All members of Hitler’s household who had been identified were held in the Reich Institute for the Blind, on the Oranienstrasse. One after another they were interrogated by a major known to history only as Bystrov. Stalin was so desperate for news that a general from the N.K.V.D., the K.G.B.’s predecessor, was sent to supervise the interrogations. He was given a secure line with a scrambler so that he could report back to Moscow after each interview.

Image Credit... Ruth Gwily

On May 5, Smersh operatives finally discovered Hitler’s body along with that of Eva Braun in the chancellery garden; the two corpses had been doused in gasoline and set on fire by SS aides, in accordance with Hitler’s orders, and then buried in a shell crater. The Soviets smuggled the remains to an improvised morgue in Buch, a suburb of Berlin. Hitler’s body was too badly burned to be recognizable, so the jaws were removed since they offered the best means of identification. The assistant to Hitler’s dentist was tracked down and brought to examine them.

Yelena Rzhevskaya, the interpreter with the Smersh group, later recounted how on the evening of May 8, when Soviet troops prepared to celebrate the German surrender, she was given a box covered in red satin and told to guard it with her life. She described it as “the sort used for cheap jewelry.” The box held Hitler’s jaws. Rzhevskaya was given it because, as a woman, she was considered less likely to get drunk that night and lose it.

The skull and the jaws are still separate because Smersh hung on to its precious evidence. The cranium, recovered later, allegedly at the same site, was taken by the N.K.V.D., and that is why it has been in the State Archive of the Russian Federation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The jaws are almost certainly still held in the Lubyanka, the Moscow headquarters of the Russian secret police, along with other prizes retrieved by Smersh from the garden, like Hitler’s Nazi party badge, which was taken from the body of Magda Goebbels.

Although we have been subjected over the last few months to a barrage of disinformation from the Russians about the start of World War II  including attempts to blame the Poles and the British for its outbreak  I would tend to believe their version in the case of its ending. Even if the cranium is not Hitler’s but some unknown woman’s, the jaws are almost certainly genuine. The Russians could end speculation and ridiculous conspiracy theories by allowing an international team to carry out DNA tests on them.