DECLASSIFIED Soviet Union documents claim that Adolf Hitler was shot dead by an SS officer after the Nazi leader ordered his own execution.
Bombshell have been released by the Russian FSB 80 years after Berlin fell.
Most experts believe that Hitler shot himself in the temple after swallowing cyanide.
However, statements and testimonies released from Russian secret service vaults highlight an extraordinary account that Hitler was instead shot dead in his bunker by his valet.
The documents appear to confirm that Police Lieutenant-General Hans Rattenhuber testified that senior valet Heinz Linge fired a shot into the German leader’s head.
Linge was reportedly the first to enter the room after Hitler’s suicide, and helped carry and burn the corpse with Günsche and others.
Rattenhuber – head of the führer’s personal security – told the Soviet officials: “Doubting the effect of the poison due to the numerous injections which for a long time had been administered to him daily, Hitler ordered Linge to shoot him after he took the poison. Linge shot Hitler.”;
Rattenhuber’s testimony made several rounds in the West during the Cold War era, but was suspected of being Soviet misinformation.
And it was completely contradicted by Linge’s own testimony to the Soviets, which speaks definitely of Hitler’s “suicide”;.
Linge revealed a “deluded”; Hitler killed himself partly because he was “afraid”; of being “caught while trying to escape from Berlin”;.
He fell into Soviet hands after the war, and his testimony was crucial to Stalin understanding Hitler final days as his Nazi regime collapsed.
Meanwhile, the – showing evidence of his cyanide suicide – and the last known photograph of him.
A Russian archivist appeared on video going over Linge’s account, which even details the clothes Hitler and Eva Braun wore when they killed themselves.
He said: “Testimony about Hitler’s reasons for taking his own life –he believed it was utterlypointlessto continue the fight.
“He was afraid of being caught while trying to escape from Berlin.
“There was also his severe physical condition, which was beyond doubt, as well as his delusions of grandeur, which would not allow him to bow to the victor or enter into negotiations with him.”;
Morbid footage also showed Hitler’s teeth, which were used to identify him.
Intriguing new details, including how the Soviets pressured Otto Günsche – Hitler’s personal assistant – into opening up about Hitler’s death were also recalled
After the war, Günsche was flown towith other Hitler associates.
The documents show that a German POW and war criminal, Colonel Remlinger was put in a cell with him and instructed by the Soviet authorities to convince him to cooperate.
It was a cunning way of using Hitler’s suicide to turn the Nazi’s fanatical loyalty into cooperation by reinterpretinghis “oath”;.
Remlinger wrote a report that “we convinced him that the events in Germany—especially Hitler’s suicide—freed him from his oath to the Führer.
“Now, with the complete collapse ofand the Nazi system, there was no longer any reason to hide the events that unfolded in the Führer’s headquarters from the Russians—it was now only of historical interest.
“It became easier to persuade him when it emerged that some of Hitler’s close associates (Göring, Himmler) had abandoned him and turned to the Western powers.”;
More documents reveal the examination of Hitler’s teeth to verify his corpse.
The FSB account reads: “On 5 May 1945, in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, SMERSH officers from the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front, discovered the heavily charred corpses of a man and a woman in a bomb crater.”;
“The bodies lay about 3 metres from the entrance to the bunker and were covered with soil.
“By 8 May 1945, a forensic report on the man’s corpse—presumably Hitler—was completed.”;
