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| The Mystery Solved This cartoon appeared in the 3 August 1945 Rome edition of Stars & Stripes, with the following caption: At last the place to which Adolf Hitler may have fled has been revealed, a tiny island in the Antarctic where he and his mistress, Eva Braun, have nothing to do but play around the icebergs. The French Brazzaville radio broadcast this latest of the where-is-Hitler reports, after Foreign Minister Cesar Ameghino of the Argentine denied a published report that Hitler and his mistress had arrived in the Argentine via German submarine U-530. The French broadcast, heard recently by NBC in Washington, quoted “the South American newspaper La Critica,” as saying Adolf and Eva had taken refuge on Queen Maude island, former base for German Antarctic explorers, after being landed there by the sub U-530 which surrendered last week to Argentine authorities. |
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by Charles C. Rocco
How Hitler could have escaped, where he could have escaped to, and who could have helped him, are the questions posed and answered by this historian. Although it is now known for certain that Hitler did die by his own hand in his bunker in Berlin, we present this piece of speculative historical research for those who always wonder, “What if…?”
The reported suicides of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun on 30 April 1945 in his underground bunker beneath the devastated Imperial Chancellery in Berlin, add up to a first-class mystery. Countless stories have heralded the theme “how Hitler died,” even though his body could not be produced in evidence , nor conflicting testimonies cleared up about his death, yet a story never appeared “how Hitler might have escaped.”
Testimonies about the circumstances of Hitler’s death from his bunker staff were somewhat similar in content. They testified to Allied investigators that they were ordered to assemble in the bunker general dining room. Hitler conducted a wordless, handshaking adieu. The pressure of events was noticed to have affected his health. His beclouded eyes, shuffling walk and trembling hand were particularly mentioned. The assemblage was dismissed, except for some of Hitler’s closest followers. Hitler and Eva Braun went into their suite. A single shot rang out. His followers entered the room and found Hitler dead, shot through the mouth. Eva Braun was also dead. She had preferred to take poison.
Afterwards the bunker and garden were cleared of unnecessary personnel. The funeral was to be held in secrecy. Officers unceremoniously carried the bodies up to the garden, soaked them with petrol and set them afire.
So ends the basic testimony and there begins a series of enigmas.
Among testimony dissimilarities, approaching absurdity, were those given by Linge and Guensche. Linge asserted Hitler shot himself through the left temple. Guensche gave the identical report only to change it to Hitler shooting himself in the right temple. Both also disagreed on the position of the bodies of Hitler and Braun.
A work titled The Death of Hitler purported the Soviets indeed did find the bodies of Hitler and Braun and included autopsy reports from the Forensic-Medical Commission of the Soviet Army. The commission reported Hitler died of cyanide poison and made no mention of any gunshot wound!
But why were these historic autopsy reports of definite world-wide interest held up for a few decades? The reason given was because of fear that “someone might try to slip into the role of ‘The Führer’ saved by a miracle,” in which case the autopsy reports would have been immediately produced in evidence of Hitler’s death.
After the autopsy reports were completed in May 1945, for the second time in the reported history of the corpses, first by the Germans and then by the Soviets, the bodies of Hitler and Braun were reported to be “completely” destroyed until ashes remained.
It is unfortunate that the body of Hitler was not preserved as irrefutable proof to the authenticity of the autopsy findings, and to better refute any claim to the leadership of Germany by a double of Hitler, which the Soviets were so worried about.
I became more entangled in the mystery after studying the memoirs of Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasili I. Chuikov. It was his 8th Guards Army that stormed the courtyard of the Chancellery on the morning of 2 May 1945.
With victory over Berlin secured, an informal general officer meeting was held in Chuikov’s headquarters; notably in attendance were Tkachenko, Weinrub, Pronin, Sokolovski, Pozharski, and Chuikov.
The events of the last few days were discussed and commented on in turn. A few thought it a strange affair that Hitler’s body was cremated by the Germans. Chuikov shrugged, adding, “Maybe Hitler has gone underground? One way or another we have polished them off, anyway.”
Perhaps Hitler really escaped or was dead, it did not interest Chuikov. What was important to him was the fall of National Socialism and the war’s end. The investigating of Hitler’s last days would be someone else’s duty. His duty had ended.
It was at this time when my overview developed that Hitler and Braun might have escaped their Soviet pursuers. Besides the nebulous testimonies and autopsy reports, the chaotic military maneuvers on the Soviet and German sides during the storming of Berlin, the Chancellery happenings starting with the histrionics of Hitler’s farewell ceremony, a few minutes later the suicides, the removal of the bodies by “close” followers, the secret makeshift cremation, and finally the mystery of the whereabouts of the remains, seemed manufactured and planned by Nazi stage managers to rule out the possibility of their escaping.
I formed three base questions that would have to be answered to support the proposition of escape. Who was capable to rescue Hitler? Under what circumstances and how would have Hitler (with Eva Braun) escaped? Where would the route of escape possibly lead to?
Who Was Capable to Rescue Hitler?
The sole organization expressly created to handle the escape of high Reich leaders was ODESSA (Organisation der SS-Angehörigen, Organization of the SS Brotherhood). ODESSA is a secret, world-wide escape system which specialized in getting big Nazi criminals like Adolf Eichmann, Dr. Josef Mengele, and even Martin Bormann out of danger and to safety.
ODESSA was established by senior officers of the SS. Exactly when it was established is not definitely known, but the summer of 1944 appears to be the logical time of conception of the idea.
It was in that same dusky period when the Nazi hierarchy, watching on colorful wall maps as its beaten armies were being pushed back toward the borders of Gross Deutschland, realized the war would be shortly lost and planned an unparalleled program in the history of Nazism.
In Bad Aussee, located in the scenic Salzkammergut region of Austria, the secret repository for the Treasury of the Fourth Reich was to be constituted, guarded, and one day, supposedly in the last half of this century, put to full use.
The program called for mass shipments of gold, art works, counterfeit dollars and English notes, classified documents, and other filched assets from the capitals of Europe, to Aussee where they were quickly dispatched to predetermined and carefully surveyed lake and mountain hiding places.
After the inception of the Fourth Reich Treasury program, the necessity to establish ODESSA must have been a major priority, basically, a matter of Allied gallows or safety for the Nazis, destined to be the future Treasury drawees.
It was elementary to the Nazis that the leadership must be rescued in order for them to carry the torch of National Socialism into the era of the Fourth Reich. Their savoir-faire to judge when the political and economic moods were suitable to subsidize from the Treasury new political aspirants, those imbued with a fierce belief in the formation of a Nazi-style, nationalistic party, would be an invaluable cornerstone service.
As a matter of note a much publicized national party of this form does now exist in Germany. Formed in 1964 by an assortment of ultra-right-wing groups and claiming a membership of 40,000, the Nationaledemokratische Partei Deutschlands was founded by Adolf von Thadden, commonly referred to as “Adolf II.”
It is a supernationalistic party with strong neo-Nazi tendencies that has so far, miraculously, avoided being legally banned. Their political platform, among other demands, calls for the removal of NATO forces from German soil and the cessation of State payments to Jews who lost assets under the Third Reich. Most of the top NPD leadership were, as a matter of open record, Nazi party members, including von Thadden.
Still a fundamental problem remained for ODESSA originators. That problem was money. They could not dare touch the secreted Treasury just after Germany’s defeat. The Allies would be swarming all over, investigating in the economy and banking, in politics, and making themselves comfortably at home in its new superintendent position.
It would be perhaps twenty to twenty-five years before the Nazis could safely begin to use the interred moneys.
At that point a secret conference was held by Germany’s leading war industrialists on 10 August 1944 at the Hotel Maison Rouge in Strasbourg. Among those in attendance were Krupp von Bohlen, Thyssen, the steel giant, Messerschmitt and Hermann Göring Works representatives. These men also had realized, as did the military bigwigs, that defeat was imminent.
After discourse they decided that funds were to be provided to the Nazi Party during its slumber period in politics. Plans were also to be undertaken to keep certain assets from the Allies and later to re-establish German industrial might.
Work immediately began to reach the seriously agreed on resolutions. Top industrialists transferred moneys to safe-from-inquiry foreign bank accounts and invested wisely in business ventures in distant lands, notably in South America.
The industrial and political intrigues had crossed and aligned perfectly to form the solution for ODESSA originators. Its money problem was solved. ODESSA leaped into existence confronted by time and the war ever mounting against its sundry labors, but with its future paid for in advance.
ODESSA’s preliminary work started. Reichssicherheitshauptamt, controller of intelligence and counterintelligence services, issued false identification papers to National Socialist leaders. The Nazi bosses were taking no chances. Incriminating records were being concealed or destroyed. Many had on their own investigated escape routes and countries which might offer a sanctuary to them.
Under What Circumstances and How Would Have Hitler (With Eva Braun) Escaped?
The Face of Berlin, April 1945: April 25th, announced by the rolling bellows of thousands of artillery pieces, brought the storming of Berlin by elements of three Soviet army groups, the First and Second Byelorussian and First Ukrainian. By the close of 27 April, after ceaseless attacks, the Soviet forces were in binocular view of the Tiergarten, the fortified heart of the Hitlerite government, being pulverized by steady shelling, which caused a kind of yellow cloud to rise, making the burning Tiergarten to appear as the ominous dwelling reserve of Dante’s underworld creatures.
Long before the Soviets reached this far, German machine gunners and panzers had zeroed in on avenues of approach to the Tiergarten. General Weidling, Berlin defense commander, was not going to be checkmated so easily. His troopers were battle-tested on the Eastern Front and flag-sworn to defend the government to the end.
Geographically, the Tiergarten is located in the central part of the city, covering an area eight by two kilometers, and surrounded by the clear waters of the River Spree and canals. Government ministries, strongly built, some heavily fortified with steel shutters and roofed with anti-aircraft guns, occupied one area. In the midst stood the jaunty Imperial Chancellery, long, three-storied, with ornate marble columns masking the facades. Underneath it laid the cramped, private bunker headquarters of Hitler. Streets leading to the Chancellery were defended by hand-picked troopers who formed the |-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment. The remaining area held a zoological garden and park. In the park, firmly planted, stood two massive bunkers, each six stories high.
In the Führerbunker: Deep below the debris of the bombed Chancellery, his health impaired, continuously being pepped up with drugs, hunched over and trembling, the charismatic look wavering in his eyes, Hitler still managed to maintain unshakable hope for rescue, regardless of his desperate position. He no longer believed in any degree of victory since military setbacks in February 1945.
Calmly, Hitler aloud recounted over and over the historic plight of Frederick the Great. He, too, had been surrounded, isolated in Berlin by allied armies, but at the last moment divine Providence interjected a miracle, the Tsarina of Russia suddenly died, the siege lifted, and he was saved.
General Wenck’s army, Hitler said, dispatched by Himmler to lift the siege, must be victorious and turn back the Red Army’s slaughter.
Unfortunately for Hitler, Wenck’s soldiers were engaged to the south of Berlin and liquidated.
Other happenings were causing Hitler to erupt in outbursts and to dictate new orders. He removed Göring from the party roster for daring to request that he hand over the leadership to him. And Himmler, whom he labeled a traitor, he also banished from the Party for conducting peace talks with the Americans and British.
Both these events had thrown Hitler into violent rages, allowing him to vent his mental stress. He screamed he was being deserted, everyone was corrupt, treasonable acts were to be found in every quarter, that “dope addict Göring” was the cause of his military failure, and the generals were no less guilty.
On such a bizarre stage of events the only high Reich leader left to benefit from ODESSA’s special services was Hitler, and he alone.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, could have been the sole exception if Hitler had not appointed him Chancellor in his political will and ordered him to survive the Third Reich. But Goebbels, the most loyal to Hitler, contrarily disobeyed the order and perished by his own will.
Time is Short, 29 April 1945: Reports of Wenck’s failure to lift the siege and of a Soviet penetration into the Tiergarten pointed to the nearness of the end. Hitler’s multiplying tirades were giving him less and less vent for his tremendous frustration. ODESSA officers might have seized the opportunity to offer him a new vent out of the Soviet ring of steel, away from the defeatists and plotters that surrounded him, escape!
They knew he had been routed before. It was long ago in Munich, in the early days of his Party, when the police capped Hitler’s putsch against the Berlin government.
By their arguing that he had not yet fulfilled his fated role in world reformation, that the National Socialist Party would be forced underground for a period but not destroyed, that the defeat of Germany would only serve to strengthen the sacred cause of National Socialism against Bolshevism, they could have challenged his revolutionary dynamism to continue the fight and altered his notion to end his life.
Escape completely out of the city was now impossible. Still ODESSA officers, like any good strategist, must have had a few back-up plans to counter a situation.
The Berlin Tempelhof Airport characterized one means of emergency escape. In its underground hangars planes were made ready to fly, at a moment’s notice, Reich leaders away, but since 26 April it was under Soviet control.
In the face of continued enemy advances, a logical escape route would be the one given to the Lorenz–Zander–Johannmeier party. They were ordered to leave the bunker on a special mission the morning of 29 April. The ODESSA operatives, receiving no report on failure of the mission to reach the Hitler Youth headquarters just outside the Tiergarten, should have had no objection to traveling the same route.
But who were the agents of ODESSA in the Führerbunker? Rattenhuber, Chancellery Security Chief? General Koller? Speer? Men recruited because of their fanatical belief in the survival of National Socialism, not to mention their own survival. Men who also understood the unique Hitler personality, understood not to always take seriously his rages and threats but to accept them as simply emotional discharges of his failures.
Some, because of their questionable whereabouts today, their unusual resourcefulness, stand out more so than do others. Among them must rank Gen. Hans Krebs, Chief of the Army General Staff, who was described by Albert Speer as “a smooth, surviving type.” He was a Hitler “yes-man,” dedicated to militarism.
On the night of 30 April Krebs appealed in person to Chuikov with instructions to propose a truce or armistice. His appeal was turned down by Marshal Zhukov’s headquarters via Chuikov. Moscow wanted complete and unconditional surrender, nothing else would be satisfactory. Krebs returned to the Chancellery, a failure.
This episode, if a grab for extra time for Hitler’s escape, was successful in that it forestalled the death-blow assault on the Tiergarten by valuable hours.
The Escape, 30 April 1945: Setting out from the Chancellery disguised as soldiers of the Volkssturm, Hitler’s ineffective civilian defense group, the Hitler party would have drawn a minimal amount of attention and enemy fire. Soviet soldiers having their hands full with battling the regular German Army troopers, paid little notice to Volkssturm units made up of school children and old World War I veterans, both ill-fit to fight a war.
The Lorenz–Zander–Johannmeier route of escape would call for them to make their way by Charlottenburger Chaussee, past the gutted Administration of the Armed Constabulary, overshadowed a little north by the hollow frame of the Reichstag, which once housed parliament. Zig-zagging between clusters of bomb craters and heaps of rubble, seeking shelter now and then from a shelling, the Hitler party’s first important port of call was the Tiergarten railroad station. By following the railroad tracks from there to Kantstrasse, drawing at this area probable cannon fire from the 34th Soviet Tank Regiment who were probing the defenses of the Landwehr Canal, their second stop would be the stronghold of the Hitler Youth, situated next to Adolf Hitler Square.
From Adolf Hitler Square it would have been little trouble for them to reach the State Sportsfield Stadium, pushing on a quarter mile more to Pichelsdorf. A short sail from there at night on the Havel Lake, exceptionally broad and irregular at this point, to a landing between Gatow and Kladow in southwest Berlin would better assure them their safety.
Afterwards in secure quarters, a stratagem of waiting and seclusion should have been the quiet climax to the most crucial step in escape. For the Hitler party to try to flee completely out of the city, no matter how well planned, would have involved a great deal of risk.
The street fighting outside of central Berlin, the Tiergarten, could be heard to be only sporadic, dying down. Once the battle for the city was won they could count on the Soviets to quickly tighten up civilian control by new policing, road check points, and retention centers.
Yes, they must wait until ODESSA people outside the city approved the start of the next step in escape. As American and British armies closed in on Berlin from variant sides, there could well be expected an increase in tension between the Soviet and Western forces. Maybe chaotic or at least shakier relations would develop, whereby the Hitler party might be advised to exit early from the city suburbs.
Noon, 2 May 1945: The battle for Berlin ended with the unconditional surrender of the last ring of defense, the Tiergarten. Only small pockets of SS holdouts remained to be crushed. The Russian bear had avenged Stalingrad, Leningrad, and scores of towns that endured the German Army’s onslaughts. There was reason for boundless celebration in Chuikov’s headquarters.
Where Would the Route of Escape Possibly Lead To?
I believe Hitler, while retrospecting on subjects distant from that of escape, unconsciously gave the answer to this question in his political testament, dated February-April 1945: “A man should never lose contact with the soil upon which he had the honor of being born.” At another point he stated “… as far as I personally am concerned, I could not bear to live in Germany during the transition period that would follow the defeat of the Third Reich.”
From these statements dictated to Bormann, his deputy, a scant few weeks before the fall of the Third Reich, one might conclude that any escape by Hitler could only lead to his country of birth, Austria.
The exact place of retreat in Austria posed an argumentative question. Bregenz offered easy emergency access to Switzerland and Germany. In Wien, Hitler had lived and evolved many of his root political ideas but considered Linz to be his real hometown. Thirty-five miles from the secreted Treasury is the medium-size city of Salzburg. In the Vorarlberg-Tirol region there are an abundancy of secluded hunting lodges through its extensive mountain ranges.
For the city of Salzburg the ODESSA port of call Zell-am-See would have handled the retreat residence for Hitler and Braun.
Curiously enough it was at Zell-am-See that a reunion took place between Gen. Karl Koller, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, and Field Marshal Ritter von Greim.
On the night of 23 April, Koller took leave of Hitler and flew out of Berlin, never to return. He relocated to Zell-am-See. There he was to meet Greim who also exited the Führerbunker on 28 April with the promotion to Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, replacing Göring. While this fact is circumstantially interesting, at least, it is notable that Zell-am-See was a major planning center and clearinghouse to the intricate ODESSA webs of escape.
A Salzburg Connection?: Until accommodations were arranged for, there would be little for Hitler to do or say, except for him to cynically introspect on his Machiavellian political revolution, snuffing the depression and unstraddling the nation from the Versailles Treaty restrictions, building a world empire and national prosperity, to war, lightening victories to defeat, ruins and occupation.
All by himself, in a short span of twelve years, he could revel in the fact that he alone directed every phase of it, to the last spasmodic pulling of a trigger.
Later an inconspicuous auto makes the final shuttle to a Salzburg suburb. Hitler’s unfulfilled historical destiny to transform the world is ended. It is evident to him now that he can only survive if he stays underground. His rescue was just a symbolic gesture, a last salute, for Hitler in person is politically irresurrectable.
The myth of him dying alongside his fellow citizens and troops in the burning capital, under Bolshevik siege, would remain the story for history. The Fourth Reich proponents would require a martyr, and from Hitler its propagandists could someday cast one, perhaps even resurrecting his body as the venerable inheritance to the new generation of followers.
Salzburg offers quiet, upper-class residential areas where smartly kept manor houses were built in the 1920s and 1930s.
Is it there that a three- or four-storied house attached to an enclosed garden, patched in shrubbery with dense, cumbersome pine trees through which twists a snake-driveway, and surrounded in its entirety by a meter high wall, promises to its occupants, a wolf’s lair of repose?
Select Bibliography
Numerous secondary sources which have been used for detail are not listed.
Bezymenski, Lev. The Death of Hitler: Unknown Documents from the Soviet Archives. New York, 1968.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. New York, 1962 (revised edition).
Charroux, Robert. Treasures of the World. Translated by G. Cantu. New York, 1966.
Chuikov, Vasili I. The End of the Third Reich. Translated by R. Kisch. London, 1969 (paperback).
Der Spiegel, Report Number 22. West Germany, 1965.
Hitler, Adolf. The Hitler-Bormann Documents, February-April 1945 (The Political Testament of Adolf Hitler). Translated by R. H. Stevens. London, 1962 (paperback).
Russell, L. Return of the Swastika? New York, 1968.
Shirer, William. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York, 1960.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. The Last Days of Hitler. London, 1947.
Wiesenthal, Simon. The Murderers Among Us. New York, 1968 (paperback).