# Buenos noches mein Fuhrer! (Hitler escaping theories) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 26, 2014, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278 "2014-05-26T11:11:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/1 "2014-05-26T11:11:30Z")
Saw [this book about Hitler’s supposed escape](http://www.amazon.com/Grey-Wolf-Escape-Adolf-Hitler/dp/1402796196) to Argentina on sale while browsing, it did make me chuckle. How seriously were these sorts of theories taken at the time? Allied intelligence released pics to show how Dolfy might [disguise himself](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/hitler-in-disguise-wartime-pictures-show-805034) and escape. The Soviets were characteristically tight-lipped about finding the charred remnants of the newly-weds, even to their own commanders - Zhukov was particularly pissed off later on when he found out Stalin had lied to him about it. I’ve read that this was part of a Soviet campaign to cast mistrust on the Allies, that they had somehow been complicit in Hitler’s escape (the idea of the western Allies and what was left of Germany teaming up against the Soviets was flying around a bit in 1945). What did Allied intelligence and civilians in the west know about the fate of the Fuhrer? Was the idea that Hitler had survived a common one in the years immediately following the war, going on into the '50s and '60s (doubt many would speculate he would survive into the '70s or '80s, since Hitler’s family wasn’t especially long lived and he wasn’t exactly a picture of health)? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/2 "2014-05-26T12:23:32Z")
The British SIS, in the person of Hugh Trevor-Roper, investigated the matter in late 1945 and concluded with a high degree of certainty that Hitler and Braun had committed suicide in the Fuhrerbunker on 30 April 1945. His researches were written up and published in 1947, and his conclusions were widely accepted. The Americans conducted their own investigation and reached the same conclusion. I’m not saying that nobody toyed with the speculation that he might have faked his death and escaped, but nobody in a position of authority took the speculation very seriously. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/3 "2014-05-26T12:47:23Z")
The Soviets reached Berlin and took the entire area before the western allies got even close. So the mop-up there was their work. It was a feature of the cold war paranoia, especially wrt the Soviet Union, that we could not be 100% sure anything they said was true. Stalin was already known to be brutal, and the Soviets were well-know for blatant lies about some things. It’s not like western journalists were allowed to wander freely and interview the people who had actually been there; even if they had, the penalty for even accidentally countering the party line was deadly. So even though the west was fairly confident from all the evidence they did get that Adolph was there until the final moment and if his body had been alive or recognizable the Soviets most likely would have been happy to display it - they didn’t, so logic suggested he died as advertised. But there would always be the lingering doubt. It wasn’t until after the fall of the iron curtain that the full autopsy and other details were released to put out any lingering suspicions. Enough other top Nazis had various plans for personal escapes that it would have been logical if the top command had also - but apparently Hitler and logic did not fit well in the final days. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/4 "2014-05-26T15:48:05Z")
Stalin, for whatever reason, personally decided that Hitler had escaped. Or at least that’s what he declared. And Stalin being Stalin, everyone else in the Soviet Union had to agree with this belief. So that created a large pool of official escape theorists. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/5 "2014-05-26T16:33:45Z")
It took a surprising amount of time for a fairly thorough series of unbiased Western analyses of the last days of Hitler to come out. Early-mid 70s. The problem was that a lot of survivors of the bunker were prisoners for a while (especially by the Russians), kept a low profile, didn’t want to talk, etc. While a few were interviewed by Western journalists in 1945-46, the proportion wasn’t good enough to allay a lot of fears that those eyewitnesses weren’t very reliable. Knowing what we knew by 1975, it is hard to imagine how and why Hitler would have faked his own death and fled. His health was so poor at the end of the war he was going to die soon anyway. But that left some 3 decades or so for people to be in denial about what was known and speculate. Especially with Stalin’s paranoia having polluted things early on. ---
**Author:** ![jerez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c68b51/32.png) [@jerez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jerez)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/6 "2014-05-26T17:37:28Z")
\ It’s “buen **a** s noches.” Sorry for the hijack; I’m not one to jump at opportunities to point out others’ mistakes, but this one is far too widespread and dumb (no offense intended). It might help to use some kind of mental device in which “night” (noche) is equated with women and “day” (día) with men. So it’s “buenos días” and “buenas noches.” \ ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/7 "2014-05-26T18:11:58Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > It took a surprising amount of time for a fairly thorough series of unbiased Western analyses of the last days of Hitler to come out. Early-mid 70s. > > The problem was that a lot of survivors of the bunker were prisoners for a while (especially by the Russians), kept a low profile, didn’t want to talk, etc. > > While a few were interviewed by Western journalists in 1945-46, the proportion wasn’t good enough to allay a lot of fears that those eyewitnesses weren’t very reliable. > > Knowing what we knew by 1975, it is hard to imagine how and why Hitler would have faked his own death and fled. His health was so poor at the end of the war he was going to die soon anyway. > > But that left some 3 decades or so for people to be in denial about what was known and speculate. Especially with Stalin’s paranoia having polluted things early on. Eichmann certainly made it to South America, there’s pretty good evidence that Mengele did as well. For a long time it was thought that Bormann had escaped there too, although relatively recent evidence would suggest he died in Berlin. So it wasn’t really such an outlandish speculation, given (as you say) that at the time there was a lack of information from the Soviets. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/8 "2014-05-26T18:18:07Z")
> [@mascaroni](#): > > Eichmann certainly made it to South America, there’s pretty good evidence that Mengele did as well. For a long time it was thought that Bormann had escaped there too, although relatively recent evidence would suggest he died in Berlin. > So it wasn’t really such an outlandish speculation, given (as you say) that at the time there was a lack of information from the Soviets. Considering Mengele died in Brazil at the age of 67, I’d say that’s more than just “pretty good”. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/9 "2014-05-26T18:45:35Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Considering Mengele died in Brazil at the age of 67, I’d say that’s more than just “pretty good”. I didn’t know that it had been confirmed with certainty that it was actually him. “A high degree of probability” is all I can find… which in my mind translates to: " pretty good evidence". ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/10 "2014-05-26T18:53:02Z")
> [@mascaroni](#): > > I didn’t know that it had been confirmed with certainty that it was actually him. > > “A high degree of probability” is all I can find… which in my mind translates to: > > " pretty good evidence". The United States Holocaust Museum reports that DNA confirmed it: > **[Holocaust Encyclopedia](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/en)** > > The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Start learning today. > [@](#): > > Alarmed by the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in that same year, Mengele moved to Paraguay and then to Brazil, spending the last years of his life near Sao Pãolo. In declining health, Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming at a vacation resort near Bertioga, Brazil, on February 7, 1979, and drowned. He was buried in a suburb of Sao Pãolo under the fictive name “Wolfgang Gerhard.” > > In 1985, German police, working on evidence they had recently confiscated from a Mengele family friend in Günzburg, located Mengele’s grave and exhumed his corpse. Brazilian forensic experts thereafter positively identified the remains as Josef Mengele. In 1992, DNA evidence confirmed this conclusion. Mengele had eluded his captors for 34 years. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/11 "2014-05-26T19:07:05Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The United States Holocaust Museum reports that DNA confirmed it: > > [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007060](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007060) Thanks, I’d only picked up on the 1985 report. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/12 "2014-05-26T21:05:24Z")
Hitler was born in 1889, 125 years ago. Whether he died in the bunker, or escaped to South America, I am pretty sure he’s dead now. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/13 "2014-05-26T21:20:08Z")
Hey, Mengele died on my 20th birthday! And my wife was born on Hitler’s birthday date! Huh. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/14 "2014-05-26T21:23:49Z")
> [@jerez](#): > > \ > > It’s “buen **a** s noches.” Sorry for the hijack; I’m not one to jump at opportunities to point out others’ mistakes, but this one is far too widespread and dumb (no offense intended). It might help to use some kind of mental device in which “night” (noche) is equated with women and “day” (día) with men. So it’s “buenos días” and “buenas noches.” > > \ Ach! Das Wagen-phone ist ein…Nuisancephone! @ **BrotherCadfael** ; Well, obviously. But if he escaped and died at the same age as dear old dad (65) he’d be pushing up daisies in 1954. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/15 "2014-05-26T22:00:31Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Stalin, for whatever reason, personally decided that Hitler had escaped. Or at least that’s what he declared. And Stalin being Stalin, everyone else in the Soviet Union had to agree with this belief. So that created a large pool of official escape theorists. > [@ftg](#): > > It took a surprising amount of time for a fairly thorough series of unbiased Western analyses of the last days of Hitler to come out. Early-mid 70s. > > The problem was that a lot of survivors of the bunker were prisoners for a while (especially by the Russians), kept a low profile, didn’t want to talk, etc. > > While a few were interviewed by Western journalists in 1945-46, the proportion wasn’t good enough to allay a lot of fears that those eyewitnesses weren’t very reliable. > > Knowing what we knew by 1975, it is hard to imagine how and why Hitler would have faked his own death and fled. His health was so poor at the end of the war he was going to die soon anyway. > > But that left some 3 decades or so for people to be in denial about what was known and speculate. Especially with Stalin’s paranoia having polluted things early on. As far as I recall, hearing the story as a child, by the early 1960’s the official Soviet version was generally accepted and was that Hitler and Eva had committed suicide in the bunker, along with several other top brass, and then their bodies were burned. Surprisingly, when the Russian archives were opened after the cold war, this proved to be essentially the true story. (I remember a reporter friend of mine saying with shock during the Romanian revolution “we’re getting most of information out of Romania from the Russian news agencies, and not only that, we believe they’re reporting the truth!” The reputation of Soviet sources was not the best, despite the assertion that the Soviets invented television, radio, and the telegraph.) As I said earlier, the lingering doubt was because the only real witnesses tended to be inside the Soviet Union and candid discussion or even hinting at disagreeing with the party line was a firing offense, so to speak. The west was never sure whether they were being told the truth or some face-saving party line. What if Hitler _had_ escaped? Would the Soviet high command admit they lost him? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2014, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/16 "2014-05-26T23:43:42Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > The Soviets were characteristically tight-lipped about finding the charred remnants of the newly-weds, even to their own commanders - Zhukov was particularly pissed off later on when he found out Stalin had lied to him about it. Stalin was particularly uncommunicative with Zukov – he saw him as a possible threat. Zukov was well liked by the military, he was a Soviet war hero (arguably, he performed his job better in the war than Stalin did), and the Soviet Union people were still suffering economic after effects of WWII longer than most pf the Allies. So the possibility of Stalin being replaced with another leader was not unreal, even to someone less paranoid than Stalin. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/17 "2014-05-27T00:01:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The United States Holocaust Museum reports that DNA confirmed it: > > [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007060](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007060) Here’s hoping it was painful. Mengele was one of the extreme exceptions where I’d support the death penalty. I believe the reason the Soviets burned Hitler’s body was to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine, no? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2014, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/18 "2014-05-27T01:04:12Z")
Hitler’s body was burned, on his own orders, by the Nazis, in an attempt to prevent the Soviets capturing it. The Soviets did recover the remains; they were near-unrecognisable, but a section of a jawbone was identified from dental records as Hitler’s. Hitler never really had a grave that could have become a shrine; his remains were buried, but for purposes of concealment, and they were regularly dug up and reburied elsewhere. Eventually, in about 1970, the mixed remains of ten or eleven bodies - Hitler, Braun, the Goebbels family, a couple of others - were crushed, burned and thrown into the Elbe at Magdeburg. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2014, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/19 "2014-05-27T01:35:14Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > . . . Hitler never really had a grave that could have become a shrine; his remains were buried, but for purposes of concealment, and they were regularly dug up and reburied elsewhere. Eventually, in about 1970, the mixed remains of ten or eleven bodies - Hitler, Braun, the Goebbels family, a couple of others - were crushed, burned and thrown into the Elbe at Magdeburg. There’s no rest for the wicked. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2014, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278/20 "2014-05-27T01:41:22Z")
Huh, I thought it was the Russians. Guess I remember wrong. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buenos-noches-mein-fuhrer-hitler-escaping-theories/689278.md?page=2)