Adolf Hitler
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Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot. During the night of 28 April, Wenck reported that his Twelfth Army had been forced back along the entire front. He noted that no further attacks towards Berlin were possible. General Alfred Jodl (Supreme Army Command) did not provide this information to Hans Krebs in Berlin until early in the morning of 30 April. On 29 April, Hitler dictated his will and political statement to his private secretary, Traudl Junge. Hans Krebs, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann witnessed and signed this last will and testament of Adolf Hitler. On the same day, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 April, which is presumed to have increased his determination to avoid capture. On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself in the temple with a Walther PPK while simultaneously biting into a cyanide capsule. Hitler had at various times in the past contemplated suicide, and the Walther was the same pistol that his niece, Geli Raubal had used in her suicide. Hitler's body and that of Eva Braun were put in a bomb crater, doused in gasoline by SS Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche and other Führerbunker aides, and cremated as the Red Army advanced and shelling continued. On 2 May, Berlin surrendered. In the postwar years there were conflicting reports about what happened to Hitler's remains. After the fall of the Soviet Union, records found in the Soviet archives revealed that the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, the six
Goebbels children, General Hans Krebs and Hitler's dogs, were collected, moved and secretly buried in graves near Rathenow in Brandenburg. In 1970, the remains were disinterred, cremated and scattered in the Elbe River by the Soviets. According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Hitler's body. The authenticity of the skull has been challenged by historians and researchers. In fact, DNA analysis conducted in 2009 showed the skull fragment to be that of a woman, and analysis of the sutures between the skull plates indicated an age between 20 and 40 years old at the time of death. Hitler, the Nazi Party and the results of Nazism are typically regarded as gravely immoral. Historians, philosophers, and politicians have often applied the word evil in both a secular and a religious sense. Historical and cultural portrayals of Hitler in the west are overwhelmingly condemnatory. The display of swastikas or other Nazi symbols is prohibited in Germany and Austria. Holocaust denial is also prohibited in both countries. Outside of Hitler's birthplace in Braunau am Inn, Austria, the Memorial Stone Against War and Fascism is engraved with the following message: Loosely translated it reads: "For peace, freedom // and democracy // never again fascism // millions of dead remind [us]"
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