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Eighty years later, the mysticism of Hitler's death lasts

Eighty years later, the mysticism of Hitler's death lasts

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Today, deep below the ruins of a decaying Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. It was April 30, 1945. Above the ground, the realm that he promised would be on fire thousands of years. With Soviet forces just meters from his command post, the leader of the Third Reich shot into his head. His wife of just one day, Eva Braun, died next to him by taking Cyanid. Together, their bodies were burned in a last, unsuccessful attempt to prevent the public desecration in such a dark and symbolic end as the empire he built up.

Hitler's suicide, which was expected for decades, but was secret and confused, was the symbolic end of the NS regime. Nevertheless, it remains a moment of historical fascination, conspiracy and caution.

The collapse of the empire

At the beginning of 1945 the letter was already on the walls for Nazi Germany. The Red Army had risen west through Poland and pushed to Berlin with a view of revenge and victory. In the West, the Allies had destroyed German defense in the Ardennes and now flocked into the heart of the empire. British, Canadian and American armed forces crossed the Rhine and performed on the industrial centers of the Ruhr. The southern front was not better. US and Commonwealth troops swept across northern Italy and press the Alps.

On January 16, 1945, Hitler descended into the driver's bunker – increased protection under the Chancellor in Berlin. From this claustrophobic Warren from concrete rooms, he gave increasingly delusional commands and moved Wehrmacht and SS military units that could no longer fight a map of a empire that no longer existed.

He insulted his subordinates and watched the realm imploded. When the Soviets prepared to cross the or River in mid -April, Nazi's chief command knew that the battle of Berlin would be its last.

The cover of the US military newspaper The Stars and Stripes in the edition of May 2, 1945 reported the news of Adolf Hitler's death on April 30 of the same year. (Credit: Stars and Stripes/Wikimediacommons)

By April 18, around 325,000 German soldiers had emerged in the Ruhr bag. On April 20, Hitler's 56th birthday, the Soviet bombing of Berlin began seriously. Two days later, the tanks of the Red Army reached the city's outskirts of the city. By April 27, Berlin was effectively separated from the rest of Germany. The radio contact with German military units has been separated. Communication was now based on frail telephone lines and parked public programs.

In this atmosphere of the collapse, Hitler received messages about Heinrich Himmler's betrayal.

On April 28, Hitler was informed about a BBC show that SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, one of his most loyal lieutenants and heads of the SS, offered the western ally behind his back. The betrayal shook Hitler into his core. He broke out and ordered Himmler's arrest to call him a traitor. He also ordered the execution of SS-Guppenkohler Hermann Fegelein, Himmler's connection and husband of Eva Braun's sister. Fegelein was shot because of desertion that evening.

At that time, the Red Army had driven to Potsdam's record, just one kilometer from the bunker. Hitler knew that the game was over.

That night Hitler and Eva Braun were married in a calm civilization in the map of the driver's bunker. The bride wore black. The witnesses included Propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels and head of the Nazi party firm and private secretary of Adolf Hitler, Martin Bormann. After a modest wedding breakfast with champagne and sandwiches, Hitler called his secretary Traudl Junge and dictated his last will and his will. In the document, he reaffirmed his anti -Semitic ideology, accused the Jews for the war and appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor as head of state and Joseph Goebbels as Chancellor.

The will was signed on April 29 at 4 a.m. Then the man who once ordered went to sleep millions.

The news from Benito Mussolini's death came on the same day. Hitler's war was captured and carried out by Italian partisans. His body was lined up with his beloved Clara Petacci from his heels on a Milanese place. The pictures followed Hitler. He would not allow him to happen to him.

The end

Soviet progress had reached the area around the Reich Chancellor until April 30th. The field marshal Wilhelm Keitel reported that the German assistants had either circled or repelled. General Helmuth Weidling, commander of Berlin's defense, warned that the city would assume the breathing of darkness. Berlin's fate was sealed.

At 2:30 p.m. Hitler and Braun entered his personal studies. Outside SS-Sturmbannroot Otto Günsche Wache. A single shot rang out.

Minutes later, Valet Heinz Linge entered the study. The door was closed. He reported on the smell of shooting powder and burned almonds, the traitorous fragrance of cyanide. Inside, Hitler sat together on the sofa, a gunshot wound that was visible on his right temple. A Walther -PPK was at his feet. Eva Braun was lifeless next to him and her face distorted from poison.

Her bodies were wrapped in ceilings, the emergency exit stairs were carried up and placed in a flat bomb crater in the garden behind the Reich Chancellor. There, when the Soviet bowls fell, they were poured into petrol. The first attempt to ignite it failed. Bormann got a thick bundle of papers, lit them and threw them on the corpses. A dozen loyalists stood at the bunker entrance and raised her arms in a last Nazi greeting when the flames used the bodies. The guide was gone.

aftermath

The Soviet Union conquered the Chancellor on May 2. The generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf had committed suicide in the bunker. Finally, the Soviet armed forces discovered dental remains near the cremation. These were later coordinated with Hitler's dental records, which provided the only conclusive evidence for his death.

But Stalin's regime was of little interest in closing. The Soviets published contradictory reports, which sometimes indicates that Hitler had died of Cyanid or that he had fled to South America. This served a double purpose: the tension of the war and the sowing in the west. The Cold War had started.

Despite these disinformation efforts, Western historians who rely on extensive eyewitness statements have long confirmed that Hitler has died by suicide in the bunker. In 1956 West Germany issued an official death certificate.

Nevertheless, conspiracy theories bloomed. Books and documentaries suggested everything, from escape to Argentina to secret submarine passages. Everyone was exposed, but the mystique remains.

Adolf Hitler's death marked the change of the epochs. It was the end of a worldview that had poisoned Europe with unprecedented hatred and violence. The ideology did not die with him. But the Nazi machine that he had built, a totalitarian state that was fear, genocide and war.

In the end, Hitler did not die with a fight, but in the hiding place, surrounded by sycophans, cut off from the world, which he had tried to conquer and dominate. There were no big speeches, no last battle. Just a pistol to mark the desperate act of an intensive tyrant.



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