SUMMER 2017
It’s raining in Moscow. Late June. More than two months have passed since our disastrous stay in the Russian capital. Two months during which we tried to persuade Alexander Orlov, our contact at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MID, to obtain authorisation for us to analyse Hitler’s teeth. But Alexander has vanished. We can’t get through to him, either by phone or mail. We are stuck. Is this how our investigation will end? A year and a half of persistence to reach this impasse? Many times, our contacts had given us commitments, made promises. “Yes, of course, we are in favour of these forensic studies. The skull? The teeth? You want them? Come on, we’re waiting for you!” The mysterious acronyms (GARF, MID, TsA FSB…), the administrative subtleties, the grim hierarchical decorum, we thought we had tamed them one after the other. We had endured internal quarrels and put up with inflated egos. Even the sudden disappearance of some of our contacts. Disappearances both literal and figurative, since one of our helpers at GARF died of a heart attack during winter 2017. Almost systematically, we quickly found that when one door opened another closed. But that didn’t matter because we had no choice. Hitler’s last human remains, or the remains alleged to be Hitler’s, are in Russia, and nowhere else. This indisputable premise grants enormous power to the Russian authorities. The power to decide who can examine them. Who and when.
A reality that has lasted since 5 May 1945, since the discovery in the garden of the Chancellery of the Third Reich of the alleged corpse of Hitler by the Red Army. We imagine that in just over seventy years we are not the first to have tried to persuade Moscow. Lana calls this seduction exercise the “belly dance.” As in the famous piece of oriental choreography, we have to keep on smiling in spite of the cavalier and disobliging attitudes of our contacts. Like the almost obligatory lack of respect at meetings, the authorisations cancelled at the last minute… Keeping calm and seducing them into letting us close to those pieces of historical evidence. The game is a biased one because we are the supplicants. Others have run the same gauntlets. People more illustrious than ourselves. Starting with the Allies in 1945.
At the time, the Anglo-American-French staffs tried to charm their Soviet “colleagues” to obtain information about Hitler. They generously offered confidential documents, in the hope of receiving something reciprocal:
MILITARY ADMINISTRATION IN GERMANY (USA)
Head of the intelligence service
APO [Army Post Office] 742
8 January 1946
Dear General!
I have the pleasure of sending you photographs of the following documents:
letter from Martin Bormann to Admiral Dönitz;
Hitler and Eva Braun’s wedding certificate;
Hitler’s personal and political testaments.
Our document experts have declared that they are authentic, without any doubt. I am sure that these documents will be interesting to you and your collaborators.
Best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
T.J. Koenig
Colonel, Director of General Staff, interim head of the intelligence service
General Command, 58 Luisenstrasse, Berlin
The particularly friendly tone of this letter between the heads of secret services is very much at odds with the reality of the time. In Berlin, relations between the Allies and the Soviets had already deteriorated in early 1946. The Russians refused to share their data on the Hitler file and the definitive point of rupture was inexorably on the way. The American Colonel Koenig couldn’t ignore it. His letter looks like a last attempt at reconciliation, a friendly hand.
Reconciliation that the strict Alexey Sidnev spurned. The thirty-nine-year-old Russian general and representative of SMERSH in Berlin, and then of the NKVD, was already partly familiar with the documents sent by the Americans. Particularly Hitler’s testaments. The British had sent them to him the previous week. An initiative that the British had clearly taken without telling their American friends.
General staff,
Regulatory commission for Germany
British sector
Intelligence group
31-12-1945
Berlin
For the attention of Major General SIDNEV
Head of the intelligence service
Red Army headquarters
Berlin.
Contents: Hitler’s testament
Please find enclosed the testament of Hitler which has been found. It was communicated to the British press on 30 December 1945.
Signature: Captain VOLIS
These “presents” from the Allies would soon stop. On 5 March 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in the presence of the American President Harry Truman. Churchill was no longer Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, since his defeat in the general election in July 1945, but he remained a political heavyweight at the international level. He was the first to be officially worried about the aggressive policies of the Soviet Union.
A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. […] From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. […] If now the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the Soviets and the Western Democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts–and facts they are–this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.*
Stalin immediately seized the opportunity to confirm the rupture with the Western camp. In an interview granted to the Soviet daily newspaper Pravda on 14 March 1946, he demonstrated an unprecedented violence towards his former allies:
Question from journalist: Can it be considered that Mr. Churchill’s speech is prejudicial to the cause of peace and security?
Stalin: Yes, unquestionably. As a matter of fact, Mr. Churchill now takes the stand of the warmongers, and in this Mr. Churchill is not alone. He has friends not only in Britain but in the United States of America as well. A point to be noted is that in this respect Mr. Churchill and his friends bear a striking resemblance to Hitler and his friends. […] There can be no doubt that Mr. Churchill’s position is a war position, a call for war on the USSR.*
The Anglo-Americans compared to Hitler? Stalin had followed what we now call Godwin’s law with disconcerting swiftness, and established a point of no-return between the two camps. From then on, all contact between the Western and Soviet secret services was severed. The famous “Iron Curtain” also fell on the Hitler file. However, investigations into the circumstances of the Führer’s death continued. Each camp used the information in their possession to the greatest advantage. In this little game, the Soviets where a length ahead. In April–May 1945, they were the first to arrive in Berlin. They didn’t wait for the Anglo-Americans before laying their hands on thousands of documents and taking a large part of Hitler’s innermost circle prisoner. The Allies had also captured a number of witnesses in the western part of Germany, and discovered some highly valuable documents. Particularly Hitler’s doctors, his medical file, and even x-rays of his face. Information that is accessible today because it has been unclassified. An opportunity that we wouldn’t pass up. There is a sequence of five x-rays of Hitler’s face in the American archives. In these pictures dating from 1944, one can clearly make out the Führer’s jaws and teeth. Thanks to this historical source, we should be able to confirm the identification of the teeth that the FSB allowed us to observe in December 2016. But above all, we need to know where these x-rays come from and check that they are authentic.
Hugo Johannes Blaschke was Hitler’s personal dentist between 1934 and 20 April 1945. This Prussian was a man of great refinement, perfectly bilingual in English and German. And a convinced Nazi. A graduate of Philadelphia Dental School at the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to his country and served as a “field doctor” in the First World War. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP, and became a major in the SS in 1935. On Göring’s recommendation he became dentist to the Nazi elite. His patients included Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, Bormann, Speer, and above all Hitler and Eva Braun. As a reward for his good and loyal service he was awarded an honorary professorship and the rank of oberführer (brigadier general) of the Waffen-SS. He would be interrogated in November and December of the same year. The intention was to obtain as many details as possible about Hitler’s dentures, in order to be able to identify his corpse if the situation presented itself.
The dentist had no x-rays or access to his patient’s file, but his memory was perfect. He provided extremely important information for our investigation, particularly concerning the fact that Hitler suffered from severe dental problems. He had had extensive caries on many occasions. He was also subject to gingivitis and suffered from halitosis (bad breath). Many bridges had been designed to preserve his teeth. In spite of this treatment, his poor dental condition did not abate. “Towards the end of September 1944 I was called to the headquarters,” Blaschke relates. “Hitler complained about slight tenderness of the gingiva of the upper left jaw. He was bedridden. He was, as Professor Morell told me, suffering from an inflammation of the naso-pharyngial area.”* In January 1945 Hitler, who still complained about his teeth, asked his dentist to move to the Chancellery, near his bunker. The Führer consulted him only once, in February, for a superficial examination.
Faced with Soviet troops coming dangerously close to Berlin, Blaschke obtained permission to flee on the night of 19–20 April 1945. All of his medical files, including Hitler’s, would be lost with the aeroplane carrying them to Salzburg. The dentist, who was travelling on another flight, reached Bavaria safe and sound.
Luckily the Americans soon discovered other medical files on Hitler. Notable among these were x-rays of his face taken after the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944. Three of these were taken on 19 September 1944 by Dr. Giesing at the military hospital in Rastenburg, in East Prussia. Erwan Giesing was Hitler’s personal ENT doctor. The x-rays show the frontal sinus (position nose-forehead), the sphenoidal sinus (position mouth-chin), and the maxillary, ethmoidal, and frontal sinuses (position chin-nose).
Two other x-rays dated 21 October 1944 were also found among the documents of Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Morell. He declared to the Americans that he could not remember under what circumstances they had been taken. These views show the maxillary, ethmoidal, and frontal sinuses (position chin-nose). To check that the two series of pictures showed the same person, the investigators compared the shape of the frontal sinuses. The examination was positive. Hitler’s sinuses were very large, and showed indications of frequent sinusitis.
For twenty-three years, this information served no purpose. The Soviets never allowed the Americans to approach the alleged bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun that they had in their possession. Besides, how could they have granted them this privilege, when officially they did not have the bodies? This version of events would be questioned by the publication of a sensational book in 1968. Lev Bezymenski, a former army translator and now a journalist, brought out a book in West Germany, entitled The Death of Adolf Hitler. For the first time since the fall of Berlin in May 1945, the secret of the bodies discovered by the Soviets was revealed with photographic evidence. This included photographs of the teeth attributed to Hitler: a maxillary bridge of nine teeth and a lower jaw of fifteen teeth. Thanks to this book, Blaschke’s testimony and the x-rays finally served a purpose.
In 1972, two Norwegian scientists, Reidar F. Sognnaes, Dean of Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Boston (United States), and Ferdinand Ström, pioneer of forensic odontology (the use of teeth to identify corpses), decided to carry out the first thorough examination of Hitler’s teeth.
An examination was performed under conditions that were less than optimal given that the two scientists had no physical access to the teeth, since these were still classified as military secrets in Moscow. The Norwegian dentists could work only from documents. On the one hand, they had the material from the American secret services: the records of interrogations of Hitler’s dentist and the five x-rays. On the other, they had the photographs published in the book by the former Red Army interpreter. At the time it was impossible to check Bezymenski’s reliability. In principle it remained questionable. But no matter. Sognnaes and Ström estimated that they had enough information to launch their investigation. They were sure that they could put an end to the most insane scenarios about the escape of Hitler and his survival of the fall of the Third Reich. Their work occurred in a special context. In fact, at the start of the 1970s, the Nazis were back in the news, thanks to the work of “SS hunters” like the Klarsfelds, but also the Israeli secret service, Mossad. The wider public thus became aware that former senior figures in the Hitler regime were living peacefully in the authoritarian republics of Latin America. Some would be arrested, like Eichmann and Barbie. Others, including Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death” for his sadistic medical experiments on prisoners, would escape judgement. If those men were able to flee Germany in 1945 and find refuge, why not the Führer? It was in this atmosphere of rumours and mystery that the dentists Sognnaes and Ström intervened.
[…] It is evident that most of the large posterior teeth on the right side are missing. […] On the left side of the lower jaw, the diagram indicates absences and replacement of the first premolar by a porcelain-faced gold pontic and of the first and second molars by solid metal. […]
In the lower jaw, one can very clearly see on the left side three roots carrying a long bridge replacement. […] It became clear that Hitler had only four remaining teeth which were not involved in either bridging a gap or supporting a bridge between adjacent teeth. […]
Where the material at hand permitted definitive conclusions, it will be noticed that there exists a remarkable conformity between the individual tooth identifications established through the analysis of the American and Soviet data. In addition to the individual teeth which were present, absent, restored or replaced, as the case may be, we have also noted a few other special areas, namely, the unique lingual bar serving as a fixed bridge bypass between the lower right canine and second premolar, and also the alveolar bone resorption around the roots of the incisor teeth.
From this overall comparison of odontological evidence we conclude that the individual identified by means of the 1945 Hitler files located in the US National Archives in 1972, is the same person as that whose 1945 autopsy report was published on the basis of the previously unknown documents from Soviet Archives of 1945.*
For the first time since the end of the war, a non-Soviet scientific report lent credit to the theory of Hitler’s death. The story caused a storm at the time. But for want of direct access to the human remains, doubt persisted. Forty-five years after the work of Sognnaes and Ström, Philippe Charlier was able to provide an analysis of these teeth. Like the two Norwegian specialists, he hadn’t seen them. But he had at his disposal the photographs and videos that we had taken in December 2016. In this way he was able to compare them with the x-rays of Hitler’s face. The results were conclusive, morphological comparison of the dental prostheses left no doubt:
Morphological comparison between the dental prostheses and bony elements, and the photographs presented as being of Adolf Hitler intra vitam.
The dental and bony elements show lesions of carbonisation, of cutting, of fragmentation, wear and an upper and lower apparatus entirely compatible with the photographs presented (x-rays of face and details). In the present state of observation of the anatomical pieces it is not possible to determine the sex and age of the subject (except that the subject is an adult). […]
Summary: perfect agreement between the x-rays presented as being of Adolf Hitler intra vitam and the dental elements presented. […]
Dr. Charlier’s report confirms the conclusions of his illustrious predecessors. These are indeed Hitler’s teeth. Our inquiry could stop there. We could stop harassing Alexander Orlov, and give up all hope of returning to the FSB offices with Philippe Charlier so that he could examine the pieces of jaw hidden away so carefully since 1945. It would be so simple.
12 July 2017. Summer obstinately refused to come for the Muscovites. The sky merges with the grey of the pavements to form a horizon of impenetrable sadness. Pelting rain clears the streets of the few passers-by. We are with Philippe Charlier in Putin’s city. With a small suitcase. It contains a state-of-the-art binocular microscope. The Lubyanka, its heavy door, ID check, the suspicious expression on the guard’s face… We act out the same film as we did last December. Alevander Orlov likes springing surprises on us. Two weeks previously, he had told us the FSB’s reply. “You can come back. With Dr. Charlier. Your request has been confirmed. We should inform you that after you there will be no further examinations. We will refuse them.” Why this change of mind? We won’t ask that question. We don’t want to give them an excuse to change their minds again.
Inside the Lubyanka (FSB archives), in the security door, a youngish man with a light-coloured beard is waiting behind the military guard at reception. His name is Denis, and he is replacing Dmitri, the FSB officer who escorted us in December. Only first names, never surnames. Are those even their real first names? They both start with the same letter, a “d.” Probably a coincidence. Denis smiles complicitly at the guard, who checks our passports. We are in order. The same lift, the same floor. The third. The same little room, office 344, on the right of a windowless corridor. Nothing in the office has changed. Only the little Christmas tree has disappeared. Otherwise, there are still as many FSB officials keeping an eye on us. Including that tall blonde young woman who treated us with such suspicion. This time she is wearing a floral nylon dress short enough to reveal solid knees. Her taut face is at odds with the brightness of her outfit. Our smiles leave her cold. Did she have better things to do than waste her afternoon with some foreigners? Probably. Lana introduces Philippe Charlier to the five men and the young woman who will be standing next to us throughout the whole examination. They are intrigued by the small case. They want to check the forensic examiner’s equipment. The agreement made with Alexander stipulated that nothing was to be removed. The examination would be entirely visual. That requirement was mandatory. To respect the Russian imperatives, Philippe decided to bring a binocular microscope. The equipment does not damage the object under examination, and allows the user to study it by zooming up to thirty-five times. It can also take films and photographs with an integrated digital camera.
Lana lists the technical specifications of the microscope for her compatriots. Denis asks if there is a light on the machine. “A light? Yes a small one…” We don’t have time to finish the phrase before a flurry of “niets” echoes around the room. Everyone becomes agitated. They are worried by the light. “Niet laser, niet!” I hurry over to Lana and ask her to reassure them. It’s only a little built-in lamp, not a laser. Translate, quickly and clearly. Lana does so. The apparatus is on the table. It is turned on. The light is activated. Not a laser! It’s not a laser! We all insist. Denis leans over the machine before stepping back and confirming this to his colleagues. It’s fine! Philippe Charlier gives Lana and me a quizzical look. It’s 2:00 pm, and after an eighteen-month wait we have been given permission to study the remains attributed to Hitler.
In spite of the orders from FSB head office, the young woman in her summer dress can’t help balking at the idea of our being allowed to handle the teeth. She picks up the little cigarillo-box in which they are stored. She moves it away from Philippe. He intervenes gently and calmly. He asks Lana to translate. “Please tell her that I am only going to handle the teeth with sterile gloves. My gloves. Look, they’re new, I’ll put them on in front of you…” He picks up a medical plastic bag, tears it open and takes out the gloves. Very carefully, he puts them on, looking the young woman from the FSB in the eye. “Now I’m equipped, the best thing would be for her to arrange the pieces of jaw, one by one, on the sterile paper that I have arranged in front of me. That way nothing will be contaminated.” Philippe Charlier speaks slowly. His voice emanates a sense of professionalism that finally convinces the young woman. Against all expectation she complies.
The silence is total. The only sound is the rustle of the paper on which the first teeth have been laid out. The scientist handles them carefully, turning them around on their axis. First of all, the examination must allow him to check the authenticity of the teeth. Reassure himself that they aren’t fake. The FSB team are perfectly capable of making a copy on the basis of the x-rays and Hitler’s dental files. Lana and I share Philippe Charlier’s tendency to doubt everything. We are at the heart of one of the most powerful and controversial secret services on the planet. Manipulation is always possible. Not to admit that fact would be a professional shortcoming. So we need to check for traces of wear and patina, clues proving the age and authenticity of the teeth. “It’s really interesting,” Charlier says, zooming in. “Deposits of tartar are particularly visible on this prosthesis. I can see some organic remains, a bit of gum, perhaps some mucous membrane and partially carbonised soft tissue. The yellow metal of the prosthesis is marked with small stripes. That corresponds to the past presence of small crystals in foodstuffs. As far as I’m concerned there is no doubt, these dental prostheses are authentic. They have been worn long enough for tartar deposits to form. Their age seems compatible with the Second World War. I can state with confidence that they are not fake!”
The teeth have not been recreated by the KGB or its successor, the FSB. They are real, and the same ones as those seen in the x-rays of Hitler’s face. Their shape, the prostheses–there is no doubt about it. These are the teeth of the Nazi dictator. At last we’re making some progress. We can confirm that Hitler died in Berlin on 30 April 1945. Not in Brazil at the age of ninety-five, or in Japan, or in the Argentinean Andes. The proof is scientific, not ideological. Coldly scientific.
“His dental health was very poor,” Charlier observes. “This individual suffered from parodontopathy [a resorption of the mucous membrane to the level of the root of the teeth], resulting in tooth loss.” This coincides with the statements of his dentist, Dr. Blaschke. He told the Americans that Hitler had developed chronic gingivitis. There are multiple causes of this well-known illness,” Charlier goes on, “tobacco-smoking, poor nutrition, drug-taking, chronic infections of the mouth and vegetarianism.” Hitler didn’t smoke, he didn’t lack nutrition either in terms of quality or quantity, but he was a vegetarian. In those days decay caused by vegetarianism had not been identified, and a vegetarian diet was not backed up by nutritional supplements.
The pieces of the puzzle are coming together perfectly. But we need to go still further. Understand how he died.
“Don’t film me! No photographs!” The threatening tone is decidedly at odds with the floral pattern on her dress. The FSB official didn’t like me taking a photograph with her in my field of vision. Lara intervenes, as ever, to calm everyone down. Let’s not forget where we are. Or the fact that it could be stopped with a click of the fingers. Or a rustle of an acrylic dress. My deepest apologies seem to satisfy everyone present. The examination continues.
Looking for traces of acid or gunpowder from a firearm. According to the different versions, Hitler committed suicide with cyanide and/or a pistol shot to the head. If the gun was fired into the mouth, remains of gunpowder, antimony, lead and/or barium, to be precise, might still be present. The different fragments of jaw pass one by one before the Frenchman’s eagle eye. They all bear marks of carbonisation. “We may have information on exposure to fire,” Charlier explains. “The intense black traces at the level of bone and mucous membrane,” as well as the roots of the teeth, demonstrate a high degree of carbonisation. The fire must have been intense, since it managed to split part of the roots, exposing the dentine [also called the ivory of the tooth].” According to the statements of Linge and Günsche, Hitler was burnt using two hundred litres of petrol. The fire was intense, violent but relatively short. This scenario accords with Charlier’s observations. He establishes, for example, that traces of gum and muscle are perfectly apparent. This means that the body was not burnt completely. On 30 April 1945 the incessant Russian bombardment of the Reich Chancellery prevented the total cremation of Hitler. No one in the Führerbunker wanted to take the risk of staying in the gardens to keep alive the fire burning the corpses of the dictator and his wife.
“I think I’ve found something…” Philippe Charlier zooms in as far as possible on one of the dental prostheses. The image appears on the laptop computer connected to the binocular microscope. A vague mass slowly takes shape. “Look at this: the metal alloy of the prosthesis has undergone an astonishing alteration. One can distinguish the enamel of the tooth underneath it.” Sure enough, there is a hole in the gilded metal plaque and the white of the tooth can be seen underneath it. “We’re looking at the premolar,” he goes on. “What could have caused this?” Several hypotheses are possible. A manufacturing defect? A poor-quality prosthesis? Unlikely. Hitler was tended to by a famous dentist. He wouldn’t have risked giving him mediocre treatment. “So it might be due to acid, an oxidation of the metal.” Cyanide? On a premolar? Does that make sense? Hitler was said to have crushed his poison capsule with his back teeth, so his molars or premolars. Other teeth show the same traces of oxidation. In the course of the only autopsy performed on the alleged body of Hitler, the Soviets indicated that “fragments of glass and fine pieces of the ends of the medical ampoule were found in the mouth.” More than seventy years later, is it possible to find these fragments of glass?
The binocular microscope works miracles. It shows you things invisible to the naked eye. Philippe Charlier has never been so satisfied with his equipment. While he goes on inspecting the tartar deposits, he happens upon crystals that he immediately identifies. “They are grains of silica. They’re there, wedged between the dentine and the cement [the tissue that covers the dentine at the level of the root]. Was Hitler buried in sand?” Silica is a metalloid chemical element found in sand and cement, but also in the manufacture of laboratory glassware. It has the quality of being resistant to many acids including cyanide. But let’s come back to Dr. Charlier’s question. Was Hitler buried in a sandy area? It’s a hard one to answer. Not a priori. His body was found in the garden of the Chancellery. On the other hand, there could be traces of cement since the bunker was very close by and it had been damaged by the bombs. And most importantly, silica is a mineral present everywhere in earth. As to its use in laboratory glassware, its microscopic form is totally different from naturally occurring silica. The silica found on these teeth does not resemble the silica of laboratory glassware. For Philippe Charlier, that trail is closed. On the other hand, he is much less circumspect about blue traces. “On the surface of this tooth there is a surprising bluish deposit that I have difficulty explaining. Was there an interaction with an external element at the moment of death? Or at the moment of burial?” The blue is intense, almost a “Klein blue,” like a paint stain. The trace is small and could go unnoticed by the naked eye. The tooth in question is one of Hitler’s few remaining natural teeth. “You can see growth rings on it, the surface, the enamel, fibrous remains, dental tartar… There was an interaction between something and this tooth, but I don’t know with what. It is not dental tartar, I’m sure of that.” Charlier reflects. He has never seen this before. “There is no reason why cyanide would interact directly with enamel to create bluish coloration like this. Physically, chemically, there is no particular reason.” And yet this blue trace exists. “I will have to consult the forensic literature, particularly in the field of toxicology, because I’m at a loss.”
The French doctor now turns his attention to other tooth fragments. “Look! You can also see this blue in the crevices of the other teeth. It also appears on the surface of these prostheses.” More tiny deposits of the same appear. They are partially covered by deposits of sediment. At first Philippe Charlier thought they might be tartar. And that consequently these blue marks dated from several weeks or even months before Hitler’s death. The forensic pathologist quickly corrected his mistake. They are sediments, which could date from the burial of the bodies in the earth. Do these blue stains give us a clue to Hitler’s poisoning. At this stage, and since it is impossible to take even a tiny sample. Charlier is unable to reply.
The examination is coming to an end. All the teeth have been carefully analysed. For some minutes I have heard Lana talking to Denis in a low voice at the back of the room. I gesture to her to say that we’ve finished. Two hours was enough. The rest of the forensic study will now take place in Paris, with the examination of the images recorded by the binocular microscope. Lana isn’t listening to me. She’s very excited. “They’re going to show us Eva Braun’s teeth. This is a first!” A fragment of the teeth of the Führer’s wife! Philippe Charlier is still hunched over his machine. He asks simply: “Can I examine them too?” Lana has joined the group of FSB officials to thank them. So we’ve got Eva Braun’s teeth. Alleged teeth, to be precise. Because, unlike the situation with Hitler, we have no x-rays to confirm their identification. As a precaution, Philippe Charlier changes his sterile gloves and takes another sheet of paper, also sterile. Once he is ready he gestures to the young woman. She opens a box. It is much smaller than the one holding Hitler’s teeth, but just as “eccentric.” It looks like the box for a pair of earrings. Inside, resting on cotton wool, are three teeth, molars and a premolar, connected by a yellow metal prosthesis. “Spasiba” (Thank you) Charlier says, picking them up. He puts them delicately down in the middle of the microscope and adjusts the focus.
Teeth attributed to Hitler kept in the FSB archives
The first observation comes quickly: “We see the same bluish deposits on the surface of the teeth!” Cautiously, he adds: “On these teeth, which are presented to us as being those of Eva Braun.” Some clues corroborate the hypothesis that these remains have undergone the same post-mortem treatment as those of Hitler. Namely a cremation and a burial in a similar natural environment. “They have been carbonised in the same way. They are artificial teeth with a deposit of tartar on the prosthesis as well as grains of silica, exactly the same as on the previous teeth. We can clearly see the patina of wear on the metal of the prosthesis. I can confirm that these teeth have really been worn. And they cannot belong to the same individual as the one just now, because they are from an identical anatomic area.” So no trickery on the part of the Russians.
Fragments of teeth attributed to Eva Braun by the Russian authorities and stored in the archives of FSB in Moscow.
Eva Braun was thirty-three when she died. She had been the Führer’s official spouse for only a day. According to Soviet and Anglo-American investigations, she committed suicide by swallowing cyanide. “I’m going to have to analyse all this from scratch,” Philippe says, still zooming in on the little blue traces, “It’s really very strange…” He takes more photographs with the digital camera built into the binocular microscope. These photographs will allow him to re-examine the teeth in his Paris laboratory and perhaps close the file on Hitler’s death.
* Winston Churchill, The Sinews of Peace, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 5 March 1946.
* New York Times, 14 March 1946.
* US National Archives, no01 FIR 31, in Reidar F. Sognnaes and Ferdinand Ström, “The Odontological Identifications of Adolf Hitler: Definitive Documentation by X-Ray, Interrogations and Autopsy Finding,” Acta Odontology Scandinavica, 31 (1973), pp. 43–69, here p. 57.
* Reidar F. Sognnaes and Ferdinand Ström, “The Odontological Identification of Adolf Hitler,” Acta Ondotologica Scandinavica, Vol. 31 No. 1 (1973), pp. 43–79.