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The Seventh Secret is a 1986[ citation needed ] novel by Irving Wallace using an alternate history of Adolf Hitler having survived World War II.
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The Seventh Secret is a 1986[ citation needed ] novel by Irving Wallace using an alternate history of Adolf Hitler having survived World War II.
Oxford historian Harrison Ashcroft, preparing to publish his biography of Adolf Hitler entitled Herr Hitler along with his daughter Emily Ashcroft, receives a letter from a stranger in West Berlin informing them that the book could be wrong if published with the popular version of Hitler's suicide as its end. The stranger even writes that he can prove that the corpses shown in the April 30, 1945 photos of Führerbunker were not of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun.
Intrigued by this information, Harrison Ashcroft travels to West Berlin. Soon after a short meeting with the informant, Harrison Ashcroft calls a press conference and reveals that he doubts Hitler would have escaped the war and would be hiding under a false name. He announces his intention to excavate the graves of Hitler and Eva on the Soviet side of Berlin. Only seconds after this press conference, he is killed in a freak truck accident which is witnessed by a press reporter. This press reporter writes to Emily Ashcroft telling her that it was murder not an accident.
With the intention of finding why her father was killed, Emily comes to West Berlin and starts investigating and is joined by three other people coming with their own reasons to resolve the mystery of Hitler's death. These are American architect Rex Foster, Soviet museum curator Neil Kirvov, and Jerusalem Post reporter Tovah Levine. Rex plans to publish a book of surviving Third Reich buildings and he is missing the seven mystery buildings built during the final days of the war in Germany. Neil Kirvov is a would-be collector of Hitler's art and possesses a valid Hitler oil painting which he wants to display in his museum's exhibition. He wants someone to validate the painting as Hitler's and also to find the provenance of the painting. Tovah is in fact a Mossad agent searching for surviving Nazis.
Emily Ashcroft, Kirvov, Foster and Levine combine their efforts and reach an incredible discovery. Kirvov finds a painting that is supposed to be an authentic painting by Hitler, and concludes that the real Adolf Hitler might still be alive. The painting depicting a Nazi building shows the image of a renovation dated from 1952. How could this supposedly authentic Hitler painting show the building as it was seven years after his supposed death?
Levine helps the four of them by discovering that Hitler and Eva Braun used body doubles to attend functions in their place and who resembled them very closely. Could the Hitler and Eva doubles have been the ones who really died in the bunker? But Levine disappears from the Cafe Wolf, which had originally been Eva Braun's photo studio.
Rex discovers through a former Nazi bunker architect that Hitler had seven bunkers, though only six were known. He discovers that the seventh bunker adjoins the bunker in which Hitler supposedly died. He searches for a secret passage that leads from the Hitler bedroom to a seventh bunker in a hidden passage previously built by Jewish slaves (who were later killed by Hitler). As Foster finds and goes through the secret passage to the seventh bunker where Emily Ashcroft is held captive; the bunker is located directly beneath the Cafe Wolf. Eva Braun is still alive and sleeping in the adjacent room. Rex asks Emily to escape, and he later drugs Eva (who is living under the name Evelyn Hoffman) with a truth drug. Braun admits that she and Hitler used their doubles at the time of their claimed death, and had been living in this bunker, escaping the Soviet Red Army after they raided the bunker complex. Eva stated the real Hitler died in 1963, and since that time she had been leading the over fifty Nazis left in the secret bunker and that they would rise once again. This would take place when the Nazis were strong enough and after the Americans and Soviets destroyed each other.
Eva Braun also revealed the secret that she and Hitler had a child before he died. Hitler did not want his daughter to rot in the bunker, so he bribed their previous maid to take care of the daughter as her own. The daughter's name was Klara Feigbig; she was already married and is pregnant with Hitler's grandchild, but she has no idea about her actual parentage and lives a peaceful life. Eva also reveals that the police chief, Wolfgang Schmidt, who appeared to be a trusted anti-Nazi was actually one of Hitler's secret SS guards and was to take over as leader when Nazi Germany was reestablished.
After these revelations, Foster goes to Levine, who relays them to her superior, Chaim Goldman. He orders his subordinates to poison the bunker with Zyklon-B (the gas used by the Nazis to kill inmates of the concentration camps), killing Schmidt and the remaining Nazis. Eva Braun escapes to daughter Klara's flat and reveals the truth to her, who poisons herself with cyanide rather than run away with her mother.
The Führerbunker was an air raid shelter located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex constructed in two phases in 1936 and 1944. It was the last of the Führer Headquarters (Führerhauptquartiere) used by Adolf Hitler during World War II.
Adolf Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, committed suicide via a gunshot to the head on 30 April 1945 in the Führerbunker in Berlin after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin, which led to the end of World War II in Europe. Eva Braun, his wife of one day, also committed suicide by cyanide poisoning. In accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery garden, where they were doused in petrol and burned. The news of Hitler's death was announced on German radio the next day, 1 May.
Blondi was Adolf Hitler's German Shepherd, a gift as a puppy from Martin Bormann in 1941. Hitler kept Blondi even after his move into the Führerbunker located underneath the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 16 January 1945.
Although there is no evidence that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler used look-alikes as political decoys during his life, some stories propagated c. 1939–1945 assert his death and replacement with an imposter. Following Hitler's suicide during the Battle of Berlin, the Soviet Union claimed to discover a number of bodies resembling him, incepting disinformation efforts. Only Hitler's dental remains were confirmed, probably due to the cremation of his body.
Heinz Linge was a German SS officer who served as a valet for the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, and became known for his close personal proximity to historical events. Linge was present in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945, when Hitler committed suicide. Linge's ten-year service to Hitler ended at that time. In the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe, Linge spent ten years in Soviet captivity.
The Bunker, also published as The Berlin Bunker, is a 1975 account, written by American journalist James P. O'Donnell and German journalist Uwe Bahnsen, as to the history of the Führerbunker in 1945, as well as the last days of German dictator Adolf Hitler. The English edition was first published in 1978. Unlike other accounts O'Donnell focused considerable time on other, less-famous, residents of the bunker complex. Additionally, unlike the more academic works by historians, the book takes a journalistic approach. The book was later used as the basis for a 1981 CBS television film of the same name.
Rochus Misch was a German Oberscharführer (sergeant) in the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). He was badly wounded during the Polish campaign during the first month of World War II in Europe. After recovering, from 1940 to April 1945, he served in the Führerbegleitkommando as a bodyguard, courier, and telephone operator for German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Otto Günsche was a mid-ranking officer in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a member of the SS Division Leibstandarte before he became Adolf Hitler's personal adjutant. Günsche was taken prisoner by soldiers of the Red Army in Berlin on 2 May 1945. After being held in various prisons and labour camps in the Soviet Union, he was released from Bautzen Penitentiary on 2 May 1956.
Erich Kempka was a member of the SS in Nazi Germany who served as Adolf Hitler's primary chauffeur from 1936 to April 1945. He was present in the area of the Reich Chancellery on 30 April 1945, when Hitler shot himself in the Führerbunker. Kempka delivered the petrol to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where the remains of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned.
Gerda Christian, nicknamed "Dara", was one of Adolf Hitler's private secretaries before and during World War II.
Johannes Hentschel was a master electro-mechanic for German dictator Adolf Hitler's apartments in the Reich Chancellery. He also served in the same capacity in Hitler's Führerbunker in 1945. He surrendered to Soviet Red Army soldiers on 2 May 1945.
Eva Anna Paula Hitler was a German photographer who was the longtime companion and briefly the wife of Adolf Hitler. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was a 17-year-old assistant and model for his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. She began seeing Hitler often about two years later.
The Bunker is a 1981 American made-for-television historical war film produced by Time-Life Productions based on the 1975 book The Bunker by James P. O'Donnell.
Walter Wagner was the notary who married Adolf Hitler to Eva Braun in the Führerbunker on 29 April 1945.
Else Krüger was Martin Bormann's secretary from the end of 1942 until 1 May 1945. She was born in Hamburg-Altona.
James Preston O'Donnell was an American author and journalist.
The Berkut is a 1987 secret history novel by Joseph Heywood in which Adolf Hitler survives World War II. It is set in the period immediately after the fall of The Third Reich. This book pits a German colonel and a Russian soldier from a secret organization against each other. The German, Günter Brumm, has been given orders to safely get the Führer out of Germany with the remaining resources of the Reich at his disposal, while Vasily Petrov, the Russian, has been given orders by Joseph Stalin to capture Hitler with the full resources of the Soviet Union at his disposal. In essence, Hitler says "Get me out of Germany, alive", while Stalin says, "Get me Hitler, alive." The book explores Brumm and Petrov pursuing their goals.
The Hitler family comprises the relatives and ancestors of Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party, who was the dictator of Germany, holding the title Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state as Führer und Reichskanzler from 1934 to 1945. Adolf Hitler had a central role in the rise of Nazism in Germany, provoking the start of World War II, and holding ultimate responsibility for the deaths of many millions of people during the Holocaust.
Ewald Lindloff was a Waffen-SS officer during World War II, who was present in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945, when Hitler committed suicide. He was placed in charge of disposing of Hitler's remains. Lindloff was later killed during the break-out on 2 May 1945 while crossing the Weidendammer Bridge under heavy fire in Berlin.
Conspiracy theories about the death of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, contradict the accepted fact that he committed suicide in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. Stemming from a campaign of Soviet disinformation, most of these theories hold that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, survived and escaped from Berlin, with some asserting that he went to South America. In the post-war years, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) investigated some of the reports, without lending them credence. The 2009 revelation that a skull in the Soviet archives long (dubiously) claimed to be Hitler's actually belonged to a woman has helped fuel conspiracy theories.