The Hunt For Hitler's Teeth

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Aktung Aktung.

Welcome to We Have Ways to Make You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland.

It's your Second World War podcast that currently is marking the end of the Second World War.

But fear not, that doesn't mean for you the podcast is over.

Oh, no.

There is so much more to talk about.

In fact, just before we started recording this, we were discussing what we're going to do as we go into the summer.

Because, as we said in all our VE Day stuff and

last week in our week of VE Day coverage that James and I were involved in, we kept having to say, don't forget, the war with Japan is still going.

Whatever you do, don't forget about the war with Japan.

And can I also just point out it is the 85th anniversary of 1940.

Back to the start.

Back to the start.

There's Dunkirk to talk about.

And in fact, we're thinking of revisiting some of the Dunkirk stuff we did in 2020 when it was the 80th anniversary of Dunkirk.

Yeah.

Well, and this is so much still to do.

We've got all sorts of ideas, haven't we?

And doing little two-parters on particular people in the Second World War.

Talking of which, I've got lunch coming up with Shane and Brian Alexander, sons of the one and only the legendary great field marshal, the Earl Alexander, which I'm very much looking forward to.

And his son, Brian, just is absolutely the spit.

He just looks exactly the same.

It's so weird.

And if we were to do a World Cup of Generals, Alex would win for you, wouldn't he?

If, say, we were to do a World Cup of Generals where we had heat and like.

Yeah, basically, if he didn't win, I'd chuck my toys out of the premiere.

Okay, brilliant.

Well, I think the listeners need to bear that in mind if they're coming to Warfest 12th to the 14th of September from Bitbury.

But, yes, but we have some unfinished business, don't we?

Yeah, but unfinished business in the wreckage of Berlin, because we were going to talk about this, but we didn't quite, you know, we just had a bit too much material.

And for those of you who did listen to our VE Day 45 series, you will have noticed that the last episode particularly was an extended run.

Yeah.

An unprecedented third half.

Yes, it was like that LP that has 16 tracks on it rather than just 12.

Yeah.

So we talked about Hitler shooting himself, but we didn't discuss what happened to Hitler.

And I think this is the only bit of mystery.

And frankly, it isn't really even a mystery anymore.

But

I got a message from someone saying, so I'm a big fan of hunting Hitler.

Can you just tell me, do you think there is any chance that he could have got South America?

One word answer.

No.

Okay, he died in the bunker at his own hand.

That's that.

But there is some skullduggery and interesting things to say about what happened to him um and i think that's what we need to be looking at yeah and and and hopefully we can knock on the head once and for all all those conspiracy theorists who believe that he escaped by a plane piloted by hannah reich got up to some bunker in denmark and then flew to tangier and then flew to wherever it didn't happen I had someone say he moved to Argentina and he has grandchildren there.

And I simply replied, what are their names and where do they live?

And I didn't hear from that person again.

So,

those of you who listen to this will remember that we introduced a character called Jelena Kagan, who was a translator, a German-speaking translator from spent most of her youth in Moscow, studied at Moscow University, originally been a factory worker, and then, because of her German skills, got drafted into the army, which is where she wanted to be in the first place, and was in the front line.

And she was interviewing mainly prisoners.

One of her big jobs in Berlin was to find what's happened to Hitler.

So, every poor young German who was pulled in before her, she'd go, where's Hitler?

Where's Hitler?

And they were trying to find out.

Anyway.

Ichweisnicht.

While other

Red Army troops are kind of roaming the streets looking for loot, she's been working flat out at the Reichschancellery, which is, despite the incredible bombardment and bombing of Berlin, is actually sort of okay.

It's still, it's smashed about, but it's okay.

And it's now this huge, kind of cavernous empty dusty wrecked but still standing building no electricity so it's kind of dark and cavernous and so on and the thing about the right reichs chances are you have these big steps going up into it you have this huge long corridor you have the kind of more steps going up onto the kind of first floor where hiller had his huge great office and all the rest of it but underneath it are lots of subterranean offices and and cubby holes and corridors and all the rest of it.

It's full of paperwork, isn't it?

That's the thing.

It's full of paperwork.

So she's just on the 4th of May, she's been interrogating a German stoker who'd been called in to fix a faulty ventilator in the Fuhrer bunker.

And I mean, it's just so bizarre, isn't it?

Becomes a witness to Hitler's wedding.

Excuse me, boss.

Where'd you.

It's all clear now, shouldn't be any more problem.

Meanwhile, Hitler's getting married.

Well, yeah, what cowboy put this in for you, my Fuhrer?

That's it.

Shater.

Yeah, exactly.

Incredible.

Anyway, she's just, you know, the interrogation goes on and on and on.

And she finally escapes for a little brief tour of the ruined city and goes off with their driver, Sergei, who is a, he's from Siberia.

Yeah.

They walk up towards a Brandenburg gate and still smoking Reichstag.

And above the skeleton of his dome, the red Soviet flag is now fluttering.

And lower windows are boarded up and already covered in graffiti.

And with a stubby pencil, Sergei writes, Hello to all Siberians.

And Yelena feels too emotional to speak, but silently adds her own greetings to all Muscovites.

And the streets are, for the most part, now kind of deserted of civilians, but Red Army vehicles are sort of rumbling through cleared mounds of rubble.

And there's Red Army girls with white gloves directing traffic, and they cross over a bridge over the spree and inch past a German truck that's upside down.

And someone's written on the side, All our wheels are turning for the war.

You You know, sort of crass one-liners, which counts for nothing.

And she spots a German woman sitting on the bridge, legs outstretched, head thrown back and laughing hysterically.

And Yelena Kagan greets her, but the woman just looks back with dazed, unfocused eyes and shouts at her, Alice Goput!

I mean, you know, if you wrote that in a film, you wouldn't quite believe it, would you?

Yeah.

These scenes are truly incredible, aren't they?

Aren't they?

I think one of the things that as we've done Victory in Europe that I've been struck by is the fighting does stop.

You think of so many other wars where there would be, you know, there would still be a party.

Sporadic firing or whatever, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, party hanging out in some block of flats somewhere, and some poor sods from the Red Army have got to clear this building room by room.

But that's not really the case, is it?

It has ended, and the Germans have accepted the defeat, I think, is really, is really interesting, which just makes you wonder so much about the political motivation because it's fanatical up to this, up to the point where it's not anymore.

What sort of fanatics are those?

Fanatics who give up.

It's very, very weird, isn't it?

Well, the main thing is, is you get this sense of complete indifference, don't you?

It's like, oh, Hitler's dead.

Oh, okay.

Oh, well, yeah.

You know,

and that's from people who are into it.

And then, you know, the family we looked at a couple of episodes ago who were opposed to Hitler, they're indifferent about it.

They're like, well, that's, he's just yesterday.

He's yesterday's problem.

He's not today's problem.

And you get the same sense from people who have been fanatical Nazis.

Oh, well, that's that then.

It's over.

Carry on without it.

Very strange.

Yes, and you get these sort of surly civilians sort of, you know, clearing piles of rubble.

and, you know, everyone's trying to sort of make sense.

You know, they're sort of abandoned.

There's no kind of sort of, you know, there's martial rule and stuff and there's curfews and what have you, but there's no sense of kind of, you know, the people are largely abandoned.

They don't know what the form is.

They don't know quite what they're supposed to do.

You know, everyone's nervous.

There's a rally.

They're talking about raping and stealing and all the rest of it.

And they seem to kind of, you know, Russians seem to want to nick half-inch watches, bicycles, and rape German women seems to be the kind of sort of the three big things.

Meanwhile, you know, Germans are just trying to work out how they're going to exist, how they're going to live, how they're going to survive.

But on that day, while Kagan and Sergey are wandering around the ruins, not far from the Reichschancery, because of course, the Reichschancery to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, you know, it's a few hundred yards.

You're not talking about a huge great distance.

But that same day, the 4th of May, Hitler's body is finally discovered, although his discoverers don't know it then.

So his remains, these charred blackened remains, are found by chance by a Red Army private, Ivan Churikov, of the 79th Corps, which is part of the 3rd Shock Army, which is a shock army that takes the Reichschancery and the sort of government area.

And under the instructions of Colonel Klimenko, they decided to give the Reichschancery garden one last inspection.

And so Churikov's attention is drawn to the loose soil in a shell crater just beyond the bunker exit.

And then, on closer inspection, he realises that what he's looking at is the remains of human legs.

This raises the question that the previous searches weren't that thorough, perhaps.

If one last look then, oh, there's some legs.

Doesn't sound like well, he scrapes some soil out of the way.

So he said, what he sees is he sees the crater and then he sees sort of loose soil.

And so he goes down at a crater, scrapes away some of the loose soil and then starts to see the blackened legs.

So, you know, and don't forget, you know, this is the end of the war and there's so much going on and, you know, however fantastical it may seem, this is what happens.

So yeah, I know.

I know.

But the thing is, a lot of it, it's not that it doesn't add up it's just that obviously in the chaos and tumble of events yeah have you checked that garden yes sir have i hell well the idea of soldiers shirking isn't exactly a radical proposition is it well that's my point that's my point of course i have boss of course i've had a look in that garden boss yeah because it just looks like a wrecked garden you know yeah anyway they they they both start he and clemenko both then sort of get down on their knees and start sort of you know digging and scraping away and they discover not one but two bodies but klemenko doesn't think either of them could be hitler because he'd already heard reports that two bodies discovered the previous day on the 3rd of May in that area were likely to be those of the Führer and his wife of one day.

But what Klemenko doesn't know is that that has already been discounted, but that information hasn't reached him.

So in other words, he thinks on the 4th of May the two bodies they found can't be Hitler because he's already been found.

But the fact that that's already been discounted hasn't reached him.

So Klemenko only learns that the two bodies found on the third are not Hitler that evening, later that evening.

So early the very next day, the 5th of May, he sends four of his men under Captain Deriabin to dig up the remains in the shell hole.

And they uncover a male and a female and two dead dogs.

One of these is Hitler's Alsatian Blondie, who those who listen to our series may remember he used to test the cyanite tablet.

But the other dog, unnamed, mysterious, some tragically dead Fido in the the ruins of Berlin.

There's your mystery conspiracy.

There's your mystery conspiracy.

I suspect there are two dogs in the Führer bunker, aren't there?

Not just Blondie.

Yeah.

And they're both tested.

You can't have two.

Hunting Hitler's dog.

I want six episodes of that on the Discovery Channel by the end of the year, please, Jim.

Anyway, Yelena Kagan is then brought into this because the Fifth Shock Army is now taking over the command of Berlin.

And they've ordered that the Reichschancellery and the bunker complex should be completely cleared.

So, yeah, so the Fifth Shock Army, and you know, because it's the Red Army, they're all sort of, and they're kind of not a million miles dissimilar to the Nazi construct.

They're all kind of rivals as well as compadres.

And Klemenko is schmursh.

And

he doesn't want the Fifth Shock Army getting hold of these bodies at all.

He wants the glory of having Hitler's body.

And he also wants to keep it from the NKVD for as long as possible.

But he's now got to smuggle them out without the Fifth Shock Army discovering.

So it's just absolutely extraordinary because what one has to understand is that the Reichschancery Garden is walled behind the Reichschancery.

So there are still the remains of this wall around it.

So they've got to get them out.

So they wrap them in sheets and get a truck to go up kind of the back of the wall, the far side of the Reichschancery Garden.

And they carefully, in the early hours of the morning of the 6th, lift them over and whisk them away to Schmirsch headquarters, which is now at Buch, which is just to the north of Berlin.

And Kagan is witness to this.

I mean, it's just extraordinary, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's completely.

But that's why

there's this mystery around it, because then everyone else is looking for the body and they can't find it.

What they don't realize is it's already been whisked away by another rival intelligence unit in the Red Army, which is Schmirsch.

Because I think, my understanding of it is that Schmirs and NKVD is kind of sort of a bit like kind of MI5, MI6, isn't it?

Yeah, well, yeah.

And obviously there's glory to be had in finding Hitler's body.

It's straight-up rivalry, isn't it?

Can one imagine MI6 whisking a thing away before OSS got their hands on it during the Second World War?

Yes.

Yes.

So, I mean,

not so strange.

Well, exactly.

You're right.

It's Soviets in competition with one another, but this is also how organizations work, isn't it?

They've got themselves, you know, Klemenko's got his hands on this absolutely extraordinary war booty is another way of looking at it.

He's not going to want to share it with anyone else.

And that would be the same if you were the 7th Armoured Division or 11th Armoured Division, the British Army.

You you wouldn't want the other lot having it.

I think you, although the problem is, we are talking about Hitler's body, which is an item of incredible political significance.

It's very, but it is also weird.

And you can also see how, if you wanted to, you could cast doubt on some of this if you wanted to,

because you'd ignore all the things we've just talked about

and thereby Hitler's body disappears.

Yeah, I mean, you know,

personally, I think this is all incredibly convincing, and I don't really see any reason to doubt it.

And, you know, there's plenty of evidence besides to support all of this, to be perfectly honest.

But anyway, I mean, Jelena Kagan's sort of slightly surreal day continues on the 6th, because while Hitler's body is whisked off in an ambulance or a truck or something, off to the Schmirsh headquarters in Buk, she and Sergei and Kamenko go off in a different vehicle.

And as they're heading back to Buck, they come across a cart and

a lone cow.

And draped over this is an Italian flag.

And there's music blaring from the nearest house.

And so, curious, they stop and go inside.

and they find a number of Italians gathered around an old piano, while one of them is sort of playing with immense gusto.

And these are all former Italian troops who'd been disarmed by the Germans in September 1943 at the time of the Italian armistice and whisked off as forced labor to Germany.

And on seeing these Russians in their midst, the pianist suddenly starts playing and they sort of scuttle out and hurry back to the waiting cow and cart.

One of them shouting Hitler Kaput.

Yes, which I think is obviously it's better to be safe and sorry.

You shout Hitler Kaput, right?

Yeah.

And

they obviously don't know for sure, but Jelena does.

That's the point.

And that's the kind of irony of it.

And she doesn't say anything.

And the big thing is, is they need proof that these blackened corpses that they've got are actually Hitler and Eva Braun.

And she's a bit confused why they haven't made a statement they've got Hitler, but Schmirch needs more proof.

That's what they're basically saying.

They want to make it absolutely certain beyond any doubt whatsoever that the two bodies they've got are the two people they think they are.

So So it's now handed over, Klemenko now hands over the whole kind of investigation to a chap called Colonel Vasily Gorbushin and one other junior officer.

And Elena is told, right, you are now seconded to Schmursh and you are going to continue being the translator because you're in on this.

I mean, it's amazing, isn't it?

Because if she hadn't been, if there was another interpreter, tracing all this would be much more difficult, wouldn't it?

The fact that she's been on both teams means you do have a coherent story, which otherwise wouldn't be on offer.

I mean, that's a remarkably fortunate appointment, isn't it?

Um, that they keep her on

absolutely incredible.

So, they've got to now prove indisputably that

this burned chunk of flesh is absolutely hit there.

Yeah, and there's a mobile field, surgical mobile field hospital number 4961 has to establish a commission of doctors, and they're under the watchful eye of a medical service colonel Faust.

He's actually called Faust, which is so

too much.

You know what?

Whoever, the writer on this reads, needs to to dial some of this down, I think.

The great writer in the sky, the cosmic author of this, could just shave 10% off a lot of this.

Faust

Shakarovsky.

He's the principal forensic medical expert in First Belarusian Front.

Major Anna Marantz does an autopsy, but they don't know who the body's meant to be either.

They're just doing an autopsy.

Because they're not told because they're not Smurch.

Yeah, they're not told.

Exactly, because they're not Smurch.

So it's kind of weird, isn't it?

So they're doing an autopsy to cause a death, but they don't know who it is.

And it's not intimated to who it might be.

They might be wondering why on earth they're doing an autopsy on one of the random thousands, hundreds of thousands of dead people in the city.

Yeah.

They might be scratching their heads about that.

But anyway.

And what's amazing about it, the autopsy takes place on the 8th of May, VE Day.

Whenever I was celebrating in London and New York and everything, you know, Hitler's child remains are being dissected.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

And they confirm it's the body of a male who's 50 to 60 years old, approximately 165 centimeters in height.

They discovered that the corpse's teeth are remarkably undamaged by the flames.

And one of the things we talked about is how little petrol there was to burn the burned body or not enough.

And petrol burned at too low a temperature actually to incinerate a body, which is why they were able to do this in the first place.

Otherwise, the body would have vanished completely.

And a section of the skull that's missing, the jaw and the upper teeth, were extracted.

And this is the really...

Yeah, so what you do is you pick off the sort of carbonized flesh.

And underneath, you've still got, you know, a decent chunk of bone.

And they're the teeth, and they're absolutely fine.

And this is the bit, again, where the script writer's gone over the top.

Colonel Gorbushin hands Jelena a red jewelry box.

In here are Hitler's teeth.

Guard this with your life, comrade.

Can you imagine?

But obviously, you know, she's it's given to her because she's not a bloke.

She's not going to go and get pissed and lose it.

Trade it for some watches or something.

Yeah, right.

Or a bicycle or something.

Yeah, yeah.

It is absolutely amazing this she's now answerable for its safekeeping safekeeping which is incredible yeah it is but the reason the the the jaw is put in a jewelry box and handed to her is because the schmirsh unit safe is still with the rear echelon and hasn't caught up yet

so as it were the teeth are with the teeth rather than the tail on this occasion Yes, and, you know,

and not surprisingly, she finds the whole thing this sort of terrible burden, sort of wandering around everything, you know, can't let go of this box.

You know, everywhere she goes, she's carrying this red jewelry box with Hitler's teeth in it and jawbone.

I mean, it's like carrying the ring of power around, isn't it?

She's got this terrible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, I've seen pictures of this.

I mean, it's all very,

you know, the jawbone still exists and everything.

Well, let's take a quick break and we'll come back to answer the question, what next for Hitler's teeth?

Because such are the details of the end of the war in Europe.

We'll be back in a moment.

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Welcome back to Weird Ways of Make You Talk, where we, before the interval, offered you the enticing

story of what next for Hitler's teeth.

And here it comes.

What next for

the Fuhrer's jawbone?

Yep, so Yelena Kagan's about to go to bed late on the 8th of May when she's called to listen to the live broadcast of the surrender ceremony, which anyone who's listened to the previous series will know concluded at 41 minutes past midnight, if I remember rightly, you know, with Keitel and Co.

down and Carlshorst.

So she's still clutching her red jewelry box, but puts it down briefly on the floor as she and a major bistrov and major pitch coat clink glasses and drink to the end of the great patriotic war.

But soon after that, she heads back down the wooden stairs and then suddenly stops as though kind of electrified by the enormity of the moment in which she finds herself.

And she just thinks, God, you know, is this really happening to me?

Is this me standing here at the moment Germany surrenders a box in my hands containing the indisputable remnants of Adolf Hitler?

Not surprising, she's feeling a little bit freaked out by it.

Yeah.

But the point is, they're not the indisputable remnants yet.

And that can only be proved by finding copies of Hitler's dental records to match to the teeth.

Yeah, because dental records, after all, they're unique, aren't they?

My teeth are nothing like your teeth.

They're nothing like JRR producer's teeth.

I know JR is saying a heave of relief at the very thought that his teeth are nothing like mine.

It is

as good as you'll get, like a fingerprint, isn't it?

Yes.

There is no DNA testing.

So it's not what they do now, is it?

They'd get the DNA from a thing that they know is Hitler's or Hitler

and then test the corpse.

So

they've got to go on the teeth.

But fortunately, teeth are completely unique.

So it's not like...

And again,

I've seen this on the internet.

Someone go, well, they obviously faked a double's teeth to be the same as Hitler's teeth.

No, it didn't work like that.

Don't worry about that.

No, No, no, it's not.

They obviously faked it in a kind of intricate, intricate faking process at the end of the Second World War just so that it could, you know, I mean, no, because

they're not trying to dupe themselves.

Yeah, exactly.

The whole point is so that they know what they've got.

You know, that's the whole point of going for the whole dental records.

They're not going to sort of pretend that they found his body because they're paranoid that he has escaped.

Yeah.

That's the whole point.

That's why they're trying to prove that it is him and that he is really dead.

You know, so that makes no sense whatsoever.

That doesn't make any sense.

Well, the only way they're going to do it is by finding his dental records, but obviously in a ruined city of millions, you know, which is now completely destroyed, you know, largely destroyed, how are they ever going to find this?

And they get lucky.

Yeah.

Because they set off through the shattered city and Sergei's once again driving his captured Ford 8 saloon.

And at the first German hospital they come to, and when they're there, they're told they should try and find a renowned laryngeologist called Karl von Eichen, who heads the Charité clinic and who definitely treated Hitler in the past.

And apparently he would know the Führer's dentist.

So it took them some time to find the charity clinic in a ruined city of few street sites, but they do eventually locate it.

And also Dr.

von Eichen, who says, yes, you know, I did, I did treat Hitler twice, once in 1935 and again in 1944 after the July assassination attempt.

So he he doesn't know who Hitler's dentist has been, but calls a student from the dentistry department at the clinic.

And incredibly, this student dentist was not only able to confirm that Dr.

Hugo Blaschke had personally attended to the Fuhrer's teeth, but also agreed to take them to him.

Literally the first attempt, they've kind of struck gold.

Quite extraordinary that.

I mean, I'm struck by two things here.

They're driving around in a Ford 8.

So there's a Lend-Lease right there, right at the end of the war.

And also, I imagine the student dentist, I imagine they were encouraging people to offer their contacts in a,

you know, there's some lapels being grabbed here, right?

I suspect so, but

I also suspect that they are Germans who are very worried about their futures and are only too happy to oblige the victors.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you can offer a magnificent service like this, we want to know who the Fuhrer's doctor.

I know, I know, I can take you there.

Yeah, don't worry, I know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, of course I can help.

Yes, put that pistol down.

Yep.

They all bundle back into the four-day A, drive to the Kefersten Dam, which is back in the golden age of Berlin, had been one of the most desirable districts.

And again, luck is with them because Blaschke's private clinic is at number 213.

And miraculously, it's largely intact.

But Blaschke, it turns out, has flown to Birkeschgaden in anticipation of Hitler's evacuation there.

So he isn't around.

He's bugged out.

But his dental assistant, Keita Hoizermann, has remained in Berlin.

It turns out that this incredibly helpful student was actually from Bulgaria, then volunteered to go and fetch her.

I'll go.

I'll go.

You can imagine, can't you?

And she lives at number 39 to 40, Pariserstrasse, apartment number one.

When Frau Anheisemann duly arrives, you know, this guy goes and collects her and sees Colonel Gorbache and Sergei, she bursts into tears because clearly she's already been raped.

But they calm her down, reassure her, and she admits that they do hold Hitler's dental records

and produces a box of patients' cards, which with bated breath, they watch as she methodically goes through them.

And at last, she produced Hitler's medical cards.

Yeah, yes.

H-I-D, H-I-M,

H-I-R,

H-I-T, Hitler.

Yeah, this is it.

Hitler, you go, yeah.

Hitler, comma.

Well, the under F for Führer.

What's the under?

I mean,

yes, would it be Hitler A,

Hitler comma A, or would it just be Führer,

Der?

I don't know.

Anyway, be that as it may.

They find his medical card, but no x-rays at all.

So Frohline Heiserman suggests that they might go to Blaschke's other office, which is back in the Reichschancellery.

I mean, can you believe it?

So off they go again, back to the Reichschanceller, of course, is where the fifth shock army now is occupying.

But the place is now completely empty and quiet as the night and guarded by a sentry who refused to let them in.

But Gorbyshin just produces a pistol and a stream of invective and, you know, that's that.

So the Reichschanchu is, you know, pretty much pitch dark and empty and even more cavernous than they remembered.

And they've only got one torch between them.

But after sending down into the depths from two flights of stairs, you know, steps echoing ominously along the corridors, they find Blaschke's room, you know, which they haven't come across before.

It's boxy and small and complete of a dentist's chair and a small desk.

And in there, at last, they find Hitler's dental records as well as a set of x-rays.

Can you believe it?

Of his teeth.

I mean, it's...

Of his teeth.

That's it.

I mean, the thing is, you've got to admire German bookkeeping

in this story.

Haven't you?

The papers are Alice and Ordenung, aren't they?

So you can actually do a paper trail to...

to solve this mystery.

It is quite amazing.

When we talked about people getting their call-up papers in April of 1945, it reminds me of this, you know, the German sort of state and not just state, but the bureaucratic side of things works well enough that even as the city's sort of still smoldering, you can do the paper trail to Hitler's teeth.

It's absolutely incredible.

It is absolutely incredible.

And they head back to Buch.

And as they do so, the Ford 8 finally conks out.

And just at that moment, guns boom out.

And Kagan suddenly thinks, oh my God, the war started again.

Of course, it's not.

This is the victory salute announcing the kind of, you know, final, complete,

irreversible end of

the war in Europe.

And Sergei gets the car going and on they go, but take Keita Heusermann with them as well.

And Jelena Kagan is suddenly struck by how quiet the city is.

And Berlin suddenly is a sort of dark and forbidding place, and there's hardly any red troops about.

And suddenly it just seems quiet and sort of skeletal and eerily still.

And on the following day, the 10th of May, Keita Hauserman is finally able to match the teeth.

Jelena has still been safeguarding in this wretched red jewelry box with the x-rays.

They're absolutely one and the same.

So that clinches it.

And they found Hitler.

And he isn't alive.

He's very much dead.

And a few days after that, they then go back over to the Reichschancery Garden and they find the missing bit of skull.

And both the missing bit of skull and the jawbone remain to this day in a drawer in the archives at the Kremlin in Moscow.

Incredible.

And I've seen photos of these and I've seen the x-rays.

There is absolutely no room for any dispute at all.

But what is really, really interesting is the bodies

of Hitler and Eva Braun

and also the Goebbels are collected together and they're driven out of Berlin City and they're buried in a wood near a village just northwest of Berlin.

And that's where they remain.

Then they're dug up again and they're taken to Magdeburg.

So they're all then buried in Magdeburg.

And there they remain until 1970.

And then it is

Yuri Andropov, who later becomes head of the Soviet Union, but at the time is head of the KGB.

In 1970, he orders all the bodies to be disinterned, incinerated, and their ashes are thrown into a tributary of the River Elba.

Do we know why he did that?

I think he just thought they're buried, they can be dug up, someone else can find them.

Let's just not miss on the head once and for all.

That's interesting, isn't it?

I mean, in the 70s and the Soviet Union, there's that switch to making the war more important in the way it's celebrated and all that sort of stuff, because basically communism is not quite delivered.

So they switched to

communism was a good thing because it won us the Second World War.

But those don't feel related.

They feel...

You do wonder, had the British and the Americans taken Berlin and Hitler taken his life in the same way, whether in a way this story would be any different, though.

You know what I mean?

Because it is a difficult thing to, you know, what do you do with Hitler's body if you've got it?

Where do you put it?

What do you do?

You don't put it, you can't put it in an unmarked grave because someone will eventually figure out where it is, won't they?

Well,

that's the problem, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you do want, like I say, if the boot was on the other foot, if say the Americans and the Western Allies had taken Berlin, which like we talked about, Hitler had killed himself, then what?

I think there'd be the same, yeah, there'd be the same web of intrigue around what actually happened as if the Soviets had taken it, but it's got that extra sort of me faux of Soviet paranoia on top of it, hasn't it?

That um, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, what I was going to say is that the conspiracy theorists will go, yeah, but you know, there's all these CIA documents that are saying that, you know, Hitler's been reported in Argentina and there's been sightings, and you know, someone has confessed that they flew him out on the 28th of April, 1945, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

All of this is false information and it most of it was set out by the KGB to test the intelligent response from mi6 and the CIA so that's all it was and

the huge number of witnesses to this who saw him you know who saw his body the people that heard you know who who saw him his body being taken out of the Fierabunke the conversations he had the last will and testament um the fact that Hannah Reich went on her own um flew out on her own without hitler um the fact that he was seen alive on the 30th multiple times that multiple witnesses gave very very detailed and and for the most part largely corresponding uh complementary reports all kind of goes to show that he absolutely did kill himself in his own hand on the 30th there's no doubt at all then when you add the kind of forensic details and also you know what we haven't really talked about is the autopsy on eva braun where they also did that as well also found bits of her teeth and you know abridged bridged teeth and you know, all this kind of stuff, all of which matches her dead records, which they didn't hunt for with the same urgency they did with Hitler, but they did subsequently find it.

All this adds up to one thing, which is, you know, indisputably, he killed himself, and this is how he did it.

The Russians found him, and they've still got the bits in the Kremlin.

I mean, you know, there is no doubt about this.

There is a really, really fantastic book called The Death of Hitler, which is by an investigative two French people, an investigative journalist and I think, no, one Russian lady one Russian journalist and a French pathologist and it's excellent and it's incredibly methodical and they've they did some extra work pathological work you know in the early 2000s something like that or maybe it's even a bit later than that maybe like 2015 or something and they proved we've gone beyond any single doubt whatsoever yeah this is what

yes I mean as you say it's it the Soviets sending dripping stuff across it's people it's people making a living out of offering tips to intelligence services, isn't it?

It's it's it's all that stuff.

I mean one of the MI six officers says in reply, one official responds in reply to all the survival rumors, he says, I believe this to be sheer poppycock.

The plastic operation which changed Hitler's appearance was probably carried out with a service revolver in the Fuhrer book.

I think he's being too

cautious there.

The probably is there's no need for the probably.

The poppycock is absolutely right.

It it is interesting though, because who is it that wants it to have not happened?

Is what I often wonder with the people who are indulging these conspiracies.

Why do they want Hitler not to have killed himself?

Why do they need him to live on in their imaginations?

What is it about him living on that is so appealing?

You know, these are questions worth asking about the people who want to ask those questions.

Why do you need Hitler to have survived?

Can you answer me that?

And I think that's something you need to ask of the people who think that it is all a conspiracy.

Why do they need Hitler to have lived?

Yeah, no, it's very weird.

I mean, you know.

And when we, you know, when we were filming Hunting Hitler all those years ago, you know, we'd have this sort of the CIA vo you know, reporting that a sighting of Hitler in Argentina or wherever it had been.

But what we then never showed was the one that was then issued a day later, which said, this has been proved to be completely false.

Well, and also it's being cited in several places at once.

Yeah, all of that.

Obviously.

All of that.

Anyway, there we go.

The ballad of Hitler's teeth.

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, German paperwork for the win.

And we hope that we've put this particular mystery to rest once and for all, emphatically,

beyond not beyond reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt.

Oh, I'm looking forward to the Twitter bin fire of where we're obviously paid stooges of the Secret Services.

Yeah, clearly.

And all that bollocks.

Anyway, thanks for listening, everybody.

As we said right at the start of this episode, there is a festival in September, the 12th or 14th of September, we have Ways Fest, where we will be, amongst other things, we'll be doing our World Cup of Generals.

If what you want to witness is James Holland throwing his toys out the pram as monty pips alexander in our top three

general off this is your opportunity um go to we havewaysfest.co.uk buy your tickets we'll see you there um thanks by the way everyone for the incredible feedback we've had for our v-day uh series of eight episodes and an extra third we really love it when you engage so thoroughly with the stuff and we do like doing these long series that are plenty for you to get your teeth into and also a huge thank you to all the positive responses to our visit to number 10 downe street which we'll talk about reflect on a bit more another time because it's been incredibly thought-provoking yeah particularly the thing i that i was really struck by was watching jim go from going crikey i'm in downing street to basically going oh it's just another room in another building

the end of the day it's a room of four walls exactly but watching the transformation of you james was very fascinating because i've been there before and i've done the i've done the whole first visit where you're going oh my god and then it like wears off because of course it does and the the woman looking after us rolling her eyes when we said oh it's like the tardis it's bigger on the inside Yeah, it's like, Oh, I never heard that before.

Is there any other way of expressing this, please?

Yeah, no,

no,

anyway.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

We will see you very soon, and cheerio!

Cheerio.