Alleged doubles of Adolf Hitler

The corpse of an apparent Hitler body double with a gunshot wound to the forehead, a battered right temple, and sunken vestibules (filmed by the Soviets)

Although there is no evidence that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler used look-alikes as political decoys during his life, some stories propagated as early as 1939 assert his death and replacement with an imposter. Following Hitler's suicide during the Battle of Berlin, the Soviet Union claimed to discover a number of bodies resembling the dictator, bolstering a disinformation campaign asserting Hitler's survival. Only the dictator's dental remains were positively identified.

The most prominent evidence of any Hitler double is Soviet footage of a toothbrush moustache-wearing body with a gunshot wound to the forehead, ostensibly found in the Reich Chancellery garden; the Soviets sometimes implied this to be the body of Hitler himself. Conspiracy theorists cite this double as evidence that Hitler faked his death and escaped Germany.

Background

Adolf Hitler (right) and his chauffeur Julius Schreck (left), both wearers of the toothbrush moustache—their only substantial physical similarity (1925)

The 1939 book The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler alleges that the Nazi Party used four people as doubles for Hitler, including the author, who claims that the real dictator died in 1938 and that he subsequently took his place. The book was considered farcical in the year of its release and cannot be considered as being remotely reliable. In 1939, the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), while admitting that the book has "practically no direct evidence of authenticity", defended it by dubiously citing the purported death of Julius Schreck in 1938 as support for Hitler's use of doubles. The NEA claimed that after Schreck had ceased to be Hitler's chauffeur (in 1934), he was riding in the back of a car being driven by Hitler in 1938 when he took a bullet from a would-be Hitler assassin who did not expect Hitler to be driving. The NEA also cited public appearances of Hitler look-alikes in Europe as fueling belief in his use of doubles: one man was photographed in 1935 in Nice, France, wearing a pinstripe suit (said to have been accompanied by two bodyguards and to have caused a commotion) and another in 1936, spotted at the zoo in Vienna, Austria.

On 25 April 1945, Hitler instructed Schutzstaffel (SS) valet Heinz Linge to ensure that his body was burned to avoid falling into Soviet hands, asserting, "They would make a spectacle in Moscow out of my body and put it in waxworks." On 26 April, Stockholm's "Free German Press Service" circulated a rumor that a Hitler double named August Wilhelm Bartholdy, supposedly a former grocer from Plauen, was called to Berlin to be filmed dying on the battlefield in Hitler's stead. The Germans émigrés stated, "He will act as Hitler's trump card, creating a hero legend around the Führer's death, while Hitler himself goes underground." Hitler died in Berlin on 30 April, with his dental remains subsequently being positively identified.

Supporting claims

On 2 May 1945, the day Berlin fell, an official Soviet newspaper declared the German report of Hitler's death to have been a Nazi trick. On 9 May, The New York Times reported that a body was claimed by the Soviets to belong to Hitler. This was disputed by an anonymous servant, who stated that the body was that of a cook who was killed because of his resemblance to Hitler, and that the latter had escaped via a faked death. On 6 June 1945, Western correspondents cited the statements of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov's staff that four bodies resembling Hitler had been found in the Führerbunker, purportedly burnt by the Red Army's flamethrowers; one body was considered most likely to be Hitler's, chemically determined to have died by poison. A few days later, on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's orders, Zhukov presented the official narrative that Hitler had escaped, stating, "We have found no corpse that could be [his]." In mid-1945, a Soviet major told American sources that Hitler had survived and claimed his body was not found burned in the Reich Chancellery garden, stating, "Our experts have established that the man found here didn't look like Hitler at all." Similarly, the British Daily Herald cited a major who was reputedly the first Soviet to enter the garden, where he saw the body of "a double—and not even a good double". During their Soviet captivity, Heinz Linge, SS guard Josef Henschel, and Hitler's pilot Hans Baur were interrogated about whether Hitler escaped by leaving a body double.

According to the 1947 American book Who Killed Hitler?, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler previously employed several Hitler doubles as political decoys and knew of one in the Führerbunker. This unnamed double was "about 54" or perhaps younger, "[having] been groomed for [non-speaking] public functions in the earlier years" when Hitler was healthy; thus, he could not deceive those familiar with the elder Hitler but might fool the public, being able to "pass as Hitler at a distance of fifty feet" by styling his hair and donning a prop toothbrush moustache. He supposedly began appearing in the kitchen by mid-April 1945, known to only a few of Hitler's servants as a helper to his chef, Constanze Manziarly, who was exclusively aware if he performed kitchen duties. He was not allowed above ground nor seen outside the kitchen except by an SS escort (undercover as a servant) with whom he shared a room in an area "neither visible nor accessible" to other staff. The kitchen servants reputedly pitied the duplicate, sensing that "whatever fate overtook Hitler also would overtake" him. Himmler supposedly had to reckon with the double's existence after hatching a (purportedly successful) plan to assassinate Hitler via the dictator's physician Ludwig Stumpfegger. The double was killed via gunshot and partially burned, with the Soviets mistaking his body for Hitler's, which a Nazi servant debunked due to his cheap clothing. According to a 8 May 1945 Soviet report, Hitler's body was found on the bunker grounds, bullet-riddled and seemingly beaten before and after death; it was captured in a series of photographs and identified as Hitler by several members of his staff, except for a chauffeur and maid, the former saying it was the body of a staff cook he knew intimately and was apparently killed to help Hitler escape. From 1951 to 1972, the American tabloid National Police Gazette ran stories alleging Hitler's survival, saying for example that Stumpfegger employed his own technique of temporarily paralyzing the brain to switch the double in for Hitler.

In 1963, author Cornelius Ryan interviewed General B. S. Telpuchovski, a Soviet historian who was allegedly present during the aftermath of the Battle of Berlin. Telpuchovski claimed that on 2 May 1945, a burnt body he thought belonged to Hitler was found wrapped in a blanket. This supposed individual had an exit wound through the back of the head. Several dental bridges were purportedly found next to the body, because, Telpuchovski stated, "the force of the bullet had dislodged them from the mouth", ostensibly from an oral gunshot. In his 1966 book, The Last Battle, Ryan describes this body as that of Hitler, saying it had been buried "under a thin layer of earth". Telpuchovski had said there were a total of three Hitler candidates which had been burnt, apparently including a body double wearing mended socks, which he described as being in "remnants". Ryan quotes him as saying, "There was also the body of a man who was freshly killed but not burned."

Film of body double

The double was filmed next to a fallen Nazi eagle in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery courtyard (July 1945, British Army Film and Photographic Unit).

Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski details the darned-sock-wearing double in his 1968 Soviet propaganda book, The Death of Adolf Hitler (which novelly provided details of Hitler's dental remains despite implying that they were detached from a chimerical charred corpse). Bezymenski quotes Ivan Klimenko, the commander of the Red Army's SMERSH unit, as stating that on the night of 3 May 1945, he witnessed Vizeadmiral Hans-Erich Voss seem to recognize a corpse as Hitler's in a dry firefighting water tank filled with other bodies in the Reich Chancellery garden. Although Klimenko had some doubts because the corpse was wearing mended socks, he briefly speculated that it belonged to Hitler. On 4 May, Soviet officers had the body double filmed. In the 1982 edition of his book, Bezymenski cites the cameraman behind the footage as saying that the body had been brought inside the Chancellery for identification by Germans, most of whom thought it was not Hitler; the body was then brought outside to be filmed in better lighting.

The footage shows the double with an apparent gunshot wound to the forehead (with a portrait of Hitler laid on the double's torso). According to Klimenko, later on 4 May, Hitler and Eva Braun's true remains were discovered buried in a crater outside the Chancellery, wrapped in blankets and reburied, then re-exhumed the next day after the double was debunked as being Hitler. A 1945 Soviet television documentary implied the footage showed Hitler, with the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda later saying it was Hitler's double. In 1992, journalist Ada Petrova found the footage in the Russian state archives; the body double had reputedly been identified as Gustav Weler. In their 1995 book, Petrova and Peter Watson opined that 'Weler' may have worked a menial job in the Reich Chancellery and occasionally stood in for Hitler as a political decoy.

Arguments against

According to a purported Soviet biography dated January 1946, Gustav Weler was born in Pomerania in 1886 and later lived in Berlin. In 1924, he was sentenced to three years in prison for counterfeiting banknotes. In January 1932 he joined the Sturmabteilung, but was expelled after two months for failing to cut his hair. In 1933–34, due to Hitler's rise to power, the Gestapo summoned Weler and implored him to cut his hair and moustache to keep him from resembling the chancellor; the repeated summons prompted Weler's attempted suicide via illuminating gas. In 1934, Himmler offered Weler 1,000 Reichsmarks to shave, asserting that Weler would "disappear forever" if he continued to resist. He was not a Nazi Party member and in 1944 moved to a village in Bernau, where he was still alive, working as a roofer.

Hitler's pilot Hans Baur wrote in his memoir that c. 1934, Johann Rattenhuber, then head of the Reichssicherheitsdienst, had found a potential doppelgänger for Hitler and asked Baur to see if Hitler wanted to employ him for that purpose. This prompted the dictator's laughter, saying it was a trick more befitting of Stalin. While in Soviet captivity and being questioned about Hitler's possible escape via a body double, Baur told the Soviets that Rattenhuber might be able to help them contact the man; the Soviets dubiously claimed that they successfully contacted him. In 1955, SS guard Hans Hofbeck said that during his Soviet captivity, he was asked about Hitler's alleged body double; he told the Soviets about a porter—who ostensibly worked in the Reich Chancellery—with similar facial features, hairstyle, and moustache, but was slightly shorter. Hofbeck further claimed the porter wore a brown jacket resembling the party uniform and comrades sometimes jokingly called him "Führer". Hofbeck further stated that in 1946 he witnessed Baur telling the Soviets that the Nazis had once found a baker from Breslau (modern Poland) who strongly resembled Hitler, but the dictator refused to employ him as a doppelgänger. Hofbeck also claimed that he had learned about the Breslau man from Rattenhuber.

Hitler's dental remains, the only confirmed forensic evidence of his death

Presiding judge at the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg Michael Musmanno wrote in 1948, "There is not a shred of evidence to show that Hitler ever had a double." Musmanno further states that "the several score immediate associates of Hitler whom I questioned expressly stated that Hitler never had a double." Among these, Hitler's chief secretary, Johanna Wolf, considered the use of a double in the Führerbunker an impossibility. Musmanno wrote in his 1950 book about Hitler's death:

To suggest as some sophomorically reasoning theorists have, including the noted author Emil Ludwig, that possibly it was a double of Hitler who died and was cremated is, without any evidence to support it, about as rational as to say that Hitler was carried away by angels. ... it is inconceivable that Hitler, with his self-assurance of superiority over any other human being, would concede the existence of anyone even superficially an artificial duplicate of himself.

Soviet war interpreter Elena Rzhevskaya (who safeguarded Hitler's dental remains until they could be identified by his dental staff) attributed the rumours of doubles to Soviet Colonel General Nikolai Berzarin's pledge to nominate the discoverer of Hitler's corpse for the Hero of the Soviet Union award, causing multiple potential bodies to be presented. In his 1995 book on Hitler's death, historian Anton Joachimsthaler implies that the Soviets may have falsified the body double because they failed to find Hitler's body (though they reputedly found it before discovering Hitler's dental remains); Joachimsthaler echoes Musmanno's argument that it must have been burnt to near-ashes. Certain scientific studies opine that the open-air burning would not have disintegrated bone. Historian Mark Felton further surmises that after the cremations failed, the Germans planted the dental remains on other cadavers, perhaps taken from the nearby hospital—explaining certain defects—and expertly concealed Hitler and Braun's real bodies.

Historian Peter Hoffmann, a specialist on Hitler's security units, similarly doubts that he ever used doubles. Historian Sjoerd deBoer also states that the stories of a double are highly suspect and found no evidence to support that there was one used in Berlin in April 1945 or that Hitler escaped. He concludes that these stories were part of the post-war Soviet disinformation campaigns regarding Hitler's fate.

Legacy

In 1998, it was dubiously claimed that Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller (missing in action as of May 1945) had survived the war and told the U.S. that a double was used to help Hitler escape.

Photographs of Hitler c. 1935 and April 1945; between which dates the authors of Grey Wolf (2011) say that a double had begun appearing in the dictator's place

The false implication that footage of a body double showed Hitler's corpse in a 1945 Soviet documentary was corrected in a 1966 documentary. In September 1992, Ada Petrova edited a still of the footage into a Russian television broadcast, which was criticized for implying the body was Hitler's. A few days later, Bezymenski claimed that the double was unique from the body identified as Hitler, which he reaffirmed that the Soviets had found elsewhere in the Chancellery garden.

Joachimsthaler disputes the purported Soviet autopsy report of Hitler's body (published by Bezymenski in 1968), quoting esteemed German pathologist Otto Prokop as saying it "describes anything but Hitler". Similarly, historian Luke Daly-Groves states that "the Soviet soldiers picked up whatever mush they could find in front of Hitler's bunker exit, put it in a box and claimed it was the corpses of Adolf and Eva Hitler". Also in 1995, Bezymenski disclosed that his work had contained "deliberate lies", evidently including the manner of Hitler's death. In his book, he had claimed that if the dictator died from a gunshot wound, it was a coup de grâce to ensure his quick death after he took cyanide, not a suicide by gunshot.

In 1998, British author Ian Sayer received from an anonymous source what alleged to be a photocopy of a 427-page report from the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), apparently containing a 1948 interview of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, who went missing in action in 1945, but claimed to have been retained by the CIC as an intelligence adviser and to have joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Müller's purported account: a Hitler double was discovered in Breslau in 1941 and was seldom seen after July 1944, being sedated and kept hidden until April 1945; on April 22, Hitler, Braun and three of Hitler's associates departed by air for Hörsching Airport and were then flown to Barcelona; the double was later killed by a coup de grâce, dressed in Hitler's clothes, and buried. Joachimsthaler notes that the plane claimed to have been flown out of Berlin was considered a "total loss" by the Luftwaffe in May 1944, and the Junkers Ju 290 supposedly flown to Barcelona had been grounded in that city since the beginning of April 1945. Thereby, the claims of the dossier are considered by historians such as Joachimsthaler and Daly-Groves as an example of created "myths".

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said that he opted not to include a bait-and-switch with a double in the version of Hitler's death he depicted in Inglourious Basterds (2009), saying it was something he had "seen before" and that it would be more interesting to "just fucking kill" the dictator.

In a 2009 episode of History's MysteryQuest, a bone-specializing archaeologist collected samples from a skull fragment in the Soviet archives believed to be Hitler's. DNA and forensic examination indicated that the fragment, which had an exit wound on the right parietal bone, belonged to a woman less than 40 years old. On the same program, fringe author H. D. Baumann asserts that Hitler increased his use of doubles after a 1944 assassination attempt. Baumann claims that the darned-sock-wearing double, whose ears he points out are different than Hitler's and allegedly was two inches shorter, was killed by the Germans on 30 April 1945. Baumann cites the purported account of Müller that Hitler was replaced by a double called Sillip, saying that this explains his weakened and otherwise uncharacteristic appearance. Citing all these details, as well as the implication that the bodies of Hitler and Braun were never found and Stalin's assumption that Hitler escaped to Spain or Argentina, Baumann concludes that Hitler faked his death. He posits that Hitler's dental remains were put in the mouth of the double, with discrepancies between eyewitnesses explained by their loyalty to the ostensibly living Hitler.

In their 2011 book, Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, British authors Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams cite "a noted facial recognition expert witness" in claiming that a double stood in for Hitler on his 20 March 1945 appearance with the Hitler Youth—citing this as the dictator's last public appearance. The book claims that in a deal with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the country's intelligence agency during World War II), on 28 April 1945 Hitler's private secretary, Martin Bormann, installed the alleged 20 March imposter and an actress in place of Hitler and Braun, then staged their deaths, possibly with the help of Müller.

Greek conspiracy theorist Peter Fotis Kapnistos, author of 2015 fringe book Hitler's Doubles, claims that Hitler was replaced by a double after he was hospitalized near the end of World War I, citing personality changes and his increased nose width in later photographs. (In fact, there is only evidence of Hitler's enlarged nose close to the end of World War II in Europe.) Kapnistos claims that Hitler had four doubles: Schreck, stenographer Heinrich Berger (who was killed in the 20 July 1944 attempt to kill Hitler), Gustav Weler (whom controversial author W. Hugh Thomas said was found alive after the war), and English occultist Aleister Crowley.

See also

• The Great Dictator – 1940 American film by Charlie Chaplin
• The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (film) – 1943 American film by James P. Hogan

References

Sources

• Bezymenski, Lev (1968). The Death of Adolf Hitler (1st ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
• Brisard, Jean-Christophe; Parshina, Lana (2018). The Death of Hitler. Translated by Whiteside, Shaun. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-92258-9.
• Daly-Groves, Luke (2019). Hitler's Death: The Case Against Conspiracy. Oxford, UK: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-4728-3454-6.
• de Boer, Sjoerd (2022). The Hitler Myths: Exposing the Truth Behind the Stories about the Führer. Frontline Books. ISBN 978-1-39901-905-7.
• Eberle, Henrik; Uhl, Matthias, eds. (2005). The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides. Translated by Giles MacDonogh. New York: Public Affairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-366-1.
• Joachimsthaler, Anton (2000) [1995]. The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth. Trans. Helmut Bögler. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-1-85409-465-0.
• Moore, Herbert; Barrett, James W., eds. (1947). Who Killed Hitler?. W. F. Heimlich (foreword). New York: The Booktab Press.
• Musmanno, Michael A. (1950). Ten Days to Die. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
• Petrova, Ada; Watson, Peter (1995). The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-03914-6.
• Ryan, Cornelius (1995) [1966]. The Last Battle. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-80329-6.