Hunting Hitler
By Jerome Corsi
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published In: New York City, NY
Date: 2014
Pgs: 138

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
If Hitler had died on April 30, 1945, the facts surrounding his death should have been easy to prove...Doesn’t the explanation that the Soviets absconded back to Moscow with Hitler’s remains before the United States had a chance to demand proof that the Fuhrer was dead seem a little too convenient? Historically, it appears not only did Stalin and the Russians doubt Hitler was dead, but so did US General Dwight D. Eisenhower. And in 2009, DNA testing proved the skull the Russians had been claiming was Hitler’s since the end of the war was actually that of a forty year old woman. The truth is that when the Russians entered Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were gone. Their bodies were never found. Exactly what happened to them on April 30, 1945, has long remained a mystery...

Genre:
nonfiction, conspiracy theory, hitler, ww2, world war 2, nazis, history

Why this book:
The claim of “new scientific evidence that Hitler escaped Nazi Germany” on the cover sucked me in.

This Story is About:
Shoddy investigative work more in service of propaganda than in search of the truth. That’s the story of both the Allied and Soviet investigations into what happened. There was a whole lot of bending the truth to the narrative instead of letting the truth drive the narrative. What was always a meager suspicion on my part is a strong feeling now.

Favorite Character:
N/A

Least Favorite Character:
Trevor-Roper who seemed more interested in writing a book and having it be dramatic than in doing his job and investigating like the intelligence officer that he was purported to be at the time.

Peron and Evita for their complicity in the escapes of many of the Nazis along with the Roman Catholic Cardinals of Argentina in that era..

Character I Most Identified With:
N/A

The Feel:
You get the feel early on that there was a lot of propaganda trying to tell a good story instead of a real search for the truth.

Settings:
Berlin; Moscow; Washington DC; Argentina; Vatican City; Switzerland

Pacing:
This documentary is very well paced.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
N/A

Last Page Sound:
The author threw away the good will he had built up with me in the close when his politics came to the fore whereas the majority of this book relied on speculation on a strong foundation of fact.

I buy it. Hitler, at least, didn’t die in that bunker in the ways that the various histories claim. He may have died somewhere else during the escape or as an older man in Argentina. Either way he’s dead today. Still...I wonder.

Author Assessment:
My politics and the author’s don’t line up. But I won’t hold that against him if he delivers a good and interesting read.

Editorial Assessment:
Well edited. The prose is kept punchy and direct.

I wish the editor had lured him away from the political statement in the closing paragraphs.

Did the Book Cover Reflect the Story:
A shattered swastika with Hitler’s face inside the broken cross.

Hmm Moments:
Stalin and Eisenhower, neither one, believing that Hitler was dead.

The main guy who wrote the Allied version of the accepted story didn’t have access to all the witnesses that he claimed to quote and he is the same guy who later in life falsely authenticated The Hitler Diaries.

The dental plates that the Russians used for their identification. And the question of whether their investigators allowed the dental witnesses who had handled Hitler and Eva Braun’s teeth to see the plates and base their findings on their memory rather than having them produce at least a drawing of what they remembered and then compare that to the plates the Russian authorities had recovered from the suspect corpses.

Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur and one of the purported witnesses that much of the little that is “known” about those days is based on, admitted in a 1974 interview that in those 1945 interrogations he told investigators what they wanted to hear. This admission throws Hugh-Roper’s “definitive” and Btitish propaganda backed book The Last Days of Hitler is thrown into severe doubt due to Kempka being one of his primary sources.

Hugh Thomas’s assertion that “some of these eyewitness accounts are confused, some are deliberately duplicitous; very few are unchanged.”

The father of Eva Braun’s brother-in-law received a message from his son after he was supposedly shot for treason. The message told him that his son and the Furher had left Berlin.

J. Edgar Hoover following up on a report through a US Counter Intelligence Corps from Austria that Hitler was in the company of the Eichhorn family in Argentina in the area of a farm and spa called La Falda informed the US embassy in Buenos Aries to be on the look out for the family and put the embassy on alert.

Dulles and the nascent CIA’s complicity with the escaping Nazis. Same with the banks both in Switzerland and abroad; in Argentina, the US, and around the world.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
instant classic, real classic, real genre classic, really good book, glad I read it, it’s alright, meh!, why did I read this, not as good as I was lead to believe

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
I’m sure this will show up as a documentary on Discovery, History Channel, etc

Casting call:
N/A

Would recommend to:
history buffs, conspiracy theorists, militarists, genre fans ( )

Hunting Hitler is exactly what the synopsis states it to be. It is nothing more than a detailed examination of all of the evidence put forth by the Germans and by the Allies proclaiming the double suicide of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler. Written in a narrative fashion, Dr. Corsi explores one piece of evidence per chapter, giving each case a thorough evaluation on its plausibility, especially in the context of other evidence gathered. He takes the driest evidence and gives it a life of its own through historical context.

As one would imagine given its timeliness, Dr. Corsi pays particular attention to the DNA discovery in 2009 but does not limit his review to that event. He also focuses on the multiple contradictions in the alleged eyewitnesses to the events, declassified documents discussing Nazi defections to Brazil, as well as the mysterious and unsolved routes taken by various U-Boats before they surrendered, also in Brazil. Of particular interest is the length Hitler’s secretary went to distribute the Nazi wealth among various businesses and banks to get it out of Germany should the war not end in their favor. Unbelievably, this massive export of funds and other valuables started as early as 1942 and ended up involving some of the most well-respected banks and companies in existence even today.

What emerges is a clear understanding that while one will never definitively know Hitler’s fate on 30 April 1945, there is too much evidence that points to Hitler’s escape from Germany rather than his suicide. Dr. Corsi presents the idea that the suicide story is nothing more than a fabrication by the Allies to further embarrass the defeated Germans. That there is much more to the story than the history books state, there is no doubt. Hunting Hitler presents a very intriguing hypothesis that could not only rewrite the history books but also force people to rethink the complexity of the Nazi regime and its survival.