Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler?

[StefanM]

The lead forensic pathologist was Dr. Faust Shkaravski who performed the autopsy on the two newly recovered bodies, during which he observed that the male body was missing a piece of the skull. A later re-examination of the grave where the two bodies were found, turned up a piece of a skull that the Russians thought came from Hitler's skull. That is the skull piece that went to Moscow and was later determined to belong to a female. The autopsy is covered on pages 62-70 and includes the identification of Hitler's body based on dental records provided by Hitler's former dental technician, Käthe Hausermann (p.65). Dwight

So it would seem that the Russian lead forensic pathologist, Dr. Faust Shkaravski, couldn't tell that the body with the missing skull piece was actually that of a woman rather than a man, if we are to believe that Bellantoni did actually gain access to DNA test samples of the "Hitler skull" piece which the Russians said had come out of the same burial pit as the two bodies Shkaravski investigated earlier....mmmm

The autopsy is covered on pages 62-70 and includes the identification of Hitler's body based on dental records provided by Hitler's former dental technician, Käthe Hausermann

I guess this is the Hitler jaw bone the Russians have along with the Hitler skull piece, which isn't.

Käthe Hausermann (who spent ten years in Soviet prisons and camps) and Fritz Echtmann produced drawings from memory which seemingly were a dead match for the teeth and bridgework the Soviets had. Now I don't suppose the Russians would have an ulterior motive for making sure the jawbone fragment matched the drawings... especially as they had a skull piece to go along with it

[StefanM]

I am surprised that Skorzeny was not mentioned in the post-war Nazi story by the authors given he was organising SS prisoners out of Dachau whose likely end destination was to be S. America or Spain, as well as his extensive business interests in Spain and elsewhere backed by Nazi war loot.

What did come across was the way German industrialists and banking families who prospered on the backs of its forced labourers and concentration camp workers and looted Jewish assets managed to escape retribution for their criminal acts and went on to further prosper as the most "well respected" German industrial and consumer brands of today.

I also remember the decades of struggle it took for German industry to take responsibility for its use of slave labour and agree to the barest minimum compensation payments to former slave workers....luckily the bill for them was much less than it should have been as many of the now elderly slave labourers had died during the intervening years. I also recall the explosion of studies commissioned by German industry to show just how few slave workers were employed in order to minimise any potential compensation total.

Overall, I did enjoy the read though

[drmessimer]

4thskorpion: "So it would seem that the Russian lead forensic pathologist, Dr. Faust Shkaravski, couldn't tell that the body with the missing skull piece was actually that of a woman rather than a man..." You have misunderstood what was written. The body being examined was a male whose skull had a fragment missing. Later in the same place from which the body in question was removed, a Soviet soldier found a bone fragment which was believed to have been the piece missing from the skull of the male being examined. That skull fragment was later identified as having come from a female. In other words, they were dealing with two bodies; one a male with a piece of skull missing, and the other a piece of skull with the entire body missing. Dwight

[StefanM]

4thskorpion: "So it would seem that the Russian lead forensic pathologist, Dr. Faust Shkaravski, couldn't tell that the body with the missing skull piece was actually that of a woman rather than a man..." You have misunderstood what was written. The body being examined was a male whose skull had a fragment missing. Later in the same place from which the body in question was removed, a Soviet soldier found a bone fragment which was believed to have been the piece missing from the skull of the male being examined. That skull fragment was later identified as having come from a female. In other words, they were dealing with two bodies; one a male with a piece of skull missing, and the other a piece of skull with the entire body missing. Dwight

Maybe something was lost in translation

Because the quote from your post said: "....Further digging uncovered two badly burned bodies of a man and a woman." and " ...The lead forensic pathologist was Dr. Faust Shkaravski who performed the autopsy on the two newly recovered bodies" which I took to mean as you worded it ie. "two bodies" rather than one body and a piece of skull minus one body which is obviously substantially less than two bodies

But as I now understand from your latest post there were two "bodies" one male with a small piece of skull missing; a female body (no mention of missing skull piece) and a convenient skull fragment from a third body long claimed to be that of Hitler but now discovered to be that of an unknown female, who presumably was also buried in the same pit as the previous two bodies. Wonder what happened to the rest of her body?

I guess the pertinent point is that the skull fragment claimed by the Russians to be that of Hitler for all these decades and held as definitive proof that Hitler died in Berlin turned out to be that of some unknown female and not Hitler at all. It doesn't mean that Hitler didn't die in Berlin it just means there is no physical proof that he did ...unless the Russians have DNA tested the "Hitler" jaw bone to finally prove it is actually Hitler's and not from some other unknown male or female corpse?


In an earlier post you mentioned that:

".... For example, U880 and U518, which according to the authors transported Hitler and his group to Argentina, were both sunk during the war. The USS Stanton Frost sank U880 off the Azores on 16 April 1945, and USS Carter and the USS Neal A Scott sank U518 in the same area on 22 April 1945."

The authors point out some doubts about these u-boat kills as there was no evidence of any surface wreckage at all on the water that would prove that either subs were destroyed? I have no idea if a sub that has been blown up under water would leave a trail of floating detritus, bodies and fuel spillage or not—my layman's feeling is that there would be some such evidence with which to positively claim a kill?

In May 1945 the head of the Royal Navy's Submarine Tracking Room is reported to have cast some doubts over these US claims. The authors also point out that head of the Royal Navy's Submarine Tracking Room mentions in his memo of May 1945 that U-530 was a claimed kill by the US Navy but the sub surfaced off Mar de Plata, Argentina, where it surrendered in July 1945!

The authors cite Innes McCartney as a submarine historian and U-boat expert who helped in their research, so I am assuming as a expert McCartney might have gotten these details correct? I can't comment as I know absolutely zilch about German U-Boats in WWII... or u-boat historians either for that matter.

It is certainly entertaining!

[drmessimer]

4thskorpion: I have never heard or read that the U-518 and/or the U-880 survived the war. Had that happened, the recognized sources for U-boat losses in WWII would provide that information. Could you provide the sources for your information? For the US Navy accounts of the actions, my sources are Department of the Navy, American Naval Fighting Ships, 9 vols. Washington: GPO, 1976, vol. 3, p. 42; and vol. 6, pp.605-606. For the German accounts I use Bodo Herzog, Deutsche U-Boote, 1906-1966, Koblenz: Pawlak, 1990, pp. 245 and 282; and Erich Gröner, Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe, 1815-1945, 2 vols., München: Lehmanns Verlag, 1966, vol. 1 pp. 413 and 415. I know Innes McCartney as he has been very helpful with providing updates for my book Verschollen, Naval Institute Press, 2002.

For the record, U-518 and U-880 were both destroyed in Operation Teardrop that was conducted in April and May 1945 to intercept and sink nine type IX U-boats that were known to be en route to the US and Canadian Atlantic coasts. The boats were, U-518, U-846, U-805, U-881, U-858, U-880, U-1235, U-530, U-548. Of those nine boats, only three survived; U-805, U-858 and U-530, which was never listed as destroyed, but surrendered at Mar del Plata and was subsequently turned over to the United States. Dwight

[StefanM]

The source is "Grey Wolf" as per my post and McCartney is given as researcher for U-Boat information used in the book some of which was drawn from National Archives at Kew, Great Britain. The Royal Navy Submarine Tracking Room memo of May 1945 that questions the US u-boat kills claims to have come from the National Archives at Kew.

As I mentioned before, I have no "expertise" in this subject but I do know that if the original US reports were simply wrong in the first place these errors would be perpetuated ad infinitum as might be the case in all of the standard reference works you mention. I am not saying this is true but the authors of "Grey Wolf" would suggest this is a possibility. But then again the authors may have misreprented the research provided by u-boat expert Innes McCartney, I cannot answer that one. I wonder if McCartney checked what the authors had written?

However I think we both will agree that inflated kill numbers or wrongly attributed kills are a factor in WWII reports.

[Scout]

If anybody needs a good read, try reading 'Eastern Approaches' by Fitzroy Maclean.