CREMATION OF HITLER AND WIFE EVA BRAUN

A group of aides, secretaries and friends shared Hitler’s last days in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin as Russian troops moved in. They were interviewed at Nuremberg three years after the war by an American film unit and the film was carried away by US judge Michael Musmanno. The film was recently shown for the first time on German television.

Here, from a portion of the film, is a description of the disposal of the bodies of Hitler and his new wife Eva Braun:

BURN MY BODY SO I'M NOT EXHIBITED AT A RUSSIAN FREAK SHOW

Mail Online
May 1, 2013

A Colonel Holsten who was in the bunker when Hitler and Eva ended their lives on April 30 1945 told how he saw the bodies being dragged up the narrow stairs to the Reich Chancellery garden where they were doused in petrol and set aflame.

'I was frozen,' he said, 'then raised my arm automatically one last time in the 'Hitler Greeting' to salute him.'

Hermann Karnau, an S.S. bodyguard of the Fuehrer who escaped the bunker and tried to return to it at the last moment, said; 'I tried to get back through into the bunker through the emergency exit when I saw about 20 metres away from me the bodies of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

'They had been set on fire. When I went to the spot early in the evening to try to move them into a hollow in the ground, they disintegrated.

'I recognised that it was Hitler from his uniform and his distinctive moustache. I had seen the Fuehrer alive that morning sitting in his favourite wicker chair. Later in the day, before the suicides, I recalled seeing four men arrive with gasoline cans which they said was for the air conditioning system inside the bunker.

'As I remembered that the air conditioning system was fuelled by diesel, I personally denied them entrance to the bunker. I relented after Heinz Linge, Hitler's valet, vouched for them. This was, of course, the petrol that was to be used to cremate the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.

'I last saw Hitler alive around about 4.00pm that day. I believed that the Fuehrer had been poisoned by his personal physician Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger.'

Erich Kempka, Hitler's chauffeur from the earliest days of the Nazi movement, scrounged the necessary fuel to burn the bodies in the garden of the Reichs Chancellery.

He said; 'I remember with complete sureness that I was called on April 30 by S.S. Sturmbannfuehrer Guensche while I was in the Reich Chancellery garage asking me to bring over five cans of petrol to the bunker.

'Once there Guensche told me the Fuehrer was dead and that he had been ordered to burn his corpse 'so that he would not be exhibited at a Russian freak-show.'

'I then helped carry the corpses. While Linge and an orderly whom I do not remember were carrying the corpse of Adolf Hitler, I carried the corpse of Eva Hitler. I noticed the long black trousers and the black shoes which the Fuehrer usually wore with his field-gray uniform jacket.

'The corpses were taken from the bunker to a spot about four to five metres distant from the bunker exit and at this location both bodies were cremated.

'Guensche poured the complete contents of the five cans over the two corpses and ignited the fuel. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Reichs minister Dr Goebbels, SS-Sturmbannfuehre Guensche, SS Sturmbannfuehrer Linge, the orderly and I stood in the bunker entrance, looked towards the fire and all saluted with raised hands .'