Hitler’s Teeth Confirm He Died in 1945 (2018)
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
It's pretty naive to think that a study like this one will do anything to shut up conspiracy theorists. You verified the dental records? Well teeth on the body could be easily altered. How are you sure of the records in the first place? Hospitals didn't have good record keeping in the early 1900s, so chances are you don't have the original data. Oh and why should we trust this "expert"? He's probably working with the establishment.
And so on and so forth..
Or we could just take the word of the KGB/FSB who has lied about everything. The same people who say we can't trust anything from putin because he is/was a kgb/fsb agent are the same ones saying we should trust their version of events absolutely. Katyn massacre was rife with conspiracies too because the official narrative was a lie.
The official narrative was that in 1970?, the kgb dug up their bodies, burnt them, ground them up into fine powder and dump them in a river so that nobody should visit their burial site. Were there many people in the soviet union/east germany looking to visit hitler's grave to pay homage? Of course not. Does that kgb narrative make any sense to you?
Also, it's hard for me to believe that the kgb didn't keep some dna material. After all, by 1970, dna was old news.
Rather, Hugh Trevor-Roper interviewed many, many people, without them knowing what the other people said. He carefully cross-checked their testimony, and since then no serious person has disputed what he established.
Unfortunately in the 1970s he damaged his credibility by "authenticating" the Hitler diaries, which were fake. That doesn't change what he did in 1945-46.
If the russians did get hitler's body, then they most likely still have it or dna material. Also, aren't they worried that fsb headquarters or their archives will attract fascists wanting to pay homage to hitler?
There are some Nazi graves that are used as such. So yes, it makes sense to me.
Furthermore, we don't need to believe the KGB or see the actual remains as they're not the only evidence that Hitler's dead: there are a number of (German) eye-witness testimonies, as well as documents such as his will.
I haven't had many arguments about Hitler's death, but I've pulled people away from the moon landing conspiracy theory, and a bunch of others. My success rate got much better once I was able to walk them through the Apollo 11 mirror and the detection of it from earth. It's not perfect, but it makes a difference having a single clear piece of information you can offer them, especially one they hadn't considered before.
Consider different types of conspiracy theorists:
1. Ones who copy something they vaguely heard. New information is a relief to them. They don't like being on the outside. Even if you are only temporarily their new source of authority, convincing them of the truth is a win and you can build from there. Also, you can usually find someone they regard as an authority who can present the information.
2. Ones who want to have inside/obscure knowledge of something. Telling them a fact most people don't know is exciting. They may switch to the truth just to have one up over their fellow theorists. They may become your best research partner.
3. Ones who have put in work to adopt conspiracy theories but are genuinely confused about the story. These can be won over with an abundance of factual information and analysis. So not only do you mention the dental records, you show them the whole paper, review the other pieces of evidence, etc. They take time but the effort genuinely pays off, likely for life.
4. Ones who think anyone but their unhealthy brain or true cult leader is trying to deceive them. You probably can't win here. But they're far from most common and you generally know if you have one of these on your hands.
Flat earthers I'm not so sure about. There are so many things just by looking at the horizon or up in the sky that make it absurd. I've taken to simply stating that I don't believe that they really believe in a Flat Earth. They're just faking it... prove me wrong.
Play chess with pigeons and they'll shit on the board, just to see you wince.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Diego,+CA,+USA/@32.676...
"bad customer service, some guy in a mustache told me to follow him and he shipped me to poland? im confused"
Do you believe that 9/11 happened? By any definition, that was a conspiracy among hijackers. We have the government's theory of how that conspiracy unfolded, as well as a variety of other theories about how that conspiracy unfolded (some extremely unhinged). If you do believe that 9/11 happened, then you believe in at least one conspiracy theory. Does that make you "susceptible" to others? The fact is that any time two (or more) people get together and make a plan that isn't public, that is a conspiracy. This happens every day, millions of times per day. This happens in every board room, every statehouse, every hall of power. Every one of these is a "conspiracy" that people may or may not have theories about. The fact that there are many mentally ill people out there who have unhinged ideas about absurd conspiracies doesn't make the fact that there are many actual conspiracies unfolding around us every day.
However colloquially a conspiracy theorist is a person who believes in the further-fetched conspiracies on the spectrum.
The term is pretty exclusive to that kind of "Bill Gates invented COVID so he could inject us with tracking and mind control chips" person :)
Snowden changed a few people's minds, but not the elite.
No, it wasn't, as someone who had dozens of knock-down, drag-out arguments well after this time period.
X-Files in the 90s was basically a meme about three letter agencies that everyone knew had been spying on everything they could since before the cold war. You were only a conspiracy theorist if you thought they had alien tech or controlled the weather.
Conspiracies exist. Cover-ups exist. Propaganda is always in play. People act surprised when human behavior that has played out throughout written history is revealed, again, in the news as some sort of big scandal (surveillance leaks, MK Ultra, Operation Sea Spray, Operation Northwoods, Panama Papers, etc.).
If you were a Russian citizen today, so much of your conventional information would be wrong and someone with that personality type would seem to us an absolute fool with a completely distorted reality. And apparently that is exactly what's happening, as a recent Reuters article reported: Putin's approval rating is doing pretty well since the Ukraine conflict began. In the western world, we have much more freedom of information, but we certainly don't have ubiquitous, objective information.
Everyone wants an easy, lazy solution (only accept information from a preferred news source or the opposite: accept anything that challenges the mainstream), but if you want to have the most accurate reality possible, you have to continuously apply some thought to your available information yourself.
If you believe JFK was assassinated by the CIA, for instance, you're more likely to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, because a government capable of one is capable of the other. If you're already anti-vaxx, you're more likely to believe in COVID conspiracy theories, because you already believe vaccines are poison and the medical establishment is lying to everyone.
People are emotional beings, not rational. Even most people who think they're as coldly logical and passionless as a compiler are driven primarily by a need to preserve their ego and reinforce their existing biases. Why do you think so many conspiracy theories spread across social media as well as they do? It's precisely because of that effect.
So we should probably forbid saying NO at all, cause otherwise people will say NO to everything.
But the real world, is not that black and white.
Yes, that's what a verbal tic is, people develop them all the time. But you're purposely ignoring the complexity of human psychology and social dynamics involved in what I'm talking about and employing a reductionist "logic' that doesn't even relate to my point. I'm not the one using black and white thinking.
A better example of what i'm talking about would be the "Big Lie," a propaganda technique employed by Goebbels and Stalin. It works because people will eventually believe something, even something they know to be false, simply because it's repeated often enough. In an environment where one is surrounded by truth-bubbles like social media, that effect is multiplied because the propaganda tends to come from people you already trust.
I mean look at most threads about conspiracy theory here on HN and you'll see plenty of comments justifying conspiracy A because conspiracy B was proven to be true, even though that makes no rational sense. That's the way people are.
At a nation-state level, this would certainly be a reasonable level of “attack.” Could come either from German or Soviet assets, both having possible motive.
One wonders how the Bin Laden disposal will play in the future. Perhaps similarly...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Man
Plus I don't see how it would be a "conspiracy theory" to be skeptical of Hitler's alleged teeth. It might truly be a kooky, unfounded falsehood, but just being totally wrong shouldn't be labeled a conspiracy theory.
So it's a wrong conspiracy theory that has been debunked, but because of a real conspiracy theory that we have evidence for.
They were able to come construct the dental work done on Adolf.
Eva had a rubber bridge put it. That was much more helpful in identifying the bodies than any of the actual work on teeth.
Adolf had X-rays taken of his teeth. I’m not sure if they survived the war, my off the shelf books focus on Eva, as her bridge was the “aha!”
But Soviet intelligence spent great effort trying to hunt down the dental records of the Hitler and Goebbels families.
I understand and agree that this study seems to put this question to rest (I would like to read the actual study tho) but just using the label "conspiracy theory" is simply intellectual laziness and doesn't advance the conversation.
Now, what happened to the Gestapo Heinrich Muller is a mystery and warrants a conspiracy theory. Highly skilled man, ideologically flexible, didn't tell anybody he'd rather die, and no body has been linked to be his. He's probably in a mass grave in Berlin, but it's at least plausible he might have escaped.
After the war, many Nazis that got away were tracked down. They sometimes couldn't be captured but at least certain intelligence agencies or groups knew where they'd hidden (looking at you Mossad). Yet somehow Hitler himself just vanished, assuming you don't believe the much more plausible official story.
edit: The Gestapo Muller case is indeed interesting. That guy truly did just vanish into thin air, and aside from being a barely famous face, he had an extremely common name. His position would have definitely allowed him to prepare a truly deep disappearing act and his lack of ideology too. On the other hand, people thought similar about Martin Borman, Hitler's personal secretary and Party secretary, for decades, until DNA testing of remains found close to where the Nazi chancellery in Berlin had been proved that he'd died in the city while fleeing, only hours after leaving the bunker.
No, but claiming Russia and/or the USA lie about his death is. They likely had the the opportunity and the means to do that, but what would be their motive?
Maybe it's worth contemplating what the conspiracy _truly_ is? Why keep pushing out 'proof' when it's just to convince some fringe minority?
Additionally, surely there must be objects with excellent provenance containing Hitler's DNA?
This kind of agreement is incredibly common in families with histories of mental illness, drug abuse, criminality, and other major issues. I know dozens of people who have all agreed to never have children for this and various other reasons, and half of them are in long-term, committed relationships or married.
In at least one instance, I’ve seen the DNA analysis and the family tree. This particular family has a known gene for heightened intelligence (related to Scandinavian heritage, it’s well known, you can look it up), and their family has an uncanny predilection towards careers involving mathematics stretching back over a century. I’ve seen this ability with my own eyes. It’s uncanny and bordering on savantism.
The problem is, in as much as their genetics gives them a head start towards math, it is also heavily weighted towards certain forms of sociopathy/psychopathy and criminality; their family tree is heavy with addictive disorders, extreme religiosity, murder, substance abuse, and mental illness. The youngest member of their family is currently in prison as a recidivist. He’s only 27.
I don’t see it as "fucked up" at all for these people to stop having children; they are trying to be socially responsible for their progeny, some of which may have a genetic predisposition towards bad behavior. The philosophy of movements like antinatalism and childfree are rooted in these ideas and seek to make the world better with less humans.
There aren't good arguments against this kind of "voluntary eugenics" that don't appeal to religion or prescribe a transcendant value to human life.
https://phys.org/news/2009-09-hitler-skull-woman-scientists....
This will never be put to rest. It's a little like that scene in Terminator where the shrink says something like "It's brilliant. It doesn't require a shred of proof!"
A fool can ask more questions than even the wise can answer, which is why conspiracy theories are so persistent.
Anyway my father swore that he saw "an old man that looked a lot like Hitler without the mustache" in the 80's in that colony.
And its funny because its like those stories about people that have seen alien ships, you know is very unlikely but you never stop to wonder, "what if..". Well now there's no doubt that it was just a Hitler lookalike (poor man).
Also, one thing that always looked of in those theories is the fact that a man with the psychology of Hitler would be able to live a very simple life with such big regrets and big dreams smashed, seeing how much he was hated (remember, he was a narcissist) til old age. It always seemed unlikely to me, "not like hitler", while the suicide seems much more believable.
I remember the plot was a little outlandish to me even when I 11 years old: All American kids team up with a brilliant scientist and build a rocket to the moon, where they discover and defeat a secret Nazi moon base.
That sounds like a lot of reasons to lie about him.