Rumors and conspiracy theories that the Führer of the Third Reich Adolf Hitler actually survived were inspired by the Soviet leadership, British historian and journalist Guy Walters wrote in an article for The Mail on Sunday.
After World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was interested in further splitting Western countries by spreading rumors that the British or Americans might have sheltered Hitler, the author believes. This, in his opinion, is evidenced by the mass appearance at that time in the press around the world of news that the Fuhrer did not commit suicide, but fled from Berlin, as well as a large number of eyewitness reports who claimed that they saw Hitler disguised as a monk or how he boarded a submarine in the Canary Islands.
Many of these messages were processed by Western intelligence agencies, including the FBI, Walters writes, noting that most of those materials are now declassified - and they refute any rumors about the escape of the Nazi leader.
The historian recalls that the burnt remains of the bodies of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun initially fell into the hands of the Soviet military, since the allies refused to storm Berlin, and the capital of the then Third Reich was captured by the Red Army. For a long time, Western countries could not familiarize themselves with the fragments of the Fuhrer's jaw and teeth, which were stored in the archives of the USSR secret services. Only in 2017, the FSB of Russia, the successor to the KGB, granted access to French scientists, who further confirmed the generally accepted version of Hitler's suicide in the Fuehrerbunker in Berlin.
Also in the State Archives of Russia in Moscow, fragments of a skull are kept, as the FSB told Interfax in 2009, “presumably Hitler” - this wording appeared in the documents due to the fact that the commission examining the remains did not find it possible to draw final conclusions on this issue. Everything else that was left of the Fuhrer was burned in 1970.
