PARIS, SEPTEMBER 2017
They’re barely discernible to the naked eye. How many are there? Two, maybe three. Pieces–crumbs, rather–dark as dust. Philippe Charlier is holding up in front of his eyes a plastic phial sealed with a red cork. A label is attached to it, bearing the words “dental plaque A.H.” How did these fragments from Hitler’s teeth make their way to Paris? An accident, a concatenation of circumstances. After the test that he carried out at FSB headquarters in Moscow in July 2018, Dr. Charlier carefully put away the materials he had been working with. In this instance, two pairs of latex gloves and two sheets of paper on which the teeth had been arranged. Meticulous as ever, he didn’t mix them together: the paper and the gloves used for Hitler’s remains on one side, the ones for the teeth attributed to Eva Braun on the other. When he returned to Paris, before throwing everything away, he realised that some tiny pieces of tartar from Hitler’s teeth had come away during the examination. He automatically recovered them and stored them in a phial.
What was to be done? Alexander, our contact at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the officers of the FSB had always opposed any samples being taken from the teeth. We were familiar with that condition. And besides, how could we have escaped the close vigilance of the FSB officials during the microscope analysis? Inside the Lubyanka itself? Even Lana, always ready to attempt the impossible, wouldn’t have dreamed of it. Now we’re in Paris, far from Moscow. The Russian secret services can no longer intervene to prevent us from exploiting these fragments. Nonetheless, acting without their consent is out of the question. For two quite simple reasons: out of moral principle and out of professionalism. Two ideas on which Philippe Charlier is particularly keen. All the more so since, without the green light of the Russian authorities, it will be impossible to treat the analysis of these pieces of tartar in any official way. We would then find ourselves in the same situation as the American team from the History Channel that made the American documentary that was broadcast in 2009. Because they had no agreement with the Russian archives (GARF, in this instance), their revelations about the fragment of skull allegedly belonging to Hitler remain tainted with suspicion. In their case, several questions linger. How were those pieces of skull collected and by whom? The mystery surrounding the work of the American team means that their results cannot be exploited scientifically. Not without reason has Dr. Nick Bellantoni never published his work in a scientific journal, which means that it has never been validated. We aren’t going to make the same mistake.
Lana jumped with joy. “Some pieces came away? That’s incredible! What a stroke of luck…” Her enthusiasm barely surprises me any more, and neither does her boundless energy. As usual, obstacles seem to melt away as if by magic when she’s around. My fears and doubts become deluded neuroses. But I still take the time to set out my point of view: the potential wrath of our Russian contacts, their possible refusal, coercive reprisals (particularly for Lana who has the good fortune to have a Russian passport and to live mostly in Moscow). My imagination amuses her. She laughs at it. I can distinctly hear her doing so down the telephone. Is it an exaggeration to imagine that the FSB could, quite freely, harm in some way or another a Russian citizen who had put them in an awkward position?
“Don’t worry about me; quite the contrary, they will be delighted to learn that we have some pieces of the teeth.” Her logic makes me feel like a child learning a lesson.
“What was our agreement?”
“To make a purely visual examination.”
“Were we under constant surveillance during the analysis?”
“There were at least five of them watching us.”
So far, Lana is not mistaken. All we did was play the game by the rules they imposed.
“Is Philippe Charlier going to call into question the authenticity of the teeth?” Lana already knows the answer. She is practising a form of Socratic method on me. She is pulling me in the wake of her thought, and she insists that I reply. “No, he’s not going to claim that they aren’t Hitler’s teeth. On the contrary, he is categorical.”
So? I can hear the smile in Lana’s voice. “So, it’s all fine, Jean-Christophe. They will accept it. Trust me.”
The Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (Laboratory of Solid State Physics, LPS) of Paris-Sud University is under scaffolding. Some workmen are busy from dawn till dusk around the central building. They’re hammering, pounding, drilling. The quiet forest and the affluent detached houses of the little town of Orsay, south-west of Paris, barely pay the slightest attention to these regular disruptions. Philippe Charlier has come to terms with it as well. The essential thing is that he can carry out the analyses of the samples carefully stored in his little phial. In his forensic investigations, Charlier is able to rely on a cluster of experts. One of the very best is Raphaël Weil. This engineer at the LPS specialises in the scanning electron microscope. Equipment indispensable for the analysis of the morphology and chemical composition of samples, without damaging them. Thanks to this machine and to Raphaël Weil’s gifts, the “crumbs” of dental tartar from the teeth stored at the TsA FSB will yield up all their secrets. It’s a huge project: a search for vegetable and meat fibres (since the Führer had been a vegetarian for years, the slightest fibre of meat would destroy our hypotheses), and traces of the components of gunpowder (from firearm ammunition). The chief goal is to know whether Hitler really fired a bullet into his mouth. Not forgetting, of course, the bluish traces found on the surface of the prostheses. “You can no longer do without the scanning microscope when performing a historical anthropological study,” Charlier insists. “I hope that the chemical analysis will allow us to discover the elements that go to make up the prosthesis,” he adds. “And thus understand what could have caused that blue deposit. Is it an interaction with the cyanide…?”
For once, the FSB has reacted promptly. It’s Dmitri, the first one who replied to Lana. Dmitri, the agent of the Russian secret service who escorted us on our first visit to the Lubyanka. “Of course. No problem. Niet problème!” Lana was right. As she had imagined, a simple letter from Philippe Charlier should be enough to reassure the Russian authorities. Concise, clear, and precise, the report from the French forensic pathologist was swiftly dispatched. He repeated that he had no doubt about the identity of the teeth. They were Hitler’s. Normally, within a day or two we would receive the official letter from the FSB or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agreement, the green light, a positive sign, however vague, however brief.
Nothing. Two weeks.
Then a month.
Then almost two months.
Nothing!
The same absurd and Kafkaesque routine. Lana told me over and over that her contacts had confirmed once again on the phone that we could carry out analyses. I insisted on having a written record. “Ah, a written record…?” Lana said with surprise, having suddenly fallen victim to amnesia. “I get it, I’ll send them a reminder.” And again we wait. For days.
Then, when all seemed lost, the answer came. My email. It was Alexander Orlov, our dear Alexander from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mother Russia, sending me an email in French. Here, in English translation, is an extract: “It seems to me that if you analyse the particles from Hitler’s jaw that adhered to your gloves and your conclusions are not in conflict with the official position of the Russian side, we will have no right to.”
It is 7 November 2017, the leaves are turning yellow on the trees, the silent birds are saving their strength for bracing temperatures to come. I catch myself smiling. Is it exhaustion, nerves, or a lack of lucidity?
Alexander’s email appears in front of me. And I smile at it. Everything’s there. Or almost everything. “We will have no right to.” A word is missing and everything collapses. Over two months waiting for this message. Dozens of calls to Russia, reminder letters, supplications… And for what? To receive an incomplete and unusable phrase. Is it out of malice? A perverse desire to play with our resilience? Or simply a highly developed form of Muscovite administrative procrastination?
Clearly Philippe Charlier isn’t satisfied with Alexander’s message. “We will have no right to.” No right to WHAT?!!!
Dear Alexander,
Many thanks for your permission to allow us to exploit this analysis of the fragments from Hitler’s jaw.
Late afternoon: 7 November 2017. I decide to send a reminder to Alexander.
Not to annoy him. Not to vex him. Choosing my words tactfully.
“I notice the care that you have taken to reply to me in French. Nonetheless…”
Think.
“Nonetheless, a word is missing from your reply. You say: ‘We will not have the right to…’ I imagine you mean ‘the right to prevent you’ or ‘to forbid you’. Could you please just confirm?”
Lana? Nothing”! Lana is no longer in contact with the FSB, or with Alexander. The situation in Russia is becoming increasingly tense. Accusations are being made about Russian interference in the last presidential elections. No end is in sight for Syria and its military-humanitarian-religious nightmare either. The Putin regime is increasingly adopting a hard line of aggressive isolationism. Everything that comes out of the Kremlin smells of sulphur, as it did in the good old days at the height of Stalinism. And here we are benefiting from the goodwill of the Russian power that frightens so many people.
Seven days. It took Alexander seven days to pick out the right word, the most correct one, the one closest to his thoughts and send it to me. He even found several. He writes them in capital letters as if screaming them in my face: “WE WILL NOT ACCUSE (INCRIMINATE, INCULPATE) YOU.”
Now we can carry out the analyses. As far as we know, these are the first ever performed with a scanning electron microscope.
A world first.
And the hope of resolving the mystery of Hitler’s death.
“With current scientific techniques, we have the means to go much further than we could in 1945 or 1970,” Dr. Charlier says enthusiastically. “We have the means to acquire a toxicological, chemical vision of this tartar. All kinds of advantages encouraging the revelation of the truth.”
“You’ve done them all. St Louis, Richard the Lionheart, Charlemagne, Mary Magdalene… So who’s this one?”
Raphaël Weil knows Philippe Charlier very well. He’s been working with him for about ten years. He suspects that this time, yet again, the object of study for the day is a leading historical figure.
“So, which era?”
“World War Two,” the pathologist replies evasively. “The subject is a German,” he goes on. “An important historical figure, very important, even.”
Raphaël Weil looks down at the phial and sees the label with the initials “A.H.” He asks no further questions. “I’ve only got the morning,” is all he says, in a serious voice. “So let’s get going.” Of the three pieces collected, only two will be examined. The two larger ones. The less small, to be precise. The first is, at the most, 2.5 mm long by 1.3 mm thick. The second one is even thinner. But size doesn’t matter. The microscope is so powerful that it can see things on the scale of a micron. Most importantly, it will tell us the chemical composition of these tiny samples. “The idea is to have confirmation of the composition of this tartar, what was the individual’s diet, do we find only vegetable fibres, or also meat fibres? And then, last of all, I would like you to look for traces of poison.”
Not having been able to take a sample of the blue traces, Philippe Charlier hopes to collect convincing information from the tartar. Not least concerning the nature of the prostheses. “I wasn’t able to examine those prostheses at an elemental level,” he explains to Raphaël Weil. As in detective novels, the slightest detail can turn out to be the determining factor that resolves an investigation. Charlier is all too aware of this. That’s why he warns his partner: “Those prostheses were quite badly damaged, and they didn’t seem to me to be of very good quality. What I’d like you to do is to find their elemental signature. That’s essential for an understanding of a possible interaction between them and the cyanide.” In plain words, could the blue traces have been caused by a reaction between the cyanide and the metal of the prostheses? Did Hitler commit suicide by poisoning, as the Soviet investigators claimed in May 1945?
Is cyanide an effective poison? Is it painful? Hitler must have asked those questions to the doctors surrounding him in his bunker. We know that he checked its deadly effects on his dog Blondi, the Alsatian dog that he loved so much. As described earlier, he forced it to swallow a capsule. Many witnesses have described the scene. It was on 29 April 1945, in the middle of the night. Hitler no longer had any illusions about the outcome of the battle of Berlin. The Red Army was only a few streets away from his lair. In his eyes suicide was becoming the only imaginable end. But Himmler had just betrayed him by trying to negotiate directly with the Anglo-Americans; the same man who had supplied the cyanide capsules. And what if that “traitor to the Reich” had altered its composition? In a new fit of paranoia, Hitler decided to test the poison on his dog. Professor Haase, who was in charge of the hospital in the bunker, performed the macabre task with the help of the bunker’s dog handler. The animal died. The versions of this episode vary according to the witnesses. Rattenhuber, the head of the Führer’s personal guard, would later tell the Russians who took him prisoner that the dog suffered, cried out in agony and finally died after long convulsions. Hitler was profoundly shocked by the effects of the poison. Linge, Günsche, and Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s private secretaries, agreed on a different version: after Blondi’s death, which he did not in fact witness, the Führer just acknowledged the effectiveness of the poison, showing no emotion. What is certain, on the other hand, is that the capsule worked perfectly. Was Hitler reassured? Yes, if we are to believe his entourage. He boasted of the merits of the poison to those around him. Traudl Junge reveals: “Hitler told us that death by poison was completely painless. Your nervous and respiratory systems were paralysed, and you died in a few seconds.”* Was he lying to his devoted followers, or did he really not know the secondary effects of cyanide? All his life Hitler was suspicious about doctors and any treatment they prescribed. He must have known the terrible truth: poisoning of that kind is fatal, but absolutely not painless.
Depending on the dose of cyanide and the weight of the individual, their age, their state of health, and whether they have just eaten or not (it has been proven that cyanide acts more quickly on an empty stomach), death is more or less swift. But it always follows intense suffering. The first pains are manifested at the neurological and cardiovascular levels. Severe migraines appear very quickly. Then dizziness, confusion, a sense of inebriation… After that comes the sense of being unable to breathe. Like a prolonged fit of apnoea. Anxiety is added to pain. The individual is seized by general convulsions and then loses consciousness. A few minutes later death comes by cardiac arrest. How long does it take to lose consciousness? It is all a matter of dosage, the type of cyanide, and the mode of its administration. Himmler would have taken fifteen minutes to die after taking his cyanide capsule. That detail was reported by British soldiers who had just arrested him by the Danish border and impotently witnessed his suicide on 23 May 1945. However, the death of the head of the SS also remains surrounded by shadowy areas. Himmler’s autopsy, like the official report of his death, is not declassified even today. Both remain classified as “military secrets” in the British archives. They should not be accessible until 2045, or a hundred years after his death.
It is often noticed that a strong smell of bitter almonds is given off after the use of cyanide. In the episode with the dog Blondi, the witnesses are united in remembering this typical odour hanging in the air. That tenacious smell can linger for a long time. In the case of Hitler and Eva Braun, the Soviet forensic team noticed it during the autopsy. But the bodies had been carbonised and buried for several days: “[…] upon opening of the corpse a marked bitter almond smell was perceived. The conclusion reached is therefore that the death […] was cause by poisoning with a cyanide compound.”* Is it possible that the smell could have persisted for such a long time after the suicide? And particularly that it could have resisted intense carbonisation? Did the Soviet forensic team not exaggerate this theory of bitter almonds in order to confirm the cyanide theory? A theory, as we were able to establish in the Russian Archives, which Stalin preferred because, in his eyes, suicide by poison was a contemptible act for a warlord.
Some eyewitnesses to Hitler’s death mention that famous smell of almonds. Others do not. That incoherence is easily explained. Today we know that the smell is not perceptible to everyone. It is accepted that between 20 and 40 per cent of people are insensitive to the smell. So should we still accept the hypothesis of cyanide in Hitler’s suicide? Might the smell of bitter almonds reported by the witnesses to the suicide not have been caused solely by the death of Eva Braun? In her case, the use of cyanide has never been called into question. Linge remembers seeing traces of pain characteristic of this kind of poisoning on the young woman’s face. In his memoirs, Hitler’s valet adds that he found a small box on the table by the sofa where the two corpses were lying. It was in that box, according to him, that the Führer’s wife’s capsule had been stored. But it is important to note that this box “no longer exists” in the reports on the Soviet interrogations of Linge.
The night of 26–7 February 1946:
Russian investigator: Did you find, on the sofa or somewhere nearby, on the floor, an ampoule or a box of poison that Eva Braun might have been able to use?
Linge: No. There was no trace of poison: no ampoule or box of poison has been discovered by me, even when I came back after cremating the corpses of Hitler and his wife to attend to their personal effects.
More contradictions, more doubts. Was Linge lying when he gave his answers to the officers of the Soviet secret services? Or when he wrote his memoirs? These changes to his story, the constant alteration of details, encouraged conspiracy theories, according to which Hitler might not have died in his bunker and might have been able to escape.
The Soviet investigators also had their doubts. They very quickly identified a flaw in Linge’s scenario. That of establishing the deaths of Hitler and his wife:
Investigators: Which doctor confirmed the death of Hitler and his wife?
Linge: Bormann and I did not call any doctors because it was clear to us that Hitler and his wife were dead.
Investigators: Do you or Bormann have a degree in medicine?
Linge: No. Neither Bormann nor I have a degree in medicine.
Investigators: How in that case were you able to conclude that Hitler was indeed dead? Did you check his pulse, listen to his heartbeat?
Linge: No. We did none of any of that. We just reached the conclusion that he was dead by looking at him.
Investigators: How did you deduce that Hitler’s wife, Eva Braun, was dead?
Linge: We concluded that she was dead only by her appearance. She remained inert. We thought she had poisoned herself.
[…]
Investigators: Were there doctors in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery?
Linge: Yes. There was Hitler’s personal physician, Standartenführer Stumpfegger, and Hitler’s former personal physician, Professor Haase.
Investigators: Why did you not summon those doctors to establish whether they were dead or not?
Linge: I cannot explain why we did not call doctors to confirm the deaths of Hitler and his wife.
Joël Poupon is very familiar with the effects of cyanide. Unlike Linge, he has no shortage of degrees. He is a specialist in mineral analysis in the laboratory of biological toxicology at the Saint-Louis-Lariboisière Hospital in Paris. Philippe Charlier immediately thought of him as the one to help him resolve the mystery of the blue stains found on Hitler and Eva Braun’s teeth. Dr. Poupon’s first reaction to the pictures of those stains was to say “that’s incredible!” in an open manner quite unfamiliar in this rather reserved scientist. Perhaps it was the clarity and depth of that blue that left him anything but indifferent. A thick, almost sombre blue like… Prussian blue. That is the name of this singular colour. A colour created chemically by mixing iron sulphate and potassium ferrocyanide. The blue owes its name to the fact that it was discovered by a German chemist in Berlin in the early eighteenth century. Its shade corresponds to many of the traces left on the teeth stored in the FSB archives. Dark blue–kuanos in ancient Greek–which gave us the word “cyanide.”
As the quotation attributed to the Swiss doctor and philosopher Paracelsus has it, “Everything is a poison and nothing exists without toxicity; it is only the dose that makes a thing not a poison.” For cyanide this is very much the case. If, in everyday language, cyanide is widely associated with a poison that causes sudden death, often used in the shady worlds connected with espionage, in reality this chemical compound is part of our everyday life. Without necessarily putting us in danger. Thus we find cyanide, hydrogen cyanide (HCN), in cherry and apricot stones, and indeed in apple pips. If it is quite rare to eat those stones, we do eat bitter almonds. And they contain a fair amount of cyanide. Luckily, unless we eat them in enormous quantities, our body has no difficulty resisting this natural cyanide.
This compound can also be extracted by chemical methods and produced in different forms: gaseous (used by the Nazis in the gas chambers), liquid, but also in soluble salts. In this last case we talk about potassium cyanide, ammonia cyanide, or calcium cyanide. Was this the case with these teeth? To check, you need only to lay hands on one of these capsules. Not just any capsule: one of those dedicated to senior Nazi dignitaries, the ones that were distributed in the Führerbunker. After a great deal of research in all the museums and archives of Europe, we learned that one of those capsules was kept in the pharmaceutical museum in Heidelberg, Germany. Sadly that information was correct but out of date. When we contacted them, the museum told us that they hadn’t kept the capsule! A photograph, just a photograph, would have allowed us to check whether the cyanide was in liquid or salt form. No photograph! The staff of the museum hadn’t kept anything. No photograph, even in black and white, even blurry. Nothing.
And a report? Some data, an analysis, anything…? “Nein!” A “nein” not much different from the “niets” that we received so often in Moscow.
No capsules in Germany, nothing in Russia and nothing in France. Which left the British and the Americans.
A video dated 4 June 1945 gave us hope. This was a British news story soberly titled “The Last of Europe’s Butchers.” The “butcher” in question was none other than Himmler. In these pictures, you can see the house where he is supposed to have committed suicide, as well as his corpse. But most importantly it shows a cyanide capsule. The quivering, nasal voice of the journalist of the time explains that this is a capsule identical to the one used by Himmler. By freezing the image we can tell without risk of error that the cyanide is in the form of a colourless liquid, not powder. Only one of the ends of the capsule, thinner than the other, presents an opaque and coloured appearance.
In all likelihood, the cyanide used by Himmler must have been hydrogen cyanide, better known as Prussic acid. Prussic, because it was discovered in the late eighteenth century by a Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, on the basis of Prussian blue. Furthermore, in German, Prussic acid is called Blausäure, or “blue acid.” This form of cyanide is probably the most dangerous of the lot. Fatal from a dose of 50 milligrams. Hitler and his wife very probably received the same type of cyanide.
It remains to be seen if the dictator used this poison to kill himself.
Günsche didn’t think so!
He swore as much in a court in his country, in Germany. That was in 1945. The former SS man had just been freed from the Soviet camps after ten years of detention. He came back on 28 April 1956. He then discovered that Germany had been divided into two states in 1949. In the west, the three occupied zones under American, British, and French control formed the BRD (the Federal Republic of Germany). He learned, most importantly, that after being sentenced (in 1950) and condemned to twenty-five years in prison by a Soviet court (he would be freed six years later after an intervention by Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of the BRD), he also had some questions to answer in a German court. Not on his own behalf, but to bring a legal end to Hitler’s fate. Ten years after the fall of the Nazi regime, it was time to rule once and for all on the death of the dictator. Günsche was not the only person close to Hitler to return to German soil. In 1944, Adenauer negotiated with the Soviets for the repatriation of the last German prisoners, those convicted of war crimes. Among them we find the three major witnesses of the last hours of Hitler, Günsche as well as Linge and Baur. Günsche and Linge’s statements were recorded by the court in Berchtesgaden. They were made separately and over several days between 10 February and 19 June 1956.
Until 2010, these audio tapes slumbered on shelves in the State Archives in Munich. For technical reasons it was impossible to play them. Carefully restored, they are now accessible once again. In the recordings, the two men testify before a judge and representatives of the Bavarian police, including the head of the criminology service and an expert doctor. Once again, Linge and Günsche were interrogated about the last moments of Hitler in his bunker on 30 April 1945. The two men were exhausted by years of detention in Soviet jails, and particularly by the unstinting interrogation sessions conducted by the Russian secret services. For ten long years they were asked to repeat the same facts over and over again. Could they even remember with any precision what really happened on 30 April 1945? Had their memories not been erased by being repeatedly summoned and called into question?
Before judges in their country, the two men replied again, almost mechanically. Günsche declared: “As I have already said, I carried the body of Eva Braun–which was not covered–in my arms, and I noticed an extraordinarily strong smell of almonds. I did not notice that smell on Hitler. Particularly when his corpse was set down on the ground in the garden. When Bormann pulled away the blanket [covering Hitler], I brought myself quite close to it, and noticed nothing of the sort.”*
Was the Führer’s former aide-de-camp telling the truth? Unlike the Soviets, who stressed the theory of suicide by poisoning, an act which they thought was tainted with cowardice, did Günsche not want to present his boss as a man capable of killing himself with a bullet to the head? With all the warlike symbolism attached to the gesture in his eyes? The witness statement that Günsche gave to the German court, while rich in details, partially contradicts the one given by Linge. And it does so on certain important points. This is what Günsche has to say about discovering the corpse of Hitler and his wife in their antechamber:
Bormann and Linge prepared to enter Hitler’s office. I followed them, and the following image presented itself to me: Hitler was sitting in an armchair, almost facing the door, with his gaze directed towards the door to the left, his head leaning towards the right shoulder which rested against the arm of the chair, his hand dangling. […] Eva Braun was lying on the sofa facing the door at the end of the room, her head turned towards Hitler, lying on her back, her legs slightly bent and drawn up towards the body; the shoes–light women’s shoes–were on the sofa.*
The German investigators took note, but were surprised. They wanted details. Günsche obliged:
Hitler was sitting–I would say slightly sagging, but that wasn’t very remarkable–on the armchair, leaning slightly towards the right, his right hand dangling over the right arm, his head leaning slightly to the right over his right shoulder. As far as I remember, his mouth was slightly open, his chin slightly slack, but I can’t confirm that…
So Hitler had killed himself in an armchair and not on a sofa with Eva Braun. The aide-de-camp’s version contradicted the one that Linge gave the German investigators:
When I entered the room, Hitler was sitting on the left–seen from my point of view–Hitler on the left, more precisely in the left corner of the sofa.
Investigator: So on the left from your point of view, on the right-hand side of the sofa?
Linge: Yes, right in the corner.†
Who is telling the truth? Is it possible to make a mistake like that? If we keep to the arrangement of the furniture in the room where the two suicides took place, the answer is no! The German investigators returned repeatedly to the arrangement of the room. And they asked Linge to confirm it.
Investigator: The room had a surface of about 8m2, it was more or less square, it had a door that opened from the central corridor, we may imagine that the corridor also served as a meeting place for the people from the entourage when waiting, you could also sleep there, there was a sofa.
Linge: Only on the last day…
Investigator: […] The room had two other exits, on the right towards Adolf Hitler’s bedroom, and on the left towards the bathroom. In terms of furniture, there was a sofa that was about 2 metres long, a normal sofa with arms. In front of that sofa, a table, not very large…
Linge: A small table…
Investigator: On either side of that table, you mentioned the presence of an armchair on each side. The sofa was against the wall facing the door, there was a table in front of it, and again to the right of this entrance a large desk with a chair in front of it. Herr Linge said that it was so cramped that one could barely pass between the table and the desk when there were chairs in the room. Then the painting of Frederick the Great–which is not of any great importance for us–above the desk, a painting that Hitler was particularly fond of.
Linge: The painting was by Menzel.
Investigator: So much for the site.*
It’s hard to be more precise.
Unlike the written reports of the Soviets, for the first time Linge’s and Günsche’s statements are given here in oral form. The intonations of their voices, the tone and the phrasing, are additional information that helps us spot flaws in their answers.
Linge and Günsche seem very sure of their memories in these recordings. Neither of them has to search for words, neither is hesitant. And yet, for Linge, Hitler was facing the entrance on a sofa, beside Eva Braun. For Günsche, he was in front of the sofa, in an armchair.
This was a serious dilemma. Who were they to believe? Which version would they accept? Who was lying? Or who was mistaken?
Was Günsche telling the truth when he stated that Hitler hadn’t taken poison?
This episode is a perfect illustration of the near impossibility of trusting statements by witnesses to Hitler’s last moments. To get round this factual lacuna, there is, however, a solution: science.
Hence the presence of Philippe Charlier in the Laboratory of Solid State Physics in the Paris suburbs.
They have already spent over two hours going over the two fragments of tartar, micron by micron. Raphaël Weil works patiently and methodically. Nothing must escape him. In a few moments he will know everything about the chemical composition of these two pieces of evidence from the FSB archives. And perhaps he will find information about the composition of the prostheses. He is looking in particular for mercury, lead, arsenic, copper and, of course, iron. Because cyanide is impossible to reveal. Its traces disappear within twenty-four hours after its ingestion. And even faster if the corpse is burnt or kept at temperatures higher than 20º C. The clock shows 12:30pm. Raphaël Weil has gone on working for longer than planned. He has forgotten to be hungry. His concentration is at its peak, errors of interpretation are out of the question. Philippe Charlier is getting impatient. He awkwardly apologises to his fellow investigator. “Take your time,” he repeats to conceal his excitement, before asking again: “So… Is there any?” Calmly, after each calculation by the machine, the technician lists the chemical elements that have been revealed: calcium, potassium, phosphorus… but no iron, or so little that it is impossible to determine whether it comes from the fragments or the “chamber” of the microscope in which the pieces of tartar were arranged. Philippe Charlier will find out no more than that. His disappointment is total.
In fact it isn’t. Or not entirely.
Raphaël Weil turns towards the forensic scientist. Admittedly there is no information about the prostheses, but he has something better. He has absolute scientific proof of the authenticity of the tartar.
On the screen of the scanning electron microscope, a black-and-white image appears. It is blurred. It looks like a NASA command post from the time of the moon landings. Pebbly ground like that of a meteorite appears very gradually. The top of the screen comes into focus at last. “We’re getting there, you have to be patient,” Raphaël Weil says, without looking at me. Small bubbles form and fill the whole screen. Philippe Charlier recognises them immediately. “We have a classic view of dental tartar with these round shapes, like globules. This testifies to the phenomenon of calcification of dental plaque into dental tartar.” The engineer confirms: “All these globules are really the signature of the tartar.”
But the analysis doesn’t stop there. Very quickly, a vegetable fibre appears. Then another one. On the other hand, no meaty fibre is revealed. A simple piece of meat of even a micron would have been enough to call into question the attribution of these teeth to Hitler. At the moment of his suicide, the dictator had been a vegetarian for several years. The pathologist is reassured by the absence of any elements of meat.
Can he go even further with these two fragments of tartar? Can he tell if the Führer fired a bullet into his mouth? Antimony, atomic number 51, barium, atomic number 56, lead, atomic number 82. That is what Raphaël Weil is looking for. After quickly checking the periodic table, the engineer precisely calibrates his electronic microscope. Philippe Charlier has chosen to concentrate on those three minerals with a very precise goal in mind. If a gun was fired into Hitler’s mouth, traces of those three chemical elements would inevitably be found in his dental tartar.
The theory of Hitler’s suicide by firearm in the mouth was first presented by the British in November 1945.
Not even the best investigator would dare to inquire into the death of an individual without having access to the body, and without the opportunity to question eyewitnesses. But that was the situation of the Allied forces when they learned of Hitler’s suicide, in early May 1945. As we have already described the Anglo-American staffs could not agree on confirming the Soviet version. The one which claims that the Führer had very probably escaped. Then they tried the impossible. To bring together the greatest possible number of witness statements with their few Nazi prisoners who had been in the Führerbunker. The British delivered their report to the occupying forces in Germany (the Americans, the Russians, and the French) on 1 November 1945. With pragmatism and realism, the report begins with a confession in the form of resignation: “The only conclusive evidence that Hitler is dead would be in the discovery, and certain identification, of the body. In the absence of this evidence, the only positive evidence consists in the circumstantial accounts of certain witnesses who were either familiar with his intentions or eye-witnesses of his fate.” The British inquiry relied on a man who was close to Hitler. His name was Erich Kempka. He was thirty-five years old, and the dictator’s personal chauffeur. But he had only found out about the Führer’s death through Otto Günsche, Hitler’s aide-de-camp. Kempka gives an account of that scene with Günsche in his memoirs, published in 1951: “It was a dreadful shock. ‘How could that happen, Otto? I was speaking to him only yesterday! He was healthy and calm!’ Günsche was still so overcome that he could not speak. He merely raised his right arm, imitated holding a pistol grip with his fist and pointed to his mouth.”* Kempka presented this episode in the same way to British investigators in 1945. It was partly because of Kempka that the inquiry report by the British on 1 November 1945 states in black and white:
On 30 April at 2:30, Hitler and Eva Braun last appeared alive. They walked around the bunker and said goodbye to their direct entourage, the secretaries and the assistants, then withdrew to their apartments where they both committed suicide. Hitler by firing a bullet into his mouth and Eva Braun (although she had been given a revolver) by swallowing one of the capsules of poison distributed to everyone in the bunker.
Did the author of this report, the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, suspect that the Soviets hadn’t told the whole truth about Hitler’s death? During the official presentation of his inquiry to the officers of the occupying forces in Germany, Trevor-Roper attentively observed the attitude of the Russian representatives. A Red Army general was invited to react to the work of the British. Would the officer with the red star finally reveal something? Trevor-Roper would never forget his reply: “When invited to comment, [he] replied laconically and in a toneless voice: ‘Very interesting.’”*
More than seventy years after this episode, we may be about to find out if Trevor-Roper was right. And if Kempka wasn’t lying. Had Hitler fired a bullet into his mouth?
“Antimony?” Charlier asks.
“No,” Raphaël Weil replies.
“Lead?”
Raphaël says: “No, and no barium.”
This exchange of short phrases goes on for many minutes. Until the result of the last analysis.
“And?”
Charlier turns towards me. He had almost forgotten that I was there. My question surprises me. His “nothing” sounds like everything.
“Nothing!”
On the other hand, he is able to announce with certainty the end of the Hitler mystery.
Winter is about to fall like a languorous veil over Paris. Nearly two years of investigation are coming to an end.
Lana has stayed in Moscow. She is waiting.
I go to the Paris suburbs. Towards the west, just past Versailles, to Philippe Charlier’s medical anthropology and forensic laboratory at the university of Versailles-Saint-Quentin.
A grimacing face and bulging eyes that leave no doubt about his mood; the welcome is far from warm. All around us, other equally malevolent expressions, some of them sticking out their tongues as if summoning us to a sacrificial rite.
“So, this one comes from Oceania. The other one is from West Africa…” Philippe Charlier no longer knows where to put his masks and other totemic figures. His office looks more like the store-room of an imaginary museum of primitive art than the office of a forensic research scientist. Is it to help us remember that he is also an anthropologist?
A certain tension fills the office. Is it the doctor’s white coat or the worrying assemblage of indigenous tutelary figures around us? Unless it’s simply the exhaustion of those months of battles over a historical and political inquiry.
Philippe Charlier is sitting down, using the serious voice of those who are aware of the importance of the moment.
He begins: “Quite often the death of a historical figure is surrounded by mystery: people always imagine that the person isn’t dead, that they have escaped. People don’t like a classic death; it’s too simple, too ordinary. Forensic work seeks to separate the true from the false, and supply definitive conclusions in line with scientific developments. I apply the same seriousness and the same objectivity to a case pleaded in a courtroom and an archaeological case.”
A giant portrait of Henry IV rests on the floor, against the wall. It is a reconstruction made in 3D by Philippe Charlier’s team. The old French king seems to be listening impatiently.
“And?” I ask, just to bring his circumlocutions to an end. “The human remains stored in Moscow: are they Hitler’s or not?”
Not a sound. Then: “The skull, I don’t know.”
The visual examination carried out by Philippe Charlier, limited by the uncooperative attitude of the GARF teams, did not allow him to reach a conclusion: it was impossible to determine the age of that fragment of skull. Contrary to the declarations of Nicholas Bellantoni, the retired American archaeologist at the University of Connecticut, the extent of the sutures is not an indication of whether that piece of skull belonged to a young person. Philippe Charlier is categorical. The x-rays of Hitler’s face made in the autumn of 1944 allowed him to contest the analysis of his American colleague. “In those x-rays, you can see the sutures at the top of Hitler’s skull,” he explains. “These sutures are quite wide apart. That is the proof that you can’t claim that because sutures are open they belong to a young individual. It’s an argument that doesn’t hold water.” As you may remember, Nick Bellantoni explained in 2009 that: “The bone seemed to be very thin,” the American archaeologist says. “Male bone tends to be more robust, and the sutures where the skull plates come together seem to correspond to someone under forty.”*
Philippe Charlier insists: “The skull belongs to an adult. Full stop. On the other hand. I do know about the teeth. They’re Hitler’s!”
I go on: “Are you a hundred per cent certain?”
“In forensic science, we don’t like to give figures for our results, but we are certain that this isn’t a historical forgery. And we are certain that there is an anatomical match between the x-rays, the descriptions of the autopsies, the accounts of the witnesses, mainly those who made and manufactured those dental prostheses, and the reality that we have held in our hands. All of these analyses taken together confirm to us that the remains examined are those of Adolf Hitler, who died in Berlin in 1945. And all of this destroys the theories of his possible survival.”
And the bullet in the mouth? And the cyanide?
Did the bits of dental tartar allow him to answer those two questions? Was the British theory in 1945 about Hitler’s death erroneous? Was Trevor-Roper mistaken?”
“The chemical analysis of the surface of dental tartar has enabled us to look for traces of metals that are found when a shot has been fired into the mouth. Normally there are combustion gases, gunpowder, incandescence deposited in the oral cavity, the tongue, the mucous membrane… and therefore in the tartar. But we have found nothing.”
So Hitler didn’t fire a bullet into his mouth!
Kempka lied when he said that Günsche, the aide-de-camp, had mimed the gesture of a pistol being fired into his mouth. Even Günsche stated in 1956, when questioned by the German court, that Kempka had made everything up. Here is his deposition:
I rule out the possibility that Hitler fired a bullet into his mouth. I would also like to insist that I have never spoken to anyone in the bunker about the way that Hitler fired a bullet into his head and under what circumstances. I only told certain people present that Hitler had shot himself and that his body had been burned.*
We had to wait for over half a century to prove Günsche right, and confirm that Hitler did not shoot himself in the mouth. And right beyond any possible doubt. Science triumphs over all the witness statements taken together, over emotion, over attempts at manipulation. And it confirms the version repeated several times by the man who first discovered the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun: Heinz Linge, the dictator’s loyal valet. During the interrogations carried out by the Soviets, in the interviews given to the newspapers, to the radio stations and television channels, in his memoirs published after his death in 1980, it’s always the same scenario: “When I came in, on my left, I saw Hitler. He was in the right-hand corner of the sofa… Hitler’s head was tilted slightly forward. On his right temple there was a hole the size of a ten-cent coin.”*
And the cyanide?
And the blue traces on the teeth?
Philippe Charlier has to admit his helplessness. Those blue traces are surprising, startling, and most importantly, disconcerting.
But the scientist can’t go any further without taking a sample of the teeth kept in Moscow. Alexander Orlov claims it’s impossible. For his part, Dmitri confirmed to Lana that she had to move on to something else.
Switch to a new inquiry.
“They told me that no analysis will be carried out.” Lana herself told me that we could hope for nothing else for now. “They just wanted proof that the teeth belonged to Hitler. Now that it’s done they’re closing everything up again.”
But what if we had concluded that they weren’t his?
My question, rhetorical though it was, made Lana freeze: “That would have been a big problem for Russia.”
* Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour, op. cit., p. 177.
* Lev Bezymenski, The Death of Adolf Hitler, op. cit., p. 89.
* Audio archives of the interrogation of Otto Günsche, 1956, Munich State Archives (Staatsarchiv München), CD/DVD 71 à 74.
* Ibid.
† Ibid.
* Ibid.
* Erich Kempka, I was Hitler’s Chauffeur, op. cit., p. 77.
* Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, London, Pan Books, 1947, p. 6.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqrrjzfnsVY
* Munich State Archives (Staatsarchiv München), op. cit.
* Ibid.