Documenting the Death of Adolf Hitler

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Documenting the Death of Adolf Hitler

This talk follows the archival trail of the Allied investigations into the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945.

By The Friends of The National Archives CIO

Date and time

Tue, 1 Dec 2020 10:00 - 11:00 PST

Location

Online

About this event

Adolf Hitler died in his Berlin Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. The conventional historical narrative, established by British Military Intelligence in November 1945 holds that the Nazi leader shot himself in the head once it became apparent that the Russian advance on the German capital was unstoppable. What evidence was there to support this conclusion – and what traces of this enquiry remain in The National Archives? This talk explores the scope of post-war Allied investigations, the political impact of Hitler's passing and the challenges of finding clear-cut proof of death. Following the archival trail, it takes us beyond the usual scholarly focus on Hitler's final movements to also consider public encounters with key documents and eyewitnesses and the meaning that Hitler's death held for different audiences.

Dr Caroline Sharples is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Roehampton. Her research interests encompass memories of National Socialism, representations of the Holocaust, war crimes trials and perpetrator burials and commemorations. She is the author of West Germany and the Nazi Legacy (Routledge, 2012) and Postwar Germany and the Holocaust (Bloomsbury, 2016), and co-editor, with Olaf Jensen, of Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide. She is currently completing a monograph on the cultural history of the death of Adolf Hitler.

Organised by

he Friends is a registered charity (1185971) and became operational as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) in November 2020. It replaced the original unincorporated association charity (328630) established in 1988 to support the then Public Record Office, and subsequently The National Archives at Kew. The Charity's role is to continue the work of the old charity by supporting the work of The National Archives for public benefit through providing funding for projects to enable the public record to be made more easily accessible and for conservation projects. Funding is also provided for outreach and education projects to bring new audiences to the collection held at Kew that covers one thousand years of documented history. Practical support is given through volunteers to help transcribe the records and assist at events held at Kew. We hold events at Kew and online for members and organise external group visits to places of historical and archival importance. We have over eight hundred members across the UK and overseas.

 

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