Jean-Christophe Brisard - The Death of Hitler - The Final Word

At that very moment, the director waves to Nikolai to indicate that she hasn’t changed her mind. He is still dubious, and hesitates for a moment. Then, reluctantly, he plunges his thin arms into the box and delicately takes out the diskette case. “You need to sign the visitor log. Put the date, the time and your names.” Dina shows us where to fill in the form. Lana carefully does so. I let her get on with it and start inspecting the skull. Nikolai interposes himself. He places himself in front of me and, with an appalled “ tsutsut ” points out my mistake. “First fill in the visitor log,” the director insists. Lana excuses my blunder. The blunder of a Frenchman, a foreigner. He doesn’t understand, she tries to explain to them with a smile, embarrassed as if by a fractious child. Why so many precautions, why this tension? Mironenko passes in front of the open door of the little room. I recognise him from having seen him several times in reports when researching the Hitler file.

He’s alone in the corridor. With a heavy, bowed body, he drags his carcass around without even so much as glancing at us. He clearly knows what we’re doing. Before, he was the one who used to meet journalists. He knows the skull extremely well. It is 5:30 pm, he’s already picked up his thick coat, his cap hides his grey hair, his day is over. Larisa’s isn’t. “Everything has to be done according to the rules. Times change. We must be careful,” the director says as Mironenko leaves the building. “The central administration have given us the green light to show you the skull, but we need to give an account of what happened.” We say we understand, that’s quite normal, obviously, not a problem. Larisa wouldn’t hear a word of complaint from us. This skull, or what is left of it, is becoming a source of discord, of controversy between Russia and… a large part of the rest of the world. Is it Hitler’s? Is Russia lying? Larisa is waiting for us to ask the essential question, the one about the authenticity of the bones. She gives a two-word answer: “I know!” Dina and Nikolai, her deputies, know too. We don’t know. “How can you be so sure?” The precise phrases, prepared in advance, mechanically repeated–Larisa recites them to us perfectly. The years of investigation, of analysis, of cross-checking carried out by the KGB and the Soviet scientists, the best there are…. This skull is him, it’s Hitler. “At any rate, officially, it’s him.” For the first time, the director of GARF modulates her discourse. Her confidence cracks slightly. “Officially.” It’s not an anodyne term. It isn’t scientifically, but “officially” Hitler’s skull.

Nikolai melts away as if by magic. The diskette case and the skull are all ours. Our faces approach the plastic lid. A big label, the brand of computer disk, obstructs our vision. Our contortions as we try to see it from the side change nothing. With a gesture of my hand I ask if we might lift the lid. The key, turn the key? My pantomime works. Nikolai returns, takes a small key from his pocket and frees the bolt. Then he returns to his place just behind us. But he hasn’t lifted the lid. So I repeat my gesture. This time I perform the motion of opening, of lifting. I do it twice, slowly. Larisa blinks, Nikolai has understood and, grumbling, opens the box. The skull is really in front of us at last.

So, this is Hitler. The fragment of bone stored in an ordinary diskette case from the 1990s. What irony for someone who wanted to crush part of Europe and enslave millions of human beings! Hitler, who dreaded ending up in a glass case in Moscow, exhibited by his Russian enemy as a vulgar trophy. He doesn’t have the right to a display worthy of the importance that he has assumed in contemporary history: that of the absolute incarnation of Evil. The Russians put him away in a forgotten corner of their archives and, deliberately or not, they are treating him with as much respect as the remains of a dog. And if it’s so hard to obtain the right to look at it, it isn’t because the Russians fear that it might be damaged, or its preservation compromised, but for political reasons. No one must examine it any more and call into question its authenticity. The skull is Hitler’s. No conditional tense. At least for the Russians.

To be frank, I feel a certain disappointment. Is this really the most secret item in the Russian archives: a sad little bit of bone stored in a diskette case? Remembering that this may be the last human remains of one of the biggest monsters the planet has ever known adds a feeling of disgust to the disappointment. But we must rally. Return to the investigation and remember why we are here: to lift the veil on Hitler’s last hours. To do that, we have to ask the right questions. Where was this skull found? By whom? When? And most of all, how to prove that it really is Hitler’s. We want all that. And to start, we have to analyse this skull. “Analyse?” Larisa says in astonishment as she catches the conversation in English between me and Lana. “Yes, tests… DNA, for example. Bring in a specialist, a medical examiner…” Lana translates our request in detail into Russian. Politely, the director listens to her without interrupting. “That way there would be no more doubt. None. No more questions about the identity of the skull. Hitler or not. Isn’t that important?” And it would put an end to the crazy rumours about the last days of the Nazi tyrant. Hitler in Brazil, Hitler in Japan, at the South Pole…

A legendary monster or terrifying ghost, Hitler continues to haunt the imagination. After the fall of Berlin on 2 May 1945 two questions remained: Is he dead? Or has he escaped? According to the survivors of his bunker, he took his own life on 30 April 1945. Then he was burnt so that his corpse would not be found. It is precisely this absence of a body that would inevitably prompt a series of rumours to the effect that he might in fact have survived. On 8 May 1945 Leonid Leonov, an author hailed by the Soviet regime, published a passionate text in Pravda : “We demand material proof that this wily corporal has not turned into a werewolf. The little children of the world can sleep peacefully in their cradles. The Soviet armies, like their Western allies, want to see the Führer’s corpse ‘as large as life.’” The tone was set. While that ultimate “large as life” proof was still missing, Hitler’s ghost would linger in people’s minds. And an increasing number of people claimed to have seen him. Among the stories, some were based on tangible facts. One of them is like a spy film. It concerns the journey of the U-530–U for Unterseeboot , the German for submarine. In spite of the fall of the Third Reich, this vessel refused to surrender to the Allies and reached the coast of Argentina on 10 July 1945. Perhaps with secret passengers on board.

At the command post of the U-530 was a very young officer, perhaps too young. His name was Otto Wermuth, and he was only twenty-four. This undistinguished Oberleutnant zur See (the equivalent of a British Sub-Lieutenant or an American Lieutenant Junior Grade) was swiftly promoted on 10 January 1945 to commander of this fighting submarine. In this last year of the war, the Kriegsmarine (the German navy) was suffering, like the rest of the armies of the Reich, from an all-too-obvious shortage of battle-hardened officers. Of course, Otto Wermuth wasn’t a complete beginner, but he hadn’t had time to put himself to the test. He was recruited to the Kriegsmarine with the outbreak of the war against Poland, France, and the United Kingdom, in September 1939. He was nineteen years old at the time, and a long way from the battling figure of the Aryan warrior celebrated by the German regime. Otto Wermuth looked more like an elegant student, with his long face and equally slender, almost skinny, physique. He was quickly appointed to the “U-Boot” division of the Nazi army. Once he had completed his training, he was sent on a mission, in September 1941, as a watch officer.