The topic was a bit off-beat, but enjoyed this interview with Caroline Sharples. There is so much greatness on the R&R channel! Thank you!

That was a fascinating discussion. Thank you all

Thank you, this podcast is doing a valuable service to provide form and structure to the chaos of the podcast world.. fighting misinformation one person at a time I suppose!

Fascinating episode. Thanks to Katja, Chris and Caroline.

When Ernst Gombrich who was monitoring German broadcasts for the BBC? Heard the addagio the second movement from the seventh Symphony of Bruckner written in memory of Wagner he realised that it would proceed the announcement of Hitler’s death. He was a great art historian so understood symbolism and he also had a deep knowledge and love of music.

I'm a dental assistant.  I attended a seminar once on forensic dentistry, and the identification of Hitler's remains was featured in presentation.  He had very idiosyncratic work done.  Must have been a hard man to work on, too.  Imagine not getting the Fuhrer numb enough!

A fascinating discussion. Certainly puts to bed the escape to Argentina by submarine theory.

In the 1932 election he was holding a glove to stop the Parkinson’s tremor in his right hand. So he had Parkinson’s back then. Shows why he was so keen to get things done and fast as he knew his time was limited.

When I was stationed with the US military in West Germany in the 1980’s I had the opportunity to meet SS Colonel Max Wunsche, Hitler’s SS adjutant from 1938-40 and later commander of the 12th SS Pz Regiment of the 12th SS Pz Division in the Normandy campaign in 1944 and who survived the war into old age. Long story of chance as to how that came about, but I found him to be a fascinating character. Up until then I had never expected to meet anyone who had lived and worked at the absolute center of power in Nazi Germany, and who had commanded and fought at his level in on the German side in Normandy. I can only speculate if the post war years of raising a family and his subsequent financial success as a business manager mellowed him in any way…probably so, but he never came across as a stereotype fanatic, at least not in our conversations. He was actually pretty nuanced and circumspect when discussing his time and proximity to Hitler. As adjutant he watched the New Reich Chancellery being built throughout 1938 and worked in the building in the adjutant staff office next to Hitler’s. Wunsche had been POW in England for eight months by the end of the war, having been captured late in the Normandy campaign. And although he had no firsthand knowledge of events in the bunker, he had no doubts that Hitler took his own life, corroborated by many of the survivors whom he knew and reconnected with after the war.

In terms of “Did Hitler really die in the bunker”, the Gettysburg Museum put this to bed. They had a section of the couch with Hitlers blood on it DNA tested compared with other relatives of Hitler.

Tge language used to describe the disposal of the body of Hitler is suitably bathetic! Well done!

Top pod. Caroline’s comprehensive demolition of all the nonsense was top notch. Years ago i read books written by Traudl Junge, Joachim Fest, and more recently Luke Daly-Groves so I have long been sure Hitler was dead. Full disclosure I am a huge fan of Downfall, saw it in the cinema. I think it displaced Das Boot as the most successful German language film in the UK. I must get Caroline’s book.

Caroline was a wonderful guest. Her look and her accent remind me a lot of my British stepmother (St. Albans).
Basically, he who must not be named went out the way he had to, and as far as I'm concerned, it proves that he knew what he was doing was wrong. Pretty much the whole lot of them took the coward's way out.
Moral of the story: If you are hanging out with a group of people and all of you are carrying cyanide capsules on your person, "just in case", you may want to re-examine some of the decisions you've been making and find a new group of friends.

As soon as Berlin fell the allies should have crushed the Bolsheviks. They were the real monsters.

Swansong 1945 by Walter Kempowski  covers this period in great detail.

There was of course the recent and highly controversial TV show that analysed Hitler's DNA, based on blood stains that an American representative had found on fabric on the sofa on which Hitler had killed himself in the bunker.  The DNA extracted was subsequently verified to have been Hitler's by genetic analysis and comparison with his relatives' DNA. Their conclusions were that his genetics pointed strongly to Hitler possibly being neurodivergent, with his DNA having an exceptionally high "polygenic risk" score for conditions including bi polar, ADHD, autism, schizophrenia and depression (the conditions are often linked by similar genetics). His genetics also strongly pointed to a propensity for antisocial behaviour. They also found that he did indeed have the genetics for Kallmann Syndrome and Congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism.

How the news of Hitler's death was received very much depended on personal attitude and relation to the regime and individual perception of Hitler in comparison to eg. other high-ranking members of the regime.
Even during the 1970ies and early 1980ies I encountered a few people who were defending Hitler blaming others for crimes, injustices or for losing the war. Somehow there seemed to be cult about Hitler within the cult about Nazi ideology.

When Hitler's death was announced most people were receiving the news as a rather sure sign that the war was about to end within a few days or weeks. While fighting continued more and more towns and villages at least tried to surrender to approaching allied forces. But circumstances and conditions could be quite difficult depending on remaining support for the regime within civilian population or armed forces and organisations of the regime.

A most interesting discussion! Well done.
Has there ever been any DNA analysis of the remains?

Excellent episode. With a superb guest.
Regarding the wide spread meme. I never really got the chill out of it like others obviously did. Might be a language thing.
To me the most chilling scene and therefore the accumulation of this dictatorial regime is the scene when Magda Göbbels poisons her own children. And there not even a question about it.The silence in the scene is deafening. Just like it was  by the majority of the population, the church and other nations. MS Louis springs to mind.
And for the life of me I don't understand, why Hitler to an unfortunately growing number is somehow an idole. In the end he was a coward.
Best Regards, Eva❤

Fantastic! By the way, what about the theory of Hitler's corpse being surreptitiously switched and disappeared by the Nazis, so that Hitler himself could not be meat-hooked like Mussolini? Mark Felton talked about it.
I'll be reading Dr Sharples' book!