The autopsy report on Eva Braun notes a chest wound. In the first edition of my book I suggested that the bullet might have hit the dead Eva, but after the book was published I received a letter from Faust Shkaravsky drawing my attention to the fact that this was not a bullet wound. The report says, ‘Evidence of a shrapnel wound to the thorax with haemothorax, damage to the lung and pericardium, six small metal fragments.’
‘When and how this wound occurred I cannot say with confidence,’ Shkaravsky wrote, ‘but it is entirely possible that while the body was being taken out of the Führerbunker it was damaged by shrapnel from a mine or artillery shell.’
A long time later, when the State Archive of the Russian Federation declassified a large number of documents, the following evidence came to light: a year after the events I am describing, in May 1946, the Ministry of Internal Affairs organized a special expedition (code-named ‘Myth’!) to the bunker in Berlin in order to collect data to support the claim about Hitler’s ‘disappearance’. This initiative came not from Stalin, but was born of the rivalry between two government departments: the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Smersh Counter-intelligence Department. Witnesses were also brought to Berlin: Hitler’s adjutant (Günsche), his valet (Linge), and other staff who served him who were in Russian captivity. However, no matter how much duress was applied to get them to admit that Hitler was alive, they answered as one: ‘He is dead and we cannot make him alive.’
Contrary to its own mission, the expedition discovered yet another piece of evidence that Hitler had committed suicide. From the bomb crater where the burnt remains were found in May 1945, after further excavation, two detached fragments of skull bone were discovered, one of which showed signs of a bullet exit wound (the absence of part of the skull is noted in the autopsy report of 8 May 1945). This, of course, suggested Hitler had shot himself, but since it was impossible to dismiss the data from the first examination, which had established that Hitler was poisoned, an assertion appeared in print that he had simultaneously taken poison and shot himself. Many experts doubt the feasibility of performing these two actions simultaneously. The account given in the testimony of the head of Hitler’s bodyguard, Rattenhuber, seemed convincing to me: Hitler, fearing the poison would be insufficiently effective, ordered his valet to shoot him after he had been poisoned, and the order had been carried out. And perhaps the ‘bullet exit wound’ is the missing evidence of Linge’s shot. But I am not going to join this polemic. Just as then, when Hitler’s remains were found, so now, in May 2007, I find the whole controversy profoundly uninteresting. What really mattered was that Hitler was dead.
Subsequently, Faust Shkaravsky confided in a letter to me that he still had a feeling of ongoing unfairness: the Commission was strictly forbidden to photograph Hitler’s body, whereas the Commission was photographed in full force next to Goebbels’ body strapped to the dissection table. There are also plenty of photographs taken during the investigation. But with Hitler, oh, no! Shkaravsky was not privy to the circumstances that required that prohibition.
Here again, chance played an important part. During the autopsy it was found that Hitler’s dentures and teeth had come through surprisingly intact. The autopsy report includes two large non-standard sheets of paper documenting Hitler’s teeth in meticulous detail. The experts removed the dentures (and lower jaw). Now the crucial task was, at all costs, to find Hitler’s dentists.
In Berlin-Buch on 8 May, the very day when the document of surrender of Germany was ratified in Karlshorst, although I did not yet know that, Colonel Gorbushin called me in and handed me a box, saying it contained Hitler’s teeth and that I was answerable with my head for its safe-keeping.
It was a second-hand, burgundy red box with a soft lining and covered with satin, the kind of thing made to hold a bottle of perfume or cheap jewellery.
Now, however, what it held was the irrefutable proof that Hitler was dead, because in all the world there are no two people whose teeth are exactly alike. In forensic medicine this is held to be the fundamental anatomical item that clinches any argument about a person’s identity. Moreover, this evidence could be preserved for many years to come.
The box was entrusted to me because the safe was still back with the second echelon and there was nowhere secure to put it. Why me? For the simple reason that everything connected with Hitler was being kept top secret and must not be allowed to leak out from Gorbushin’s group which, as already mentioned, had dwindled by now down to just three people.
All that day, so pregnant with the sense of imminent victory, it was decidedly tiresome to be carrying a box about, and to turn cold whenever I thought of the possibility of accidentally leaving it somewhere. It burdened and oppressed me.
The situation in which I found myself was odd, unreal, especially when I look back at it now, out of the context of the war. War is itself pathological, and everything that happened during the war, everything we went through simply cannot be translated into the concepts of peacetime and does not fit into the familiar psychological categories.
Already by this time, the sense of history surrounding the fall of the Third Reich was fading. We had experienced too much. The death of its leaders and everything connected with that seemed nothing out of the ordinary.
I was not the only one feeling that way. When I was called to front headquarters to translate Goebbels’ diaries, I met up with Raya, our telegraphist, and saw her trying on a white evening dress that had belonged to Eva Braun and which had been brought to her from the underground complex of the Reich Chancellery by Senior Lieutenant Kurashov (who was in love with her). It was a long dress, reaching almost to the floor, with a plunging neckline, and Raya did not care for it. As a historic memento it was of no interest to her. Shoes from a box labelled ‘Für Fr. Eva Braun’ were just right and she appreciated them far more.
Towards midnight on 8 May, I was about to go to bed in the downstairs room I had been allotted in a two-storey house when I suddenly heard someone calling my name from the first floor. I hastily ran up the very steep wooden staircase. The door to the room was wide open, and Major Bystrov and Major Pichko were standing beside the radio craning their necks.
It was strange really, because we were expecting this, but when the newsreader finally came on air to announce solemnly, ‘The signing of the instrument of unconditional surrender of the German armed forces…’ we just stood there, overwhelmed.
1. We, the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Supreme High Command of the Red Army all forces on land, at sea, and in the air who are at this date under German control.
2. The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German commanders of the land, naval and air forces and all forces under the German Command to cease hostilities at 23.01 Central European Time on 8 May 1945, to remain in their places where they are located at this time, and be completely disarmed…
The voice of Yury Levitan resounded, ‘To commemorate the victorious culmination of the Great Patriotic War…’ We yelled something and waved our arms about in the air.
We poured out the wine in silence. I put the box on the floor and the three of us clinked glasses, deeply moved, excited but hushed as the cannonades boomed out in celebration over the airwaves from Moscow.
I went back down the steep wooden stairs to the ground floor. Suddenly it was as if something jolted me and I clutched at the banister. Never am I going to forget the feeling that electrified me at that moment.