Show notes
What do we really know about Adolf Hitler’s death? In this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, historian and author Caroline Sharples tells Charlotte Vosper about the reporting that surrounded Hitler's final days in April 1945, the subsequent discoveries of biological evidence, and our ongoing fascination with finding out more – ultimately revealing what really happened in the Führerbunker in 1945.
Highlighted moments
people are starting to question, and obviously they're questioning what German radio is saying. The idea that he's fallen in battle seems obviously very convenient. But because you're not seeing him die, like Mussolini has been very visibly executed, his body hanged in the public square, and people have seen that. But Hitler, we don't have that kind of visual end to him.
“In Soviet narratives, then, it's not enough for Hitler to die. He couldn't have shot himself like a man. He had to take poison. In their eyes, that's seen as, well, I suppose, stereotypically a woman's weapon. It's seen as weaker.”
“the provenance of these bones is challenging. You know, is it just coincidence that they were found in that same spot? We don't have anything to definitively link it to the original corpse, which in the meantime after autopsy had been destroyed further and buried and then reburied. So we can't match the two.”
“I think if we handle this story critically, if we approach it in a way where we're not looking to go down little rabbit holes or conspiracy theories or engage in all this outlandish survival legend, if we look at the evidence before us, if we handle that correctly, I think actually we are doing the opposite of mythologising him”
Transcript
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