Conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler's death

Conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler's death contradict the fact that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. Most of these theories hold that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, survived and escaped the city of Berlin. While subject to some exposure in popular culture, examples being books such as Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, these viewpoints are regarded by mainstream historians as disproven fringe theories.

The theory that Hitler did not commit suicide but escaped with his wife, was deliberately promoted by Soviet government personnel as part of its policies of state-sponsored disinformation. This "myth" first being announced by Marshall Georgy Zhukov at a press conference on 9 June 1945 on orders from Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Even at the level of the Potsdam Conference, U.S. President Harry S. Truman received a flat denial from Stalin as to whether Hitler had died. This ambiguity has been a main cause of various conspiracy theories over the years, despite the official conclusion by Western powers that Hitler indeed killed himself in April 1945.

The first detailed investigation by Western powers began in November 1945 after Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin (and later head of MI5 and MI6 in succession), had their agent Hugh Trevor-Roper investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. His findings that Hitler and Braun had died by suicide in Berlin were first written in a report and then published in book form in 1947. As Trevor-Roper stated in 1946, "the desire to invent legends and fairy tales...is (greater) than the love of truth".

...
Wikipedia