“The idea that the Allies allowed Hitler to escape damages vital trust in our democracies, our intelligence services, our historians and our scientists.”

By Luke Daly-Groves

CONSPIRACY THEORIES about Adolf Hitler’s death are frustratingly enduring and remarkably popular. That they are so widely believed is evidenced by the almost daily occurrence of claims on social media that the Nazi dictator didn’t shoot himself in his bunker on April 30, 1945, but rather escaped to Argentina.

Such a widespread belief is largely the product of sensationalist newspaper stories, television shows and a swathe of books all claiming that history as we know it has been proven wrong. But the truth is, it hasn’t.

As I discovered when writing Hitler’s Death: The Case Against Conspiracy, several of the most common claims made by conspiracy theorists about Hitler’s last days are untrue, or at best only half true. Here are the facts behind four of the most popular conspiratorial claims concerning the Führer’s death.

Myth #1 – FBI and CIA files show Hitler escaped to Argentina

Most conspiracy theorists claim that recently declassified U.S. intelligence files prove that Hitler escaped to Argentina. The trouble is, they do no such thing. Instead, they reveal that a medley of individuals with a variety of questionable motives all reported that they believed Hitler had outlived the Second World War and that their claims were brought to the attention of the American intelligence services. Conspiracy theorists consider these reports to be fact without analyzing them in their appropriate context or properly questioning their provenance, if they question it at all. Because the latter is taught as a basic expectation of high school-level history, the failure to meet it should raise alarm bells.

As a thorough analysis of the available FBI and CIA files reveals, the majority of individuals asserting that Hitler had escaped his Berlin bunker were motivated by money, politics, journalism, personal problems or mental illness. The intelligence officers investigating these rumours discovered this, which is why, when drawing general conclusions on the reliability of these fairy tales, they claimed, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover did in September 1945, that “…no serious indication has been received that Adolf Hitler is in Argentina.”

Conspiracy theorists ignore such conclusions and instead focus on the disproven reports of Hitler living in South America, which exist alongside claims that he was simultaneously spotted in other locations around the world. Yet conspiracists typically ignore such discrepancies. For example, in October 1945, one handwritten letter to the FBI read: “Dear Sir, I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut that Hitler is located right in New York City! There’s no other city in the world where he could so easily be absorbed…”

And when they aren’t focusing on dubious reports, conspiracy theorists claim that the very fact that intelligence agencies investigated rumours of Hitler’s survival proves that they actually doubted the ‘official story’ of his suicide. But again, the reasons behind such lengthy investigations are stated by intelligence officers themselves in documents that have been conveniently overlooked by conspiracists. Unsurprisingly, the investigating agents were usually more interested in who was spreading such rumours and why, rather than the ridiculous claims themselves. Moreover, intelligence officers sometimes investigated tales of Hitler’s survival in hopes that they might lead to the discovery of other Nazi war criminals who escaped justice.

Myth #2 – British investigations into Hitler’s suicide were politically motivated coverups

In September of 1945, Soviet newspapers claimed that Hitler was hiding in the British occupation zone within Germany, having recently changed his appearance through plastic surgery – and presumably removed his moustache. The need to quash such myths largely inspired a detailed British investigation into Hitler’s suicide led by Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Consequently, conspiracy theorists have argued that such probes were politically motivated and rushed to counter ‘truthful’ Soviet claims of Hitler’s survival. Yet, there are more convincing reasons for the remarkable speed with which Trevor-Roper conducted his inquiries.

Firstly, prior to his appointment, other British officials had already been collecting evidence concerning Hitler’s death. Very few authors acknowledge this, but Trevor-Roper was able to build on this pre-existing evidence, which helped speed his investigations.

Secondly, Trevor-Roper was helped by American intelligence officers, which allowed him to cover more ground quickly. It’s clear from the thick volumes of files available at the British National Archives that his investigations were not rushed, they were just very efficient.

Furthermore, political involvement did not taint the conclusions published by Trevor-Roper. The opposite is the case.

According to a recently declassified MI5 dossier, the Foreign Office and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) suggested that Trevor-Roper’s book be translated into German “for dissemination as propaganda.” However, Trevor-Roper corrected the JIC, saying that his work wasn’t propaganda at all, but rather a matter of historical record.

“I think the facts are true as given,” he reported. “I have been more concerned to understand the events and their causes and relations, than to push a point of view.”

Clearly, conspiratorial claims that British intelligence invented the story of Hitler’s death for political purposes are incorrect. But what about Trevor-Roper’s suitability to lead the investigations?

The star of the History Channel series Hunting Hitler, Gerrard Williams, claims to “have no idea why Hugh Trevor-Roper was actually chosen by the Secret Services to do the death of Hitler.” But if Williams had studied the evidence, he would know that Trevor-Roper was a highly regarded and very talented intelligence officer during World War Two. For example, he single-handedly broke a German Abwehr cipher. In fact, Dick White (an influential MI5 officer) claimed in 1943 that he knew of “no single officer, either in MI5 or MI6, who possesses a more comprehensive knowledge of the Abwehr organisation.” In September 1945 when White was initiating the Hitler investigations, he described Trevor-Roper as a “first-rate chap” who had “kept the closest tabs on the matter.” He was the obvious choice. 

Myth #3 – There is no reliable forensic evidence of Hitler’s death

In 2009, DNA tests conducted at the University of Connecticut proved that a bullet-holed piece of skull, archived in Moscow, once thought to belong to Adolf Hitler, actually belonged to a woman.

Predictably, this revelation unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories all claiming that Hitler had somehow escaped Berlin. Some conspiracy theorists go so far as to claim that this means there is no reliable forensic evidence of Hitler’s suicide. This is simply untrue.

In 1945, the Soviets forced a dental assistant (Käthe Heusermann) and a dental technician (Fritz Echtmann) who had both worked on Hitler’s teeth to identify a set of jawbones that had been dug up in the Reichschancellery garden, near Hitler’s emergency bunker exit. Due to their unique characteristics, the two experts identified them without hesitation as Hitler’s. But that is not all the Soviets discovered. In 1946, the NKVD (Soviet Secret Service) tested blood found on Hitler’s sofa (clearly visible in several photographs) and confirmed it was the Führer’s blood type. The presence of this blood matched the claims of eyewitnesses, such as Reichsjugendführer Artur Axmann, who saw Hitler slumped over the armrest of his sofa, having blown his brains out.

On the subject of eyewitness testimony, conspiracy theorists are remarkably selective. Many zero in on the multitude of largely understandable discrepancies between the statements of eyewitnesses who were actually in the bunker in order to denounce any accounts that contradict their theories as unreliable. Yet at the same time, they take the outlandish statements of Hitler sightings from almost every Tom, Dick and Juan in Argentina at face value.

In the 1970s, forensic scientist Reidar Sognnaes produced a comparison between Soviet documents and evidence from American archives, such as reports from Hitler’s doctors and dentists, which, Sognnaes claims, proves that the Soviets found Hitler’s remains. In 2017, Professor Philippe Charlier analyzed the jawbones in Moscow, using modern methods and equipment. He concluded, categorically, that they are the Führer’s teeth.

The fact that the skull fragment stored in Moscow probably does not belong to Hitler doesn’t  prove that he escaped. It does, however, highlight certain political and methodological issues which surrounded the Soviet investigations into Hitler’s last days.

Myth #4 – Eisenhower and Stalin both believed that Hitler escaped

Conspiracy theorists often rely on statements by officials such as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to support their claims that Hitler fled to Argentina. But again, these statements are never placed in their correct context.

For example, in October 1945, Eisenhower was temporarily convinced by the Soviets that Hitler was still alive. He later retracted his statement after a discussion with Trevor-Roper on the evidence available to the contrary.

Furthermore, most historians are not convinced that Stalin actually believed Hitler escaped as he had received documents stating that the Soviets had found and identified the Führer’s remains. Yet claiming that Hitler was in Spain or Argentina helped Stalin to undermine his political opponents. It also strengthened his hand in territorial disputes and gave him an excuse to avoid sharing evidence with the West, some of which may have revealed the shortcomings of the Soviet investigations into Hitler’s last days, which are now widely described as ‘botched’.

Conspiracy theories may seem like harmless fun and sometimes they are. But when lies about the past are reported as fact, evidence is distorted and such theories transition into widespread belief, historians have a duty to respond. The idea that the Allies allowed Hitler to escape damages vital trust in our democracies, our intelligence services, our historians and our scientists. It also encourages individuals with harmful world views. Therefore, I am very glad to set the record straight.

Author Bio: Luke Daly-Groves is a historian and author of Hitler’s Death: The Case Against Conspiracy. He holds two prize-winning degrees in History and has written for The New Statesman, The American, The Journal of Intelligence History and Dan Snow’s History Hit. He is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Leeds.