The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

INTRODUCTION3plan with the use of a double? Fegelein had left the bunker but protestedwhen captured by an SS search party that he planned to return. He waslater shot by a firing squad in the chancellery garden for desertion. Yet,days earlier, Hitler had urged others in the bunker to flee. “Get out! Getout!” he cried. “Go to South Germany. I’ll stay here. It is all over anyhow.”Why make Fegelein the exception?Evidence that Fegelein was privy to secret knowledge comes from KristinaReiman, an actress who met with Fegelein in Berlin on April 27. Shetold author Glenn B. Infield, “He was very worried. We had several drinkstogether and he kept repeating that there were two Hitlers in Berlin. . . . Ithought he was drunk. Just before he left me, however, he said that if thefuehrer ever discovered that he, Fegelein, knew his secret, Hitler wouldkill him.”To fake Hitler’s death would have been simple. A Hitler double couldhave been secreted into the bunker any time prior to his reported suicide.After Hitler got Eva to take poison—or a dead duplicate Eva broughtin—the double, dressed in the fuehrer’s clothing, could have been shot, apoison capsule placed in his mouth, and left to be covered by Bormannand retrieved by the unsuspecting valet Linge.Hitler could have then passed from the study through his living quartersto a small conference room containing a stairway to the garden above.Hitler had instructed Linge to wait “at least ten minutes before enteringthe room.” While Linge and others from the entourage waited in the hallwayoutside Hitler’s study, the fuehrer’s party and an armed SS escortcould have made their way to a secluded spot to await darkness.Under the cover of night, Hitler could have moved along HermannGoering Strasse, then cut across the Tiergarten to the Zoo Station nearAdolf Hitler Platz. From there, they could have followed the rail lines tothe Reichssportfeld and crossed the Scharndorfestrasse to the PiechelsdorfBridge, a short walk to the Havel River, where a Ju-52 floatplane wouldhave been waiting to fly the fuehrer out.Indeed a Ju-52 pontoon plane had landed on the Havel the previousnight, at the radioed request of someone in the Fuehrerbunker. It took offthat same night. Author Infield has suspected this was a practice run forthe following night.