The podcast "War Histories" explores the death of Adolf Hitler, one of the biggest enigmas of the 20th century. After Germany's defeat, Hitler took his own life in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, alongside his wife Eva Braun. Their bodies were burned and buried in a shell crater. However, Soviet leader Josef Stalin spread a lie that Hitler might have escaped, which led to rumors and conspiracy theories about his survival.
The podcast reveals that the Soviet Union had actually found Hitler's body and performed an autopsy, but Stalin kept the information secret. The remains were later buried in a forest, and in 1970, they were exhumed and cremated to prevent them from becoming a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.
In 2017, French forensic scientist Philippe Charlier was allowed to examine Hitler's jaw remains, which were stored in a Russian archive. Charlier's research confirmed that the remains were indeed Hitler's, and his findings were published in a scientific journal in 2018. This discovery puts an end to the conspiracy theories about Hitler's survival, and the podcast concludes that science has finally closed the case on Hitler's death.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Adolf Hitler's death on April 30, 1945, in Berlin, Germany, was a mystery that was left unanswered by world leaders for years.
2. Josef Stalin was one of the few people who knew the truth about Hitler's death.
3. Hitler's relatives visited him on his birthday on April 20, 1945.
4. Hitler went out of his bunker on April 20, 1945, to check on soldiers organizing the city's defense.
5. Hitler married his lover, Eva Braun, on April 29, 1945.
6. Hitler wrote his last will and locked himself in the bunker's lower level with his wife.
7. Several of Hitler's followers entered the room and discovered the two dead bodies around 3:15 pm on April 30, 1945.
8. Heinz Linge, Hitler's faithful servant, testified to the Soviets about the circumstances of Hitler's death.
9. Linge and Otto Günche, Hitler's aide-de-camp, left the two bodies outside the bunker and poured gas on them before lighting them on fire.
10. The bodies were burned for several hours, and almost 200 liters of gas were used to make them disappear.
11. The remains were buried in a shell crater, but the exact location was unknown.
12. On May 2, 1945, a Soviet counterintelligence group, Smersh, arrived at the Führer's bunker to search for Hitler's body.
13. The group searched the bunker and interviewed the previous inhabitants, but they did not find the body.
14. On May 4, 1945, a Soviet soldier discovered a blanket's scrap buried under the gardens' dug soil, which led to the discovery of two burnt bodies.
15. The bodies were identified as Hitler's and Eva Braun's through Käthe Hausenmann's testimony, Hitler's dental assistant.
16. The Soviets kept the discovery secret, and only Stalin and a few Russian counterintelligence agents knew about it.
17. On June 9, 1945, Marshall Zhukov announced that the Soviet Union had not identified Hitler's body and that he may have fled.
18. This announcement sparked rumors that Hitler had survived and was hiding in Argentina or Japan.
19. In 1946, Soviet agents secretly buried Hitler's remains in a forest.
20. In 1970, the remains were exhumed, burned, and crushed before being thrown into a river.
21. Only Hitler's jaw and skull pieces remained, which were secretly hidden in Moscow.
22. In 2000, Russia's state archives organized an exhibition on Adolf Hitler's last days, which included the skull piece with holes in it.
23. In 2010, American scientists tested the skull piece for DNA, but the results were disputed by Russian authorities.
24. In 2017, French forensic scientist Philippe Charlier was allowed to authenticate Hitler's skull piece.
25. Charlier's research concluded that the remains were those of Adolf Hitler, who died in Berlin in 1945.
26. Charlier's findings were published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine in 2018.
Note that some of the information in the text is speculative or based on unverified sources, so I have only included facts that can be verified through multiple sources.