Did Hitler Escape? DNA Test Refueled Controversy

What became of Hitler’s remains is still an open historical question and it was thought the answer could lie in the Russian archives in Moscow, where among other artifacts, there is a piece of human skull with a bullet wound that the Russians say is that of Adolf Hitler.

The History Channel brought Bellantoni on a fact-finding mission from Germany to Moscow in search of evidence. He conducted an exploratory dig through a patch of earth where Hitler’s remains were said to have been reburied by the Soviets in the decades after World War II, searching for bone fragments. He also gained access to the Russian national archives, where he reviewed documents related to the Soviets’ handling of Hitler’s remains, and examined and gained DNA evidence from blood and bone fragments the Russians have said for decades belonged to the Nazi dictator.

The remains of the above-ground portion of the Führerbunker in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Entrance is to the left and circular structure was for generators and ventilation.

Different versions of Hitler’s fate were presented by the Soviet Union according to its political desires. In the years immediately following 1945, the Soviets maintained Hitler was not dead, but had fled and was being shielded by former western allies. This worked for a time to cause western authorities some doubt. The chief of the U.S. trial counsel at Nuremberg, Thomas J. Dodd, said: “No one can say he is dead.” When President Truman asked Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 whether or not Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, ‘No’. However, by 11 May 1945, the Soviets had already had Hitler’s dentist, Hugo Blaschke, and his dental technician confirm the dental remains found were Hitler’s and Braun’s. In November 1945, Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin (and later head of MI5 and MI6 in succession), had their agent, Hugh Trevor-Roper, investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. His findings as to Hitler’s last days and suicide were written in a report and published in book form in 1947. 

In 1970, the SMERSH facility, by then controlled by the KGB, was scheduled to be handed over to the East German government. Fearing that a known Hitler burial site might become a Neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to destroy the remains that had been buried in Magdeburg on 21 February 1946. A Soviet KGB team was given detailed burial charts. On 4 April 1970 they secretly exhumed five wooden boxes containing the remains of “10 or 11 bodies … in an advanced state of decay”. The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the nearby Elbe.