Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story | Hacker News Reader

Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story

theguardian.com

64 pointsohjeez23 comments

This is particular evidence is relatively old news, the discovery was made during a History Channel special. There is currently a show running on the History Channel called Hunting Hitler that goes into much more depth on this topic and expands on the evidence (there is also a book from several years ago with the same namesake).

I agree that this information is not enough to say he escaped, but there is a plethora of other information that makes the case he escaped very compelling.

Some points the show makes: - testimony from supposed eye witnesses in the bunker has been unreliable and inconsistent - underground escape routes existed with possible tunnels (that have since been sealed) that lead directly to the templehof airport - safe houses have been identfied that housed nazis after the war in spain and the canary islands - eye witness uboat activity around argentina after the war ended - various safe houses discovered in Argentina that housed Nazis - ruins of a compound in remote Argentina that have nazi paraphernalia including medicines Hitler would have needed - locations in nearby brazil that have nazi sitings after the war

There's a ton of new evidence, I really think there's enough to take these claims seriously. The only thing that I'm not sure about is the dental records that were verified in 1945. I'm not sure how well that was handled being that Hitler's personal dentist did the verifications.

http://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Hitler-Scientific-Evidence-Esc...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hunt-Begins/dp/B017WZWN7S/ref=sr_1...

This is all the same sort of thing that the folks who keep "finding" Amelia Earhart do, and it's all completely backwards. They are not finding bits of evidence, investigating them at length, and then reaching a conclusion about Hitler. They're finding "evidence" and then asking "how can this prove my theory about Hitler"? It's the reverse of a real investigation, because it starts with a conclusion and then looks for evidence to support it.

As far as the show is concerned, I don't think this is true. They approach it forensically, first determining if they should even cast doubt on the historical assumptions. I know this is mostly dramatized tv, but it coming up with some great results using technology where it's never been used before. Of course a show needs a narative, and that's a bit dangerous, but it doesn't mean the new evidence is invalid. Funding archeology and investigations like this can only come though tv sadly. I hope some historians review the new material and give their feedback because I really don't want to have to rely on the History Channels accounts of these events.

Forensic science is also highly prone to confirmation bias. It's a rather low bar to say something was investigated forensically.

Unfortunately, this means that even valid discoveries funded by someone with a story already in mind can't be given much weight, because there's no way of knowing what discoveries their preexisting bias prevented them from finding or acknowledging.

Review this document, and decide for yourself:

http://www.nl-aid.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Sognnaes.pd...

> Unknown to the world, Hitler's corpse was interred at a Smersh centre in Magdeburg, East Germany. There it remained long after Stalin's death in 1953. Finally, in 1970, the KGB dug up the corpse, cremated it and secretly scattered the ashes in a river.

This sounds really interesting. Anyone have additional information on this topic?

Hugh Trevor-Roper's "The Last Days of Hitler" is the nearest we have to a primary source in English. The 1947 edition didn't have any details from the Soviets, but there were a number of subsequent editions where additional details were added, most recently 1995.

After reading the article, I can't see how this discovery cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story. The skull fragment may tot belong to Hitler, but that has nothing to do with the possibility that Hitler committed suicide. It only shows that the soviets were wrong to think that the skull fragment come from Hitler.

Well, it doesn't disprove the story, it just disputes the only significant proof corroborating the story. It's reasonable to say that's "casting doubt". It may very well still be a true story, but now we'll (probably) never really know.

Not that I think it matters in the grand scheme of things.

You can remove a single brick from the foundation of a building and it will still stand. Remove enough bricks and the building will come down.

People want to know exactly what happened; the cyanide pill would have been enough to kill him so where did the story of the shot in the head come from? And now that it is not sure if it happened then did it happen or did he just take cyanide and was the self inflicted head shot story only added to make him more of a 'man' after the fact (as in; women use poison, men use guns/swords to kill themselves (and others))?

I don't get this fascination with hunting down the truth behind a single person. He died, whether then or 20 years later, case closed.

I find more interesting the that ex-Nazis worked on some of the most important discoveries and inventions of the modern age, as well as them working behind the scenes to fight against communists in West Germany (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/wehrmacht-vetera...).

History is not about one person, it's about society and civilization as a whole...

Knowledge of what happened is probably a justice interest for some.

> I don't get this fascination with hunting down the truth behind a single person. He died, whether then or 20 years later, case closed.

It's significant because it gives us a rare insight into Mr Hitler's late-war psychology.

The traditional story, at least in the English-speaking West, was that he finally realised that he had failed himself and Germany and took his own life to escape the inevitable wrath of the Soviets.

An alternative narrative that I have encountered is that he saw the whole conflict as a competition between national character. He felt that the majority of the German people had failed him and Germany, in which case it is difficult to understand why he would have committed suicide.

I thought it is well known under conspiracy theorists that Hitler died near Bariloche, Argentina at the Nahuel Huapi Lake. The secret postwar center of the highest german NAZI criminals. http://www.google.com/?q=hitler%20bariloche%20argentina

Not sure if a DNA test was necessary to determine that skull fragment wasn't the result of a suicide... not that this says much about whether it is Hitler's skull or not. The picture provided in the article clearly shows a downward angled hole high on the parietal lobe of the skull-- a typical suicide shot, assuming it was taken at roughly the temple, should be in the temporal or sphenoid bones, and angled flat or slightly upward.

EDIT: I don't know if Hitler was right or left handed, but a right handed person would likely use their right hand to fire a suicide shot. This may be another fact that is inconsistent with the existing skull fragment, which has a bullet hole on the right half.

It's not very unusual to shoot with the "wrong" hand. Sure, someone who had never used a gun before would naturally pick one up with her dominant hand. Those who practice a bit, however, often shift to using their dominant eye (occasionally opposite the dominant hand). If only one chirality of firearm were available when one were learning to shoot, one might acclimate to that as well. Right-handed bolt-action rifles are a regular annoyance to me.

Are there non-symmetric pistols?

Many pistol safeties that are located near the trigger operate side-to-side. That means that it's easy, depending on which hand is holding, either to go from safe to fire or from fire to safe, but going the other direction requires using the other hand. Most shooters would prefer the safe-to-fire transition to be easy. Not all safeties on modern firearms are set up like this, however.

De-cocking mechanisms may be located on only one side, although most are on both.

I've never seen a slide release that wasn't limited to only one side. That would seem unavoidable from a physics perspective.

However, your question is a bit off-target. Most shooters, particularly early in the previous century, would learn with a rifle first, and their rifle preferences would transfer to their pistol use.

> However, your question is a bit off-target. Most shooters, particularly early in the previous century, would learn with a rifle first, and their rifle preferences would transfer to their pistol use.

Oh, I was curious in general, not as pertaining to this particular historical question. Thanks for the answer!

You're welcome! b^)

Hitler's dentist and the techs who worked with him were captured after the war. They independently reconstructed the details of the dental work that was placed in his mouth. The reconstructions meshed with each other and matched perfectly with the dental work on the jaw fragments attributed to Hitler, including the famous "telephone bridge" which was put in his mouth. They also match with the skull X-rays of Hitler which were taken after the July 20th bomb attempt. Hitler died in Berlin, forensic analysis confirms it.

While interesting...it is from 2009.

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