Dental detective work gets to the root of Hitler mystery By Roger Highfield, Science Editor A new portrait of Adolf Hitler's last days before he committed suicide in the Berlin bunker emerged, revealing how the Nazi leader was tormented by tooth decay, abscesses and gum disease that caused "terrible bad breath".   The study of film footage of Hitler, enhanced by a computer, has confirmed that remains found by the Russians in 1945 were his, helping to end half a century of speculation about his fate and validating an identification technique of increasing value to forensic scientists. A paper was presented yesterday at an international conference in London by Prof Michel Perrier, 52, of the University of Lausanne, and will be published in the Journal of Forensic Science. It links newsreel footage with X-rays of Hitler's skull, jaw remains found in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden and his dental records. Even if Hitler had a double, so many characteristics in his teeth match in each source of evidence that Prof Perrier said yesterday he had no doubt that Hitler died in the bunker. Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, during the night of April 28/29, as Soviet troops advanced towards his bunker complex. On April 30 he committed suicide with his wife. In accordance with his instructions, their bodies were burned. Russian forces found the remains and conducted the autopsy of the bodies the following month, said Prof Perrier. "What they found were charred pieces of bone, such as pieces of skull, the lower jaw and part of the upper jaw consisting of a bridge with nine units." Nothing was revealed to the public until 1968, fuelling speculation about Hitler's fate. That year a book by Lev Bezymenski contained a description of Hitler's autopsy and his remains. The jaw remains were compared with dental evidence given to the Americans by Hitler's American-trained dentist, Hugo Blaschke, who had been arrested in 1945. Blaschke, an SS general, had treated Hitler from 1934 until shortly before his death. When his testimony was added to that of his assistant, Käthe Hausermann, there was a great deal of material to check the jaw remains against, and they seemed to match. "Hitler had very bad teeth. He had periodontal disease. He had many reconstructions, some done before the time of Blaschke," said Prof Perrier. There were no X-rays of Hitler's jaw available at the time, which could have helped to provide even better confirmation. Then, in 1972, archives in Washington released five X-rays of Hitler's head, taken on July 20, 1944. They revealed bridgework, periodontal (gum) disease and "very unusual dental work", said Prof Perrier. These matched Blaschke's evidence and the Russian autopsy. Prof Perrier has now provided further evidence to link the remains in the bunker to footage of the Führer. He combed Swiss archives for newsreels of Hitler and produced computer-enhanced images of his teeth to compare with the autopsy, X-rays and Blaschke's report. Prof Perrier found clear-cut matches between the computer-enhanced footage of Hitler's teeth and the bunker remains. Hitler once referred to his dental problems openly, albeit indirectly, after negotiations with General Franco. Hitler's interpreter, Paul Schmidt, wrote that "they talked to or rather at one another" until 2am and failed to agree on anything. Hitler later told Mussolini he would "rather have two or three teeth out than go through that again".

Dr. Robert Dorian, Director of Forensic Dentistry for the Ministry of the Solicitor General of Quebec, in Montreal has compared photos of the corpse's teeth with thousands of open-mouthed close-up photos of the Führer himself. The pattern of gaps between teeth was different; Hitler had a root canal and porcelain tooth that did not show up in the corpse; and the corpse had different lower bridge work from what Hitler is alleged to have had. SAN JOSE MERCURY February 20, 1987 "WAS THE BODY HITLER'S?" "The teeth of corpse DON'T MATCH Führer's pictures" 1. Two lower bridges in corpse, NOT INSTALLED BY HITLER'S DENTIST when questioned. 2. No evidence of root canal in corpse, DENTIST PERFORMED ROOT CANAL. 3. Natural teeth on corpse, DENTIST SAID HITLER'S LOWER RIGHT TOOTH WAS PORCELAIN. 4. Gaps on autopsy report not present on HITLER'S DENTAL RECORD. Dr. Robert Dorion, Director of Forensic Dentistry for the Ministry of Solicitor General, Quebec Information presented last week to AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FORENSIC SCIENCES On a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program called "As It Happens," September 17th, 1974 at 7:15 p.m., a Prof. Dr. Ryder Saguenay, oral surgeon from the Dental Faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles, said that Hitler had ordered a special plane to leave from Berlin with all medical and dental records, especially X-rays, of all top Nazis for an unknown destination. He said that the dental records used to identify Hitler's body were drawn from MEMORY by a dental assistant, WHO disappeared and was never found.

Hitler's Skull Fragment Displayed By Anna Dolgov Associated Press Writer MOSCOW What officials claim is a fragment of Adolf Hitler's skull went on display Wednesday, along with documents revealing what happened to the dictator's remains after they were seized by Soviet troops in 1945.   The four-inch fragment -- with a hole where a bullet reportedly exited through the left temple -- was displayed under thick glass at Russia's Federal Archives Service. The exhibition, called "The Agony of the Third Reich: The Retribution," was timed to mark the 55th anniversary next month of the defeat of Nazi Germany.   The piece of skull and the jaw are the only surviving remains of Hitler's body, according to officials at the archive service and at the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor of the KGB.   Photographs of the jaw went on display Wednesday. But the jaw itself, with the dental work that originally allowed the Soviets to identify Hitler's body, is still in secret archives.   "The jaw is the main piece of evidence" in the decades-old Soviet investigation into Hitler's death," said Yakov Pogony, head of the FSB archive department. "And the main piece of evidence must be preserved." After Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, his body was taken outside by his staff, doused with gasoline and set ablaze along with the remains of his long-time companion, Eva Braun. Soviet troops seized the remains when they captured the bunker. But what happened later has been shrouded in mystery and speculation. Secret communications between Soviet counterintelligence units in Germany and the government in Moscow tell of repeated burials and exhumations of the remains, and of their final destruction by fire in 1970. According to the documents, which also went on display Wednesday, the remains had been kept by the counterintelligence unit of the Soviet 3rd Army, part of an intelligence organization called SMERSH -- a Russian acronym for "Death to Spies." The soldiers buried and dug up the remains at least three times in 1945-46 as the army moved around Germany.   They were finally interred on SMERSH-controlled grounds in Magdeburg, a town about 70 miles west of Berlin -- until the Soviet government in 1970 ordered the remains be dug up and burned, the documents say.   The Magdeburg base was about to be transferred to East German authorities, and the Soviets feared "possible construction or excavation work on this territory that might lead to the discovery of the remains," according to a report by KGB boss Yuri Andropov.   Moscow in 1945, to be included as evidence in an investigation into Hitler's death, said Sergei Mironenko, head of Russia's State Archive. The skull fragment was found separately in 1946, when the Soviet secret police opened a second investigation, prompted by rumors that Hitler had survived. They again dug up the hole outside Hitler's bunker, Mironenko said. The fragment they found was sent to Moscow.   Russia announced it had the skull fragment in 1993, and some Western experts argued it was not Hitler's. But Mironenko insisted his service had "no doubts that it is authentic."   "It is not just some bone we found in the street, but a fragment of a skull that was found in a hole where Hitler's body had been buried," Mironenko said in an interview.   Still, the archives service has asked Russia's Forensic Medicine Institute -- a top agency for genetic testing -- to help in positively identifying the skull fragment, Mironenko conceded.   So far, there seems to be no conclusive evidence. "I have not seen any documents providing evidence that this is the skull of Hitler," said Alexander Kalganov, an official at the FSB's archives department.   In April of 2000, a skull fragment went on display in the National Archives in Moscow. It is said to be a piece of Adolf Hitler's skull. According to the Russians, the charred remains of Adolf and Eva Hitler were discovered by the Red Army in 1945; part of the skull was missing on one of the corpses. The Russians took the corpses to a pathology lab and they proceeded to conduct a secret investigation into the death of Adolf Hitler. The jaw fragments were removed and placed into a cigar box and shown to two former dental assistants who worked on Hitler's teeth, Käthe Heusermann and Fritz Echtmann. Both Heusermann and Echtmann positively identified the fragments as belonging to Adolf Hitler. In July of 1946, the Russians conducted a search in the area around the Berlin bunker and discovered the fragments of a skull which had a bullet hole in it. The skull fragments were taken to Moscow and were positively matched to the Hitler corpse. The corpses of Adolf and Eva were kept in Moscow and the skull fragments were kept in the stores of the KGB. In the 1970's the corpses were destroyed on orders from Leonid Breshnev. The skull and jaw fragments were not destroyed. The authenticity of the jaw fragments is not a matter of debate, everyone agrees that these are indeed the fragments of Hitler's jaw. The Russians put the skull on display in 2000 as part of an exhibit called The Agony of the Third Reich: Retribution. Along with the skull, the exhibit displayed some of Hitler's personal items that were found in the bunker after the collapse of the Third Reich. Parts of a bloodstained mattress were also on display - the mattress is said to have been part of the sofa that Hitler was sitting on when he committed suicide. Looking at the hole in the skull, it is difficult to tell whether it is an entry wound or an exit wound. According to Hitler's entourage, he used a self-loading 7.65mm Walther PPK. With this type of pistol, it is possible to release the safety catch and cock the hammer using one hand. After a shot is fired, the cartridge case is ejected to the right. Interestingly enough, no bullet was ever found in the Bunker, either lodged in a wall or the floor. According to experts, when a bullet from a 7.65mm Walther PPK is fired into the head, there is an almost 50/50 chance that it will become lodged into the skull. Since no bullet was ever found in the Bunker, if the members of Hitler's entourage were telling the truth that he had shot himself, the bullet probably became lodged in his skull. If the skull fragment is really Hitler's, the hole would have to be an entry wound. According to Hitler's entourage, when they entered the room after he had shot himself, he was seated on the couch, his body leaning slightly forward and to the right. His arms were hanging loosely and his right arm was between his thigh and the armrest of the couch. His head was slightly leaning to the right and blood was dripping onto the armrest of the couch and onto the carpet. There were two pistols lying on the floor in front of him: both were Walther PPKs, a 7.65mm and a 6.35mm. Only the 7.65mm smelled of powder smoke and a single shot had been fired from it. The 6.35mm was fully loaded.

Scientists: Skull piece that Russian officials say came from Hitler's body actually from woman 29/09/2009 5:01:00 PM Pat Eaton-Robb, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HARTFORD, Conn. A piece of skull with a bullet hole through it that Russian officials claimed belonged to Adolf Hitler actually came from a woman, scientists at the University of Connecticut concluded. The cranium fragment is part of a collection of Hitler artifacts preserved by Soviet intelligence in the months after Hitler and Eva Braun reportedly committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945. The collection, now housed in the Russian State Archive in Moscow, also includes bloodstained pieces of the sofa where Hitler reportedly shot himself after taking a cyanide pill. The artifacts were put on public display in 2000. Connecticut archaeologist Nick Bellantoni was asked to examine the skull and blood samples for a History Channel documentary on Hitler's death that aired this month. Bellantoni said his initial forensic exam of the skull fragment showed it didn't match what he knew of Hitler's biology. "The bone was very small and thin, and normally male bones are much more robust in our species," Bellantoni said Tuesday. "I thought it probably came from a woman or a younger man." Bellantoni then took several pinhead-size pieces of the skull fragment and swabs of the blood stains back to the university for analysis. Linda Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, got help from two former students who work in the New York City medical examiner's office. The former students, Craig O'Connor and Heather Nelson, are experts in working with challenging DNA samples and were able to extract enough DNA from the bone pieces to do a forensic study, Strausbaugh said. She said they determined that the DNA came from a 20-to 40-year-old woman. The skull fragment could have come from Braun, but to know that, the lab would need samples of her DNA, she said. Also, the DNA samples were very degraded, making identification unlikely, Strausbaugh said. Witnesses never reported Braun being shot in the head, Bellantoni said, and she is thought to have died of cyanide poisoning. "This person, with a bullet hole coming out the back of the head, would have been shot in the face, in the mouth or underneath the chin," he said. "It would have been hard for them to miss that." DNA from the bloodstain swabs showed at least some of it came from a man, Strausbaugh said. "The DNA is relatively degraded and we don't have a full range of markers that we'd like to have," she said. Russian officials have said Hitler and Braun's bodies were removed from a shell crater outside the bunker shortly after he died. An autopsy allegedly showed Hitler's body was missing part of his cranium. A Soviet team went back to the crater in 1946 and allegedly found the piece of cranium that the UConn scientists examined. Russian officials have said the rest of Hitler was buried beneath a Soviet army parade ground in the former East German city of Magdeburg. They said his remains were exhumed in 1970 and incinerated, and the ashes were flushed into the city's sewage system. Both Strausbaugh and Bellantoni said there is nothing in their findings that significantly challenges the conclusion that Hitler died in the bunker. "My gut feeling is he did commit suicide there, and maybe the blood sample we found is his," Bellantoni said. "What this does is it raises a question: If this is not him who is it?" he later added. "And, two, what really happened there?"   Adolf Hitler alive: weird conspiracy theories The discovery that the skull believed to be Adolf Hitler's was actually a woman's has reignited conspiracy theories. By Tom Chivers September 29, 2009 Rumours of Hitler’s survival have been widespread for years, with some even claiming he is alive today. While that is unlikely – the Nazi leader would celebrate his 121st birthday in April – the possibility that he made it out of the Berlin bunker has been seriously put forward on several occasions. Here are four of the strangest theories. Hitler fled on a 'ghost convoy' to Argentina Several prominent Nazis – including 'architect of the Holocaust' Adolf Eichmann and Dr Josef Mengele, the 'Angel of Death' – certainly did flee to Argentina. And the arrival of two U-Boats in the South American country in the weeks after the war led to more speculation that Hitler joined his former underlings there. But Heinz Schäffer, one of the officers on the U-Boats, has always strenuously denied being part of a 'ghost convoy'. The two U-Boats, U-530 and U-977, surrendered at Mar del Plata in Argentina in July and August 1945 respectively. Hitler 'fled to Antarctica in a U-Boat' Among the theories of Hitler's whereabouts after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 was that he was smuggled out of Germany and onto a U-Boat. From there, the story goes, the Nazi leader was taken to a secret military base in Antarctic. In the late 1950s British and American forces found the base and destroyed it with atomic weapons. The theory falls down on three major points. One, there was never a German military presence in Antarctica, despite a pre-war mission there to see whether a whaling base would be feasible. Two, while the two U-Boats mentioned above did arrive in Argentina after the war, they could not possibly have made it to Antarctica. The sea ice in the winter blocks all access to the land where any base would have been. Three, while atomic bombs were detonated in the southern hemisphere in 1958, they were atmospheric tests, hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth. All three took place between 1400 and 2150 miles north of Antarctica. Using secret rocket technology, Hitler fled to a Nazi base on the moon The point when Hitler conspiracy theories lose touch with reality altogether. The Nazis' development late in the war of high-technology weapons – including the V2, an early ballistic missile, and the Me 262 jet fighter – inspired some to believe that Germany had secretly won the space race. It was also suggested that the Nazis had made contact with UFOs and that they had made it to the Moon as early as 1942. Furthermore, Russian and American astronauts actually made it there in the 1950s, and stayed at a Nazi lunar base. For added measure, it is claimed that the Moon is perfectly habitable for humans, but that NASA claims it is barren and airless in order to stop Third World countries visiting it. Hitler is alive and well and staying in San Diego Well, not really. This one is a joke – but there is a structure, visible on Google Maps, that might make you think otherwise. A barracks building in the US Navy base in San Diego's Coronado island, known as the 'Seal's Lair', is very definitely in the shape of a swastika. In 2007, the US Navy said it was going to redesign the 1960s-built edifice, spending around $600,000 (£375,000) to make it less master-racy. They admitted they noticed the shape when it was built, but didn't think anyone would spot it from the ground. SEPTEMBER 29, 2009 Did Adolf Hitler escape from the Bunker after all? Alan Nothnagle Back when I was growing up, Hitler sightings were a running joke, a semi-comical preview of the Elvis and Jacko sightings that haunt our tabloids today. I still have a vivid memory of one such story in the National Enquirer. The front page depicted a wrinkled, grizzled ex-Führer hiding out in Argentina. According to the Enquirer, Hitler had been the driving force behind the recent Falklands War and was now on the run yet again. This came just a couple of years after the appearance of The Boys from Brazil starring poor old Gregory Peck as Josef Mengele in the most thankless role he ever let himself get talked into playing. These sightings finally dried up around 1989, when Hitler passed the hundred mark, and I thought we were well rid of them. But now that new evidence has surfaced challenging the standard version of Hitler's suicide in the Reich Chancellery Bunker in April of 1945, you would be well advised to fasten your seatbelt and prepare for a Hitler sighting renaissance. A scoop to die for The sudden upsurge in online speculation about Hitler’s true fate has been provoked by a History Channel documentary called Hitler’s Escape, which was first aired on September 26. It promises to be the scoop of the young century. For the making of the film, American archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni from the University of Connecticut flew to the Moscow State Archive to examine a skull fragment with a bullet hole through it that the Russian government has been publicly claiming belonged to Hitler since 2000. Bellantoni swabbed the bone fragment and had the genetic material analyzed at a laboratory back home in New England. His examination revealed it to be not that of the fifty-six year-old dictator but rather the remains of a young woman. “The bone seemed very thin. Male bone tends to be more robust,” he says. “And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40.” A DNA examination also proved that the skull is female. Did it instead belong to Eva Braun, Hitler’s thirty-three year-old girlfriend and – for some forty hours – his wife, who supposedly died with him in the Bunker? No, Bellantoni says. Eva is known to have died after biting a cyanide capsule> Hitler - a man of many graves Now does this evidence prove that Hitler “escaped” the Bunker and took off for South America, as the History Channel would have us believe? Since the TV show’s case rests on the identity of the bone fragment, it is worth taking a look at the story behind it. According to official Soviet reports, on May 4, 1945 the military intelligence agency SMERSH unearthed Hitler’s purported remains on Stalin’s personal orders after seizing the ruins of the Reich Chancellery and examined them at a commandeered laboratory in the town of Buch on the outskirts of Berlin. These remains included the skull fragment and part of a jaw bone, which the SMERSH pathologists confirmed as belonging to Hitler after interrogating Hitler’s dentist and nurse. The jaw contained glass fragments of the kind one would absorb after biting on a poison capsule. According to the report they filed on May 8, Hitler had died of cyanide poisoning and not from a bullet after all. It also claimed that he had only one testicle. Many Western historians have assumed that both of these statements have little basis in fact and were merely intended to humiliate Hitler in the eyes of the world. SMERSH then buried the Führer’s remains near the eastern German town of Rathenow. But Stalin still did not believe his nemesis was really dead. In late 1945 Soviet General Bogdan Kobulov began a new investigation. The eyewitness accounts he gathered told that Hitler had shot himself through the head. In early 1946 the Soviets dug up the bones and examined them once more, then took them to a SMERSH base near Magdeburg and buried them a second time. In 1970 KGB boss Yuri Andropov was growing uneasy that the East Germans would come across the remains after they took possession of the base from the KGB and possibly revert to fascism. He ordered the bones unearthed and destroyed in a top secret operation. Special agents placed the bones in Kalashnikov crates and soaked them with twenty liters of gasoline before setting them on fire. They then scattered the ashes across a vacant lot outside the town of Schönebeck. Only the skull fragment was secured and deposited in the Moscow archive. A dramatic exit If we choose to believe Bellantoni’s account, the fragment most definitely did not belong to Hitler. But why should it have anyway? Let’s look at what happened in the Bunker in the spring of 1945. With the war as good as lost, Hitler informed his immediate circle that he intended to take his own life rather than to allow himself to be captured by the approaching Red Army and ordered that his body be completely destroyed by fire. He asked physician Werner Haase to try out one of his cyanide capsules on his beloved dog Blondi and then prepared for his own suicide. According to sworn testimony by witnesses on the scene, Hitler and Eva Braun entered their private quarters in the Bunker on the afternoon of April 30 with strict orders not to be disturbed. Some witnesses heard a shot. Hitler’s SS valet, Heinz Linge, and his private secretary, Martin Bormann, then entered the room to find Hitler slumped on the couch with a bullet wound in the side of his head. Eva Braun also lay dead. A scent of burnt almonds hovered over both corpses, suggesting that both had taken cyanide. Hitler’s adjutant Otto Günsche joined Linge in wrapping the bodies in blankets and carrying them up into the open air. There they laid them in a shell crater and poured two hundred liters of gasoline onto them. They set fire to the corpses and watched them burn. After the flames had consumed this grueseome offering, all that was left of Hitler and his wife were a few scorched bones that crumbled into dust at a touch of Linge's boot. He and some other men transferred these remains to another crater and covered them over with rubble, stamping it tight. That is the official version. Heinz Linge died in 1980 and Otto Günsche passed away in 2003. So why not ask a living eyewitness? Well, one such witness has been asked. In fact, he’s been asked and asked. Rochus Misch was Hitler’s personal bodyguard and is alive and unrepentant in Berlin at the age of 92. The Soviets interrogated him for nine years at Lubyanka Prison and at Butyrka military prison in Moscow before finally releasing him to West Germany in 1954. He published his memoirs, Der letzte Zeuge [The Last Witness] – based on a series of interviews with a French journalist – in 2008. In an exclusive interview for Salon.com back in 2005,  Misch told his version of events to freelance journalist Ida Hattemer-Higgins: I was curious. I still don't remember whether it was Linge or Günsche who first opened the door to Hitler's rooms, but one of the two. I was really curious and came forward a few steps. Then somebody opened the second door -  I still don't know who it was, probably Linge. And it was then, as the second door opened, I saw Hitler, dead, lying on a chair. Eva [Braun] on the couch completely clothed. In a dark dress and white, white skin. She was lying back. … Then I was on my way over to the Reich Chancellery, already in the passageway, but I had an uncanny feeling, very scared and uncertain, so I turned around. When I got back they already had Hitler down on the floor. I watched them packing him up, in a blanket. Well, so it went. Then they carried him out, and I went away finally and made the communication to the commanding officer. A new lease on life? So did Hitler somehow miraculously escape from the Bunker after refusing all the many opportunities he was offered to do so – including a dramatic airplane flight out of the besieged city with Nazi flying ace Hanna Reitsch at the controls? And, at age 120, is he still out there somewhere up to his old tricks, advising Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and secretly designing Barack Obama’s “death panels”? Considering how often Hitler’s name pops up in political discourse these days, it sure seems as if he still walks among us. All we have to go on is the sworn testimony of those who were on the scene in Berlin. So what are we to make of the skull fragment? It may have belonged to Eva Braun after all. Or how about this: Perhaps the SMERSH, faced with an impossible task forced on them by grand inquisitor Stalin himself, simply pounced on the first scrap of human material they could find and swore on their mothers’ lives that it belonged to Hitler in a desperate effort to save their own miserable existence. It’s not as if there weren’t enough skull fragments to choose from in those days. But how accurate is this entire report in the first place? On the Monday following the History Channel broadcast, a spokesperson for the Moscow State Archive issued a statement that his institution had never heard of anybody called Bellantoni, and no one had taken any samples from any bone fragments. In any case, the spokesperson pointed out, while the Soviet government used to enjoy showing the bone off to guests as a sort of trophy, the Archive itself had never claimed the fragment positively belonged to Hitler. And even Bellantoni admits that the bone “could have been [from] anyone. Many people died near the bunker.”