Should Soviet troops have captured Adolf Hitler and taken him to Vienna to be executed?

a reply to: Grenade

Yes, but why would he want to escape. His entire belief system was an all-or-nothing, black and white one, he saw no reason to escape, not with his power base about to fall. And once again - I need to repeat this, because you seem to be ignoring it - he did not want to run the risk of falling into Soviet hands, given a show trial and executed and strung up in public like Mussolini had. He was safe in the Bunker, but time was running out, that safety had a time limit as the Soviets approached.
He was also - and again I feel the need to repeat this - a physical wreck. Everyone who witnessed his last year of life watched him deteriorate after almost being killed by that bomb, plus whatever the hell Morell was pumping into his bloodstream. Weidling barely recognised him, so changed was his entire stance.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

But you still can't rule it out. Which is what you keep doing. With no body or forensic evidence you have nothing but conjecture, speculation and the word of the Nazi high command.

a reply to: BernnieJGato

I'm open to the possibility, as it's entirely possible. My beliefs clearly aren't as rigid as your own. There's no forensic evidence and the Nazi's weren't the most trustworthy. You can't prove he died as the body was never found or examined.

You're the one making claims that you can't substantiate, I'm merely stating it's not as concrete as you're stating. You can't prove anything either, i have a belief based on my research, you have the same. I'm not the one trying to ridicule your beliefs now am I? Your sources are the Nazi high command, hardly the best or most reliable.

If you can't bare the though of someone having a difference in opinion then you're on the wrong forum.

Again, you can't prove anything either! Pot, meet the kettle.

I'm out of this thread anyway, it's clear that i'm dealing with folk unwilling to even consider anything other than parroting the official story.

Provide evidence, other than the testimony of war criminals, men who fought and were willing to die for their Fuhrer and his ideology? That's what i thought, you can't.

The irony of you two quoting Nazis as your only sources of information and then putting the burden of proof on me.

a reply to: Grenade

Well, forensic evidence was rudimentary in 1945 and the first investigations into Hitler's death were carried out by the Russians - after a horde of troops had trampled through the bunker looking at things. The NKVD eventually became convinced that he was dead and frankly if the Israelis had suspected that Hitler was still alive and in Argentina they would have nabbed him, tried him and hung him.
For me, aside from the fact that the British and US authorities were satisfied that they were dead, and Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote his seminal book on Hitler's death, it's the sheer lack of evidence that Hitler escaped. How could one of the most recognisable men in Germany at that time, who was in terrible physical shape, have escaped the battlefield that was Berlin and not get captured by the Soviets? That's the key element - he was terrified of being captured, paraded about and then shot and strung up like Mussolini.
Walking would have been a very bad idea. Driving was impossible - the roads were choked by rubble, shell holes and tanks with red stars all over them, plus there was little if any petrol/gas. Air? Small planes could get in, but risked getting peppered with small arms fire going in and getting out. Last flight was to the Tiergarten by Reitsch, and her passenger Ritter von Greim was badly wounded in the process. Fiesler Storchs were very small and there was no chance of stuffing Hitler in the back and sticking a paper bag over his head to disguise him. The canals and rivers were choked with debris.
If (and this is a big if) he had been flown out, where to? He never made it to Flensburg like Himmler briefly did and everywhere else was falling to various Allied Armies. No witnesses to his arrival or departure - and how would he have gotten to Argentina? U-Boat? In which case what happened to the crew? Did no-one speak about it? Witness the journey? Witness the landing?
No-one reliable at the time ever came forwards to say that hey they saw Hitler here or there outside of Berlin. Not even David Irving, whose works I am deeply suspicious of, supports the claim that Hitler made it out alive.
All the evidence points one way - to the bunker and then to the burning hole in the ground.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

So your evidence is a bunker and a burning hole in the ground?

Many Nazis made it to South America and lived out their lives without ever facing punishment for their crimes. As a former soldier, awarded the Iron Cross first and second class, i suspect Hitler would have fought till his last bullet. You can call the man a lot of things, a coward he was not.

If the US authorities were convinced he was dead then why did the investigate claims to the contrary.

Times of Israel

We can't prove it one way or the other. Again, there is only speculation and conjecture to backup both our beliefs.

Hitlers Body Doubles

On 9 May 1945, a week after the Fall of Berlin, The New York Times reported that a body was claimed by the Soviets to belong to Hitler. This was disputed by an anonymous servant, who stated that the body was that of a cook who was killed because of his resemblance to Hitler, and that the latter had escaped.[9][10] On 6 June 1945, the United Press reported that four bodies had been found in Berlin resembling Hitler, purportedly burnt by the Red Army's flame throwers. One body was considered most likely to be that of Hitler.[11] A few days later, on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's orders, Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov presented the official narrative that Hitler had escaped,[12] stating, "We have found no corpse that could be [his]."[13] In mid-1945, a Soviet major told American sources that Hitler had survived and claimed of the place in the Reich Chancellery garden where his body was said to have been burned, "It is not true that Hitler was found there! Our experts have established that the man found here didn't look like Hitler at all. And we didn't find Eva Braun either!"[14][15] During their Soviet captivity, Schutzstaffel (SS) valet Heinz Linge, SS guard Josef Henschel, and Hitler's pilot Hans Baur were questioned about whether Hitler escaped by leaving a body double.[16][17] From 1951 to 1972, the National Police Gazette ran stories asserting that SS physician Ludwig Stumpfegger had switched out a double for Hitler to help the dictator fake his death.

a reply to: Grenade

No, many low-level Nazis made it out to Argentina, the top ones were either imprisoned and put on trial or took the coward's way out and killed themselves - like Himmler and Hitler. Yes, he was a coward.
And please stop shouting that we can't trust the accounts that came out from those in the bunker, they may have been Nazis but they were the only available witnesses (and I'm not even sure that Traudl Junge and the other secretaries were members of the Nazi Party). Their testimony fits the record and can be corroborated with other accounts. We have to be very careful in looking at the various sources in this (various people have been turned into Wehrboos by reading Manstein's Lost Victories and Guderian's Panzer Leader, taking them as 100% correct and not checking bloody sources and asking what the two left out of their books (sorry, sorry, I get annoyed about Wehrboos)).
Hitler's valet Heinz Linge was captured by the Soviets after the war, was imprisoned by them for a decade and was extensively interrogated by the NKVD about the circumstances of Hitler's death. What he said went into a dossier that was presented to Stalin in 1949 and which presumably convinced him that Hitler was finally dead. Linge never said anything about Hitler escaping.
Why did the US investigate the reports that Hitler was alive? Well, J Edgar Hoover loved publicity and sending agents to check that out would have been a great headline. Plus he might have been asked about it by some idiot Congressman if he didn't send anyone to make sure that it was all rubbish.
And, once again, the man was in terrible physical condition and there is no verifiable evidence that he escaped from the burning mess that was Berlin.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

You're entitled to believe whatever you want, I'm unconvinced either way as there's no definitive proof.

WWII - Ratlines

Josef Mengele

List of Nazis - never caught

Most Notorious Nazis who escaped to South America