Why Did Hitler’s Teeth Vanish for 55 Years?

Wild theories sprang up immediately in the wake of Hitler’s death. He had escaped into the alps, he had been captured and secretly questioned. The Soviets had him. No, the British. He’d fled to Argentina.

We’ve all heard the stories.

All of these rumors and conspiracies could have been squashed almost immediately. If only Hitler’s teeth hadn’t disappeared.

It meant only a few people actually knew the truth. A truth that would not be uncovered until the year 2000.

We are going to focus on the two heroes of that day. Yelena Rzhevskaya, a Soviet interpreter and Kathe Heusermann, a dental assistant.

A Very important Mission

Yelena Rzhevskaya was used to interrogating captured Germans. It was part of her job as an interpreter for the Soviet war effort. She might have been just 25 years old but she had proved herself.

Summoned to the office of Colonel Gorbushin she thought nothing of it. Upon her arrival she was handed a satin lined wooden box containing a partial jaw and teeth. Confused, she awaited her orders.

“Those are Hitler’s teeth” she was told. “You are to take them and find Hitler’s dentist”. Not an easy task in the wartorn rubble of Berlin.

“Lose them and you’ll lose your head” Colonel Gorbushin told her, his face emotionless.

Yelena’s blood ran cold, the box suddenly feeling heavier in her hands. “Why me?”.

“Because we have no safe and as a woman, you’re less likely to get drunk and lose them”.

With that, she, Colonel Gorbushin and their driver Sergei headed off into Berlin.

Through the smoking ruins

Picking their way slowly through the destroyed city took many hours. It was slow going. The roads had been all but destroyed and barricades had been flattened by tanks.

Pulling up at a hospital, enquires were made. Only one lead. Find Professor Carl von Eicken, an ear, nose and throat specialist who for the last 10 years had been Hitler’s physician.

His offices were at the Charite clinic. They set off again.

When they arrived, they quickly found the ear, nose and throat department in the basement. Wounded patients were everywhere.

Professor von Eicken didn’t have any answers for them, sending them on to the dentistry department.

There they were given a name and an address. Dr Hugo Blaschke whose surgery was located on Kurfurstendamm. Miraculously, the building remained standing.

Here they found that Dr Blashke had fled to Bavaria. Another dead end.

However, there was a glimmer of hope. A Dr Bruck said that Dr Blaschke’s assistant Kathe Heusermann was at home in her apartment just around the corner.

Wrong place, wrong time

Kathe, a beautiful blonde woman in a headscarf and blue coat arrived within minutes. She should have stayed at home or gone with Dr Blaschke when he offered but we will discuss her fate in due course.

Asked whether Hitler’s dental records were in the building, Kathe answered that she thought so and proceeded to a box. As she riffled through the records, Yelena caught glimpses of the records of Himmler and Goebbels before Kathe eventually settled on the records of Adolf Hitler himself.

Unfortunately, only Hitler’s medical card was present. A promising start but X-rays would be needed to make a positive match. Kathe made the suggestion that the records might be at Dr Blaschke’s other surgery. Located in the Reich Chancellery. The halls of power of the Nazi’s.

The building had yet to be stripped by the occupying forces. Nazi paraphernalia hung everywhere as though the war could still be won.

Kathe led the little band of people down to a small, poorly lit room. There she found what they were looking for. X-rays of Hitler’s teeth and his dental records.

It had been a long day so they decided to reconvene at 10am the following morning.

Confirmation

Colonel Gorbushin asked Kathe to describe from memory Hitler’s teeth. As she spoke, Yelena translated and made notes.

“A gold bridge attached to the 1st left tooth with a window crown, to the root of the 2nd left tooth, to the root of the 1st right tooth and to the 3rd right tooth with a gold crown” wrote Yelena.

Comparing the notes to the X-rays was a match. Crucially though, they must all match the actual teeth in the box.

Passing the teeth to Kathe Heusermann, the awaited her verdict with baited breath. She soon confirmed it. The teeth belonged to Adolf Hitler himself.

It seemed that the world would get irrefutable proof of Hitler’s death.

The Fate of Kathe Heusermann

Stalin, the Soviet leader decided to keep the existence of the teeth secret. He wanted to keep the world in the dark. Primarily as a way to help the Soviets during discussions relating to Germany now that the war was over.

Speaking to his closest allies, Stalin said “We shall not make this public, the capitalist encirclement continues”.

To make sure the truth was kept secret he had Kathe Heusermann arrested as a dangerous criminal and sent to prison in Moscow. The only reason she survived this ordeal is because a fellow prisoner gave her some of their food.

For the first 6 years, she wasn’t even charged with a crime. Just left to rot. Finally, in August 1951 Kathe was charged with helping the Germans prolong the war.

Sentenced to 10 years hard labor Kathe was sent to a gulag in Siberia. The journey was 2800 miles long, loaded into the back of a cold, cramped cattle truck. There, Kathe could not meet her work quota and would have died if not for Stalin dying in 1955. It was the first piece of good fortune she had had in over a decade.

West Germany negotiated the return of their prisoners after the death of Stalin. Returning home to Berlin, Kathe found that everyone thought she was dead. Her fiancé had returned from the war and married someone else. That fateful day in 1945 destroyed Kathe life. She went back into dentistry and died in 1993.

Yelena Rzhevskaya

As for Yelena, she had no idea of the fate that befell Kathe. She returned to Moscow and became a writer. She had been ordered to forget her time in Berlin and keep quiet. In Soviet Russia, you did as you were told. During the intervening years, she researched what had happened to Kathe. It was not until 1996, 3 years after Kathe’s death that she got her answer.

She published several books about her experiences in Berlin in her later years and only died in 2017 at the grand old age of 97.

What became of Hitler’s Teeth?

They were place in a special container and sent to Moscow. And that was the last time they were seen until the year 2000. Russian officials decided to put them on display as part of an exhibition celebrating the 55th anniversary of the end of World War 2. Actually, they put part of Hitler’s skull and a new picture of the teeth on display. The teeth are said to be too fragile to handle or display. Apart from that, they have not been seen in public since that day in 1945.

They were studied by French pathologists in 2017 at the behest of the Russian FSB and found to be consistent with Hitler’s dental records. They showed no signs of meat residue (Hitler was a vegetarian), blue staining consistent with biting a cyanide capsule and no gunpowder residue. This means that if Hitler did indeed shoot himself as well as biting a cyanide pill, he did so by putting the gun to his temple or forehead.