| ’s Body Ever Identified? Essay, Research Paper
Was Hitler?s body ever identified?
Everyone gets a good kick out of magazines like the National Enquirer and
Globe because everything written in them is a lie. One commonly written headline in those magazines is ?Elvis has been spotted,? or ?Elvis lives, he never really was dead!!? These are the things written about today. However, about fifty years ago there was something similar going on, although it wasn?t about Elvis, it was about sightings of Adolph Hitler.
The goal of this aspect of the Mysteries of History project was to prove weather or not Adolph Hitler?s body was identified. In most of the books about Hitler that were looked into, the stories concerning the death, suicide and what happened afterwards were almost identical. However, before the death and end of his life is discussed, the reader should know what Hitler was all about.
Adolph Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889. He was born in Austria, right near the German border. According to Hitler, that date began Mein Kampf (My struggle), Hitler?s political autobiography and blueprint for a new Germany. Hitler?s life began as him being a sensitive, artistic boy. By the age of eleven, he was a committed nationalist who had ?learned to understand the meaning of history.?
When Hitler was thirteen years old, his life took a dramatic turn. On January 3, 1903, Adolph?s father, Alois Hitler passed away from a massive pleural hemorrhage. He toppled over at the table and was dead before the doctor arrived. Hitler was very much interested in the arts and dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen so he could sketch and day dream all day.
At the age of twenty-two, Hitler felt that he was alone and adrift. He needed an enemy to blame for all his problems. One day he was walking down the street and encountered a man. The first thought that went through his head was ?Is this man a Jew?? Hitler then proceeded to buy his first anti-Semitic pamphlets. He had a lot of literature to choose from in his new study. Hitler was a firm believer in the statement that ?The Jews were a desert-derived race- intellectually dry and spiritually barren. Germans, on the other hand were an instinctive, romantic, and profound people.
So, on and on his hate obsession went until July of 1921 when Hitler took control of the Nazi party. He was the head-honcho, the ringleader. Violence had always been central to Hitler?s views. It drew attention, instilled fear, and lead to domination. Gangs of Storm Troopers beat Jews in the streets for entertainment. Hitler had the Nazi?s invade theaters and plays if the show was something he considered decadent.
Hitler became a master propagandist. He chose the color red because of its high impact. He adopted the swastika because the Ehrhardt Brigade had made it stand for assertion of the Tuetonic will. He presented the symbol everywhere, on armbands, lapel pins, banners, ever-larger flags. Hitler staged flag ceremonies and the crowds rapidly started growing larger. His entrances were always dramatic and whole assembly?s of people would yell ?Heil, Heil Hitler!?
1924 to 1929 became known to some as ?The Wilderness Years.? Nazi?s and followers of Hitler were constantly bombarding the streets. From the years of 1929 to 1932, Hitler continued to gain power and leadership. Finally, 1933 and 1934, the Nazi?s seized power. They began to take control. Hitler was appointed as chancellor in January of 1933. Then, on August 2, 1934, President Hindenburg died and Hitler appointed himself Fuhrer, leader of the nation and commander-in-chief, of its army. The failed art student from Vienna had become absolute leader of Germany.
World War II began in September 1939 after Hitler invaded Poland. On it raged for six years. Six years of hate, destruction, and brutality, simply because of a powerful, full of hate, leader, Adolph Hitler.
Concerning Hitler?s supposed suicide, or the whole issue of weather or not her escaped. I have chosen to take the side believing that Hitler killed himself and committed a double suicide with his wife, Eva Braun. There are many theories about how Hitler escaped, but there is absolutely no concrete evidence to back up these theories. There are a few stories saying that Hitler escaped to Iceland and a few more claiming that there was this whole Nazi underground system set up to help Nazi?s and Hitler himself escape. To me these stories don?t seem the least bit logical.
The path I have chosen to follow and believe in, I gained from a biography called Adolph Hitler, written by John Toland. This story seems the most logical to me and I found almost the exact same one in another book titled Hitler by Joachim C. Fest. Here is the way the story unfolds.
It?s 1945, Germany knows they have lost the war, and Hitler knows it too. Late morning of April 30, 1945, Adolph and his wife, Eva, come out of his room. SS Major Otto Gunsche, a very good friend of Adolph?s, then greeted them.
Hitler took Gunsche aside and told him that he and his wife were going to commit suicide. He wanted their bodies burned. ?After my death,? he explained, ?I don?t want to be put on exhibition at a Russian wax museum.? Gunsche then called SS Colonel Erich Kempa, another very good friend of Adolph?s and told him that he was coming over. Kempa could tell that something was wrong. Then Kempa?s phone rang again; it was Gunsche telling him that he needed two hundred liters of gasoline. Kempa thought it was a joke and Gunsche told him to leave it by the Fuhrer bunker immediately.
Hitler was then bidding his personal pilot an emotional farewell. The pilot, Hans Bahr, begged Adolph to escape by plane to Argentina, but Hitler refused. He responded, ?One must have to courage to face the consequences, I am ending it all here!? They bid there last farewells and then Hitler and Eva left, to end their lives and die together.
They were sitting on the couch in their suite. Eva was the first to die, by poison. At about 3:30pm, Hitler picked up his 7.65-caliber Walther pistol. It had been his companion for years. He put the barrel to his right temple and pulled the trigger.
Gunsche and Kempka heard the shot from upstairs and stumbled into the room of the Fuhrer. They took in what had happened and carried the bodies to the garden. They proceeded to pour the gasoline all over Adolph and Eva. The clothing of the bodies became so soaked even the strongest gust of wind brought no stirring of their clothing. Gunsche suggested to Kempka igniting the bodies with a hand grenade, but Kempa thought the idea to repugnant. He saw a large rag lying near a fire hose at the entrance. He pointed it out to Gunsche who doused it with gasoline.
Kempka took out a pack of matches and set fire to the rag. He tossed it onto the bodies and watched them erupt into a ball of flames. The men watched, hypnotized, as the fire consumed Eva and Adolph. More cans of gasoline were delivered and for the next three hours they kept pouring the liquid on the smoldering corpses.
That evening the charred remains of Adolph and Eva were swept into a canvas and, so Gunsche recalled, ?let down into a shell hole outside the exit from the bunker, covered over with earth, and the earth pounded firm with a wooden rammer.?
While there is no medical evidence of Adolph Hitler or Eva Braun?s bodies ever being identified, I believe that they were identified and burned by Kempka and Gunsche. There is no solid, to the core; concrete proof of this story being true, but about eleven sources I investigated gave either the exact story or something very, very similar. I believe that if Hitler did escaped, he would have been discovered. I reason that someone as outgoing and greedy as him wouldn?t have been able to just sit back and let things happen.
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