The Death of Hitler: The Final Word

EPILOGUE

“A scientific study is debunking conspiracy theories about Hitler escaping to South America.” “A new study of Hitler’s teeth confirms that he did indeed die in 1945.”

In English, French, Chinese, German, Vietnamese–the information was relayed by the press all over the world. Thanks to a famous internet search engine, I am able to consult the headlines on my computer screen. They confirm, if confirmation is needed, that Hitler remains an inescapable historical figure. And that in a way the question of his death and the precise conditions under which it occurred still excites the public.

More than two years have passed since my first visit to Moscow, in the rather inhospitable offices of GARF. Two years after my meeting with the archivists Dina Nikolaevna Nokhotovich and Nikolai Vladimirsev. I am thinking about them. We assured them that we wouldn’t make the same mistake as Nick Bellantoni with his team of American journalists, namely asserting scientific facts without validating them in a renowned scientific publication. We didn’t want to lay ourselves open to criticism and create suspicion and doubts about our work. Rumours about Hitler’s survival after the fall of Berlin in early May 1945 would only have been reinvigorated. Philippe Charlier was aware of the obligation to publish his results, which were oh so vital to Lana and me. The French pathologist never doubted. That’s what he kept telling us throughout our investigation. In fact, to be frank, Philippe Charlier did doubt. Just as we did. In silence.

Particularly when the officials at GARF, our dear Dina and Nikolai, denied him the right to analyse the fragment of skull. On the other hand, after the examination of the teeth and particularly the agreement by the Russian authorities to exploit those small pieces of tartar with a scanning electron microscope, hope was reborn. The scientific conclusions of the investigation were drawn up by Philippe Charlier and us, working together with extreme caution, reread several times and then submitted to an international scientific journal, the European Journal of Internal Medicine (EJIM). This journal practices what is called “peer review,” meaning that the work put forward by researchers has been checked and validated (or not) by other researchers. The EJIM is the official journal of the European Federation of Internal Medicine (EFIM), but also of the associations of several European countries such as Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

On 18 May 2018, Philippe Charlier sent me a cryptic text: “It’s coming out today!” So the article had been validated, and the results of the investigation–our investigation–were recognised by the international scientific community. As we expected, its impact would soon go beyond the strict contours of the scientific world. The website of Le Monde, the famous French daily newspaper, almost immediately picked up the information and set out Dr Charlier’s analysis point by point. It underlined the main pillars of our work, particularly the absence of gunpowder in the tartar (which rules out the theory of suicide by bullet in the mouth), but even more so the authentication of the teeth. And Le Monde’s headline left no room for doubt: “Some teeth preserved in Moscow are indeed those of Adolf Hitler, who died in 1945.” Over the days that followed, the world’s press relayed the news. All the way to Russia, of course. To the FSB and the Kremlin. Lana knew, and called me to tell me. “They’ve read it, they’ve seen it…” she begins nervously on the telephone. I try to ask her who she’s talking about, but I know her too well to hope to stop her halting flow of words. She isn’t listening to me. Too excited, she goes on, her voice a few tones too high: “Alexander, Denis, Dmitri, they’ve all seen…” And Dina Nokhotovich? Does Dina, the keeper of the skull, the faithful archivist of GARF regret preventing the analysis of that key piece of bone from the Hitler mystery? “Ah, Dina…!” Lana sighs. “She’s not at GARF any more!” Dina, not at GARF?! My imagination goes into overdrive. Has she been fired? Exiled somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle, to Siberia, synonymous with the supreme punishment for opponents of the regime? Lana is amused by my fears. “No, she retired.” After forty-three years of good and loyal service, Dina decided to leave that bit of skull and those hundreds of historical documents devoted to Hitler’s death to a new generation of archivists. All through her life she has protected those shades of history from prying eyes. The world was not to know, her superiors told her. But that was another time, the time of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Today I think of her and of all those Soviet officials (whether they were members of the secret services or the state archives) who, without always knowing why, helped to create the legend of Hitler’s survival. All because Stalin wanted to keep the death of the German dictator secret. I think of them.