Folks,

Dux:

I agree that suicide would have been out of character for the Fuhrer if he had any other way out of it. We are told that the body found by the Russians and said to be Hitler's had only one testicle. In my mind that indicates the corpse was that of a doppelgänger disfigured in such a way that he might be distinguished from the real Leader. There was another Hitler lookalike body found in front of the Chancellery, the photo of which everyone has seen. That one is definitely not much of a twin. All the major leaders of both sides of that war had lookalikes. Churchill's double was kept quite active.

As an aside to that, the Germans had developed a wire recording device that was so advanced for the time that when they made recordings of Hitler's speeches and replayed them over the radio in various major German cities at the same time the Fuhrer was making an address in Berlin the Allies were amazed and could not figure out how Hitler could be in more than once place at the same time giving a speech.

I believe Hitler escaped the bunker. Whether he made it to relative safety or was blown to bits in the air I do not know. Most likely we shall never know. All the physical evidence purported to be that of Hitler placed in secret graves or dug up and kept deep inside the Kremlin vaults has been more or less discredited. There is no proof either way of what happened to Hitler. Stalin always believed Hitler had escaped.

In my most recent reading of the account of those last days in the bunker the author of "Soldat" relates that when pressed to leave the bunker and save himself he stated he would rather kill himself than die in the street like a common homeless person. This statement went over with the soldiers there like the Hindenburg loaded with anvils instead of hydrogen. So many good German men and boys had died just like that just to keep the Fuhrer's sorry hide intact for a few days longer. Apparently that was a major turning point for the author. After that statement he looked upon Hitler in an entirely different light.

At first he and his commanding General had been required to relinquish their pistols when they arrived at the Fuhrer bunker for a conference. In the last days they were ignored by the SS guards and they kept their sidearms. The author recounts that at this time he actually considered shooting Hitler as he was within easy range many times. He did not he says, because at that late date,it would have changed nothing. He would not have survived the act however he expected to die one way or another anyway even if he surrendered to the Russians. The Allies had stopped short of the city instead of advancing on Berlin thus leaving it for Russian troops. These troops were known to shoot German officers on sight.

In fact, the author was captured but the red stripes running down his uniform trousers indicating his general staff connection saved him and so early on at least he received very good, even courteous treatment from his captors.