On this date, April
30, 1945, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for one
day.
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A
headline in the U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes announcing
Hitler's death.
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Adolf Hitler killed himself by gunshot on 30 April 1945
in his Führerbunker in Berlin. His wife Eva (née Braun)
committed suicide with him by taking cyanide. That afternoon, in accordance
with Hitler's prior instructions, their remains were carried up the stairs
through the bunker's emergency exit, doused in petrol, and set alight in the
Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. Records in the Soviet archives
show that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive
locations until 1970, when they were again exhumed, cremated, and the ashes
scattered.
Accounts differ as to the cause of death; one
states that he died by poison only
and another that he died by a self-inflicted gunshot while biting down on a
cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being
either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the
different conclusions. One eye-witness recorded that the body showed signs of
having been shot through the mouth, but this has been proven unlikely. There is
also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments which
were recovered. In 2009, American researchers performed DNA tests on a skull
Soviet officials had long believed to be Hitler's. The tests revealed that the
skull was actually that of a woman less than 40 years old. The jaw fragments
which had been recovered were not tested.
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