In 1945, after everyone believed World War II was over, Joseph Stalin started rumors that Adolf Hitler hadn’t actually died in Berlin but had escaped to freedom through an underground bunker. One man decided to squash these rumors by filming interviews with the people who had been with him until the end. Those interviews, lost for decades, will now be shown for the first time to the English-speaking world on November 16 in the Smithsonian Channel’s program, The Day Hitler Died.
Despite testimony at the Nuremberg Trials and official reports from various government officials, rumors that Hitler had escaped held weight with many around the world, especially as Stalin fueled them. Michael Musmanno, a Navy attorney at one of the Nuremberg Trials, determined to put a stop to the rumors. It took him over two years, but Musmanno successfully interviewed 22 survivors, including Traudl Junge, Hilter’s personal secretary; press secretary Heinz Lorenz; Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann; Eric Kempta, Hitler’s personal driver; Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, a military general and Hitler’s aide-de-camp, and over a dozen others close to the Führer. Each interview gives a glimpse into the erratic dictator’s mind, jumping from elation at the news that President Franklin Roosevelt had died, to sinking depression when his generals refused to engage in a suicide mission against the Allies. That depression permeated the stronghold and, as Von Loringhoven told Musmanno, “The bunker became a mortuary and the people in it living corpses.”
Musmanno ultimately wrote a book called Ten Days to Die, which he based on the interviews and published in 1950. He returned to his native Pennsylvania and later became one of the state’s Supreme Court Justices. All the while this incredible footage remained untouched in storage. When he died, the film and his personal papers went to two of his nephews who gave them at a local Catholic school where Musmanno, who was lauded as a local hero, could be remembered. The school was trying to preserve the film and papers when Spiegel, a German production company, found out about the footage. Spiegel used the footage to create the 2010 documentary Witnesses of Doom: The Lost Interviews. That, however, only aired in Germany. Delayed because of rights agreement issues on the film footage, The Day Hitler Died will be the first time people outside of Germany have heard the interviews.
If you ever wanted a glimpse into the last few days of Adolf Hitler’s life, make sure to check it out. And, if you believe Hitler escaped, as some still do, perhaps this footage will convince you that, as Musmanno concludes in the documentary, “There can be no doubt that Adolf Hitler, the Führer of Germany, the master criminal of the world, the greatest gangster who ever disgraced the human race, is dead.”