Hitler Adolf - The death of Hitler: the full story with new evidence from secret Russian archives

OTHER BOOKS BY PETER WATSON

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The Caravaggio Conspiracy

Wisdom & Strength

From Manhattan to Manet: The Rise of the Modern Art Market

Nureyev

FICTION

The Nazis Wife

Crusade

Landscape of Lies

Stones of Treason

W NORTON & COMPANY

Nm York London

FOLLOWING P. 52

1. The main hall of the ruined Reichschancellery ( Popperfoto); 2. Marshal Zhukov on the steps of the Reichstag, May 1945 ( Novosti); 3. Adolf Hitler awarding the Iron Cross to a member of the Hitler Youth ( Imperial War Museum, London); 4. The emergency exit to the Bunker, as photographed by the first Russian commission; 5. Soviet Minister of the Interior, Beria and Foreign Minister, Molotov, visiting the Bunker, May 1945; 6. An American GI in Hitlers Private Suite, January 1946 ( Hulton Deutsch); 7. The bed in the Fhrers bedroom on which traces of blood were found ( Imperial War Museum, London); 8. Gustav Weler, Hitlers doppelgnger; 9 & 10. The charred corpses of Josef and Magda Goebbels; 11 & 12. Adolf Hitlers upper and lower jaws, showing teeth and bridgework; 13. Part of the Operation Myth File, the Hitler archive in Moscow; 14. Marshal Zhukov signing the surrender on 8 May 1945 ( David King Collection); 15. Field-Marshal Keitel signing the unconditional surrender on behalf of Germany ( Novosti); 16. General Chuikov ( Novosti); 17. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, American President Harry Truman and Soviet Secretary General Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945 ( Popperfoto).

FOLLOWING P. 84

1. Hitlers skull with the bullet hole clearly visible; 2. Professor Viktor Zyagin, an independent expert, examining the skull in the Kremlin in 1995; 3. The four skull fragments; 4. Sergei Mironenko holding the box in which the skull is kept; 5. Inside the Operation Myth File; 6. Blood stains on the sofa taken from the Bunker by the Russians in 1945; 7 & 8 (inset). One of Adolf Hitlers fire-scorched uniforms and tailors label: 9 & 10. The Lubianka Prison in Moscow.

FOLLOWING P. 148

1. Ivan Paderin; 2. The Russian archive where the Operation Myth file is kept; 3. Hitlers Private Secretary, Martin Bormann ( Hulton Deutsch); 4. Hein rich Himmler taking a salute ( Hulton Deutsch) 5. Himmler working at his desk ( Robert Hunt Library); 6. SS Major-General Mohnke; 7. ss General Rattenhuber; 8. Heinz Linge, Hitlers valet; 9. Hans Baur, Hitlers personal pilot; 10. Leo Raubal, Hitlers nephew who was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1943 and released in September 1955; 11. Maria Koppensteiner, the Fhrers cousin, who died in a Russian labour camp in 1953; 12-23. Photos taken from Hitlers personal photograph album, discovered in the Bunker in Berlin; 24. A Birthday cake to commemorate Hitlers fifty-fifth birthday, 20 April 1944; 25. Fake collage showing Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Lord Halifax playing a card game, Paix (Peace).

We would like to thank the people in Moscow and in London who helped produce this book.

Above all, we thank Igor Torbakov, Russian historian and political analyst, for guidance and for acting as interpreter and translator of many documents. In Moscow we would also like to thank Konstantin Akinsha, Gregorii Kozlov and Mikhail Leschinsky for their advice and support.

Ada Petrova would also like to thank Professor Viktor Zyagin of the Federal Centre for Forensic Medical Examination, for his cooperation and scholarly expertise; and Anatoli Prokopenko, the former director of the Special Trophy Archive in Moscow. He gave Ada the first encouragement to research the Hitler archive.

In London, our thanks to Lord Bullock, who read the typescript, Bernard Clark, Kate Mosse, Alexander Archer, Emily Stillman and John Laurence for their support and technical help. Peter Watson would also like to thank Patricia and John Menzies for their generous hospitality during the writing of this book.

Any errors that remain in The Death of Hitler are, of course, ours and ours alone.