The Death of Hitler; The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995. First American edition [Stated]. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xii, 180 pages. Includes List of Illustrations (some in color), Acknowledgments, Map of the Bunker under the Reichschancellery; Diagram of the Skull; Chronology of the Last Days in the Berlin Bunker; and Preface. Also includes Part 1--Hitler's Body--The Last Prize, 1945 "These Bones Have Never Been Found"; 1968: The Russian Bombshell; 1979: "Hitler Was Not a Coward"; The Discovery of Hitler's Skull; Bitter Almonds: The Forensic Evidence; 1995; These Bones Have Never Been Found; 1968: The Russian Bombshell 1979; "Hitler Was Not a Coward''; The Discovery of Hitler's Skull; Bitter Almonds: The Forensic Evidence; 1995; Professor Zyagin's Independent Verdict; Part II--Hitler's Other Remains; The Spy in the Bunker; Hitler's Sketchbook; The Bavarian Squire: Hitler's Photography Album. Also includes Epilogue: Other Secrets in the Russian Archives; Appendix A: The Fate of Hitler's Relatives; Appendix B: Russian Archives Consulted During Research, Annotated Bibliography, and Index. This book is a detective story. It explores one of the most enduring mysteries of our day: How, exactly did Adolf Hitler die? For fifty years historians, soldiers, forensic doctors, and weapons experts have wrangled over Hitler's last days, painstakingly piecing together the evidence in an effort to understand what happened in the Berlin Bunker in the last week of April 1945. New theories have appeared every few years, each one adding to the story--and to the mystery and confusion. No one yet has been able to answer all the doubts and uncertainties which remain since then. Ada Petrova is an award-winning Russian television journalist who lives in Moscow. Peter Watson is a columnist for the London Observer. For the past fifty years the Iron Curtain and the Cold War have prevented the truth from being told about one of the most enduring mysteries of the twentieth century: how, exactly, Adolf Hitler died on April 30, 1945, and what happened to his remains. In this groundbreaking book, which reads like a riveting detective story, Ada Petrova and Peter Watson provide the answers to these two questions. Given access to the Russians' hitherto unseen Hitler Archive - File I-G-23, the so-called Operation Myth File - they reveal not only the truth of what went on in Berlin in May 1945 after the Russians captured the bunker in which Hitler, Eva Braun, and their entourage spent their last days, but also why the Soviet regime felt the details of the Fuhrer's death had to be kept secret for so long. Further, they explain how and why his body and those of Braun, Josef and Magda Goebbels, and the Goebbels' six children were secretly buried in Magdeburg, East Germany, and finally disinterred and cremated in 1970 by order of the then KGB chief Yuri Andropov. Besides the Myth File, Petrova and Watson have also been given access to much more: unpublished interrogations that the Russians conducted of those close to Hitler - including his pilot, his valet, and the commander of the bunker; and new forensic evidence from the secret autopsies carried out on the bodies of Hitler, Braun, and the Goebbels, photographs from Hitler's private album; and some thirty-six unpublished watercolors that Hitler painted in his youth and that he kept with him right up to the end in the bunker. Most sensationally, however, they have been shown, and allowed to examine, fragments of Hitler's skull that the Russians have had in their possession since 1945. The location of the bullet hole in one of the fragments and the results of an independent forensic examination settle once and for all the manner of Hitler's death. Includes Forensic evidence--kept hidden in secret KGB archives for the past fifty years--detailing how and when Hitler died, as well as the existence--and identity--of a Russian spy in the Berlin Bunker. Also contains unpublished private photographs from Hitler's personal album, as well as Watercolors by the Fuhrer, painted by him as a young man, discovered in his private suite several months after the end of World War II, and kept hidden ever since in Moscow.