Newly discovered: a tape recording of Nazi officers describing the moment they found the body of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker. While the recording was made on October 25, 1956, in a courtroom in Berchtesgaden (the place of Hitler’s Bavarian mountaintop retreat), it was unearthed only recently by researchers for the German Spiegel TV channel.
Among those giving evidence that day were Otto Guensche, an SS officer, and Heinz Linge, a valet, who first discovered the corpses of Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun. The men speak under oath of entering the Fuehrer’s study after hearing shots ring out on April 30 1945. “When I entered to my left I saw Hitler on the sofa,” said Linge, who died in 1980. “Hitler had his head bent forward somewhat and I could see a bullethole approximately the size of a penny on the right side of the temple.”
Guensche, who went to his death in 1983 refusing to give details about the dictator’s end, said: “Hitler sat on the arm of the sofa with his head hanging down on the right shoulder which was itself hanging limp over the back of the sofa. On the right side was the bullet hole.”
From that point, on Guensche and Linge started removing the bodies and preparing them for cremation. After Berlin fell—and before their story went very far—the pair were captured by the Soviets and whisked off to Moscow. Their testimony lay hidden all this time in Munich’s public records office.