History Channel has been on in the background today and they have been running these shows of the dudes trying to chase down Hitler in Argentina.

Did he make it out of Germany after the war or are these shows a bunch of crap?

I thought he died in a bunker.

No body ever found. Body the Russians claimed was his was not, as was a photo. All the accounts say he committed suicide in the bunker, and his body burned outside it. Hard to believe that all of the hundreds of people who would have been in and out of the bunker at the time would keep his escape a secret for the rest of their lives.

CanyonAg is right. No body ever found but every account we have claims he committed suicide. Most of the Nazis that did escape to South America had to navigate through postwar Europe for months before getting out. No way Hitler would have been able to escape detection, let alone make it out of Berlin.

My father in law is watching this crap right now and is convinced he escaped (based on the first 30 minutes. I'll have to hear about this for at least the next six months.......he gets suckered in on shows like this and ends up believing whatever he sees on History Channel (amongst others).

That show that aired a few years ago and talked about finding a mermaid washed up on the beach was the bane of my existence for months.

I remember lots of tabloid press like the Enquirer with the same headlines.

Does he think the ancient aliens helped?

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Does he think the ancient aliens helped?

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Don't you go putting it past him.

He was 100% convinced the Iraqi dinar collapse/recovery was going to make him a multi-millionaire.

Dude is a sucker with a capital S.

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watching this crap

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Have you actually WATCHED it? I watched the first 15 minutes of it, plan to watch more with my wife, and have already set the second episode to tape.

Like everyone here, I wasn't there. Just because something doesn't make sense at face value doesn't mean it didn't happen that way. There were a lot of folks in intelligence organizations in the 40s and 50s that either believed Hitler got out or were at least open to the suggestion. What agenda could they possibly have for making that up?

Again, watch the show before making absurd comments. If its bunk, then that will become evident in due time.

I had a conversation the other day that went something like this:

Friend: Yeah, that guy died.
Me: No, he didn't.
Friend: Yes, he did.
Me: No, he didn't -- you said that a while back but his daughter said on a FB post he was still alive.
Friend: Dude, I saw his obit.
Me: He must have gotten better.
Friend: (Laughs)
Me: She wouldn't make that up -- don't know what obit you saw, but you're clearly mistaken.

Was my friend lying? No. I don't know what he saw, but he was mistaken. Yet he had spread that around to others (meaning well) and they all believed it. This is a very simple example of how people can see the same things and come to different conclusions, or be mislead by the smallest piece of information (for whatever reason).

We don't know what, if any, agenda the Russians had when they burned things in Berlin. Maybe some Major or Colonel let him escape and then lied about it to keep his own butt out of the fryer. Why would anyone here take the word of people that, 30 years ago, you would have laughed at any serious assertion they made about anything?

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There were a lot of folks in intelligence organizations in the 40s and 50s that either believed Hitler got out or were at least open to the suggestion. What agenda could they possibly have for making that up?

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Conspiracy theories are fun! Also, this is the kind of thing that always gets good ratings for the History channel. It's bad history, but lots of fun for the general audience.

Why on earth would a Russian Major or Colonel let Hitler escape?

The theory that Hitler escaped to South America is bunk. No credible historian of WWII or the Third Reich gives any weight to the idea. If the evidence was there it would have been found years ago. Everything we know about the last days of the war leads us to believe he committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945.

Found him:

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Everything we know about the last days of the war leads us to believe he committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945.

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Fine. Please state ALL the evidence you know. FBI and CIA personnel during the decade after the war apparently didn't take the historians you speak of too seriously.

I'm going to watch with an open mind. If it falls flat, then so be it.

We let Bin Laden get away several times in the 90's and later at Tora Bora. Other Nazis escaped Germany. I don't have a lot of faith in the word of the Soviets.

What would have been his best chance -- to fly out with Hanna Reisch?

Even had this happened, how much chance is there that those left in the bunker would have, or could have, maintained a conspiracy of silence? The Germans were not the only ones who had 'vays off makink you talk'.

While one of Hitler's doubles' corpse could have been planted for veracity, there is the overwhelming (says I) likelihood that even if everything worked perfectly toward extracting him from Berlin, Hitler was incapable of maintaining an obscure lifestyle afterward. To him it was not his life that was paramount, but his message.

Please let us know what % of FBI (who aren't even involved in international espionage except as it relates to domestic issues) and CIA agents believe Hitler is in Argentina. And why they believe that. An appeal to authority carries no real weight if the authority has no standing with his or her peers.

If the Soviets covered up anything, it would have been that they captured him and tortured him to death in a Gulag. No way they covered up an escape, no way in Hades they aided it.

Given Hitler's personality, I 100% believe he would choose suicide to capture. And I don't think he would have attempted an escape, if there were the slightest chance of capture. Remember, his pilot landed a Feisler Storch in the street a few days before, offering to fly him out.

I have pretty much given up on the "history" channel due to the insane amount of drama laced "documentaries" that they have schlocked all of their name. I give them a chance every now and then due to interest, but this is another in a long line of hook programming that shows that the channel has lost touch with the historical and embraced the theatrics of television.

Oak Island
Ancient Aliens
Hunt for Giants
Roanoke
Hunting Hitler

Done with it. If I wanted to watch soap operas, I'd watch soap operas. When I want to watch aliens, I will flip over to SciFy. When I want to learn some history, I will go read a book.

I tend to believe the statements given by Traudl Junge, Rochus Misch, Heinz Linge and others in the bunker on Apr. 30th.

Well if he is in Argentina, he is probably missing his jaw bone as it probably sits in a drawer in Moscow, it was verified by dental records but has not been DNA tested as far as I know.

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Everything we know about the last days of the war leads us to believe he committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945.

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Fine. Please state ALL the evidence you know. FBI and CIA personnel during the decade after the war apparently didn't take the historians you speak of too seriously.

I'm going to watch with an open mind. If it falls flat, then so be it.

We let Bin Laden get away several times in the 90's and later at Tora Bora. Other Nazis escaped Germany. I don't have a lot of faith in the word of the Soviets.

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Since the accepted theory is that he committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin in 1945, it's actually up to YOU to provide all the evidence that YOU know to somehow disprove the accepted theory. It's not up to us to provide more evidence to reprove or verify the theory that's already accepted by 99.99999999% of the world.



And a couple of skeptical CIA agents doesn't qualify as "evidence" that he survived and somehow snuck out of Germany with two of the largest armies in the history of the world having him virtually surrounded. He was also one of the most recognizable figures in the world at that time. Him sneaking through enemy lines and checkpoints would have been a virtual impossibility (other more obscure Nazi's could have done this and did). The idea of someone with that kind of maniacal ego, moving quietly to the Argentine countryside to sip coffee for the rest of his days without making a peep is also laughable. The Jews hunted down just about every key figure that they could confirm escaped (with the exception of the psycho doctor), and to this day, are still arresting and trying obscure, random, short time guards from the camps. You really think that if there was a shred of legit evidence that THE guy got away that they wouldn't burn down the entire continent of South America to find him? Give me a break.

Books are your friend. History Channel is not.

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Books are your friend. History Channel is not.

Brent Harriman
SoundWave Audio Video
o:888-511-SWAV
c:281-361-2730
e:brent@swaudiovideo.com

DIRECTV & DISH Premier Authorized Retailer

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Ok, there is some huge irony there.

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Books are your friend. History Channel is not.

Brent Harriman
SoundWave Audio Video
o:888-511-SWAV
c:281-361-2730
e:brent@swaudiovideo.com

DIRECTV & DISH Premier Authorized Retailer

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Ok, there is some huge irony there.

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Well played.

You know, there is something in me that really wants to believe that history's most notorious villain was able to escape the Red Army, find his way out of War-torn Germany and eventually settle down in some South American banana republic.

But that is crap.

Hitler died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound + cyanide on 30 April 1945 in a dank underground bunker.

Even at this time, he was showing signs of Parkinson's disease, I believe. He probably would not have lived too long given that him seeking any kind of medical care would have brought unwanted attention.

And wasn't he pretty much a meth addict by 1945? Yeah, he would have done well with escape and evasion.

Interesting read on Martin Bormans attempted escape from Berlin.

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Interesting read on Martin Bormans attempted escape from Berlin.

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One guy that I really wish had survived, been captured, and sent to face his crimes at Nuremburg.

The Albert Speer autobiography will make you really hate Bormann...even worse than most Nazis.

Speaking of Speer, he got a really sweet deal considering all the crimes he committed. I guess since he actually took personal responsibility form using slave labor (as opposed to just following orders) made him somewhat sympathetic. His contention that he didn't know about the concentration camps though is laughable.

Speer played the long shot psychologically and it came in for him.

My guess is he banked it off an estimation that the Allies might need -- maybe even unconsciously -- to supply an example of their evenhandedness and lack of bloodthirsty vindictiveness.

Of the others who escaped the hangman, none was a really big fish; Hess might have filled the bill but he took himself off the board too soon (and had he not, it is questionable whether he would have maintained his position through the Nazi infighting). Goering, Himmler and Goebbels had, of course, committed suicide and Bormann was evidently killed in the attempted breakout from the bunker, and none of them was a candidate for mercy, anyway. The Court would need someone whose extension of mercy would carry conviction.

If this were the case, he might have a chance.

It was, and he did.

A few good posts. The bottom line is that he did die at the bunker, however, the proof may be lost to all time.

An American team in 2009 did tests on the skull fragment and concluded that it belonged to a woman under 40, and therefore couldn't be from him. Although most reports don't say Eva Braun shot herself, it's possible these reports were wrong and that the skull fragment was from her, not him.

No one has tested the jawbone that BQ78 mentioned.

However, it's absolutely clear that Hitler died there. Hanna Reitsch could have possibly gotten him out, but there's no evidence she did. She couldn't have gotten that far if she had tried, and the skies were full of American and Russian aircraft, so sneaking out that way was very unlikely.

All of the witnesses in the Bunker said he died there, and they all would have known that their lives could be on the line if it was proven that they lied. Furthermore, their stories are consistent, which could have been coached, of course, but they stayed consistent through the 1970s in the case of Traudl Junge at least.

As for the pieces that the Russians have, it could have easily been the case that the story was faked or cleaned up to satisfy Stalin, but of course, if one person lied and he was exposed, Stalin would shoot him. The issue with the skull fragment likely represents nothing other than really sloppy Soviet CSI investigation. If you recall, the Soviet justice system wasn't too concerned with accuracy in investigations. They shot you because they wanted to, and they really didn't have an infrastructure worthy of the name for investigating single graves (they specialized in Mass graves).

Could the Soviets be duplicitous? Certainly. Recall the case of the Polish officers. The Soviets executed 20,000 Polish officers they captured in 1939. The Nazis found the mass graves when they launched Barbarossa and showed the evidence to the world. Then, after the Soviets overran the site again a few years later, they dug up the graves, forged a bunch of documents to prove that the Nazis, rather than them, had killed the Polish officers. This of course, is chronologically ludicrous, but they went through elaborate measures to do this.

Had Hitler made it out of the bunker, he wouldn't have gotten far. By this time, he was suffering from major illnesses and was addicted to medicines. Deprived of them, he probably would have died a miserable death on the way to wherever. He likely knew this and that is why he committed suicide rather than trying.

He also had a suicidal personality. There were a couple of points in his career when he was rumored to have considered it, including after the failure of the Putsch. It was certainly much more within his character than to try to live on the lam. And unless Eva had gone out separately, he couldn't take that mouthy chick anywhere without her spouting off to some train conductor, "Do you know who I am? Do you KNOW who he is?"

Hitler committed suicide, because that was his default plan in the face of failure. His body was burned. It may have been scattered or moved to confuse the Russians, but it happened. Now, generally burning a body in an open pit isn't very good, but by now the Germans have some pretty top-notch experts on burning bodies. If you use enough gasoline and keep the fire burning hot for a very long time, it can do a good number on a body.

aalan94,

Excellent post.

It can be considered fairly certain that Hitler committed suicide in the Fuhrerbunker. The psychological and setting arguments are even firmer than some of the others.

It is a fascinating story, one that have studied extensively, even down to very arcane details of the architecture, and which eyewitness accounts really, really miss on it, and thus throw into doubt ever being there, vs ones that nail those details in a way only one who was there would get right. Things like that.

One of the things that really screw up the post-war story is Stalin's desire to generate confusion and create a lingering worry about Hitler's "re-emergence" among many other reasons used to justify his not standing down and maintaining such a militarized stance till it was obvious what he was up to.

The trickle a bit and then stop, and contradictory Soviet accounts over the years further confused the matter. But when you go through the earliest ones and their details with full attention to the more arcane clues mentioned above, it is clear they were genuine forensic studies. What was apparently hedged was some of the conclusions and fuller supporting evidence. But when all the fragmentary clues are arranged in chronological order over decades, the Soviet version becomes more clear. (Which is not to say the skull fragment said to be his is---that is a far more shaky thing. What can be said is it is what was sent to the archives in 1946-47 if that distinction is understood.)

Overlooked a bit is the supporting evidence of Goebbel's suicide. He had become Reich Chancellor, but had no heart and feeling for it to even participate in the aftermath. He followed his master in one of the most dreadful suicides known, because it turned into a setee of the whole family. (Incidentally, if anything, Magda seems to have pushed it, even when Goebbels wavered on it.)

Put succinctly, the real mystery about Hitler's suicide would be did he definitely use pistol and cyanide together, or only one or the other? The other mystery concerns the state of the body identified as Eva's.

So, if you are going to think post-war novel and thriller mysteries, there is more room to think Eva evacuated than there is Hitler did.

True or false regardless the show has been entertaining

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Speer played the long shot psychologically and it came in for him.

My guess is he banked it off an estimation that the Allies might need -- maybe even unconsciously -- to supply an example of their evenhandedness and lack of bloodthirsty vindictiveness.

Of the others who escaped the hangman, none was a really big fish; Hess might have filled the bill but he took himself off the board too soon (and had he not, it is questionable whether he would have maintained his position through the Nazi infighting). Goering, Himmler and Goebbels had, of course, committed suicide and Bormann was evidently killed in the attempted breakout from the bunker, and none of them was a candidate for mercy, anyway. The Court would need someone whose extension of mercy would carry conviction.

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The other Nazi who played his hand well was Admiral Donitz. He was a fervent Nazi, had given some orders that were clearly war crimes and on top of that was Hitler's hand picked successor. IIRC he only spent 10 years or so in prison. He defense was helped greatly when the judges allowed testimony from Admiral Nimitz concerning the U.S. unrestricted submarine campaign against Japan.

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Since the accepted theory is that he committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin in 1945, it's actually up to YOU to provide all the evidence that YOU know to somehow disprove the accepted theory.

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First of all, this isn't a response to what I wrote: you said "everything we know." I asked you for what you did know. I didn't say prove anything. You jumped the gun a little. I can't respond to what you think if I don't know what you think. Right?

Second, since when is history a one and done deal? Are you seriously suggesting there is NO WAY what you state has been accepted is wrong? We've never come to different conclusions after another look into historical events? If that's the case, when what the hell is the point of history? We just read the contemporary accounts in the newspaper and be done with it.

If you had actually watched the series (not over yet, I don't think), there are plausible alternative explanations: how he escaped (if he did); where he went and how he might have gotten there; places he was allegedly seen at. So in reality, if you had watched the shows you would have been provided the evidence you asked for.

I thought the purpose of this forum was for intellectual discussion on history, not browbeating or trying to bully people who are interested in alternative views, even if you think they are implausible. OK, so you don't find the History Channel very credible. Fine. If you had watched the show you could have refuted the points you think they got wrong or how what they allege couldn't have happened. I'm honestly blown away by the horribly closed minded responses on here. So I'll tell you what: I won't bother you anymore.

I don't think anyone is out to browbeat or bully you. Most people on this board enjoy watching the History Channel from time to time but have become tired of the infatuation with Nazis, Ancient Aliens, and pawn shops that seems to dominate the programming. To many of us, a show on Hitler's escape from the bunker looks like another round of sensationalist, bad history programming. The History Channel has done some fine shows in the past but recently it's mostly junk.

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Second, since when is history a one and done deal? Are you seriously suggesting there is NO WAY what you state has been accepted is wrong? We've never come to different conclusions after another look into historical events? If that's the case, when what the hell is the point of history? We just read the contemporary accounts in the newspaper and be done with it.

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In this case it is certainly not a "one and done deal." Hitler has been studied by historians for the past 75 years without any sign of letting up. Some of the best historians of WWII and the National Socialist regime have written about him and, while they differ to some degree about various aspects of his life, they all agree that he killed himself in the bunker April 30, 1945.

Watching any more than 20 minutes of that show was a self inflicted lobotomy.