTB OKW, vi, 1281–2; Muller and Ueberschar, Kriegsende, 181 (Dok.21).

26. Padfield, Himmler, 611.

27. Douglas M. Kelley, 22 Cells in Nuremberg, (1947), New York, 1961, 125–6; Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley. Hitler’s Labor Front Leader, Oxford/New York/Hamburg, 1988, 292–7.

28. Irving, Goring, 504–11; Kelley, 61.

29. Michael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945–46. A Documentary History, Boston New York, 1997, 57–70; 258–61.

30. Marrus, 258–60. For the pyschology behind Speer’s guilt-complex, see especially the aptly entitled book by Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth.

31. Wistrich, Wer war wer, 64, 73, 98, 141, 159, 268; Wei?, Biographisches Lexikon, 107, 125, 161, 228, 270, 451.

32. Wistrich, Wer war wer, 177–8; Wei?, Biographisches Lexikon, 304–5.

33. Kershaw, ‘Improvised Genocide’, 78.

34. For the post-war careers of many of those involved in the ‘euthanasia action’, see Ernst Klee, Was sie taten — Was sie wurden. Arzte, Juristen und andere Beteiligte am Kranken– oder Judenmord, Frankfurt am Main, 1986.

35. For use of the term, see Hans Mommsen, Von Weimar nach Auschwitz. Zur Geschichte Deutschlands in der Weltkriegsepoche, Stuttgart, 1999, 247.

36. Klemperer, ii.766.

37. Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany. The Record of a Visit, London, 1947, 28.

38. Klemperer, ii.790.

39. Manchester Guardian, 2 May 1945.

LIST OF WORKS CITED

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Adam, Uwe Dietrich, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich, Dusseldorf, 1972.

——— ‘Wie spontan war der Pogrom?’, in Walter H. Pehle (ed.), Der Judenpogrom. Von der ‘Reichskristallnacht’ zum Volkermord, Frankfurt am Main, 1988, 74–93.

Adler, H. G., Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland, Tubingen, 1974.

Adolf Hitler: Monologe im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941–1944. Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, 1980.

Aigner, Dietrich, Das Ringen um England, Munich/Esslingen, 1969.

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Allbritton, William T., and Mitcham, Samuel W. Jr, ‘SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer und Generaloberst der Waffen-SS Joseph (Sepp) Dietrich’, in Gerd Ueberschar (ed.), Hitlers militarische Elite, Bd. II. Vom Kriegsbeginn zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, 37–44.

Allen, William Sheridan, ‘Die deutsche Offentlichkeit und die “Reichskristallnacht” — Konflikte zwischen Werthierarchie und Propaganda im Dritten Reich’, in Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beitrage zur