A01=Caroline Sharples
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Author_Caroline Sharples
bunker
Category=NHB
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=NHWR7
confirmation
conspiracy theory
cult
cultural history
death
dental records
dying
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eq_nobargain
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eva braun
fascism
missing body
national socialism
nationalism
nazi
right wing
suicide
USSR
Product details
- ISBN 9780300284911
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 10 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A fascinating exploration of why Hitler’s death was only confirmed in 2018
Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and his corpse was not put on display. This created the perfect vacuum for myth and survival legends, while rival intelligence agencies and propaganda further confounded the investigations of successive historians.
Caroline Sharples explores the aftermath of events at the Führerbunker in the first cultural account of this decisive yet elusive moment. Hitler’s death was widely anticipated, and the news elicited a huge range of emotions as governments and secret services scrambled to verify what they heard. The search for proof of death led to an outpouring of conspiratorial thinking, and the final moments of Hitler’s life have been reimagined ever since.
This is an intriguing, unsettling account of a historical event we all think we know—and a sophisticated examination of how history is written.
Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and his corpse was not put on display. This created the perfect vacuum for myth and survival legends, while rival intelligence agencies and propaganda further confounded the investigations of successive historians.
Caroline Sharples explores the aftermath of events at the Führerbunker in the first cultural account of this decisive yet elusive moment. Hitler’s death was widely anticipated, and the news elicited a huge range of emotions as governments and secret services scrambled to verify what they heard. The search for proof of death led to an outpouring of conspiratorial thinking, and the final moments of Hitler’s life have been reimagined ever since.
This is an intriguing, unsettling account of a historical event we all think we know—and a sophisticated examination of how history is written.
Caroline Sharples is senior lecturer in history at the University of Roehampton. She is the author of West Germans and the Nazi Legacy and Postwar Germany and the Holocaust, the latter of which was nominated for the 2017 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Studies.
