Hitler's Death

By April 1945, Hitler's "Thousand-Year Reich" had lasted just 12 years. Soviet forces were less than a mile from his underground bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. The man who had conquered most of Europe was trapped in a concrete tomb.

Soviet forensic teams recovered remains they identified as Hitler's from a shell crater outside the bunker. Stalin suppressed the conclusion — partly to keep the Western allies guessing, partly because Soviet intelligence feared Hitler had escaped. Conspiracy theories about his survival ran for decades, but the dental evidence held up: the teeth matched his records.