New Book Says Hitler Died From Poison

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 22

New Book Says Hitler Died From Poison

(N.Z. Presg Assn.—Copyright) NEW YORK, Aug. 7. Twenty-three years after the event, Soviet sources have finally disclosed details of the autopsy and other medical reports on the death of Hitler, says Harrison Salisbury of the “New York Times.”

An exhaustive Soviet inquiry established positively, according to a book just published, that Hitler’s death was due to cyanide poisoning. Identification of the body was made through detailed examination of dental records. The Soviet version of Hitler’s death contradicts earlier versions—including those of William L. Shirer and H. R. Trevor-Roper, who both concluded that Hitler shot himself and that Eva Braun, his mistress whom he had married the day before, had poisoned herself.

The Soviet reports, suppressed completely by Stalin and to an extent by his sue-

cessors, have been compiled by Lev Aleksandrovich Bezymensky, a former Soviet intelligence officer, and a translator and historical journalist. They have been published in New York under the title: “The Death of Adolf Hitler," and simultaneously in Europe. Soviet Investigations Bezymensky’s account confirms evidence, long known in the West, that Hitler and Eva Braun died on April 30, 1945, in his Reichschancellory bunker in Berlin. What had not previously been known was that a Soviet Counter-Intelligence team found their bodies on May 5 in a shell cratei>-where they had been put in a shallow grave—adjacent to the bunker.

The team was headed by Liteutenant-Colonel Ivan I. Kliminko, chief of CounterIntelligence of the Soviet 79th Rifle Corps. The bodies, badly charred, were taken from the erater, wrapped in blankets, and placed in wooden boxes, along with the bodies of two dogs found in the same crater. They were transported to the counter-intelligence headquarters of the Soviet Third Army

at Buch, a northern Berlin suburb, Bezymensky's account says.

A top-flight Soviet medical team, headed by Dr Faust I. Shkaravski, was assembled at' Berlin-Buch, where the bodies of the Goebbels family and that of General Hans Krebs, Acting Chief of the German Staff, had also been taken.

The team performed autopsies on each body, examining those that proved to be Hitler’s and Eva Braun’s on May 8. The corpse believed to be Hitler’s was badly burned. However, the medical examiners recovered a potassiumcyanide capsule from the mouth. They found no sign of wounds on the corpse, but part of the skull missing. A cyanide capsule was also found in the mouth of Eva Braun’s corpse. The verdict of the Soviet post-mortem was that death in both cases had been caused by cyanide poisoning. Jaws and Teeth Preserved The upper and lower jaws of the corpse believed to be Hitler’s were well preserved. The jaw bones, teeth, and dental work were placed in a box and a team of investi-

gators set out on May 9,1945, to locate Hitler's dentist, a Professor Blaschke. He was hot found, but with the help of his assistant, Frau Kathe Heusermann, the X-rays of Hitler’s dental work, and several gold crowns made for him but which had not been fitted, were found in Professor Blaschke’s clinic.

These materials were taken to a dental technician named Fritz Echtmann, who made the bridges and plates. The dental work matched that taken from the corpse believed to be Hitler’s. A similar identification was made in Eva Braun’s case. The dental examination, according to Bezymensky, established the identity of the corpses beyond doubt. However, Soviet CounterIntelligence did not halt there. It took detailed depositions from all dental technicians and specialists who had done any work for Hitler.

Soviet Counter-Intelligence also rounded up witnesses of events in the Berlin bunker and pieced together a chronological account of Hitler’s last days, and of his suicide. They concluded that the two

dogs found in the crater with Hitler and Eva Braun had been killed, in tests of the cyanide capsules, according to Bezymensky’s narrative. As Soviet Counter-Intelli-gence reconstructed the scene, Hitler and Eva Braun retired to their quarters in the early hours of April 30 after Hitler had ordered his valet, Heinz Linge, to return after 10 minutes “when everything was quiet.” When Linge reentered the room, the suicides had occurred. Acting on Hitler’s instruction, Linge then carried out what he called “the most difficult order of his life.” This, the Soviet investigators deducted, was to deliver a coup de grace, presumably because of Hitler's fear that the poison might not work. Reason For Suppression

Bezymensky leaves unclear Stalin’s reason for suppressing the evidence of Hitler’s death. Although Soviet Counter-Intelligence had established the facts beyond dispute, Stalin did not make the information public. In fact, he spoke cryptically to Churchill and President Truman at the Potsdam Conference in July, 1945, as if he

did not know what had happened to Hitler. Bezymensky believes that Stalin first kept the evidence secret in order to use it in case of any trick, should someone try to masquerade as Hitler.

In the end, Stalin never divulged a word of the evidence. It was locked in Soviet archives along with the charred jawbones, the dental work, the charts, the photographs, and possibly even the remains of the corpses. The new book presents the full text of the Hitler autopsy, and those of Eva Braun and the Goebbels family, photographs from Soviet archives of the bones and the charred bodies, and extensive extracts from the interrogations.

Newspaper Dispute.—British newspaper proprietors have threatened to dismiss trade unionists who have been working to rule and causing a reduction in the number of cartoons and photographs appearing in national and London evening papers. The men are responsible for making the blocks from which photographs and illustrations are reproduced, and want a 5 per cent wage increase.— London, August 4.