The History of the History

History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.

It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explained how and why we got here.

Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

Did you know the Adolf Hitler didn't die in World War II?

Instead, it's Gabrielin. He did so because he was removed from his bunker by a helicopter, then flown from Austria to Spain, and then he was put on a submarine and brought across the ocean to Argentina.

Now, nothing I just said right there is true, but a lot of people believe that's true because there's a whole cottage industry built around the conspiracy theory that Adolf Hitler was able to escape to South America, and he lived there for numerous years and fathered children with Eva Braun and was plotting a return to power and establishing a fourth Reich.

According to numerous official accounts of eyewitnesses who were in the bunker with Hitler, he did shoot himself, then loyal Nazis burned his body, and the bones were removed by the Russians.

But right after World War II, 50% of Americans didn't believe the captured Nazis whose head Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide.

They thought that he faked his death and escaped justice.

In today's episode, I'm speaking with Robert Hutchinson, whose author of the new book, The Death of Hitler, what really happened.

Robert surveyed all of the accounts of the people who are in the bunker with Hitler, and he's also looked at new forensic evidence of people who've analyzed the material remains of what is claimed to be Adolf Hitler, and we can finally indifinilily say what happened.

But we're not just looking at Adolf Hitler's death, we're also looking at how conspiracy theories are made, how do you sniff out when something is probably a conspiracy theory, and why the history channel is a complete waste of your time, because they have a three season series called hunting Hitler.

The final evidence, which is based on almost no evidence whatsoever. It's a case of a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy claimed that he saw Hitler one time walking around Argentina, stuff like that.

So we learned about the final end of one of history's greatest monsters, but also why the conspiracy theories about him aren't true, and how to sniff out other conspiracy theories and separate the wheat from the chaff.

A lot of really useful things here, the Bob brings to the discussion, and I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Bob Hutchinson.

Hey, Bob, welcome back to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me back, Scott.

Yeah, this is a big year for you. We talked about Abraham Lincoln and the manhunt after his death, and now we're going to look at what happened to Adolf Hitler.

And this is a topic I look forward to getting into. I was talking with Bob off the air before he recorded that when I get questions from the audience, about 20% of them have to do with Adolf Hitler.

So I've been forced to look at a lot of different aspects of his life, but this particular topic of what happened after his death is something that I've encountered well before I became a historian.

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