Nope.
That it took decades to do and, reportedly, after having exhumed and shuffled them around a few times already…yes.
I’m not saying they would have been completely cut off. But the Soviets couldn’t travel around at will in West Berlin just as the Americans, French, and British couldn’t travel around at will in East Berlin. They had to have some reason. And participating in the administration of Spandau was one reason Soviet officials had for moving around West Berlin.
By the time Hitler died, the Soviets had surrounded Berlin and were already fighting in the city. So getting out of Berlin would have been difficult and dangerous (as Kobayashi wrote, Borman was killed attempting it). Most of the occupants in the bunker probably figured they were inside a heavily fortified building and were as safe there as they would be anywhere else they could reach.
And according to reports, the times when the Soviets were in charge, the prison routine was harsher – the soviet guards were absolutely strict about every tiny detail of the regulations, and enforced them completely. The other Allies were quite a bit more relaxed about it when they were in charge.
About the remains, I wonder what could have been done with modern DNA analysis, had they been preserved. Was there enough left to do DNA work? I know modern police labs can work with just tiny samples.
Could they have traced Hitler’s ancestry with more accuracy? I know there was a suggestion that he was not actually the son of the father listed on his birth certificate, but the older landlord/employer of his mother – who was Jewish! I would like to know the accuracy of that, for example.
By the time Hitler died, the Soviets had actually taken the Reich Chancellery (the building the Führerbunker lay beneath) under direct fire. So escape was hazardous at best, although apparently some people managed.
An hour before Hitler’s suicide, Red Army soldiers had already planted a victory banner on second floor the Reichstag, but resistance continued. Historian John Keegan writes:
[after interminable delays] Realizing the Germans in the bunker were trying to treat from a position of strength – as if the shattered bunker were a nation-state deserving the respect of the Soviet Union – Stalin went to bed. Zhukov hung up, and Chuikov ordered
June 7, 1945: Hitler’s body identified by Reds. Now, maybe we didn’t believe them, but the news was out there that the Evil Empire had his remains. Or maybe it was just the detail’s of their deaths that we weren’t certain of, the body long having been cremated.
No, that rumor was about his grandparents not his parents. Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois, was the son of Maria Schicklgruber. Maria was not married at the time Alois was born and no father was named at the time of Alois’ birth.
Five years later, a man named Johann Georg Hiedler stepped forward and said he was Alois’ father and married Maria. Alois’ last name was retroactively changed from Shicklgruber to Hiedler. (Years later, Alois decided to change the spelling and began spelling his last name as Hitler.)
There’s a open question of whether Johann Georg was actually Alois’ father. He may have been. But Johann Georg had a brother named Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. Johann Nepomuk was already married so he would have had difficulties in acknowledging Alois as his son and he might have persuaded his brother to step forward. After Maria died, Johann Nepomuk took Alois in and raised him. Johann Nepomuk also had a daughter named Johanna, who later had a daughter named Klara (we’ll get back to this).
Anyway, there’s another theory. At the time she became pregnant, Maria Schiklgruber was working as a housemaid for a Jewish family named Frankenberger. So there’s a theory that Alois’ father might have been Leopold Frankenberger. But realistically, while it’s possible there’s no real evidence of this. Alois was almost certainly not half-Jewish and his son Adolf was almost certainly not a quarter-Jewish.
But I promised to get back to Klara, who as you’ll remember was Johann Nepomuk Hiedler’s granddaughter. Klara grew up and married a man she had known all of her life: Alois Hitler. Who, if the theory is true, was her uncle. Even if the official story is true, Alois was her mother’s cousin. Either way, ewww.
Alois and Klara went on to have a little boy that they named Adolf. And the rest is history.
Yep. This is rather meticuluously documented in parts of Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer, the former Minister of Armaments and War Production who spent twenty years in the prison. The book is an ironically fascinating look into the boredom of prison life, and mentions the difference in treatment they received from the allies on their rotating shifts.
Hess also had his diaries smuggled out of prison, but I don’t know if they were ever translated into English. I haven’t read them myself.
Those last weeks in the Fuhrerbunker must have been horrible-Hitler moving pins on a map, the Goebbels family deciding how to kill their children. Plus, the generators that supplied the lights and ventilation probably were rnning low on fuel. Mch better to slip ot one night and get away…before the Red Army tightened the noose.
Except that this was the most securely guarded place in Nazi Germany – how would you ‘slip out one night’, with only 2 exits, and guards at them. It isn’t like Adolf would have given you permission to bug out!