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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

> “The teeth are authentic, there is no possible doubt. Our study proves that Hitler died in 1945," Philippe Charlier, lead author of the study in the European Journal of Internal Medicine, tells AFP. “We can stop all the conspiracy theories about Hitler. He did not flee to Argentina in a submarine, he is not in a hidden base in Antarctica or on the dark side of the moon.”

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..

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> 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.

DNA was old news sure but using it to identify individuals was only theoretical and hardly widespread knowledge, it wouldn't be practical until the late 80s/early 90s...

Sure. But police departments started keeping dna evidence in the 70s/80s in anticipation of advances in technology. It's how the golden state killer was eventually caught. If police departments were capable of such forward thinking, it's hard for me to believe the kgb wasn't.

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?

Maybe before you throw shade on the KGB (well-deserved in general, imho) you should examine the provenance of the official story. It does not depend solely on KGB / FSB [1]. In fact, it doesn't depend on them at all.

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.

[1] https://war-documentary.info/the-last-days-of-hitler/

> 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?

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.

The word "naive" gets thrown around a lot when dealing with apparent expectations about apparent human irrationality. I find it's usually uncalled for. In this case, saying "We can stop all the conspiracy theories" does not mean that he thinks they will stop.

No, it does make a difference to have more information and especially more incisive and clear facts that are easy to present.

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.

Yeah, once you can point them to something they could test themselves it becomes a bit more real.

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.

The best way to cure most flat earthers of their apparent affliction is to introduce them to even more obnoxious methods of trolling people. Trolly irreverence to rational conversation is the big draw of flat eartherism.

Play chess with pigeons and they'll shit on the board, just to see you wince.

Everybody knowns he lives in San Diego and works at a Subway. He is normally in a bad mood, but the sauce is great.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Diego,+CA,+USA/@32.676...

Can't resist copying here one of the Google Customer reviews ( this one posted 2 weeks ago):

"bad customer service, some guy in a mustache told me to follow him and he shipped me to poland? im confused"

Looking at the reviews this has been a running joke for a while. Wonder what started it? Was the location featured in one of those "hunting Hitler" documentaries or something?

If you look at the building from above, looks like a swastika. Took me a while to get it

haha lol now I see! urban planner was sleeping lol

Conspiracy theorists believe in things like the Mandela Effect and the existence of alternative realities. With this, you can give them all the proofs you want and they can simply claim that history has been altered.

Just because you believe in one theory that doesn't adhere to the mainstream "theory" of history does not make you a complete crackpot that believes all conspiracy theories. Come on.

I would argue that believing in one conspiracy theory makes you much more susceptible to others, because they all require a flawed type of logic. Conspiracy theorists overlook large bodies of evidence and laser-focus on tiny contradictions and rely on their own intuition over research or listening to other experts.

15 years ago believing in the NSA fiber taps made you an insane conspiracy theorist. Save your judgement for something else.

Perhaps you could argue that in the 90s, but no it was already the opposite of a conspiracy theory by 2000. The idea that not a single element of the tens of thousands (many TLAs) dedicated to US national security and monitoring was doing fiber taps (in SF or elsewhere) would imply that not a single one who had means (they were known to be doing it in other countries) motive (because they wanted metadata if nothing else) and opportunity (National security letters were a thing even then) would do their jobs. I mean... maybe at Home Depot, but not in the Federal Government where you take an oath to the constitution!

Snowden changed a few people's minds, but not the elite.

> no it was already the opposite of a conspiracy theory by 2000.

No, it wasn't, as someone who had dozens of knock-down, drag-out arguments well after this time period.

You can have a "knock down drag out" argument about climate change today, doesn't change the fact that we have had rock solid evidence of it for decades.

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.

Some echelon incidents such as the Airbus controversy were reported as far back as 1995 in mainstream media.

In my opinion, people who reject any "conspiracy theory" across the board are just as cognitively deficient as those who accept any controversial idea that challenges some conventional narrative.

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.

I guess it depends on what level of conspiracy we're talking about. The parent comment referred to the Mandela effect, so that's what I was thinking about. Mandela effect, flat earth, anti-vax, Q-anon, reptilians, bigfoot, there's a reason these groups tend to cross over.

>I would argue that believing in one conspiracy theory makes you much more susceptible to others, because they all require a flawed type of logic.

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.

Technically those are all conspiracy theories yes.

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 :)

If you believe in one conspiracy theory, it is more likely that you will believe others, yes. It's just a matter of how "out there" the conspiracy you believe in is. That forms the baseline for what you consider by default to be plausible.

That’s awful logic. I believe X, therefore I also believe Y and Z because some people who believe in Y believe in Z. See how that doesn’t make any sense?

That's exactly how it works, though. You believe X, and you're more likely to be convinced of Y and Z if Y and Z correlate with a worldview that already accepts X as normal.

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.

That’s not how it works. Not even remotely. That’s how your brain has decided things function and your explanation has merely been good or functional for you. It’s not logical.

Logic has little to do with human behavior, much less belief in conspiracy theories.

The same logic could be used in saying the word NO, if a person says NO the first time, he is more likely to say NO the second time, and a third time.

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.

> The same logic could be used in saying the word NO, if a person says NO the first time, he is more likely to say NO the second time, and a third time.

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.

> strawman

Conspiracy theorists are usually impervious to evidence. They'll simply adjust their stories.

The fact that the records are so well known would also mean someone could create a fake set, using teeth and materials scavenged from the time

Alternatively, one could assume a false record for dentistry matching to someone else.

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...

Or we can possibly be wrong for any number of reasons. It's not like we haven't before taught millions of people complete nonsense on the basis of some dug up teeth.

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.

The interesting thing here is there was a conspiracy! At the direction of Stalin, the Soviet Union knew that they had Hitler's remains but intentionally sowed the idea of his escape. And we're not entirely sure why.

So it's a wrong conspiracy theory that has been debunked, but because of a real conspiracy theory that we have evidence for.

Says right in the bottom of the article that Stalin wanted to seed the idea that the West was keeping Hitler alive for nefarious Western reasons.

When the Soviets took Berlin, they grabbed the dental assistants who worked on Adolf and Eva Hitler.

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.

Why Hitler escaping a "conspiracy theory"? A leader of a losing country fleeing for his life is not a far fetched hypothesis, especially given how the US actively recruited Nazis through Operation Paperclip and Operation Gladio for scientific and non-scientific purposes.

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.

It's a conspiracy theory because it's a theory about a conspiracy.

"Conspiracy theory" is a pejorative directed at theories about conspiracies that implies irrationality or mental illness.

Do you believe that's because there are established links between mental illness and belief in conspiracy theories, and many such conspiracies are irrational, or because it's all a campaign by the CIA to discredit truth-seekers who threaten the establishment order?

Because the proof was overwhelmingly pointing at the other direction. It ranges from his defeatism earlier on, multiple eyewitness accounts from his last days, including his refusals to evacuate (including people begging him to join them in running away), the official Soviet accounts, etc. And around zero proof that anything else happened and he somehow miraculously escaped from the surrounded Berlin. So it's a baseless conspiracy.

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.

Also worth mentioning is that Hitler's health by the last days was so terrible that any sort of serious escape would have been exceptionally difficult. If even the clever, very capable and well organized Heinrich Himmler, with a face that was hardly memorable at the time couldn't successfully pull off an escape It strains the imagination believing that the nearly crippled Hitler, with one of the world's most absolutely famous faces could have gotten away without a single piece of evidence ever appearing to back up this idea.

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.

I’m open-minded about the subject. Here are some concerns I have with your claim: is the proof provided by either the Russians or the Germans? If so, it’s only as meaningful as any other story during that time. The Germans are smart enough to falsify a story that leads to a dead end before doing an escape, and the Russians are smart enough not to lose face if they can’t find him. Could you explain why that’s not plausible?

> Why Hitler escaping a "conspiracy theory"?

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?

> do anything to shut up conspiracy theorists

Maybe it's worth contemplating what the conspiracy _truly_ is? Why keep pushing out 'proof' when it's just to convince some fringe minority?

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