Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Based on unprecedented access to a long-buried archive, a dramatic and revealing account that sheds new light on Hitler's final hours, his death and his remains. What actually happened in Hitler's bunker? What happened to Hitler's body in those last desperate days after Germany's surrender? Soviet troops had occupied the Berlin sector where Hitler's bunker was located--and they found bodies. Or so they said, and they didn't say much more. Questions have lingered ever since: Did the Russians identify Hitler's burned corpse? Why did Stalin mislead the world into believing the German dictator had escaped? Without a body, doubts spread like wildfire and fed even wilder fantasies.
After years of negotiations with Russian authorities, Jean-Christophe Brisard and Lana Parshina were finally granted access to secret files detailing the Soviets' hunt to find and recover Hitler's body. And buried in those archives they found much more: the layout of the bunker, escape plans, eyewitness accounts of the F hrer's final days--and a small section of a skull with traces of a lethal bullet.
In The Death of Hitler, the authors add new context and perspective to Hitler's final hours and the days of chaos and mystery that followed his death. Based on previously unseen Soviet archives and the latest scientific findings, the authors reveal the final secrets of one of history's most fascinating cold cases.
Synopsis
On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker as the Red Army closed in on Berlin. Within four days the Soviets had recovered his body. But the truth about what the Russian secret services found was hidden from history, when, three months later, Stalin officially declared to Truman and Churchill that Hitler was still alive and had escaped abroad. Reckless rumors about what really happened to Hitler began to spread like wildfire and, even today, they have not been put to rest. Until now. In 2017, after two years of painstaking negotiations with the Russian authorities, award-winning investigative journalists Jean-Christophe Brisard and Lana Parshina gained access to confidential Soviet files that finally revealed the truth behind the incredible hunt for Hitler's body.
Their investigation includes new eyewitness accounts of Hitler's final days, exclusive photographic evidence and interrogation records, and exhaustive research into the power struggle that ensued between Soviet, British, and American intelligence services. And for the first time since the end of World War II, official, cutting-edge forensic tests have been completed on the human remains recovered from the bunker graves--a piece of skull with traces of a lethal bullet, a fragment of bone, and teeth.
In The Death of Hitler -- written as thrillingly as any spy novel--Brisard and Parshina debunk all previous conspiracy theories about the death of the Fuhrer. With breathtaking precision and immediacy they penetrate one of the most powerful and controversial secret services to take readers inside Hitler's bunker in its last hours--and solve the most notorious cold case in history.