A photo from open sources
April 30 at about 15 :30 Adolf Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Brown committed suicide in the Fuhrerbunker. That day them the corpses were burned in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. However, it is clear that corpses could not be burned to the ground. “Where to put the remains of Hitler?” has become a problem for the Soviet special agencies for decades.
Search for Hitler!
April 25 troops of the 1st Ukrainian and 1st Belorussian fronts closed the circle of encirclement around Berlin. Soviet fighters preparing to storm the city and take prisoners. The most valuable trophy Hitler was considered, of course. Officers and political workers did not get tired to repeat that the Fuhrer is only needed alive. It was officially announced that a soldier or officer who captured Hitler will become a Hero twice Soviet Union. Several special groups from people who knew German and were given the task: search all of Germany, look under every stone, under every blade of grass, but find Hitler dead or alive (preferably alive).
In search of a corpse
On April 30, General Krebs arrived at the headquarters with General Chuikov. armistice proposal. He was the first to report suicide Hitler’s. Important news Chuikov passed Zhukov, he immediately called Stalin. After listening to Zhukov, Stalin asked: “And where dead body?”
Without stopping the search for living Hitler, they began to search for his corpse. 5May, a soldier Ivan Churakov found buried in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery a funnel from an air bomb from which the burnt legs of a man women.
The group dealt with questions of identification of the remains, led by the head of the SMERSH of the 3rd Army, Colonel Gorbushin. They searched and questioned witnesses, compared testimonies. Found dozens of specialists examined the remains. Was assembled and studied a gigantic amount of materials, all those who was in the bunker on April 25-30, 1945, the sequence The events taking place in it were restored in almost a minute.
A multi-page document was compiled for Stalin, in which the results of the research were set out in detail and at the end unequivocal conclusion: the found remains certainly belong to Hitler and Eve Brown. It is clear that before you put your signature under with this document, each not ten – a hundred times thought and all weighed.
A photo from open sources
How to hide and hide the remains
After the truth was established, the question arose before the Soviet authorities: what to do with the remains? The question is far from idle. Everyone understood that the burial place of the Nazi Fuhrer will become an object Pilgrimages for the unfinished fascists and their followers. therefore all actions carried out with the remains of Hitler were carried out in deep secret.
First, the corpses were buried in Buch – a suburb of Berlin. (Together with the bodies of Goebbels were buried by the remains of Hitler and Eva Braun, members of his family and the corpse of General Krebs) Then they were transported and buried in the vicinity of Finov. June 3, 1945 the remains again dug and reburied in the area of Rathenov, as expected now forever. The burial site was razed to the ground. planted trees.
The reburials had several reasons. Graves exhumed for conducting additional examinations, bones were torn out of the ground if it was suspected that information about the place of their burial leaked out.
The burial place was under constant tacit surveillance 3rd military counterintelligence, so when in February 1946 the headquarters relocated to Magdeburg, among other things the property half-rotten crates transported and dug from the ground. February 21 them buried in the courtyard of the house number 36 on the street. Westendstrasse in Magdeburg where the SMERSH department was located so that the burial was always before eyes.
Operation Archive
In 1970, the territory occupied by Soviet troops the town in Magdeburg was transferred to the authorities of the GDR. The question came up again about the remains of the Fuhrer and buried with him (a total of 10 corpses). In March 1970, KGB Chairman Andropov sent a note to Brezhnev, in which offered to open the grave, destroy the remains by burning. Your affirmative visa on a document other than Brezhnev left Kosygin and Podgorny. The operation to destroy the remains received the name “Archive”.
In the courtyard of the house №36 on the street Westendstrasse appeared big a tent that hid excavations. For german comrades voiced the version that according to the surfaced archives documents somewhere here the Nazis buried secret archives. On the night of On April 5, the burial was opened, the bones were reloaded into another box, taken to an army training ground, where they were crushed, burned, and ashes poured into one of the tributaries of the Elbe – the Biederitz river. Supervisor who carried out the operation sent to Andropov corresponding report.
All that remains of the fanatic, who burned half of Europe in the fire of war – part of Hitler’s skull stored in the State Archive, and in the FSB archive – his jaw. But these bones are unlikely to ever be buried. Their destiny – forever archive shelves.
Stalin
