Within hours of his suicide on 30 April 1945, Soviet authorities were already learning of his death through members of a new German government, hoping to negotiate a surrender to Marshal Zhukov. Two days later, the head of that new German government, Joseph Goebbels, had also taken his life, along with that of his wife and their six children. While hearing of the deaths through relatively official channels was one thing, the Soviets needed whatever proof they could acquire, and leaned on their spy network already entrenched in Berlin to chase down that proof.
On 6 May 1945, after the Red Army had secured Berlin, an unidentified agent sent a multi-page Top Secret report to Moscow, providing some of the initial details of the deaths of the two infamous Nazi leaders. The agent was able to see for himself the bodies of the Goebbels family, and spoke with a number of SS and Ministry of Propaganda prisoners who were able to fill in some blanks.
The following is a translation of this Top Secret report. There are two obvious gaps in the document text, highlighted by notes from the translator.
TOP SECRET
CODED TELEGRAM No. 5970, 5971, 5972
From BERLIN
Received 6 May 1945 at 10.50 Decoded 7 May 1945 at 13.25
1/ After our troops had taken the Reich Chancellery, the SS and Ministry of Propaganda employees taken prisoner there testified that Goebbels, having poisoned his children and shot his wife, shot himself as well.
The burnt corpses of a man and woman were found in front of the bomb shelter where his accommodations were located, and within the accommodations there were the bodies of six children, exhibiting external signs of poisoning.
When trying to identify the bodies, the prisoners showed that the body of the male was that of Goebbels; the female’s corpse was so burnt that it was impossible to make a positive identification. The body of the male, which I also saw, displayed the well-known features of Goebbels – height, nose, long teeth, and the elongated back of the skull. The right leg of the corpse had the leg turned inward. Next to the body were the remains of a brown Nazi uniform and gold party badge No. 22.
[Translator note: Text missing] Goebbels and sent it off to Moscow. Yesterday, all of the corpses were shown to one of Goebbels’s closest associates, Hans Fritzsche, and one of Hitler’s physicians, captured in the chancellery of the latter.
Both initially expressed uncertainty that this was the body of Goebbels, but they then stated with confidence that it was. The former identified all of the Goebbels children, the latter only one of the children. Goebbels’s stenographer, Fritzsche, and the aforementioned physician, who were all interrogated today, testified that they weren’t certain which leg of Goebbels was deformed, the left or the right. The stenographer and Fritzsch offered that they previously thought that his left leg was deformed, whereas the physician stated that he doesn’t remember at all. These interviews cast some doubt about the story of the corpse.
2/ As far as Hitler is concerned, the prisoners testify that he, having poisoned his wife Eva Braun, then poisoned himself, after first issuing orders that his and his wife’s bodies be burned and have their ashes scattered. However, individuals who participated in burning the body, or even having seen the body of Hitler, have yet to be identified among the prisoners.
The aforementioned physician testifies:
On the day he took his own life, Hitler called upon him for a consultation regarding the power of a poison that Hitler had. In the physician’s presence, the poison was fed to Hitler’s dog, which immediately died. The physician only knows about what next took place from the account of a friend of Hitler’s personal physician, SS Brigadeführer Stumpfegger. According to these accounts, [Martin] Borman, Hitler’s servant Linge, and Stumpfegger took part in burning the corpse. None of them were among those detained.
There is evidence according to which these individuals left the city together with the group that broke away from the center on the first of May to [break in text] 3000 SS members, and was destroyed that same day in Berlin’s northern suburbs.
A number of things in the accounts about Hitler’s suicide are dubious and raise doubt about the entire version.
3/ The body of a general from the infantry, Krebs, was found in Hitler’s chancellery. He is the one who appeared on 30 April in Marshal Zhukov’s headquarters with the report that Hitler had committed suicide. This made Goebbels the Reich Chancellor, who then formed a new government with Borman and Schwerin von Krosigk. On behalf of this new government, Krebs had come to negotiate a surrender.
Translating History 