History of Sorts

The History Channel has been showing a documentary series, Hunting Hitler. The aim is to prove that Hitler did not commit suicide but escaped to Argentina. Although intriguing and compelling, and if you are not au fait with the history—you might actually believe it.

However, there are several parts of evidence that they have omitted from the show. They are taking the 20th of April 1945 as a starting point, and according to the documentary, it was the last time Hitler was seen in public. They are using this as the potential date he made his escape. What was excluded in the investigations were the eyewitness accounts of those who were with Hitler in the bunker until he committed suicide.

Also, the photograph below is deemed the last picture of Hitler alive. It was taken on the 28th of April 1945, in the Reich chancellery, eight days after he allegedly escaped.

Another vital part they have left out is his dental records.

Elena Rzhevskaya, a Jewish Russian  writer who worked as a translator with the Soviet team, identified Hitler’s body after he died in 1945. She was entrusted with the teeth of Hitler during the search for a dentist who could identify them and thus prove that the Fuhrer was really dead.

It was possible to identify Hitler from his teeth because of his extensive dental work. By the end of his life, Hitler had very few teeth left, and most had crowns. The remaining teeth were prosthetic and were held together with bridges.

The Soviet troops captured the Reich Chancellery and the subterranean Führerbunker on 2 May. The corpses of Goebbels and his wife Magda were found and identified, and a subsequent report about it was openly publicized. This apparently outraged Stalin, who immediately ordered to keep secret all records related to the search for Adolf Hitler. The contacts with the press and photographers were banned, and the information was sent directly to Stalin.

In the following days, speculation and contradictory facts appeared about the alleged death of the Führer. According to Rzhevskaya, Hitler’s corpse was found by accident. Shortly before they departed from Berlin, a group of Soviet soldiers led by commander Klimenko visited for the last time the garden of the Chancellery, where the burned corpse of Goebbels was found. Near the entrance to the bunker, the soldier Churakov found a shell hole filled with unusually fresh soil. After a brief examination, a male and female corpse were found. Klimenko and his men were apparently confused because, at that time, an alleged Hitler’s corpse was placed in the hall of the Chancellery. They left without further investigation. However, the information leaked to Gorbushin and his team, and they returned the next day. They recovered the previously found human corpses and the bodies of two dogs.

On the  9th of May 1945, they managed to track down Käthe Heusermann, an assistant of Hugo Blaschke, Hitler’s personal dentist. They followed her to the building of the Reich Chancellery, where she found Hitler’s medical records, including X-ray images of his teeth. During the interrogation led by Gorbushin, Major Bystrov, and Rzhevskaya as an interpreter, she confirmed that the box contained the teeth of Adolf Hitler. The information was subsequently confirmed by Fritz Echtmann, a dental technician who worked in Blaschke’s consulting room since 1938.

Below is the written description of Hitler’s dental records.

‘In the upper jaw, there are nine teeth connected by a bridge of yellow metal (gold). The bridge is anchored by pins on the second left and the second right incisor. This bridge consists of 4 upper incisors (A), 2 canine teeth (B), the first left bicuspid (C), and the first and second right bicuspids (D), as indicated in the sketch. The first left incisor (E) consists of a white platelet, with cracks and a black spot in the porcelain (enamel) at the bottom. This platelet is inset into the visible side of the metal (gold) tooth. The second incisor, the canine tooth, and the left bicuspid, as well as the first and second incisors and the first bicuspid on the right, are the usual porcelain (enamel) dental plates, their posterior parts fastened to the bridge. The right canine tooth is fully capped by yellow metal (gold). The maxillary bridge is vertically sawed off behind the second left bicuspid (F). The lower jawbone lies loose in the singed oral cavity. The alveolar processes are broken in the back and have ragged edges. The front surface and the lower edge of the mandibula are scorched. On the front surface, the charred prongs of dental roots are recognizable. The lower jaw consists of fifteen teeth, ten of which are artificial. The incisors (G) and the first right bicuspid (H) are natural, exhibiting considerable wear on the masticating surface and considerably exposed necks. The dental enamel has a bluish shimmer and a dirty yellow colouration around the necks.

The teeth to the left (I) are artificial, of yellow metal (gold), and consist of a bridge of gold crowns. The bridge is fastened to the third, the fifth (in the bridge, the sixth tooth), and the eighth tooth (in the bridge, the ninth tooth). The second bicuspid to the right (J) is topped by a crown of yellow metal (gold) which is linked to the right canine tooth by an arching plate. Part of the masticating surface and the posterior surface of the right canine tooth are capped by a yellow metal (gold) plate as part of the bridge. The first right molar is artificial, white, and secured by a gold clip connected with the bridge of the second bicuspid and the right incisor.’

According to the record of the interrogation of Frau Käthe Heusermann, it may be presumed that the teeth as well as the bridge described in the document are those of Chancellor Hitler.

The photograph at the top of the blog is an image of a fragment of Adolf Hitler’s mandible.

I am not totally ruling out the investigation concluded in Hunting Hitler, but I did notice that the longer the show continued, the more excited they became but the less proof they actually came up with.

Sources

https://www.history.com/news/hitler-death-cause-teeth-analysis

Click to access sognnaes_rf__strom_f_1973_hitlers-dentition.pdf

Hitler and his Dentist

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