The Death of Adolf Hitler

The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives is a 1968 book by Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski, who served as an interpreter in the Battle of Berlin. The book gives details of the purported Soviet autopsies of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, their children, and General Hans Krebs. Each of these individuals are recorded as having died by cyanide poisoning, contrary to the conclusion of Western scholars that Hitler died by a suicide gunshot.

The book's release was preceded by many contrary reports about Hitler's death, including from commonly self-contradictory (and tortured) eyewitnesses. The Soviets implied that the body of an apparent double belonged to Hitler, that such a body was found with Hitler's dental remains (perhaps killed by cyanide), and that the dictator used these means to fake his death and escape Berlin. Some Western authors suggested that the lack of a body was due to its burning. Much of the information presented in the book about Hitler's cause of death (e.g. poisoning or a coup de grâce) has been discredited, even by the author, as propaganda. The only Soviet forensic description accepted by Western sources is that of Hitler's dental remains, photographs of which were novelly published via the book.