Dan Snow's History Hit - The Death of Hitler

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Warning: this episode contains discussion of suicide.Berlin, April 1945: After nearly 12 years, the "Thousand-Year Reich" is crumbling. Isolated in a bunker beneath the city, as Soviet forces close in on them, Adolf Hitler and his inner circle face the end.Today we're joined by Frank McDonough, a historian of the Third Reich and author of The Hitler Years series. Frank unpacks for us the final days of the Nazi dictator, and debunks some of the myths around his death.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. 80 years ago, Adolf Hitler was sickly, tempestuous, scratching out a life beneath the streets of Berlin in his bomb-proof bunker. Now, at the end of April 1945, he was accepting defeat, acknowledging what the rest of the world had known for months, if not years. He was there in the Führerbunker. It was a complex underneath the Reich Chancery, effectively his office, his official residence, where he was able to seek refuge from the crash of Russian artillery,

which was by now systematically reducing the city above his head to rubble. Russian tanks and troops had penetrated the city itself and they were now just a few hundred yards away. I always think this is one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in history. Four years before, Hitler's infantrymen had been on the outskirts of Moscow, and now here were Joseph Stalin's Soviet troops, about to penetrate the very heart of the Third Reich. With that as the context, he decided to sit down and dictate his last will and testament to his young assistant, Frau Tradel-Junge. He was unrepentant, he made arrangements for his art collection, he appointed the German political leadership that would succeed him, and he stated categorically one last time that he hadn't wanted war in 1939. No, it had been the Jews and their supporters that were responsible for the war

and all Germany's and Europe's woes. The next day, on the 30th of April, after a big lunch with his staff, Hitler and his now wife Eva Braun went into their private apartments and took their own lives. It's unclear entirely what happened, but it seems likely that her death was caused by biting into a cyanide capsule and he put a gun to his own temple. They had been married for one day. Their bodies were taken upstairs into the open air by loyal officers. As artillery shells rained down on them, they hastily dug a pit in the Chancery Garden, cremated them and threw their remains into the shallow grave. It was a tawdry end for Hitler and indeed his whole National Socialist project. socialist project. Hitler had insisted that millions of people, men, women and children, had fought and suffered and died and been wounded or brutalised, all to postpone this inevitable moment as long as possible. But now, in the spring of 1945, it came. Hitler was dead,

and with him, the Third Reich. In this episode, we're going to dig into the final moments of one of the most prolific criminals in the long and lamentable history of humankind. We're going to talk about the last hours and the death of Adolf Hitler 80 years ago. We're joined by the very brilliant historian Frank Madonna. He's been on the podcast many times. He's got a wonderful series of books called The Hitler Years. There's another one coming out soon on the Holocaust, which I know from talking to Frank was a very, very difficult project for him personally to work on as well. For more detail about anything you hear today, make sure you go and check out Frank Madonna's wonderful books. But in the meantime, let's get

into it. This is another one of our D-Day to Berlin series, marking all those 80th anniversaries. This one is the final days, the final hours and minutes of Adolf Hitler. White unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Frank, good to have you back on the podcast. Great to be here. Why does Hitler stay in Berlin? The Soviet jaws are closing around the city, aren't they? Well, you've got to remember that he kind of has this kind of

nihilistic view of the world that it's either you win or you lose and you blow yourself up. Now, that's his vision of the world, really. So, I mean, I think he did know that Germany was heading for defeat and he did know that the Red Army would come into Berlin and would win. But he stuck firm to the idea that he could somehow turn this round. And even if he didn't turn it round, he had the idea of himself in history as some kind of martyr. So he thought, well, I'll die.

And he does say to his secretary, Traudl Jung, he says, Nazism can't come back. I know that. But it might come back in 100 years. So he has this idea that he's leaving a legacy for the next 100 years. Goebbels shares that vision as well. So he sort of says, yeah, let's die in a blaze of glory. So in a way, this is Hitler's last big strategic decision. He says, well, let's stay in Berlin. We might have lost this war, but by giving this example,

we might win the next one. Whereas him getting arrested, wearing sort of civilian clothes, trying to cross the Rhine and escape would just be utterly humiliating. That's his thinking. He would have been caught. You know, anyone famous, very famous,

they get caught. You can't hide from your face. I mean, even if he shaved, they found the himbler and he shaved his mustache off but someone said that's himbler and also there's nothing in what he says to people talks to people that indicates that he wants to go into exile you know and live a quiet life in exile and secretly like that it It's not like that. He sort of talks about, I'll kill myself. Many times in the past, over the years, you know,

like the Munich Beer Hall coup, for example, he said he'd kill himself. He said it many times that, you know, if it all goes pear-shaped, I'll kill myself. I just don't buy into the idea that, you know, he was going to go off to Argentina. I mean, look, people did go off to argentina i mean look people did go off to argentina and the south america so people said ah but if they got there surely hitler went with them but he didn't want to go and it would have been impossible how are you going to get out of

that bunker it wasn't as if you could just get out the bunker and phone an uber take you to a ferry and then go to Argentina. It's just, it's so unbelievable that that could happen, really. So I'm not a big one for conspiracy theories, you know, because I know Hitler very well. I just don't buy he was the kind of person that would do that. For him, it would have been seen as humiliating. And I can't see him living his life in a little farm in Argentina with Ava Brown, you know, like turn into a Sky TV program, Hitler in

Argentina. They're in a big underground shelter, are they, beneath the Reich Chancellery? Yeah, they're in this Führer bunker. It was designed by Albert Speer. It was built to go under the right chancellery garden. So it's kind of like a self-contained unit. It's about 40 people can get in there and it's got living quarters. It's got some kind of air conditioning system, but doesn't really work really. So they're sort of sharing the same air for days on end so it's got like sort of offices that he has meetings at it's got his own living quarters he's got like a living room

with a settee and stuff like that also you know his main military men are down there and the Goebbels is in Berlin but he goes in as well towards the end and stays with him as well. I mentioned Traudl Jung. He's got three secretaries who are down there. So it's kind of like an underground shelter. And he stays in there in the latter days. Sometimes he goes up, actually, into the Reich Chancellery and goes into the rooms, which are bombed, you know.

But sometimes he goes in there and has a cup of coffee with uh ava brown it's a kind of subterranean world if you like they've got links with the outside world people come in and give them messages and so on and so forth what roughly when was the last time he sort of left the premises totally and went we think that he might have gone up to the top near towards the end. There's supposed to be a photograph. Some people have questioned it, but that's sort of roundabout the day before he dies, we think. The last time we see him above ground,

I think it's like the 16th of March when he gives out medals to these Hitler Youth people who are defending Berlin. I think that's the last time we officially see if there's a newsreel of that but he's down in the bunker and he's listening to all these terrible reports that the red army are overwhelming the wehrmacht in berlin and the allies are sort of coming from the west they're're moving through city by city now, capturing them. He knows things are bad in Italy as well.

What's his mental health or physical health like? I mean, can he sleep? How's he getting through the day? I actually think, Dan, he's got bad mental health. I think he's mainly a depressive type of person whose normal default position is to be depressed. And this is just run of the mill for him. You know, things are going badly. Well, in his life, lots of things went badly. You know, I suppose if you've had a life in which loads and loads of things have gone

badly, you get used to it. So he sort of thinks, yeah, but I turned that round, you know, I went to jail for the Munich beer hall coup, but I got out, you know, and people said I couldn't get into power. But I did get into power. People said I couldn't revise the Treaty of Versailles, but I did. You know, and people warned me against attacking France, but I did and I won. So he sort of thinks things can turn around. He feels like he's lucky that he's a lucky person, that things often go his way. Even when Roosevelt dies on the 12th of April, he sees it as a sign.

It's a sign. He says to Goebbels, we're going to turn this round. So there's all this sort of daydreaming that goes on. The lack of reality, I personally think that he knew it was hopeless. I think he did, but he wasn't the kind of person who would ever admit that. The reports about him suggest that he was shaking unsteady on his feet. Yeah. About the fits of temper.

Yeah. Doctors have said that he probably had, they've seen these pictures of his arm. You see, there's a few pictures of his arm shaking badly. People are saying that that's Parkinson's disease, that he had Parkinson's disease and it was affecting his leg and his arm. On top of that, he had bad stomach and he was taking all kinds of drugs given by his own physician, Dr. Morel.

We reckon he took a lot of speed, you know, amphetamines. We're not sure about cocaine, although he did take something like a cream for cocaine because he had problems with his dental fixtures. So he put it on, rubbed it on. He quite liked it because it was a lot of cocaine and it it said that he kind of liked that so it's like a hypochondriac you go to their house the drawers are full of various potions and stuff like that i think he was a hypochondriac and i think he did take painkillers and he definitely took amphetamines Amphetamines do make people's temper go up and down.

You know, sometimes they can go crazy with a temper. I mean, I think we can exaggerate Hitler's temper. I don't think he was screaming, ranting and raving all the time. I just don't think he did. He did scream and rant and rave. You know, we've seen the famous downfall clip, haven't we, where they then pile on all modern things to it. The interesting thing to read about Hitler

is his meetings, his military meetings with the Wehrmacht and the Navy. And when you read them, it's surprising how calm he is. The transcript of what was said at these meetings, and it's not every five minutes, the Fuhrer jumped from his seat and screamed at Kiesel or whatever. it's not every five minutes the Führer jumped from his seat and

screamed at Kiesel or whatever. It's not like that. So I'm not sure about this kind of idea of him as a ranting, raving lunatic. I think that's a bit, it's a bit exaggerated really. But extraordinary, Frank, that they were having meetings, minutes were being kept and typed up, and this is an empire on the very, very brink of absolute extermination. Yeah, they did. Well, he started at Rastenberg, which is where his military headquarters were. He moves out of there by the end to go to Berlin. But he took all this paraphernalia with him.

He wanted a record himself because he wanted to make sure that nobody was double-crossing him. So he wanted to say, this is what was said at this meeting and that meeting. So he did have a stenographer and the fairly accurate reports of what was said at these meetings with the military men and the Navy. Of course, he doesn't have political meetings, so there's no cabinet meetings that we can look at. You just have to go to his correspondence with individual people, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Albert Speer. They're the kind of main people who he's conversing with at this time. And is he still moving units around on the map like he's a great military supremo?

And is he still moving units around on the map like he's a great military supremo? Supposedly he is. Whether those units can actually move on the ground is another matter. And I don't think they're very keen on telling him exactly what is happening towards the end. I think they're sort of making up a little bit of a fiction in a way. He asks for a counterattack. That's the one where he screams and rants and downfall. He asked for a counterattack and then he finds out the counterattack never happened in Berlin.

So he goes mad about that. You know, you lied to me about this. So that is true that he does rant and rave when Goering sends him a telegram saying, look, I think you're no longer capable of running the country. I'm going to take over my powers as deputy leader. And then he strips Goering of all of his officers of state. And the fact he could do that right at the end shows that he still had some power. Yeah. Isn't it strange that he sent SS guys around to Goering's house, didn't he? So the regime continued to function in some ways. Yeah. That's the weird thing, isn't it? I think it's the loyalty to him. You see, I think he's established a personal loyalty as the Führer.

And people, they are fond of him. They're definitely loyal to him. The public are loyal to him. The public go on supporting him to the bitter end as well. Again, we sort of think, well, why did they do that? Is it really true? But it is largely true that the functions of the Third Reich carry on, even in these terrible situations where the whole city is destroyed,

and yet they manage to get the water supply back on, the electricity. Amazing powers of recovery from the German authorities. I guess there is one other big bit of disobedience, the so-called Nero Decree. Tell me about that, which is the end of March. Hitler would have been in the bunker issuing that, would he? Well, Hitler knew about Stalin's scorched earth policy. And Stalin's scorched earth policy was, as the Red Army retreated, scorched earth policy was as the Red Army retreated, they destroyed any infrastructure they could so that the enemy couldn't gain control of that infrastructure. So he'd done that

scorched earth policy and it did work. The Soviet Union did remarkable. They'd destroy a factory, dismantle it, move it eastwards and open it again, rebuild it and open it quickly. So Hitler wanted to have his own scorched earth policy. He thought, well, the Allies are moving in the west. I want my scorched earth policy. I want them to destroy all of our main industry in the Ruhr. So that's what he told Speer to do, this Nero decree, in which he asks for this to happen.

But Speer doesn't do it. He just ignores it. And then he tells him a few days before Hitler dies, they have a final meeting and Speer says, look, I want to tell you something. I didn't carry out that Nero decree that you gave me. So apparently Hitler just sort of looked at him coldly and didn't say another word.

He just looked at him like, yeah, fine. Okay. Right. And that was the end. He said in his memoir, Speer said, that was the moment I knew that the relationship I had with him had ended. So it shows that not everything got going because they knew the West were going to win. And people like Speer were thinking, well, let's do a separate deal with the Western allies, Britain and America, and then persuade the allies to turn on Stalin. Let's get into those last few days.

It's a date I find easy to remember. It's Hitler's birthday because it's my dad and my sister's birthday, April the 20th. Do they make an occasion of it? Yeah, they have a party. The champagne is drunk. They go up to the bombed right chancelier and they have champagne and a cake is brought out. So, yeah, they have a celebration of it.

People don't realize that he was 56 in 1945. He's quite young, actually. You know, and people talk about it. You know, Traudl Young gives a very good description of the party and says, you know, everyone was trying to put aside. Ava Brown was one of them who, she liked to have a good time. So she saw a party or drinking as a distraction from that. Hitler, of course, didn't drink.

But he did go to the party, stayed for a bit, and then he went back to the bunker. You're listening to Dan Snow's History, and we're talking about the end of Hitler. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. To be continued... friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So they have a party. What's the next big milestone? Would it be Hitler's marriage? It's a big week for him.

Yeah, yeah. They have a party. That's the 20th of April, which is the birthday. And then on the 28th or the 29th, he hears about Mussolini, that Mussolini is captured by partisans. And then he's strung up with his mistress, Clara Patacci, over a garage. So they're hung upside down in this garage.

They're already shot dead. And this sort of rattles Hitler. Hitler thinks, oh, I don't want to be out on the streets of Berlin being picked over by an angry mob. So this sort of convinces him that he's got to kill himself. It makes a big impact on him.

So he decides, first of all, to marry Ava Brown. It's a kind of compensator for all the privation she's had to suffer by being his partner, so to speak. So he decides to marry her, and they have a marriage ceremony, which is conducted by a local official. So he comes in, conducts the marriage ceremony, and then Hitler slips away during the ceremony to get his last will and testament typed by his secretary, Traudl Jung.

So he starts to dictate his last will and testament. It's in two parts. One's a personal testament. He says, I'm going to kill myself because I don't want to face the humiliation of defeat, he says, with my wife, Ava. He says, but also I'm going to give a political testament of what I want to happen. He appoints Grand Admiral Dönitz as the president in this will and testament. Of course, he's a naval man and he did

that because of his hatred of the military leadership by then he said you know they don't deserve to run this country he made a goebbels chancellor quiz question who's the shortest reigning german chancellor it's actually goebbels but the main thing about that testament i think which is interesting is that he doesn't take any responsibility for the second world war he says the second world war was forced on us by the worldwide jewish conspiracy and these people you know are trying to rule the earth and we tried to stop them he says we could have settled the Polish issue by negotiation, but the Poles wouldn't have it. He said, again, they were pushed on by the Jewish worldwide conspiracy. What's interesting

is that his anti-Semitism stays right there, front and center, right to the very end, which is very interesting that he sees that. And he even says that in the future, the task of the German people is to destroy Judaism if they want to prosper. So unrepentant, even with the Russian guns bringing down fire on the ground above him. Yeah, he's not willing to accept that he did anything wrong. He takes the last will and testament.

They've got married. Was there a party after the ceremony? Yeah, yeah, there was a party, yeah. They sort of hosted it in Hitler's living room. And again, there was champagne and a cake and, you know, it was very convivial and they're all there, you know. So Brown was very happy, yeah. And did Brown know that Hitler was about to conduct a murder-suicide?

Were they talking about it openly? yeah he told her yeah by the time he'd written his will and testament it had already been agreed with her because he says we have decided to kill ourselves in the will and testament so they're at the party they're all drinking Hitler signs his will at what

five in the morning something like that yeah she's shocked Traal Young said I couldn't believe it as he was saying thinking, Hitler signs his will at, what, five in the morning? Something like that, yeah. She's shocked. Traor Young said, I couldn't believe it. As he was saying, I thought he was going to take some responsibility for all the destruction that he'd wrought on the world, but he didn't. He stuck true. And he also stuck true to his decision, clearly,

to kill all of the world's Jews. How does he intend the will to have any force? Does he telegraph it out? Does he smuggle it out? Well, five copies are made and some brave person gets one copy out and ends up handing it personally to Grand Admiral Dernot, for example. So the will is actually carried out. So as you say, there are still messengers coming in and out of the bunker, and even though it's all pretty much on the front line now.

There's messengers coming in and out, you know, and it goes by that service, yeah, messenger service. The Soviets are now, what, 400 metres away? They've completely encircled the Reich Chancellery, so they're kind of all around the Reich Chancellery. It's just a matter of when they're going to go in. There's now negotiations opening up between the general staffs of the German army and the Red Army about, you know,

when are you going to surrender and stuff like that. So there's already discussions that this isn't going to last much longer. The people in the bunker say, you know, that the best we can last for two days, I think. Let's get to the afternoon of the 30th. Does he go through the bunker saying, you know, the best we can last for two days, I think. Let's get to the afternoon of the 30th. Does he go through the bunker saying goodbye? Is this quite a public moment? Yeah, he does.

He has a lunch, which is his favourite. It's like a pasta dish with tomato. He eats that. It's made for him and he likes it. He congratulates the cook and says, oh, that was was wonderful then he says goodbye to these secretaries as well the cook and then the three secretaries he says goodbye to them because he always has his meals with them you see he doesn't like to have his meals with military people he likes to have it with people who aren't connected to the military so he has the meal says goodbye to all the people there's a lot of crying magda gerbils

she gets hysterical in the corridor as he says goodbye says do you can't leave us my pure and all this and sort of somebody shepherds her away but that's the only sort of sign of emotion that goes on and then the last the people there's so many people in the bunker who testified later about what happened. They say that he then went into his room, his living room with Ava Brown. And then they heard a gunshot. Then they opened the door and he was dead with a bullet hole in his forehead. And she was just immobile and dead from the smell and a seed smell they thought she'd taken a cyanide capsule he'd apparently taken a cyanide capsule and shot himself it's unclear

whether he took the cyanide capsule and shot himself at the same time or just shot himself in the head because he didn't have the same smell around him that you would associate with a cyanide capsule and then of course these assistants they take him up as was pre-planned take him up to the right chancel garden and set a light to the two corpses they don't completely burn they're put in a shallow grave this is dan snow's history hits. More on the last few minutes of Hitler's life after this. Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings

and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. The other sort of suicide murder is so extraordinary, isn't it? The one that just appalls everyone who hears about it. Tell me about the Goebbels family. Well, obviously, you know, Goebbels becomes the chancellor for a day, but he decides that he's going to kill himself. But what's awful is that his wife Magda and him agree that their six children will be killed as well using cyanide.

Magda says that in a letter she's saying, I can't envisage my children living in a world without the fiora and i can't envisage living in that world either so i'm doing it to save their skin and gerbil says who wants to be the daughter or son of me because i'm going to be vilified he said so they'll have to have decades of shame so i'm going to save them from that so that's how they justify it and they're helped by a doctor the doctor goes in with magda and they give each of the children a cyanide capsule it's very sad really and they uh they are then taken out and they're seen actually that a photograph of them is taken.

They're all lying in the right chancel garden, not buried. And then Goebbels and Magda Goebbels, either they took the cyanide themselves or one of them did and the other one shot the other or whatever. We don't really know exactly. There's no sort of eyewitness who can say exactly what happened but their bodies were found so they definitely did take cyanide so those two died as well and their children died too extraordinary yeah so five daughters and one son all killed there what happened after after these bodies were laid out in the garden of the Reich Chancellery?

What happened to everyone else? When Hitler and Goebbels were dead, did everyone just sort of, every man for himself? Bormann tried to escape. He tried to escape. Some people said he did escape to South America. But in 1973, a corpse was found and later DNA was attached to the corpse showing that boorman had died

escaping from the right chancel the gestapo official heinrich muller he left the bunker but we never heard of him again so he obviously was killed some of them committed suicide some of the army officers took their own life quite quite a large number actually. And ordinary individuals took their own life as well. There's a local town where maybe about 1,500 people killed themselves. These were just ordinary people from the town. So the surrender took place on the 1st of May. So the day after Hitler's death, the surrender started to open. I think on the 2st of May, so the day after Hitler's death, the surrender started to open. I think on the 2nd of May, it was finalized and that was it. That was the kind of end of the military conflict.

Although, Dönitz carried on with the war for a week. He was trying to find out if he could get a separate peace for germany at the expense of the soviet union so through the 30th and the first i suppose people are just slipping out of the bunker and just trying their luck trying to escape yeah trowel young she goes out as well she escapes and she ends up in munich so it shows that some of them got out and did get away do you have an soviet account of when they entered those grounds and storming through that bunker must have been just what a moment for those soviet troops yeah we've got accounts of the soviet soldiers who went in and they saw the photographs as well

they went into his living room and stuff and photographed the settee chaise lounge which has got some blood on it where Hitler was shot and so on. So they did film the bunker. They took souvenirs as well. So you've got like Red Army men with busts of Hitler under their arm, photographs of things like that. They knew that Hitler had committed suicide, did they? Did they try and recover his body, his remains?

They did recover those charred remains. The Soviets did recover them. And they did an autopsy on them. So that exists, the autopsy. They cut out his jaw. So they cut out above and below his jaw. And through that, because that survived, his dentist, Hitler's dentist, looked at these jaws and said, yeah, that's Hitler.

Because he had a strange dentistry. He was always getting silver fillings put in and gold teeth replacing his other one. And he had a dental plate, a very distinctive dental plate on the bottom, like a bridge that held together a lot of his teeth as well. So the dental records are pretty good and they were used. Because what you can remember is there was three different investigations into Hitler's death. There was the Red Army Soviet investigation, which involved these autopsies and stuff like that.

There was also a British-led investigation by Hugh Trevor Roper, and he interviewed every single person who was in the bunker at the time. There's no forensic evidence in Trevor Roper's report. There is forensic evidence in the Soviet autopsy, which I mentioned the dental records is the main way of identifying Hitler. Records is the main way of identifying Hitler. And in 1944, Hitler had agreed to have an X-ray taken of his head after the bomb plot. So they were able to take that X-ray of his head

and compare it to the dental plate that they cut out of his mouth, the Soviets at the end of the war. Then there was, you know, if you want more, you know, you've got these people who go for conspiracy theories they always ignore things like this there was a four-year investigation by the state of bavaria into hitler's death and they went through everything and the dentists gave evidence of that everyone in the bunker gave evidence of that. Everyone in the bunker gave evidence of that. All of the evidence of the eyewitness accounts was taken and so on. And they concluded in 1956, they said Hitler died in the bunker by a single shot to his head, self-inflicted. And that Ava Brown, she died

with cyanide. So that was what that concluded. And that was a four-year investigation. And obviously, there were people who said that Hitler was alive. You know, the CIA would report. It's a bit like Elvis. We've seen Elvis down on Chippy and all that. It's a bit like that, really. None of these CIA reports have got any validity. They're all sort of, you know, people giving reports,

and I saw Hitler in the pub or something. But none of them have got any validity. They're all sort of, you know, people giving reports saying I saw Hitler in the pub or something, but none of them have got any validity. It's like sort of, yes, people did say I saw Hitler in Argentina, right? People did report that to the CIA, but it was never verified. He was never found. So I think, you know, we can just ignore that. So within hours, Berlin has fallen to the Soviets. The war lasts another week. Yeah. As we say, that's why we're having VE Day, isn't it? On the 8th. On the 7th, they surrendered to the British and the Americans. A Soviet representative was there. The Allies insisted that the armies surrendered because they didn't want to legitimize the regime of Dönitz.

So they didn't want to legitimize that. So he said, no, we don't want him to sign the surrender. We don't even agree that that's a legitimate government. We want the army, armed forces, to sign the surrender. So they signed the surrender in a place called reams on the 7th and on the 8th we announced ve day the end of things but it wasn't all over then they actually have a signing in berlin which took place sometime after midnight on the 9th so you've got two different celebrations we celebrate ve day on the 8th for the signing on the 7th.

And the Soviet Union and Russia, they celebrate on the 9th. It's called Victory Day and they do that on the 9th. So there's a little bit of confusion at the end. Frank, obviously the last will and testament, a lot of it is sort of a political screed, justifying himself, talking about the future and the past.

There is also the political arrangements for the new Nazi regime that only lasts a week. Is there anything else in there? Is there anything else that endured? Did Hitler get his way on anything? No, not much endures. You know, the Third Reich is destroyed, isn't it, completely. isn't it? And completely. Whether the German people felt the same, the Americans did opinion polls in 1940s, late 1940s. And they found that something like 53% of the German people thought Nazism was a good thing. It was just badly applied. And so, you know, there was a lingering

love of Hitler, the Hitler youth. I mean, I've talked to some Hitler youth, well, many years ago now, who survived and they're still, you know, my Fiora, they're definitely still loyal to Hitler. And we know about the Odessa file, don't we, that these SS men have these periodic meetings where they celebrated Hitler. But in a sense, the Third Reich is then blotted out of history, isn't it? It's sort of destroyed. Most Germans then agree that they've got to become a democracy. Some people said they were forced to be free, but Germany has been a functioning democracy since 1949. They've got laws that prevent democracy being overthrown. Some of the most stringent laws are under the German constitution. It'd be far easier to overthrow America or Britain than it would to overthrow democracy in Germany, which is a good thing.

Yes, but amazing that despite the absolute catastrophe that Hitler inflicted upon the people of the world, particularly the people of Germany, that it didn't ruin his reputation. The manner of his death, the manner of the collapse of the German Empire didn't actually blacken his name with large chunks of the German population. Yeah, that's true. There are neo-Nazis who support Hitler,

but you couldn't say he's been rehabilitated. And let's hope his master plan that in a hundred years time, the manner of his death would inspire a new generation of Nazis. Let's hope that also does not come to pass like the rest of his last will and testament. Frank, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again. You're an absolute legend. Tell everyone about your biographies of Hitler. for coming on the podcast again. You're an absolute legend. Tell everyone about your biographies of Hitler. Well, I've written a series called The Hitler Years, and it covers German history from 1918 through to 1945. And there's a fourth volume coming out in November, The Hitler Years, Holocaust, 1933 to 1945. So that concentrates on the Holocaust.

So through those four books, you've got a complete history of Germany from 1918 to 1945. Great stuff, Frank. Thanks so much for coming back on the podcast. We're going to talk to you again soon, I'm sure. I hope so. Take care. it. you