You will recall the bloody and needless battle over the Reichstag for the right to put up the Soviet flag by May 1, 1945. Hitler decided to commit suicide the day before: Monday, April 30. He gave cyanide to his Alsatian/German shepherd dog Blondi to see how it worked. It did. The dog died. He then gave one to his wife of one day—his girlfriend of many years—Eva Braun. They went through a perfectly proper and correct civil wedding ceremony the day before, Sunday, April 29. What happened next is still unclear. Hitler’s body was found with a hole in the head; it's unclear whether he shot himself or had someone else do it, and he may have taken cyanide as well.

The appalling Joseph Goebbels was now in charge of Germany, or a good 7½ square meters of it; the Allies had the rest. He, Martin Bormann (Hitler’s personal secretary in the Nazi party), Erich Kempka (Hitler’s long-year driver), and SS adjutant Guensche carried the two bodies up to the garden (they probably had other help) and cremated the two bodies. Kempka the driver provided petrol to help things along. They stood there saluting for a while and then went back into the bunker, leaving some SS men to continue the work.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, was now in charge of Germany. Hitler had appointed him to be the new Chancellor, over the head of his archrival Göring, the Luftwaffe commander, who had fallen into disgrace. Goebbels tried to arrange a truce with the Soviets, but they would only accept if Berlin was surrendered unconditionally. Brilliantly, Goebbels refused. Instead, he and Magda Goebbels poisoned their six children, five girls and a boy aged from 3 to 14. (Magda Goebbels’ eldest child, a son from a previous marriage, survived.) Then, they committed suicide. The bodies of the two were burnt alongside Hitler’s and the grotesque corpse of Goebbels was taken back down in the bunker to were the dead children were.

Artillery General Weidling was the most senior officer present and commander of the Berlin military district. In the early hours of May 2, he contacted Gen. Chuikov by radio and made his way to Tempelhof to surrender. He broadcast to the German forces in and around Berlin and told them to cease all resistance, which was then futile. The Soviet army arrived in the ruined buildings around that time. However, the soldiers had difficulty in locating the entrance to the bunker, which seems to have been abandoned. Here again we are faced with conflicting evidence.

The bodies of the Goebbels children and the charred corpse of Joseph were found in due course in the bunker. Hitler’s body (Soviet version) was found eventually in a very shallow grave under loose earth. They do not mention Eva Hitler. Hitler’s very charred body was identified by a female dental assistant. Hitler was always very careful about his teeth. For her cooperation she was imprisoned in solitary confinement for “only” eleven years. Clemency, thy name is the Soviet Union. At least one Hitler look-alike corpse was found, clearly intended to mislead the Soviets. Its darned socks soon exploded that idea. “Surely the great Führer would not use darned socks!,” protested the cunning Soviets.

And what of the remains of Hitler? Where are they today? Sure, you could try and do Internet research to sort of, kind of figure this out--or you could go on one of our tours. The latter is much less likely to give your computer a virus.

The Internet: a constant source of peril.