[b] In accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery garden, where they were doused in petrol and burned.

Historians have largely rejected these as part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by Joseph Stalin to sow confusion regarding Hitler's death,[7][g][h][i] or have attempted to reconcile them.

Poland had fallen to the advancing Soviet Red Army, which was preparing to cross the Oder between Küstrin and Frankfurt-an-der-Oder with the objective of capturing Berlin 82 kilometres (51 mi) to the west.

[15] Some 325,000 soldiers of Germany's Army Group B were surrounded and captured in the Ruhr Pocket on 18 April, leaving the path open for US forces to reach Berlin.

[16] On 16 April, Soviet forces to the east crossed the Oder and commenced the battle for the Seelow Heights, the last major defensive line protecting Berlin on that side.

[27] On 28 April, Hitler received a BBC report originating from Reuters: it stated that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had offered to surrender to the western Allies.

[29] By this time, the Red Army had advanced to the Potsdamer Platz, roughly a kilometre away from the bunker, and all indications were that they were preparing to storm the Reich Chancellery.

It left instructions to be carried out immediately following his death, with Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels assuming Hitler's roles as head of state and chancellor, respectively.

[37] Late in the morning, with the Soviets less than 500 metres (1,600 ft) from the Führerbunker, Hitler had a meeting with General Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area.

[q] Günsche and SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke stated "unequivocally" that all outsiders and those performing duties and work in the bunker "did not have any access" to Hitler's private living quarters during the time of death (between 15:00 and 16:00).

[47] Günsche left the study and announced that Hitler was dead to a group in the briefing room, which included Goebbels and Generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf.

As the two corpses caught fire, a group including Bormann, Günsche, Linge, Goebbels, Erich Kempka, Peter Högl, Ewald Lindloff, and Hans Reisser raised their arms in salute as they stood just inside the bunker doorway.

Although the corpses were being burned in the open, where the distribution of heat varies (as opposed to in a crematorium), according to eyewitnesses, the copious amount of fuel applied from about 16:00 to 18:30 reduced the remains to something between charred bones and piles of ashes which fell apart to the touch.

On the night of 1 May, the Reichssender Hamburg radio station interrupted their normal program to announce that Hitler had died that afternoon,[r] and introduced his successor, Dönitz.

[67][68] Hoping to save the army and the nation by negotiating a partial surrender to the British and Americans, Dönitz authorised a fighting withdrawal to the west.

His tactic was somewhat successful: it enabled about 1.8 million German soldiers to avoid capture by the Soviets, but came at a high cost in bloodshed, as troops continued to fight until 8 May.

[80] In 2017, French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier also found the dental remains in the Soviet archives, including teeth on part of a jawbone, to be in "perfect agreement" with X-rays taken of Hitler in 1944.

[82] In May 2018, the European Journal of Internal Medicine published a paper co-authored by Charlier and four other researchers, which concluded that these remains "cannot be a fake", citing their significant wear.

[84][e] In early June 1945, SMERSH moved the remains of several individuals, including the Goebbels family (Joseph, Magda, and their children), from Buch to Finow.

[7][85][86] The remains of the Goebbels family and others were buried in a forest in Brandenburg on 3 June 1945, then exhumed and moved to SMERSH's new facility in Magdeburg, where they were re-buried in February 1946.

Concerned that a known Nazi burial site might become a neo-Nazi shrine, KGB director Yuri Andropov authorised an operation to exhume and destroy the decaying remains.

[94] In the years immediately after the war, the Soviets maintained that Hitler was not dead, but had escaped and was either being sheltered by the former western Allies, was in Francoist Spain, or was somewhere in South America.

[100] Between 1948 and 1952, amid denazification proceedings in West Germany, legal disputes over Hitler's former property (including The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer) were hindered by the lack of an official death declaration.

After four years of extensive review, Judge Heinrich Stephanus concluded: "There can no longer be the slightest doubt that on 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler put an end to his life in the Chancellery by his own hand, by means of a shot into his right temple.

Two representatives from each nation watched several Germans dig up soil down to the concrete roof of the bunker; the excavation included the bomb crater where Hitler's burnt remains had been buried.

[108] In 2009, University of Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni examined the skull fragment,[109] which Soviet officials believed to be Hitler's.

[113] Western historians were allowed into the archives of the former Soviet Union beginning in 1991, but the dossier remained undiscovered for twelve years; in 2005, it was published as The Hitler Book.

[113] In 1968, Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski published his book, The Death of Adolf Hitler,[80] which includes previously unreleased photographs of the dental remains.

[121] Historian Joachim Fest opines that the almost "traceless" death of Hitler allowed him to stay in the public eye, granting him a "bizarre afterlife"; conspiracy theories – rooted in Soviet disinformation alleging his survival – bolstered continued doubts and speculation, including outlandish tabloid and journalistic reports published into the late 20th century.

[122] Conspiracy theories about Hitler's death and about the Nazi era as a whole still attract interest, with books, TV shows, and films continuing to be produced on the topic.