Did Hitler and Eva Braun flee Berlin and die (divorced) of old age in Argentina?
- Rumours suggest the couple fled to South America by submarine
- Claims have been ridiculed as '2,000 per cent rubbish'
Adolf Hitler faked his own suicide and fled to Argentina where he lived until a ripe old age, according to extraordinary new claims.
Authors of the new book ‘Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf’ believe evidence of the tyrant’s suicide is flawed – and that he actually escaped in 1945 to begin a new life with his wife, Eva Braun.
But the claims have been ridiculed by leading historian Guy Walters who today branded them ‘2,000 per cent rubbish.’
'Junk history': Claims that Adolf Hitler, left, and his partner Eva Braun, right, fled Germany and survived in Argentina have been branded 'utter nonsense' by a leading historian
Hitler and Braun’s ‘flight’ from Berlin is laid out in lavish detail by British authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan in their new book.
They refute the widely accepted view that the Fuhrer shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, and Braun committed suicide by taking cyanide.
Instead, they claim, there is ‘overwhelming evidence’ to suggest that the couple escaped at the end of the Second World War for a new life in a Nazi-controlled enclave in Fascist Argentina.
Mr Williams and Mr Dunstan go on to state the pair had two daughters before Hitler died in 1962 at the age of 73.
Mr Williams, a historian and journalist who has written extensively about the Second World War, told Sky News: ‘We didn’t want to re-write history, but the evidence we’ve discovered about the escape of Adolf Hitler is just too overwhelming to ignore.
‘There is no forensic evidence for his, or Eva Braun’s deaths, and the stories from the eyewitnesses to their continued survival in Argentina are compelling.’
Escape: This map shows the route that Hitler and Braun are said to have used to escape from the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin when the Russians were approaching
The book also claims American intelligence officials were complicit in the escape, in return for access to war technology developed by the Nazis.
It also says that skull fragments thought to be those of Hitler currently held by the Russians are actually that of a young woman under the age of 40. Hitler was 56 when he died.
Mr Williams said he and Mr Dunstan - an author, film-maker and photographer who specialises in military history - carried out their research on the ground in Argentina, interviewing eyewitnesses to Hitler’s presence there.
He added: ‘It’s only now that Argentina is once more a thriving democracy that the real stories are beginning to come out.
‘Even so, two of our eyewitnesses received death threats from persons unknown while working with us on this book.’
The sensational claims have already been ridiculed by historians, including Mr Walters, who has studied Nazi Germany extensively and written a series of books about the war.
He labelled the idea that Hitler lived in South America until the 1960s as the ‘worst sort of junk history’ that relied on ‘dubious secondary sources.’
He said: 'The theory that Hitler survived rubbishes decades of research by proper historians and intelligence officers.
Hideaway: Decades of research has concluded that Hitler and Eva Braun died at the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, pictured
New home: Hitler lived until the age of 73 in the foothills of the Andes mountains in Argentina, according to Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler
'The two authors should be ashamed of themselves for peddling this kind of utter nonsense. It's simply unbelievable that publishers would give them the time of day.
'It's an absolute disgrace. There's no substance to it at all. It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research.
'There have been thousands of theories over the years that Hitler might have escaped but they are nothing more than parlor games.
'The evidence that Hitler was killed in simply overwhelming. For these authors to claim otherwise is simply staggering.'
Mr Walters conceded that the authors are right in stating that the skull taken by the Russians was not that of Hitler.
He said: 'There were many people in the bunker and it takes a giant leap of the imagination to get from a museum in Russia to him living a life in Argentina.
'The idea that everybody in the bunker was in on the plan is infeasible. It just would not have happened.
'The whole point of Hitler was that he would die after the war. It was not in his psychology to carry on living in Argentina.'
Nazis: Josef Mengele, known as 'The Doctor of Auschwitz', left, escaped to South America after the War, as did Otto Adolf Eichmann, right
Rochus Misch, 94, Hitler’s former radio operator and the last survivor of the Berlin bunker, says he saw the bodies of ‘the boss’ and Eva Braun with his own eyes.
He said: ‘I was in the room next door when he shot himself. I did not hear the shot but I saw his uncovered corpse when the door was opened.
‘I saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table.
‘I saw Eva Braun sitting dead in the corner of the sofa, her head turned to Hitler, her knees pulled up to her chest. She had a dark blue dress on and a white frill on her collar.’
Dispelling the myths: Leading historian Guy Walters said the Hitler escape theory was 'junk'
Historians hold him up as a reliable source and he is the author of a book, published several years ago, called The Last Witness.
Grey Wolf focuses on the crucial days in 1945 as the allies closed in on Hitler’s bunker.
Mr Williams and Mr Dunstan claim a body double took Hitler’s place and an actress stood in for Eva Braun on April 27.
It was at this point that the pair were able to flee Berlin, travelling to Tonder in Denmark before returning to Travemunde in Germany.
From here it is claimed that they flew to a Spanish military base at Reus, south of Barcelona, before General Franco supplied a plane to take them to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands.
A day later the two fugitives are said to have boarded a U-boat and the two body doubles were executed and their bodies subsequently burned.
The book points to declassified FBI documents which contain references to Hitler having escaped Berlin to begin a new life in South America.
It also includes testimony from the pilot who supposedly flew Hitler and Eva Braun out of Berlin to Mar Del Plata on the Argentinian coast.
Here they say he lived in a wooden chalet in a remote village where they survived on the money from looted gold and jewellery.
The book quotes a number of sources, such as cooks and doctors, who claim to have knew the Nazi leader before he died aged 73 on February 13, 1962. They claim that Hitler's bloodline survived through two daughters he had with Braun.
If Hitler had escaped to Argentina, he would have been following in the footsteps of his henchmen, Mengele, Eichmann and Barbie who all fled after the war to South America.
A film based on the claims called Grey Wolf is currently being made and is due to be released early next year.
It is not the first time that Hitler has been rumoured to have fled to Argentina. Author Abel Basti claimed the same in his 2003 book Hitler In Argentina.
He said Hitler and Braun fled to Argentine shores aboard a submarine and lived for many years in the vicinity of San Carlos de Bariloche, a tourist site and ski haven some 1,000 miles southwest of Buenos Aires.
In his book Bariloche Nazi-Guía Turística he reproduced documents, affidavits, photographs and blueprints aimed at steering the reader to the sites that sheltered Hitler and his top henchmen.
He claimed the Incalco Ranch, located in Villa la Angostura on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi, was the refuge chosen by Argentine Nazis to hide the couple.
Set amid a pine forest, it could only be reached by boat or hydroplane, and belonged to Argentine businessman Jorge Antonio, one of the most trusted friends of three-times president Juan Domingo Perón.
Basti also claimed Hitler had lived at Hacienda San Ramon, six miles east of Bariloche, which belonged at the time to Schaumberg-Lippe principality.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html#ixzz2GeN6lv7h
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