It wasn’t immediately clear what had happened on April 30, 1945. This much the world knew: Adolf Hitler was gone, one way or another.

The week after, TIME ran a list of his “many deaths,” the theories of his survival or defeat. Some said he had actually been killed the year before. Some said he was on his way to Japan. One captured Nazi actually got it right, telling the world that Hitler, along with his wife, had committed suicide.

At the time, the lack of a body made many on the Allied side of WWII very suspicious about the reports of suicide. Also, reports of Nazi submarines making their way to Argentina caused even more stories to unravel. Truth is, a ton of weird stuff happened at the end of WWII, especially revolving around the fall of the Nazi party and the death of Adolph Hitler.

Some wonder, did this dictator fake his own death and escape to somewhere to live out the rest of his life in hiding?