The whole story about the French memo that claims Osama bin Laden has been dead since August got me wondering about that other bad guy, Hitler. We all know in the hindsight of history that Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945. My question is, did the Western World and the rest of the Allies know of Hitler’s death immediately? If not, how long did it take for them to discover that Hitler was undeniably dead?
It was certainly front page news two days later
Hitler committed suicide on the afternoon of April 30th. German radio announced that Hitler was killed “in battle” the following day and that Doritz was the new Führer. So most newspaper accounts were released on the 2nd (like the paper GorillaMan linked to or this headline from Stars & Stripes). Can’t say whether or not it was widely thought at the time that perhaps the story was a ploy on the part of Hitler to go into hiding or not. The Russians used dental records to confirm the identity of what was left of his corpse, so it took some time (not sure how long) before it was absolutely confirmed.
Keep in mind that Germany was part of the “Western world”. Hitler’s staff in the Führerbunker learned of his suicide almost immediately after it happened, and were responsible for partially cremating and burying his corpse. The remains were discovered by the Russian Army two days later.
But the Russians were quite secretive about this, and there was a conspiracy theory that Hitler had escaped to South America. I don’t think anyone took it too seriously, though.