Ten days from Hitler’s last public appearance to suicide
Hitler's last ten days, from his last public appearance on his 56th birthday to the shot at about 15:30 on 30 April 1945, day by day, with the witnesses' conflicting times shown as ranges.
What it shows
20–30 April 1945: military breakdown and isolation give way to purge, marriage, testament and the shot at 15:30 during the final three days. The calibrated day ruler extends to 2 May, when Soviet troops reached the bunker complex.
Notes & caveats
The 15:30 time of death is from Otto Günsche's NKVD testimony 1946, corroborated by Heinz Linge's 1980 memoir. The cremation in the Chancellery garden was incomplete; SMERSH recovered jaw fragments identified via dental records of Hitler's dentist Hugo Blaschke. The 'Steiner attack' Hitler ordered on 21–22 April never materialised because the units assigned to it had already been destroyed.
Sources
- Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (1947)
- Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende (Herbig 1995)
- Traudl Junge, Bis zur letzten Stunde (Claassen 2002)
- Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (Viking 2002)
- Günsche/Linge NKVD interrogations 1946
