Did Hitler Escape Berlin in 1945?

It's Not So Much the Question, It's the Rabbit Hole that Matters

Whenever I hear or see the phrase, “the overwhelming consensus of experts says…” I know I’m going to be lied to. It’s like the gas-lighter’s national anthem. They can’t name the experts, nor is there any attempt to quantify them, except to shut down discussion by saying the overwhelming consensus. I don’t know anything about which there is overwhelming consensus. Even getting criminals off the street in Washington, D.C., is a topic that divides Americans down party lines. Should fentanyl be legalized? Again, no overwhelming consensus.

So yesterday I asked Google, “Did Hitler escape the bunker in Berlin in 1945?” It assured me two things: there was an overwhelming consensus of historians who say Hitler died in Berlin in the bunker on April 30, 1945, and there is “substantial evidence” to back that claim. If you rifle around historical accounts, you’ll find some claim Hitler shot himself in the head and his wife Eva Braun took cyanide, but some other accounts say Hitler took cyanide and shot himself in the head and don’t mention Eva Braun. There’s a new school of thought that says Hitler shot Eva in the head and then took cyanide. Or maybe Hitler only shot himself.

Our AI overlords conclude that, “There is no credible basis for the claim he escaped.” If that doesn’t make you doubt the official narrative, I don’t know what would.

Hitler: The Man, the Myth, the Legend

Adolf Hitler is possibly the most impactful figure of the last century, maybe even the last millennium. After assuming power in Germany in the 1930s, he eerily proclaimed, “Give me 10 years and you won’t recognize Germany!” Well, that sure came true but not the way he meant.

Spotty evidence is emerging that Hitler was far from the overpowering, all-controlling, political mastermind and military strategist his party presented. His legendary book Mein Kampf was ghost-written. Hitler was a gifted orator, but many of his speeches were written for him. What Hitler brought to the party was passion and an ability to yell for really long periods of time. He was authoritarian, even in private life, but also superstitious, vain, petty, and not exactly all that smart. His approach to military strategy was that of a nitwit on methamphetamine. Even as late as early April of 1945, Hitler was reported as claiming Germany could still win the war.

By around 1943 or 1944, the charismatic national socialist Adolf Hitler had devolved into a Biden-like figure. Like Biden, he had some sort of neurological illness that caused tremors, which by 1945 rendered his left hand nonfunctional. We’ll never know, but it might have been Parkinson’s disease. Like Biden, Hitler took a medicine cabinet’s worth of pills every day, including dangerous and addictive drugs, and sometimes spent long periods of time napping or sleeping in. Hitler liked people to be scared of him, but he often left the pesky details of running the war and the country to the men around him—and he chose those who feared him rather than those who knew what they were doing. Like Biden, he delegated himself out of a job. Even as early as 1941 or 1942, there were those in his inner circle who realized Hitler was deranged, out of touch, incompetent, and much too mentally unstable to run the country. (The difference is that some around Hitler tried to circumvent him like Rudolf Hess, while others like Claus von Stauffenberg, Rudolf von Gersdorff, Axel von dem Bussche, and Georg Elser tried to kill him. In contrast, those surrounding Biden were far more nefarious, leaving Biden unharmed but grabbing the Autopen.)

Even Hitler’s personal life was bizarre. His girlfriend and later wife Eva Braun lived where Hitler lived and was always seated beside him at meals or social occasions, but Hitler’s unwritten rules said she was never to be acknowledged or spoken to. He literally kept a ghost-mistress that everyone was required to see but not admit existed.

On June 6, 1945, the American troops invaded Europe from the beaches of Normandy, France. With the ferocious Soviet Army to the east and the rest of the Allies approaching from the west, Germany was in a vise. It reminds me of the movie O Brother, Where Are Thou? when the George Clooney character keeps announcing, “We’re in a tight spot.” Yes, they were. Germany was in a tight spot.

The Soviet Army was fearsome and it is they—not the United States—who first arrived in Berlin. Hitler and some of his top guys and their families had sequestered themselves in an elaborate underground facility known as “the bunker” in Berlin. The war was going so badly, Hitler set up housekeeping in the bunker in January of 1945.

You can actually tour the bunker if you visit Berlin. Parts of it are open around-the-clock, every day of the week, and it’s free. There are other museums that provide more information in a more museum-like setting with more museum-like hours. If you’re bound for Berlin, the actual bunker is beneath a parking lot at Gertrud-Kolmar-Strasse in Berlin. After Germany surrendered, the Soviets tried to destroy the bunker but were unsuccessful—that’s how well it was built.

This place was more than just a bomb shelter or a safe room. It was 28 feet below ground, contained about 30 rooms, and had a concrete ceiling about 10 feet thick. There were two main sections: the Vorbunker or front-bunker and the Fuhrer-Bunker to the rear. That’s where the Adolf lived. It also had two emergency exits. One exit led to the Chancellery Gardens and another one to the subway system. The bunker complex had its own power plant, air-conditioning system, and switchboard for telephone contact to the outside world.

Hitler moved into the bunker on January 16, 1945 and allegedly committed suicide there on April 30, 1945. It was stated that Hitler was not the last to die there and he had ordered that his remains and the remains of other suicides be removed and burned in the Chancellery Gardens.

It is believed that once Hitler retreated to the bunker in January 16, 1945, he never lived above ground again. Or did he?

Did Hitler Die in the Bunker?

It was the Soviet Army that got to the Hitler-Bunker first. Photos taken from that initial raid showed creepy abandoned rooms, bloodstains, and eerie ruin. Some corpses were found. The Soviet Union announced that they found Hitler’s remains. That was in April 1945. Then the Soviet Union said Hitler’s remains had not been found and Hitler might well be alive. That was in June 1945. By this time, other Allied forces and investigators got there and some British historian wrote a book in 1947 stating yes, Hitler died in the bunker.

Some of the people in the bunker, mostly staff and servants, were alive when the Soviets liberated the bunker. They reported that Hitler dictated his will on April 28, married Eva Braun on April 29, poisoned his dog later that same day on April 29, and committed suicide on April 30. Previously, the Soviets had claimed that Hitler’s corpse had been taken to the garden but was only partially incinerated. The Soviet army then took what remains they could find back to the Soviet Union. The most notable remains were portions of a jawbone with some teeth and a partial skull with a bullet hole. The Soviets said these belonged to Hitler and put these items on display in Moscow until April 2000.

Jean-Christophe Brisard, a French writer, and Russian-American investigative journalist Lana Parshina decided to do a documentary on Hitler’s death. They got permission from the Soviet Union to analyze the skull fragment in 1993. They came to the conclusion the skull, jawbone, and teeth belonged to Hitler. Their examinations were largely visual and both of these people were journalists, not forensic scientists.

In the year 2000, American scientists were allowed access to the skull fragment but not the teeth and jawbone. The skull is indeed the skull of an adult and there is a bullet hole in it. If you don’t ask too many questions, it fits the narrative that Hitler shot himself in Berlin.

However, it is the skull of a young woman under 40 years of age. That does not fit the narrative unless it’s the skull of Eva Braun. However, contemporaneous reports all say Braun died by cyanide poison rather than a gunshot wound to the head. But even if it is the skull of Eva Braun, it still doesn’t prove Hitler died in the bunker.

Although DNA samples were taken, they have not yet been matched to anyone. However, we can be certain that the DNA from the skull is not going to match Adolf Hitler. This was the skull the Soviets for decades had said belonged to Hitler. Except it wasn’t Hitler.

Did the Soviets know this was a hoax? We cannot really be sure. Disinformation was currency of the Cold War, and there could be good propaganda-based reasons for the jumbled Soviet accounts. The Soviets may have liked purveying lies—maybe they were monkeying with the news to make people doubt what the press was telling them. Or they may have truly believed the skull belonged to Hitler and reported what they thought was true. Or maybe they knew they had no proof of what happened to Hitler, so it was better to just go with the skull story and put the Hitler myth to rest. Communists seem to embrace the old motto: never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

More importantly, we still don’t know what happened to Hitler.

If you express any doubt about the official story—even the official and debunked story of the Hitler skull—you are going to be cast as conspiracy theorist. After all, why would anyone think Hitler might have escaped alive out of Berlin? Here’s why:

• As many as 9,000 former Nazi war criminals and collaborators did escape—and those are just the ones we know of

• Big-name Nazis got away, too, like Dr. Josef “Angel of Death” Mengele who did experiments on kids in concentration camps. Even easily recognizable persons or international sinister reputation escaped and easily

• Like most things done by Germans, these escape routes were highly organized and efficient. They even had a name—the Rattenlinien (the “Rat Lines”)

Rat Lines

Think of the Rat Lines as the Underground Railroad except for war criminals. The Rat Lines ran a variety of routes run by independent operators, backed by elaborate international networks. A Rat Line could quickly, safely, and efficiently get a Nazi war criminal out of Dodge, or in this case, out of the Third Reich. While there were many Rat Lines, the two biggest were the best known and most utilized. These two main operators eventually consolidated their routes. The destination on the main Rat Line routes was always South America, the difference is whether the Nazi went by way of Spain or Rome.

And don’t think this was a frenzied activity in the post-war chaos. Rat Lines ran well into the 1950s.

The rats who operated the Rat Lines had some powerful assistance, including the Vatican, Catholic officials in Austria, Franciscan monks in Croatia, Nazi extremists in several countries (not mentioning any names but one of them rhymes with Finland), and very wealthy people who wanted to help Nazis, such as Ludwig Freude. Argentinian president Juan Peron openly welcomed Nazis, such as Adolf Eichmann, who arrived on the Rat Line.

(This is not to say everyone associated with organizations like the church, Nazi sympathizers, or rich people were running the Rat Lines, just that the Rat Lines were helped by a few powerful people with known associations to some surprising enterprises.)

Not every Nazi war criminal rushed to get on the Rat Lines. Many Nazis hid out for years or traveled slowly, inching their way circuitously toward some more favorable destination. For instance, Adolf Eichmann did not arrive in Argentina until 1950.

South America was a favored destination for Nazis in this era because the countries were large and Nazis could live out their golden years in remote villages with little to no government surveillance. There are stories that some distant South American towns resembled little German villages, where many people spoke German. Surprisingly, some Nazi war criminals opted to go to Canada. Go figure.

But why would any place want to harbor a bunch of fugitives from the most diabolic war ever fought in recent memory? Many of these rats on the Rat Lines were architects of the “final solution.” Who wants them?

• Many of the rats who rode the Rat Lines were rich with stolen money, purloined gold, and vast art treasures which they were willing to trade for assistance in their escape

• Rats on the Rat Line were famous for bribing officials along the way. Some may have bought residency into foreign countries. There are stories that Eva Peron, wife of Juan Peron, accepted $200M in gold for helping the Nazis resettle in Argentina

• Many people who ran or otherwise abetted the Rat Lines were true believers in the Nazi cause and were glad to help their fellow travelers

• A shadowy underground organization known as the Spider (“die Spinne”) provided aid and comfort along the way. This suggests that powerful people were in support of the Rat Lines and perhaps some who helped the Rat Lines would benefit from their patronage as well

If Hitler had escaped the bunker, with or without Eva, he could have gone into hiding and then found passage by way of the Rat Lines. Heck, logistically, Hitler could have shaved his signature mustache, walked out of the bunker at the end of April 1945, and gotten on the subway to make a connection to get aboard the Rat Line. The route is there.

Operation Paperclip

But some Nazis (probably not Hitler, though) were relocated to the United States thanks to our taxpayer dollars and a covert CIA program known as Project Paperclip (more commonly called Operation Paperclip). When Germany collapsed, the “spoils” of war were not just gold, treasure, or state secrets. There was human capital involved in the form of scientists, researchers, engineers, and technicians. Germany had been reduced to rubble in the war, but its intellectual powers were equivalent or perhaps even slightly superior to those of the Allies.

The Cold War took on a new dimension as both the Soviet Union and the United States tried to loot the best and brightest minds from Germany. We practically played tug-of-war with these genius Nazis, as both the Soviets and the Americans wanted them and the genius Nazis wanted to get out of war criminals’ trials. France and England were also allies but did not participate in this struggle for scientists. The catty rumor is that most German scientists did not want to live in France under any circumstances, and some openly said that, “England can’t afford us.” So it was a match that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union to see who could get the best and most brainiacs.

President Harry Truman did not like the idea of rolling out the red carpet for Nazis. He said no to Nazis. You wouldn’t think that is such a controversial position, but it was at the time. The intelligence agencies pushed back, arguing that if the United States didn’t claim these high-IQ assets, the Soviet Union would take them to our detriment.

Truman still didn’t like Nazis, but then it was argued that they were not all Nazi-Nazis. Back then, anyone with an important job, anyone in the military, or anyone just living a normal life in Germany, was almost forcibly recruited into the Nazi party. Nazi party membership and overt signs of low-level Nazi support were meaningless. As a result, Germany was full of Nazis, but some of them were nominal Nazis or Nazis in name only (NINOs?) Truman flinched. It was decided that high-value German scientists could be imported to the United States, providing they were not real Nazis. Truman had tried to limit the program to no more than 1,000 German scientists and their stay in the United States would be “temporary” and they would be in “military custody.” That was quickly rolled back.

Eisenhower came into the White House.

What started as Operation Overcast under Truman morphed into Operation Paperclip and what is popularly called Project Paperclip today. The intelligence organizations started to scrub the files of desired Nazi scientists to make them seem less Nazi-Nazi and more palatable to Americans. Some of the best scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, were hardly nominal Nazis; Wernher von Braun was clearly a true believer in the Third Reich. He used concentration-camp slave labor in some of his missile research and production in Germany. (Fun fact: President Gerald Ford wanted to give Wernher von Braun the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his considerable contributions to our space program until Ford was tipped off by an advisor that, um, sir, Wernher von Braun was a big-time Nazi.)

The apocryphal story behind Operation Paperclip is that paperclips were used to identify the sanitized files of the German scientists America wanted to recruit but who were very strong Nazis. In those pre-internet days, files were stacks of papers, documents, and other records stored in manila folders. German scientists of interest each had such a file folder. If the German was genuinely a good candidate for admission into the United States, the file was just processed normally. But if efforts had been made to redact, hide, scrub, or alter information in the file that might make the scientist look a little less like a real Nazi, it was flagged with a paperclip. The message: we want this guy, don’t dig too deeply.

It is not clear how many Germans came to America through this program or more above-board efforts.

As the Americans deconstructed German knowledge and scientific advances after the war, they came across mind-control techniques and found out the Soviet Union was studying these as well. This launched Operation Bluebird into evaluating whether humans could be mind controlled. Operation Bluebird morphed into MKULTRA. This is not a conspiracy theory—that information is right on the CIA’s website. This may be one of the worst things the Nazis were able to do to this country. But that’s another story for another day.

So What Happened to Hitler?

Sometimes the conspiracy theory isn’t what matters, it’s where the conspiracy theory takes you. It’s not always about the destination, it’s about the journey down the rabbit hole.

The mystery about Hitler’s last days is important because it forces us to consider what happened in the aftermath of World War II. Many Nazi war criminals escaped, and many important people helped them get away. And some had their escape from the Third Reich was facilitated by American taxpayers.

As for Hitler, he’d be 136 years old if he were alive today, so whatever happened to him in Berlin way back when, he’s surely dead now.