Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party. As leader of the Nazi regime, he was the Führer of Germany between 1933 and 1945, and a chief instigator of World War II. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
Biography
Rise
Youth
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass, Warlords of Utopia)
In 1903, after receiving a wealth of information from the future, Grigori Rasputin foresaw, among other things, Hitler's rise to power. (AUDIO: The Wanderer)
Hitler tried his hand as a student of art but never forged a successful career in the field.
When the First World War broke out, Hitler served as a soldier in the German Army. Germany's defeat in 1918 was a source of bitter humiliation to many Germans and Hitler was no exception. He became bitter, neurotic, resentful and hateful, blaming the loss of the war on Jews, communists and the rich. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
Entering politics
Hitler became a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party after its foundation in 1919 and became its leader in 1921. He discovered a talent as an orator and his speeches helped raise the party to prominence, while other similar fringe groups during the period quickly faded away. During this time, the Timewyrm, seeking revenge on the Seventh Doctor by destroying the planet he loved, chose Hitler as a vessel and figurehead to help advance her plan to manipulate human history. However, she did not expect his mind to be so powerful and became trapped inside. Hitler, unaware of the attempted possession, began subconsciously accessing the Timewyrm's vast psychic powers and using them to become an even more compelling speaker.
Also during this time, the War Lords discovered Hitler's psychic abilities and decided to use him in their second attempt to conquer the universe. However, for much of the 1920s and 1930s, they could only observe Hitler, nudging his career along from the sidelines at most.
On 9 November 1923, Hitler led the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch against the German War Office in Munich. Trampled by the fleeing party members after the police scattered the protesters, he thought the display a shameful one and contemplated suicide after believing his chance at leadership had been squandered. However, the Seventh Doctor reset Hitler's dislocated shoulder and gave him words of advice and encouragement, claiming his time as leader would come in later years. The Doctor's shocked companion, Ace, tried to assassinate Hitler with a canister of nitro-9a but the Doctor ruined her aim. He warned her that Hitler's survival was necessary to ensure history ran its proper course.
Hitler was later arrested and imprisoned for his part in the coup. Originally sentenced to prison for five years, he was ultimately released after only six months, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf. After his release, he returned to public life as a hero to many. From then, he was able to focus his efforts on reorganising the scattered remnants of the Nazi Party. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
By January 1933, Hitler and the resurgent Nazis were seen by many in Germany to be playing their part in the nation's recovery. Hitler's private army, the Sturmabteilung (SA), effectively replaced the corrupt police force and helped clamp down on crime, as well as many of the Nazis' opponents in the process. Hitler and the Nazi party played on the German people's discontent with the punishment Germany faced from the Treaty of Versailles, especially the war reparations they were made to pay to the Allies. This led to the party winning the 1932 elections. However, they did not win a majority in the Reichstag. (AUDIO: The Alchemists)
Hitler finally became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 (AUDIO: Neverland) after winning 33% of the vote. (PROSE: Players)
The Führer of the Third Reich
Statecraft
Hitler and his followers subscribed to the ideology of fascism, which called for governance by a ruthless military dictatorship committed to the suppression of weakness and the importance of the fatherland. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) Accordingly, Hitler and his ministers purged the German state of all dissenting voices and establishing the dictatorship of the Third Reich. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus, Just War, Players, AUDIO: Just War) His rise coincided with that of other fascist leaders: Benito Mussolini in Italy and Francisco Franco in Spain. (AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned)
His ascension to power received little reaction from the United Kingdom, where the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, continued to prioritise his domestic program. For this, the Seventh Doctor branded MacDonald "an idiot", while individuals like Winston Churchill tried to warn others of the danger posed by Hitler. However, most of the British people ignored such warnings. (PROSE: Log 384)
Though sitting atop the Reich as Führer, Hitler himself had little interest in administration and hard work, preferring ceremonial roles of little real importance despite his public image as a "superman". He enjoyed sleeping late, long lunches, inspecting factories and new autobahns, and haranguing his subordinates. He left the running of the state apparatus to said subordinates, including Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering and others. (PROSE: Players)
A photograph of a Silent stood behind Hitler at a Nazi rally was included in the book The Secret Lives of Monsters. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)
In the summer of 1934, Hitler began to fear that Ernst Rohm and the SA were plotting a coup against him. On 29 and 30 June, Hitler ordered a preemptive strike against his own private army which was effectively eradicated by the Schutzstaffel (SS). (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus, Wolfsbane) The SS essentially replaced the SA as Hitler's elite body guard. (PROSE: Just War, Warlords of Utopia)
Germany's rearmament
By 1936, Germany had reoccupied the Rhineland and began rearming in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles. The British government took no action and instead adopted the policy of appeasement, hoping to avoid another war. The policy counter-productively suited Hitler very well, granting him time to build up the strength of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine (PROSE: Just War, Players) as well as emboldening him further by showing that the Allied powers were willing to back down from a confrontation. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
In light of these developments, Hitler was irritated by the presence of the likes of Winston Churchill, whom he referred to contemptuously as "that gangster". Churchill and his allies opposed appeasement and although remained unpopular and marginalised at home, Hitler worried that they could harm Germany's standing in British public opinion. At the time, Hitler was planning to build a vast empire in the east, modelled on the British Empire, and wanted to avoid a fight with a fellow nation of superior "Aryans". Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador to Britain, began working to secure an alliance. (PROSE: Players)
In the midst of Britain's abdication crisis during November and December 1936, (PROSE: Wolfsbane) Ribbentrop was approached by the Count and Countess of the Players and began organising a coup in Britain to install a pro-Nazi government. Churchill, the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown foiled the plot, leaving Ribbentrop to face Hitler's fury when he returned to Berlin. Ribbentrop tried to salvage the situation by producing a list of British Nazi sympathies, but it had been replaced with a laundry list. This oversight made Hitler even angrier and he flew into a ferocious rage, chasing Ribbentrop from the office. (PROSE: Players)
These fits were caused by the trapped Timewyrm amplifying Hitler's emotions, especially in stressful or unfavourable situations. The rooms in which they took place were frequently wrecked by the unstable use of psychic powers, which would leave Hitler unconscious. They never occurred in the presence of someone like Martin Bormann, who had a calming effect on Hitler. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) Unaware of the cause, Bormann noted the alarming frequency of the Führer's destructive fits. Following the latest outburst in front of Ribbentrop, he decided to enlist the aid of a psychic advisor named Dr Felix Kriegslieter. (PROSE: Players)
Kriegslieter was an alias of the War Chief, who offered what aid to Hitler he could. The arrangement brought the War Lords the proximity to Hitler they had sought for over a decade. They set themselves up as the Black Coven and used psionic technology to boost Hitler's abilities even more. Their ultimate aim was to help Hitler conquer Earth, and then, using the War Lords' advanced technology, lead the Nazis in the conquest of the universe. For the time being, their aims coincided with the expansionist goals of the Nazis, (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) as exemplified by the 1937 Hossbach Niederschrift. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)
Empire building
In 1938, Hitler acquired a validium bow, one of the components of Nemesis. (TV: Silver Nemesis) In the same year he was almost killed prematurely by the Teselecta, only to be accidentally saved by the Eleventh Doctor when he lost control of his TARDIS and crashed through the window of Hitler's Reichschancellery office. After thanking the Doctor for saving him, Hitler asked what the TARDIS was. The Doctor responded by saying it was a London police box, issuing Hitler with a chilling warning about his future defeat. After shooting at the Teselecta, Hitler was punched by Rory Williams and locked in a cupboard. A stray bullet from Hitler's gunfire struck Mels and lethally wounded her, forcing her to regenerate into her new appearance and identity as River Song. Hitler stayed locked in the cupboard as the time travellers pursued River through the streets of Berlin. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
Later in 1938, Hitler ordered the annexation of Austria. (TV: Silver Nemesis) On the day it fell under German control, Hitler drove straight to Vienna to obtain the Spear of Destiny from a museum. He took the spear back to a museum in Berlin and from then on believed Germany was invincible. According to the Third Doctor, it would have been, had Hitler been aware that the Spear was a Physical Temporal Nexus which required the user to personally wield it; as a simple museum exhibit, it was useless, and in any event, the Doctor subsequently replaced the genuine PTN with a fake. (PROSE: The Spear of Destiny) Beneath the Rhineland, the Nazis also discovered a piece of chronosteel, which Hitler believed to be Thor's Hammer. (TV: Lost in Time)
Following Austria, Germany annexed Czechoslovakia. This finally provoked a response from the British government but in the face of Hitler, the Allies resolve remained weak. George Limb, who was present at the conference intended to resolve the crisis, felt that Neville Chamberlain allowed Hitler to walk all over him. (PROSE: Illegal Alien) During the crisis, Hitler succumbed to the Timewyrm's powers again and launched into another fit. The only witness, an old German general, died of a heart attack. Hitler was found unconscious by Bormann once again. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
Hitler intended his empire in the east to consist of Poland, Russia, Persia and parts of Asia and the Far East. Russia was especially important given Hitler's hatred of communism and the Soviet Union. Yet before such a confrontation could take place, Hitler's attention turned to Poland, (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) seen by the Nazis as a contemptible produce of the Versailles settlement. (PROSE: Just War, AUDIO: Just War) The Nazis approached the Soviets and agreed to split Poland between them (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) in a non-aggression pact. (AUDIO: An Eye For Murder)
At the end of August 1939, Hitler was reunited with the Seventh Doctor and Ace after addressing a party rally at Nuremberg. Hitler hugged the Doctor, recognising him as the man who helped him after the 1923 Putsch and knowing that his words of encouragement had come to pass. Upon returning to Berlin, Hitler took the Doctor on as an advisor and asked him what would happen in the future. The Doctor warned Hitler that to attack Poland would mean war with Britain. Having been led up to this point to believe that Britain had no stomach for a fight, Hitler flew into to another Timewyrm rage, wrecked his office and fell unconscious, after which Bormann arrived on the scene. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
Second World War
Outbreak
On Friday 1 September 1939, following a fierce propaganda campaign denouncing Poland as a warmongering nation, Hitler addressed the Reichstag. He delivered a speech accusing Poland of attacking German soil to justify the German invasion.
I am wrongly judged if my love of peace and my patience are mistaken for weakness or even cowardice. I have therefore resolved to speak to Poland in the language Poland uses to us. Last night, for the first time, Polish soldiers fired on our territory. We have been returning the fire. From now on, bombs will be met with bombs!
Declaring that he was now but a simple soldier of Germany, vowed to wear his brown soldier's coat until the end of the war.
On the morning of Sunday 3 September, Hitler was quickly satisfied with the German progress in Poland and summoned the Doctor to his office in the Chancellery building, confident Britain's guarantee of aid to Poland would come to nothing despite the Doctor's earlier prediction. However Ribbentrop and an interpreter named Schmidt reached Hitler's office at precisely 9 o'clock with a communication from the British Ambassador stating Germany was to withdraw from Poland or face war. Hitler realised that Britain was serious and he had been given two hours to comply with their terms. He sat silently for ages and then asked Ribbentrop, "What now?" Ribbentrop responded, "I assume the French will hand in a similar ultimatum within the hour." Further enraged, Hitler shouted Ribbentrop and Schmidt from the room and in his fury, the Timewyrm began to reassert control again once more. The Doctor intervened and implored Hitler to resist. The Führer calmed down just as Bormann, Goering and Ribbentrop reappeared with news of setbacks on the Polish front that required Hitler's attention. The calming effect of Bormann instilled more confidence in Hitler. He crumpled the ultimatum up and ordered Bormann to contact the British Ambassador. The terms of the ultimatum would not and could not be fulfilled.
With his intervention, the Doctor inadvertently taught Hitler how to control the Timewyrm's power. While taking personal command of the Polish campaign, Hitler made several sound strategic decisions which helped to overcome the setbacks and restart the push towards Warsaw.
In his capacity as Hitler's adviser, the Doctor exposed the schemes of the Kriegslieter and the Black Coven. To accelerate Hitler's victory, the Coven sought to iron out known mistakes in his strategy, mainly the incomplete victory at Dunkirk and the premature invasion of the Soviet Union. They also began developing nuclear weapons for use against Russia, America and China. In addition, the Coven feared Hitler's mental state posed a risk to their success and considered replacing him as Führer with someone more stable like Himmler. Himmler himself separately considered something like this as well, although out of loyalty, he felt Hitler could remain as a figurehead as Germany's emperor. However, with Hitler now in control of the Timewyrm, this proved a moot point.
They were all killed in a conflict with Goering's soldiers at Himmler's castle of Drachensberg. Hitler arrived at the castle to investigate the occurrences, where the Doctor commended the actions of Himmler and Goering for defeating a plot by Kriegslieter against him. Pleased with the news, Hitler informed the Doctor of his newfound powers and then returned Himmler and Goering to Berlin to prepare for a showdown with the Western Allies. The Doctor despaired at the realisation that he had just helped Hitler become powerful enough to win the war. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
Facing the Allies
After the fall of Poland, the Nazis offered to reopen negotiations with Britain and France in October, which was rejected. (PROSE: Just War, AUDIO: Just War) Committed to a war in the west, Germany launched the Blitzkrieg in May 1940. Under the onslaught, France, Belgium and the Netherlands all fell within the month while the British Army was surrounded by the Wehrmacht at Dunkirk.
Hitler had taken personal command of the campaign, which he oversaw at his command bunker at Felsennest near Aachen. As he examined the battlefield one night, the Seventh Doctor arrived and goaded the Timewyrm with taunts of her inferiority and subservience to Hitler. The Timewyrm found the strength of will to escape his mind and the Doctor fired her away through time. Losing his augmented abilities, Hitler's confidence was sapped and he desperately appealed to the Doctor for advice while he sat on the cusp of victory. The Doctor advised him to let the British go and to postpone an invasion of England, so they would eventually seek peace with Germany and aid in a war against the Soviet Union. Convinced of the longer-term strategy, Hitler rang a field-telephone with a message for General Heinz Guderian: "There is to be no further advance on Dunkirk." On Hitler's order, for reasons his generals never understood, the Germans' encircling advance was halted in one fatal last-minute delay. The bulk of Britain's military forces were successfully evacuated back home. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)
Despite victory on the continent, leaving him as "master of Europe", (AUDIO: The Ultimate Adventure) Winston Churchill, now as Britain's Prime Minister, vowed never to surrender. (WC: Amy's History Hunt, PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) With the supremacy of the Royal Navy in the English Channel, an invasion by Germany proved unfeasible, moving the war to the skies in the Battle of Britain. (AUDIO: Their Finest Hour) The Royal Air Force repelled the Luftwaffe before they could achieved air superiority, (PROSE: /Carpenter/Butterfly/Baronet/) much to Hitler's disappointment. By now, it seemed to be dawning on him that Britain would not come to terms and he never forgave the Luftwaffe. Hitler decided to change tactics in September. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Rather than fight the RAF directly, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to begin an aerial bombardment campaign against British cities, mostly London, which became known as the Blitz. German propaganda claimed the attacks were only directed against military and industrial targets. (PROSE: Just War, AUDIO: Just War) However, civilians suffered under the bombardment. (PROSE: Tell Me You Love Me, TV: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) Hitler hoped this would deplete civilian morale and lead to the British surrendering. (PROSE: Illegal Alien) For a while, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill bemoaned Hitler's "Nazi menace" proved exhausting on morale. (TV: Victory of the Daleks) However, this surrender did not come to pass. The Blitz was effectively over by July 1941, Hitler and his forces having failed to defeat the British in both conventional military and psychological warfare. (PROSE: Illegal Alien)
By 20 January 1941, posters reading "HITLER WILL SEND NO WARNING!" and depicting Hitler were present in a London nightclub. (TV: The Empty Child)
War against the Soviet Union
By 1941, the British were still resisting, and had expanded their war effort into the Mediterranean, (PROSE: The Christmas Presence) Greece (PROSE: Just War) and North Africa. (COMIC: The Instruments of War) The Reich's focus instead moved to Hitler's main goal: the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Germans made a titanic advance deep into Russia but by December, the winter had halted them outside Moscow, where the Red Army counter-attacked. At the same time, the United States joined the war, mobilising vast resources against Germany. (PROSE: Just War)
For all the setbacks, the Third Reich reached its peak in August 1942. In Berlin, Hitler attended a ball with his secret lover, Eva Braun. There, Hitler met the Sixth Doctor and Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who, to his intense embarrassment, accidentally offered Hitler a sausage roll. Introduced themselves as Major Johann Schmidt of the Berlin Fifth Medical Corps and Brigadier General Braun from the Eastern Front, the pair won Hitler's confidence and were invited to take blood samples from Hitler and Eva in order to test their compatibility, as they were secretly planning to get married and have a child.
During the examination, Hitler raised the topic of the Eastern Front. His armies were by then advancing to the city of Stalingrad for a huge confrontation with the Soviets. The Doctor told Hitler that the victor of Stalingrad would "win the war". Indeed, Stalingrad proved a great Soviet victory which ended the ascension of the Third Reich, with huge consequences for Hitler's ultimate downfall. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Downfall
Desperation
By 1944, the war had turned against Germany and military scientists scrambled to construct new and miraculous Wunderwaffen. In March, the Germans intercepted radio transmissions from space which Hitler believed were plans sent by aliens to help him win the war. The plans helped the Germans construct Die Glocke but after unsuccessful testing, the device was shelved. (PROSE: The Crawling Terror) The V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets also launched against against Britain that year but had little more than a psychological effect. (PROSE: Just War, Illegal Alien, The Turing Test, et al.)
In Germany, members of the armed forces came to oppose Hitler, seeing his ongoing struggle as insanity. The Valkyrie plot tried to remove him from power but failed. After Erwin Rommel was implicated in the plot, he was offered a choice between suicide or the death of his family and chose the former. (COMIC: The Instruments of War)
In August 1944, while planning a raid on Turelhampton to acquire alien technology, Hitler insisted that Major Schmidt be included as part of the team (from the Doctor's perspective, this took place before his meeting with Hitler in 1942).
In the same month, Martin Bormann began planning Operation Eagle Flight, an initiative to stockpile massive amounts of economic resources to aid in the continued struggle for Nazism even if the war was lost. As part of Eagle Flight, it was crucial for Eva Braun to survive the war after she became pregnant with Hitler's child. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Among more of Hitler's outlandish plots were a replica of London and human experimentation to produce super soldiers. (AUDIO: The Shadow of London) By 11 April 1945, all these "miracle schemes" had failed. Doktor Vilhelm Schädengeist thought the Wunderwaffen projects an absurdity which only drained valuable resources and Reichmarks which could have been put to something more useful. (PROSE: Schädengeist's First Love) April laid bare the hopelessness of Hitler's situation. While the British and Americans invaded Germany, (PROSE: Made of Steel, Cabinets of Curiosities, Timewyrm: Exodus) the Soviets marched against the German capital city itself.
The Soviet invasion of Berlin led Hitler and many other high-ranking Nazi ministers to retreat to the Führerbunker beneath the Reichschancellery. Accompanying Hitler was his beloved Alsatian, Blondi, and, on 15 April, Eva Braun.
20 April marked Hitler's 56th birthday but he appeared almost 20 years older than that. His left arm shook uncontrollably due to him having developed Parkinson's disease and among his several forms of medication were strychnine and cocaine. Goebbels ordered that the Führer only be filmed and photographed from certain angles to hide his frailty as this was no longer the Führer at the height of Nazi power. Some of his generals and ministers urged him to flee Berlin to Southern Germany but he refused. Hitler ventured outside the Bunker for the last known time and addressed the Hitler Youth Brigade, preparing them for the continuation of military operations in spite of the hopeless situation. Himmler secretly left the Bunker in an attempt to make peace with the allies, without Hitler's knowledge or authorisation.
Death
A few days later, the Soviets reached the outskirts of the city, causing Hitler to declare, "All is lost." While showing signs of emotional and physical breakdown, he, along with Eva, stated their intention to commit suicide. Hitler tested cyanide pills on Blondi. On 25 April, the Soviets entered Berlin's inner city ring and began hunting for Hitler. Rumours circulated that whoever found him would be proclaimed a Hero of the Soviet Union. Hitler's once loyal ministers, including Albert Speer and Hermann Goering, continued to abandon him until only Bormann and Goebbels were left by his side.
On 29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun. Eva signed her name on the marriage certificate as "Eva Hitler". Afterwards, Hitler dictated his Will and Political Testament to a secretary. The will denounced the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe for their failure, he named the highest-ranking Kriegsmarine commander, Admiral Karl Donitz, as his successor. In character to the last, Hitler blamed the start of the war on a Jewish conspiracy.
On 30 April, after lunch, Hitler bid his final farewells and was then escorted towards his room by Bormann. On the way, he met the Sixth Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart one last time, recognising them as Major Johann Schmidt and Brigadier General Braun, who he assumed had come to pay their last respects to their Führer. Yet with them was Adolf Hitler, Jr., Hitler's son who had come back in time to meet his father. Hitler merely assumed the lookalike was an overenthusiastic follower but he quickly lost patience with the stranger when he insisted on his familial ties. The Doctor also swayed Hitler's perception of Hitler Jr. Given their prior "friendship", Hitler was more willing to believe the Doctor over this stranger with his face and name, and dismissed the latter as a madman.
Finally, after Hitler Jr brought news of the Scrying Glass and suggested they consult Himmler for advice, Hitler's tolerance for the stranger evaporated. Having learned of Himmler's betrayal, Hitler decried the former Reichsfuhrer for his wasted obsession with the occult. Hitler took his gun and shot Hitler Jr through the head and told Bormann to dump the body in the water tower.
Hitler returned to his room where Magda Goebbels and Arthur Axmann tried to have final words with him, but they were sent away by Heinz Linge and Otto Gunsche. Finally, Hitler bit down on a cyanide pill while simultaneously shooting himself through the jaw. The Doctor pronounced him and Eva dead, knowing the latter was in fact alive. Bormann had Hitler's corpse placed and burned in a shell crater outside the Bunker. Alongside him was placed the body of the Doctor's ally, Claire Aldwych, who Bormann had murdered to fake the death of Eva Braun, who escaped Germany with the unborn Hitler Jr. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Postmortem
Recovery of body
According to Russian reports held by the State Special Trophy Archive in the Operation Myth file, the Russians recovered the burned bodies of Hitler, Eva Braun, the Goebbels family, General Hans Krebs and two dogs from the Reichschancellery garden and autopsies were performed at Buch. Two autopsy reports were drawn up, with one of them made official. The second was written up after the crater in which the bodies were found was re-examined.
Skull fragments, teeth and a jaw bone which were believed to belong to Hitler and Eva were sent back to Moscow and retained in the archives. The body officially identified as Hitler's was 10 centimetres shorter than his known height but the burning of the body accounted for this. The first autopsy concluded Hitler also died from cyanide poisoning while the second discovered a bullet hole in the roof of the mouth. The Russians concluded Hitler had taken cyanide and shot himself at the same time but this was not made public. For propaganda purposes, Stalin promoted the idea that Hitler chose poison, "the death of a coward".
Without anything to compare the results to, DNA tests would have proved useless in confirming the identity of the bodies. Bodily fluids were also recovered and retained in the archives. Tests on those confirmed they came from the same bodies but not whose bodies they were. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Interment
The bodies were reburied in Buch, then dug up and reburied an Finow. On 3 July 1945, the bodies were moved again to Ratenow and a pine forest was planted over the area. In February 1946, the bodies were moved yet again to the courtyard of 36 Westernstrasse in Magdeburg, the SMERSH regional headquarters.
In 1970, the building was returned to East Germany and SMERSH moved out. Head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, ordered the bodies destroyed to prevent the accidental discovery of Hitler's secret grave. The human and dog bones were mixed up to make identification harder before they were completely incinerated on 5 April on waste grounds at Schonebeck in Operation Archive. A cover story claimed that Counter Intelligence had discovered secret Nazi documents in the courtyard to explain the digging. The ground where the bodies were buried was dug out and thrown into the river.
Archivist Irina Kobulov was confident that all the evidence in the Myth file confirmed that Hitler had not survived. The skull fragments and bodily fluids were all that survived of the bodies. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Speculation and reported post-war sightings
During the Potsdam Conference, Stalin told US President Harry S. Truman that Hitler may have fled to Spain or Argentina. The Conference took place before the Russians had performed the autopsies, and the Soviets were unaware if they had truly found the body of Hitler.
The testimony of Hitler's personal pilot, Hans Baur, on 14 July 1945 revealed the existence of a double of Hitler who turned up in the Bunker, and that a body was substituted before the burning took place. However, the rest of the document was charred, rendering it unreadable. The Russians believed it to be a deception or even a forgery, and attempts by Baur to bargain for his life.
Also in July 1945, a letter to a Chicago newspaper alleged that Hitler was living in a hacienda nearly 500 miles away from Buenos Aires. The American Office of Censorship intercepted the letter, which also instructed the intended recipient how to enter the house and what torchlight codes to use to indicate friendly intent. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, wrote a handwritten note regarding the letter, which indicated that he took the information seriously.
A Russian newspaper claimed Hitler and Eva Braun were hiding in a castle in Westphalia, which was part of the British zone of occupied Germany. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart dismissed this as Soviet propaganda intended to smear the British. He admitted that although it was possible for the British to have secretly spirited Hitler away, his position at UNIT meant he would have known about it if it was true.
Other documents suggested Hitler that had become a hermit in Italy or a shepherd in the Swiss Alps. Another placed him in Ireland. Another postulated that he had supplemented his income by working as a croupier in an Evian casino. None of these had much merit.
The most detailed and accurate documentation available was Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler, a landmark report published by Macmillan in 1947. Commissioned by the Allies to compile the report, the report was limited by the shortage of contemporary evidence; most of the information about the events in Berlin had fallen into the hands of the Russians when they took the city.
It was not until 1950 that the Russians stated they knew Hitler was dead. The length of time only served to highlight their immense doubt. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
Hitler would later be temporarily resurrected in a holo-cube by the Plume Coteries as part of their programme of using a Time-Ladle to interview historical witnesses to gauge the accuracy of various written records. After they were done "asking him about South America", his cube was smashed as per normal procedure, which the Bookkeeper who did the smashing found "quite cathartic". (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse [+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"])
City of the Saved
Hitler was resurrected with the rest of humanity in the City of the Saved. He was imprisoned in the Gaol which had been constructed by his victims, a great number of them Jewish, eagerly awaiting his arrival in the City, and was given six million consecutive life sentences. His punishment became a heated subject of debate. Civil liberties groups and his supporters argued his sentence had been a form of vigilante justice and harmed his prospects of rehabilitation; other groups tried to find ways to harm him within the City protocols.
Marcus Americanius Scriptor tried to meet with him, and questioned whether his release from the Gaol would be better, allowing him to wander the world drowned out in anonymity. Scriptor's request at a meeting was denied so he agreed to return when Hitler's sentence had been served. He had already met many other versions of Hitler many times during his travels through the Known Worlds. (PROSE: Prologue to Warlords of Utopia)
Legacy
After World War II, the name "Adolf" virtually disappeared not only in Germany but all over Earth due to its association with Hitler. This came to be known as "the Adolf Effect". (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
Hitler gave his name to the Second World War; one of the names it became known by was the "Hitler war". (TV: The Time Monster)
After Eva Braun's escape from Berlin, she gave birth to Adolf Hitler, Jr. who was raised under the guidance of the likes of Bormann to revere his father. When the time came, Hitler Jr. was to lead various neo-Nazi cells to establish the Fourth Reich. In 2001, at the same age his father was at the time of his death, Hitler Jr. encountered the Sixth Doctor and forced him to take him back in time to meet his father. This led to the incident in the Berlin Bunker on 30 April 1945, where both Hitler and Hitler Jr. met their demise. The latter passed into history as a body double of Hitler who was found dead in the water tower. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)
In the mid-2000s, cats that bore resemblances to Hitler were named "Kitlers", and there was a website for pictures of said cats. Louise told her brother that his cat looked like a Kitler, and he frowned at Louise when she asked for a picture of the cat, and their Mam told Louise off. (PROSE: The Story of Fester Cat)
References
The First Doctor warned Steven Taylor that even saving the life of a child in the 1240 siege of Kiev could change history into a future where Hitler did not lose the Second World War. (PROSE: Bunker Soldiers)
When the Master claimed that he wanted to rule people "for their own good," the Third Doctor wondered if he had heard Adolf Hitler or Genghis Khan say the same thing. (TV: The Dæmons)
A. H. Millington maintained a copy of the German naval cypher room in the naval base at Maiden's Bay, including a portrait of Hitler and other Nazi paraphernalia. The Seventh Doctor considered Hitler to be "a dreadful man." (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
Winston Churchill once mentioned that that "If Hitler invaded Hell, [he] would give a favourable reference to the Devil." After the attack on the Dalek ship put London back under cover of blackout, an officer shook his fist towards the oncoming bombers and said, "Do your worst, Adolf!" (TV: Victory of the Daleks)
Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor was noted as a key event by the Matrix while attempting to keep a clear record of the Web of Time during an outbreak of anti-time. (AUDIO: Neverland)
After the Germans took Paris, Hitler wanted his photo taken at the top of the Eiffel Tower. This was impossible, however, as the tower's keepers had scuppered the lifts, and so he settled for a press conference in the monument's shadow instead. (PROSE: History 101)
In high school, Mels stated to her teacher that the reason Hitler came to power was because the Doctor did not stop him. This got her sent to the head teacher's office. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
The physical resemblance between Hitler and Charlie Chaplin was once remarked upon by Fey Truscott-Sade who once told Nazi Colonel Kessler that she thought that it was "mad" that "millions of people [were] following a disgusting little man with a Charlie Chaplin moustache." (COMIC: Me and My Shadow)
Barbara Wright once asked the First Doctor what would happen if a time traveller assassinated Hitler in 1930. The Doctor answered that this would be impossible, because of the fact that Hitler was not assassinated. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Crusaders) The Twelfth Doctor told Clara Oswald that he wouldn't kill Hitler as it would mean changing the course of human history. (TV: Kill the Moon)
Behind the scenes
- In the novel Timewyrm: Exodus, the Seventh Doctor stated that he had never met Hitler before, even though he had done so in his sixth incarnation in the novel The Shadow in the Glass.[1]
- While he otherwise liked the novel, Lance Parkin criticised the portrayal of Hitler in Timewyrm: Exodus, suggesting the implication that the external influence of the Timewyrm significantly aided his rise cheapened the lessons to be learned from the Nazis. In his later novel Just War, also part of the Virgin New Adventures, Parkin created the character of Oskar Steinmann as a counterpoint to Hitler in Exodus. He portrayed Steinmann as "a talented, intelligent, cultured man who chooses to be a Nazi. That is much scarier than the thought he's been hypnotised by aliens." The novel deliberately avoided making any direct references to Hitler,[2] save for a declaration of loyalty mentioning "the Führer", which could arguably refer to the holder of the title rather than the individual. Parkin later featured multiple alternate version of Hitler in his Faction Paradox novel Warlords of Utopia.
- The Shadow in the Glass features jaw bone fragments that, in the real world, were long believed to have belonged to Hitler, with the story explicitly revealing that they do. Some years after the novel's release, it was discovered that the fragments were not Hitler's at all, instead belonging to an undefined woman. Authors Justin Richards and Stephen Cole acknowledged in the 2015 re-release for The History Collection.
- Following a screening of Voyage of the Damned in 2007, Russell T Davies was asked what historical figure would make the best Doctor and jokingly replied, "Hitler. He was stern and strong. He would be great." This sparked some criticism.[3] In contrast, Albert Welling called Hitler "the biggest Doctor Who monster ever."[source needed]
- Patrick Troughton played Hitler in a 1950 stage production of Eva Braun. This role was cited in advance publicity when Troughton was first cast as the Doctor.[4] Long-time Doctor Who actor Michael Sheard also played Hitler several times, including in The Tomorrow People and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but never in Doctor Who itself. Other portrayals of Hitler outside of the franchise include those by Frank Finlay in The Death of Adolf Hitler, Derek Jacobi in Inside the Third Reich, David Bamber in Valkyrie, Ian McKellen in Countdown to War, Alan Cumming in Jackboots on Whitehall, and John Cleese in a Monty Python sketch. He was also played by Neil McCaul in the quickly cancelled sitcom Heil Honey, I'm Home!.
- The only actor to play Hitler in Doctor Who was Albert Welling in Let's Kill Hitler.
- Steven Moffat addressed the use of Hitler for largely comedic purposes in Let's Kill Hitler by drawing comparisons with the scene in The Last Crusade in which Indiana Jones accidentally receives Hitler's autograph.[5]
Invalid sources
A script typo once briefly led to the Doctor Who episode Let's Kill Hitler turning into a knockabout comedy called Let's Kiss Hitler, in which a terrified Hitler was chased by Amy Pond and Rory Williams, who were both trying to kiss him. (COMIC: Doctor Whoah! 438)
Footnotes
- ↑ Despite this contradiction, the continuity of the two novels - which were released in different ranges - is otherwise bound together by Players, in which Hitler also appears. Players contains a direct reference to the events of Timewyrm: Exodus (both share the same author), and its own events were later directly referenced by The Shadow in the Glass (both were released in the same range).
- ↑ NZDWFC Lance Parkin Interview
- ↑ Daily Star: Hitler would be top Timelord
- ↑ Daily Telegraph: "Tougher" Doctor Who is chosen
- ↑ Doctor Who's Day Roundup: Steven Moffat Says 'Taking the Mickey' Out of Hitler Was the Plan. Anglophenia (17th August, 2011). Retrieved on 26th June, 2020.
