Hitler Took Cyanick Soviet Inquiry Found Result of an Autopsy Is Disclosed in Book Published Today

'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- BODY IDENTIFIED ler's , dentist, a Professor Blaschke. The dentist was not found, but with the aid of his BY DENTAL RECORD assistant Mrs. Kathe Heuser- mann, the X-rays of Hitler's dental work and several gold crowns. that had been made for ■re • Book to Be Published Today him but had not yet, been. fitted were located in the Blaschke Contradicts Earlier View clinic. These materials were taken That He Shot Himself to a dental technician named Fritz Echtmann, who had made *Ile bridges and plates. The Continued From Page 1, Col. 3 dental work matched that taken from the corpse believed name by which Soviet counter- to be Hitler's. intelligence forces were known A similar identification colloquially in World War II an was made of Eva Braum• The is an acronym for the. Russian dental examination, the Smersh words "smert shpionam," which investigators reported, accord- ing to Mr. Bezymensky, estab- mean "death to spies." lished the identity of the On Hitler's instruction, ac- corpses beyond doubt. t. 'cording to hisiorians, the two However, Smersh did not bodies were burned with gas-. halt here. It took detailed de- oline in the shell crater. positions from all dental tech- r, nicians and specialists who had The bodies, badly chaired, done any work for Hitler. wbre taken from the crater ad- jacent to the bunker, wrapped Witnesses Rounded Up in blankets and placed in wood- They rounded up witnesses of the events in the bunker ,; en boxes along with the bodies and pieced together a chrono- ,t• of two dogs found in the same logical account of Hitler's last it shell crater. They were trans- days and his suicide. They ported to the counterintelli- concluded that the two dogs ' gence headquarters of the So- found in the crater with Hitler and Eva Braun had been killed viet Third Shock Army at Buch, in ' tests of the cyanide-cap- a northern Berlin suburb, the sule's fragments, according to Bezymensy account says. the Bezymensky narrative. A topflight Soviet medical As Smersh reconstructed the team, headed• by Dr. Faust 1. scene, Hitler and Eva Braun retired to their quarters in the Shkarayski, chief of forensic early hours of April 30 after medicine for the Byelorussian Hitler had ordered his valet, l; Front, wasNassembled at Fier- Heinz Linge, to return after lin-Bueh, where the bodies of 10 minutes "when everything the Goebbels family and that was quiet." of Gem Hans Krebs, Acting When Linge re-entered the Chief of the German Staff, had room, the suicides , had oc- also been transported. All of curred. Acting on Hitler's in- the bodies came from the struction, Linge then carried Reichschancellery bunker. out what he called "the most The forensic team performed difficult order of his life." This, autopsies on each body, exam- the Soviet investigators de- ining .those that proved' to be ducted, was to deliver a coup Hitler's and Eva Braun's on 4- de grace, presumably becauSe May 8. The corpse believed to of Hitler's fear that the poison be Hitler's was badly burned. might not work. However, the medical exami- Mr. Bezyinensky leaves un- ners recovered fragments of a clear Stalin's reason for sup- potassium-cyanide capsule from pressing the evidence of Hit- the Mouth. They found no sign , ler's death. All the basic facts, of wounds on the corpse but Mr. Bezymensky noted, were part of the skull was missing. fully reported to Stalin before Part of a cyanide capsule was the end of May. The first news also found in the mouth of the of Hitler's suicide had been Braun corpse: ' given to Stalin May 1 when The verdict of the Soviet , General Krebs appeared at post-mortem was that death in Marshal Vasily I. Chuikov's both cases had been caused by headquarters and delivered a cyanide poisoning. letter from Goebbels announc- Jaws Well Preserved ing Hitler's death. General Krebs ,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- dence secret in order to use it amination.. in, case of any trick, should Now, the volume published someone try to masquerade as today presents the full text of Hitler. the Hitler autopsy, the autopsy 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 Giinsche, his pilot, Hans Bauer, Harednit, Brace & World, Mr. and the chief of the body- Bezymensky; with the knowl- guards, Wilhelm Mohnke. They edge of the Soviet authorities, apprehended Linge, and a body- sent his manuscript to Christian guard named Harry Mengers- Vegner Verlag, a major. West hausen, who had witnessed German publishing house _ in the burning of the bodies, and Hamburg. Vegner Verlag as- many others. signed the book and serial pub- 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 / —,