"None of it is depending on the alleged validity of a body or skull in Russian possession," Browning said. They also have investigations from the period, including one by British intelligence officers who collected corroborating evidence from witnesses about the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun. Historians do not rely solely on accounts by Soviet troops, he said. Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that the results of tests on the skull would not change the consensus that Hitler died in the bunker. The revelation is featured in a new documentary airing on the History Channel called "Hitler's Escape," which revisits the idea that Hitler may have escaped from Berlin.īut Strausbaugh says her testing proves nothing about Hitler's fate - only that the skull purported to be his belonged to someone else. "What the DNA told us is that it was female," Strausbaugh said. However, the inside of the fragment was not burned and "the amounts we had were well within the range that you would expect to get DNA samples from," she said. The skull had been stored at room temperature which had also damaged the DNA. Fire is one of the real enemies of getting DNA evidence out," Strausbaugh told AFP. What was exposed to us was the side that was charred. Initially they feared the state of the skull would make it impossible to obtain results. It took them three days, working with two forensic scientists from the office of the New York City chief medical examiner, to complete their tests. So Bellantoni made the trip to Moscow, where he was allowed to obtain the DNA sample, and at the end of May the team got to work in the university's laboratory in Storrs, Connecticut. His partner on the project, Professor Linda Strausbaugh, director of the university's applied genetics center, agreed to test for DNA if a good sample could be found. Now, professors at the University of Connecticut say they have debunked the story of the skull, arguing that examinations show it belonged to a woman, probably between the age of 20 and 40.Īrcheologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni says he immediately suspected the bone belonged to a woman because of its structure. In addition to the skull, Soviet troops said they exhumed Hitler's jawbone and that the bone's identity was confirmed through his dental assistants. The debates made the symbolic importance of the skull piece, which went on display for the first time at Moscow's Federal Archive in 2000, all the greater - a unique war trophy which gave the Russians enormous pride. The bone, bearing a bullet hole, has been held up to support the theory that Hitler shot himself and took cyanide in his Berlin bunker as Soviet troops approached in April 1945.ĭoubts about the chain of events - and even speculation that Hitler got away - have persisted for decades.
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