The Hunt for Hitler: How the Making of a Documentary Revealed the True Story of the Führer’s Fate

Why did the Soviet Union hide the facts surrounding the death of Adolf Hitler at the end of the Second World War? Australian documentary-producer Cyril Jones provides a fascinating insight into how one woman had the courage to take on the Soviet bureaucracy to get the truth to the West, and how his ground-breaking documentary on the Führer’s death enabled her to do it. Only slowly and reluctantly did the Soviets let the light in on the events which occurred in bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin in 1945; it was Elena Rzhevskaya who prised open the archival vault. Rzhevskaya was a Russian military translator who was the first to speak with those still alive in the bunker within minutes of Soviet soldiers taking control of it. Her first words to them was: ‘Where is Hitler?’ Told that he was dead and his body set alight, she demanded to know where his body was. She then set about unravelling the mystery of the death of the Führer, but as soon as she discovered the whole story Soviet leader Josef Stalin instructed her to ‘keep her mouth shut’. He wanted to keep the secret to himself. Because of that the Western Allies were fed lies, it even being suggested that Hitler might still be alive. It took another twenty years of digging for the truth to come out. Rzhevskaya herself was responsible for that, having dedicated herself to lifting the veil of secrecy and ensuring the world knew of Stalin’s duplicity. In this book Cyril Jones reveals how he managed to get previously unseen film footage from the Soviet and Russian archives, material which helped reveal the facts. The author also details interviews with Elena Rzhevskaya which shows the paths she took to tell the real story. The Hunt for Hitler expands upon our understanding of those momentous days following the end of the Second World War and provides an absorbing insight into the background surrounding the fate of Hitler’s body as the chilling blast of the Cold War swept across Europe.