Hitler Took Cyanick Soviet Inquiry Found Result of an Autopsy Is Disclosed in Book Published Today
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'68 I968 Tag New York Times Company. NEW YbRIC, FRIDAY, AUGUST 2,1968 Hitler Took Cyanick Soviet Inquiry Found Result of an Autopsy Is Disclosed in Book Published Today Soviet investigators' autopsy report is an Page 14. By HARRISON E. SALISBURY Twenty-three years 'after the event, Soviet sources have finally disclosed details of the autopsy and other medi- cal reports on the death of 'e An exhaustive Soviet in- t gully established positively, according to a hook to be published today, that Hitler's death was due to cyanide PbiSoning. Identification of the body was made through detailed examination of den- - tal evidence. - The. Soviet version of Hitler's death contradicts ear-!' From '`The Death of Adulf fatIer"—flarehtrt Brace & World I.. Her versions, including those Photo made by a Soviet cameraman purportedly shows charred body of Adolf Hitler tt of William • Tirevcr-RtiJ10.h.liatuago,_,... Mr_ Bezymensky's account t coraCluded. that H. shot confirms evidence, long ▪--pelf an at E'er'+'n,..:_jr.nown , in the West, that- Nit-r" g lies mistress, Vihi;m he had ler died on April 30, 1945, in 3 married the day before, his Reichschancellery bunker Poisoned herself. - in Berlin with Eva Braun. I The Soviet reports, sup- What had not been preVi- pressed completely by Stalin ously known was that a SO- r and to an extent by his sue- viet counterintelligence team cessors, have been compiled found 'the bodies believed -to by Lev Aleksandrovich Bezy- be those of Hitler and Eva mensky, a former Soviet Braun on May 5 in a shell intelligence officer and trans- crater where they bad been lator and historical journal- put in a shallow grave. 1st They are being published The Smersh team was here today, under the title headed by Lieut. Col. Ivan I. "The Death of Adolf Hitler," Klimenko, chief of counter- by Harcourt, Brace & World, intelligence with the Soviet A frame from a roll of film marked "Last Pictures of Hit- and are being published si- 79th Rifle Corps. "Smersh" is a multaneously in Europe. The , ler," found in the files of Heinrich Hoffmann, the Fiihrer's price here is $3.95. Continued on Page 14, Column 1 official photographer, when the Russians entered Berlin. 'tal work were placed in a box and a team of investigators set out May 9, 1945, to locate Hit- ler's , dentist, a Professor BODY IDENTIFIED Blaschke. The dentist was not found, but with the aid of his assistant Mrs. Kathe Heuser- BY DENTAL RECORD mann, the X-rays of Hitler's dental work and several gold crowns. that had been made for him but had not yet, been. fitted ■re • Book to Be Published Today were located in the Blaschke clinic. Contradicts Earlier View These materials were taken That He Shot Himself to a dental technician named Fritz Echtmann, who had made *Ile bridges and plates. The dental work matched that Continued From Page 1, Col. 3 taken from the corpse believed name by which Soviet counter- to be Hitler's. A similar identification intelligence forces were known was made of Eva Braum• The colloquially in World War II an dental examination, the Smersh is an acronym for the. Russian investigators reported, accord- words "smert shpionam," which ing to Mr. Bezymensky, estab- mean "death to spies." lished the identity of the corpses beyond doubt. On Hitler's instruction, ac- However, Smersh did not t. 'cording to hisiorians, the two halt here. It took detailed de- bodies were burned with gas-. positions from all dental tech- oline in the shell crater. nicians and specialists who had r, The bodies, badly chaired, done any work for Hitler. wbre taken from the crater ad- Witnesses Rounded Up jacent to the bunker, wrapped They rounded up witnesses in blankets and placed in wood- of the events in the bunker ,; en boxes along with the bodies and pieced together a chrono- logical account of Hitler's last ,t• of two dogs found in the same days and his suicide. They it shell crater. They were trans- concluded that the two dogs ported to the counterintelli- found in the crater with Hitler ' gence headquarters of the So- and Eva Braun had been killed viet Third Shock Army at Buch, in ' tests of the cyanide-cap- sule's fragments, according to a northern Berlin suburb, the the Bezymensky narrative. Bezymensy account says. As Smersh reconstructed the A topflight Soviet medical scene, Hitler and Eva Braun team, headed• by Dr. Faust 1. retired to their quarters in the Shkarayski, chief of forensic early hours of April 30 after Hitler had ordered his valet, medicine for the Byelorussian Heinz Linge, to return after l; Front, wasNassembled at Fier- 10 minutes "when everything lin-Bueh, where the bodies of was quiet." the Goebbels family and that When Linge re-entered the of Gem Hans Krebs, Acting room, the suicides , had oc- Chief of the German Staff, had curred. Acting on Hitler's in- also been transported. All of struction, Linge then carried the bodies came from the out what he called "the most Reichschancellery bunker. difficult order of his life." This, The forensic team performed the Soviet investigators de- autopsies on each body, exam- ducted, was to deliver a coup ining .those that proved' to be 4- de grace, presumably becauSe Hitler's and Eva Braun's on of Hitler's fear that the poison May 8. The corpse believed to might not work. be Hitler's was badly burned. Mr. Bezyinensky leaves un- However, the medical exami- clear Stalin's reason for sup- ners recovered fragments of a pressing the evidence of Hit- potassium-cyanide capsule from , ler's death. All the basic facts, the Mouth. They found no sign Mr. Bezymensky noted, were of wounds on the corpse but fully reported to Stalin before part of the skull was missing. the end of May. The first news Part of a cyanide capsule was of Hitler's suicide had been also found in the mouth of the given to Stalin May 1 when Braun corpse: ' , General Krebs appeared at The verdict of the Soviet Marshal Vasily I. Chuikov's post-mortem was that death in headquarters and delivered a both cases had been caused by letter from Goebbels announc- cyanide poisoning. ing Hitler's death. General Krebs Jaws Well Preserved ,e • subsequently committed suicide The upper and lower jaws by cyanide poison, according of the corpse believed to be ; to official Soviet reports. Hitler's were well preserved. The letter was passed to The jaw bones, teeth and den- what had happened to. Hitler. in a box, searching for dental Mr. Bezymensky believes specialists to complete the ex- that Stalin first kept the evi- amination.. dence secret in order to use it Now, the volume published in, case of any trick, should today presents the full text of someone try to masquerade as the Hitler autopsy, the autopsy Hitler. of Eva Braun and the Goebbels Smersh was ordered to check family, phOtographs from So- the possibility that Hitler could viet archives of the bones, the somehow have escaped from charred bodies and extensive Berlin. It took into custody extracts Jronx the interroga7 everyone it could find who had tion. been in the bunker or close- to According to an official of Hitler — his adjutanC•Sitto Harednit, Brace & World, Mr. Giinsche, his pilot, Hans Bauer, Bezymensky; with the knowl- and the chief of the body- edge of the Soviet authorities, guards, Wilhelm Mohnke. They sent his manuscript to Christian apprehended Linge, and a body- Vegner Verlag, a major. West guard named Harry Mengers- German publishing house _ in hausen, who had witnessed Hamburg. Vegner Verlag as- the burning of the bodies, and signed the book and serial pub- many others. lishing rights to publishers in Held Prisoners for Years the Unit& States, Britain, These individuals were in- France and Italy. terrogated. again and again. They - were held secretly in r prison in the Soviet Union for years. As late as 1951, they were. still being questioned by Smersh and were being com- pelled to sign new detailed declarations about Hitler's last moments. In the end, Stalin never di- vulged a word of the evidence. It was locked in the archives along with the charred jaw- bones, the dental work, the charts, the photographs and possibly even the remains of Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov's the corpses. • 1 headquarters where Mr. Bezy- The full record, even now, '' • mensky transalated it for for- has not been published in the warding . to Stalin. However, Soviet Union although Mr. the Soviet authorities were Bezymensky has written sev- skeptical of the Krebs report. eral popular works dealing with Although the Smersh investi- the last days of the Third 4 gation established the facts bey- Reich and has included ex- / and dispute, Stalin did not cerpts from some key docu- make the information public. ments. 1 In fact, he spoke cryptically So has Yelena Rzhevskaya, __to Prime Minister Churchill another Soviet interpreter, who and President Truman- at the accompanied the -Smersh tearri Potsdam Conference in July, that raced about Berlin on May 1945, as if he did .not know 9 with Hitler's jaws and teeth t / —, .