"As Long As I Live ..."

A team of Soviet detectives conducted last week that if Adolf Hitler was dead, he had not died in the ruins of his Reich Chancellery.

Led by quiet, blue-eyed, middle-aged Major Ivan Nikitine, deputy chief of Stalin's own security police, Russian criminologists reconstructed the last days of Hitler in Berlin. Beside a bookcase in Hitler's personal room in the battle-wrecked Chancellery the sleuths found a thin concrete removable panel. Behind was a man-sized hole leading to a super-secret concrete shelter, far underground and 500 meters away. Another tunnel connected the shelter with an underground trolley line. Food scraps in the shelter indicated that from six to twelve people had stayed there as late as May 9, V-E day plus one.

Under crossexamination, Germans who had told of Hitler's death twisted their stories, clashed in detail, finally admitted that no one had seen the Fiihrer die. Finally the tale told by a member of! Hitler's personal bodyguard catalyzed the conflicting stories. The bodyguard, an SS Untergruppenfuhrer, last saw Hitler on April 27, in his personal room in the Chancellery.

Eva Braun, Hitler's blonde friend, was seated at a table, writing. Hitler fidgeted on a sofa. Hitler asked the bodyguard about casualties outside the Chancellery, where the fighting was heavy. Then he began a harangue, his voice ringing above the noise of battle.

"As long as I live," said Adolf Hitler in effect, "there will be no conflict between Russia, America and England. They are united in their will to destroy me. If I am dead, they cannot remain united. The conflict must come. But when it comes I must be alive to lead the German people, to help them arise from defeat, to lead them to final victory. Germany can hope for the future only if the whole world thinks I am dead. I must.. . ."

The voice trailed off, and the SS Untergruppenfuhrer was told to leave. As he left, Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann were entering. Later the SS Untergruppenfuhrer was wounded and taken prisoner.

In a corridor leading to the secret shelter, the detectives found a charred note, in a woman's handwriting. It told her parents not to worry if they did not hear from her for a long while. The Soviet investigators thought that Eva Braun had written it.

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