This article was first published at Burners.Me in 2016. Since then, further evidence has surfaced that the intelligence community believed Hitler to be alive and well in South America. I may explore this in a follow-up Steemit post.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Not Just the FBI
Limited and Conflicting Testimony
FBI Documentation Suggesting the Escape
First-hand Testimony from the Pilot
Photos of Hitler in Later Life
Forensic Evidence Doesn't Match
Conflicting Stories About the Teeth
Many Nazis Escaped
Other Research
Potential Links to the Present Day
Conclusion

Introduction

The FBI had information that Hitler lived on for years in South America, which has now been declassifiied. This was something that was long suspected in the conspiracy para-politics world. Thanks to the FBI data dump, we now have hundreds of reports that he survived, and some that appear to have been taken quite seriously saying that he went to South America.

Here's what the FBI themselves say, at the introduction to their Hitler section:

Straight away you will see that his death was suspect from the beginning, there's hardly any evidence of it, and the FBI took very seriously the possibility that Hitler lived on past World War II. The files are full of reports supporting that, with only a couple to the contrary. Despite all the investigations, neither the FBI nor any of the rest of the Western Allied forces have ever found any evidence of his death. Unless you think "he told people he was going to commit suicide" is evidence.

The FBI archivists have kindly put one of the biggest "smoking gun" reports on Hitler from the Vault up front as the very first pages of Part 1:

Sure, it's hearsay; but that's how the FBI operates. They collect reports from informants. This particular report is pretty detailed, but it is by no means the only document in the files relevant to Hitler's escape.

There are scores, maybe hundreds, of reported sightings in these documents, mostly in North or South America. Admittedly, some appear to be from kooks - but can we really judge any eyewitness report to be false just because it sounds implausible? For example, one source was reported to be "highly intoxicated". One drunk guy calling the FBI saying he saw Hitler in the donut shop doesn't automatically prove Hitler died in the bunker. In the case of the South America information, there is much more than a single sighting, and the different reports corroborate each other. In the case of the official history, the evidence is weak, circumstantial, and contradictory.

Not Just The FBI

Documents in the Vault show it wasn't only the FBI investigating Hitler sightings. The CIA was too. Interestingly, out of all the reported sightings, it is only those related to Hitler being in South America that the CIA seem to take an interest in. More recently, CIA bad ass Bob Baer (the real life guy George Clooney played in Syriana) led a team of professional investigators analyzing the 2014 FBI data dump, and concluded:

Using a collection of never-before-seen documents, the team claim to have proof Hitler did not kill himself in his underground bunker at the end of the Second World War.

Instead, the investigators believe Hitler faked his own death before scarpering to the Canary Islands to live out his days in the sunshine.

CIA veteran Bob Baer said: "The narrative the government gives us is a lie. if you look at the FBI files it throws open the investigation.

"What we are doing is re-examining history, history that we thought was settled that Hitler died in the bunker but the deeper we get into it, it's clear to me we don't have any facts for it."

The team have access to 700 pages of newly declassified information, with one document stating: "American Army officials in Germany have not located Hitler's body nor is there any reliable source that Hitler is dead."

It wasn't just the Western Allied forces that suspected Hitler escaped. The Russians thought so too.

"Overwhelming" circumstantial evidence? I find the circumstantial evidence here to overwhelmingly point to his escape.

Limited And Conflicting Eyewitness Testimony Points to a Cover-Up

This 1949 story "Did Evil Hitler Escape?" by Colonel John Stingo details the sketchy evidence for Hitler's death. This is based on testimony from Erich Kempka and Kranau.

Let me summarize the detail because it's a little hard to read. Hitler called a final conference around noon of April 30. Nobody knows what was said,

Immediately at the conclusion of the conference orders were broadcast throughout the Chancellory that everybody, without exception, should repair to their respective shelters and remain there until further orders

Shortly afterward Kempka, whose station was in Hitler’s bunker, heard two shots from the direction of Hitler’s room, and an instant later saw the Feuhrer’s valet Linge and an unknown man carry out a body caved in a grey army blanket

The head and shoulder were hidden, but the rest of the body was plainly visible - it was clad in Hitler’s uniform

A few steps behind appeared Bormann, bearing Eva Braun’s body, which was not covered and was easily recognizable. The left side of her dress appeared to Krempka to be darkened, presumably from blood

The excavation dig found 2 pink slips with Eva Braun’s initials and several typewritten letters form Hitler to Goebbels. They found no trace whatsoever that any part of the bunker or garden had been used as a crematorium.

Linge, Hitler's personal valet has another story again:

That would be the Heinz Linge that told the Wehrmacht surgeon-general, Major-General Walter Schreiber, while he was interned for several years in two Soviet POW camps in Strausberg and Posen and had a chance to speak to him about events in the bunker, that he -

"...did NOT see Hitler, but toward the end noticed two bodies wrapped in carpet being carried out of the bunker"....

And Kempka later told a different story:

Erich Kempka made a statement to American interrogator George R. Allen, the counterintelligence officer of the 101st Airborne. In it, Kempka gave the Americans their first eyewitness account of any of the events connected with the death of the Fuehrer. He said that on 30th of April—although he felt unable to say that this was the date "with complete sureness" - But he COULD say that at "precisely" 2.30pm, Guensche called him at the Reich Chancellery garage, asking him to bring five cans of petrol to the bunker. There Guensche told him that Hitler was dead and that he had been ordered to burn the corpse "so that he would not be exhibited at a Russian freak-show". Kempka said he then helped carry the corpses; while Linge and an orderly whom he did not remember were carrying the corpse of Hitler, he carried the corpse of Eva Hitler. Kempka simply assumed that the corpse he had seen Linge carrying was Hitler's, for he noticed "the long black trousers and the black shoes which the Fuehrer usually wore with his field-gray uniform jacket"....

[Source]

Axmann says that Goebbels led him into the room, where they surveyed the death scene for 15 minutes before Goebbels sent him to get the blankets. Then Kempka moved the bodies out. Kempka says that he heard two gunshots, and saw two bodies being carried out with blankets on them instantly. And then later he says he didn't hear any shots, and found out about the deaths at precisely 2:30 at the garage, from Guensche. So basically the two main witnesses who survived have wildly conflicting stories. Axmann says the bodies were covered so that guards in the outer areas couldn't identify them. The only other witness is a guard from the outer area. Kempka says he could only identify the body by the boots.

Of the witnesses only Goebbels and Axmann saw Hitler dead without a blanket over his face (Axmann says Linge did, Linge says he didn't). Goebbels and his six kids supposedly committed suicide the next day with cyanide capsules. Bormann died at the Chancellory bunker site too.

FBI Documentation Suggesting the Escape

Here's a memo from J Edgar Hoover referring to Hitler operating under an alias "Theodore Donay" who was reported missing from a foreign submarine - whoever this source was, was obviously credible enough for Hoover to write back thanking him for the information. He didn't do that to very many of the other reported sightings. There are quite a few documents in the FBI files relating to this foreign submarine incident.

Continue to Part 2
Part 3

Further research, sources:

FBI Vault, Hitler section

CIA Reading Room, Hitler