Introduction
Harri (sometimes spelled Harry) Mengershausen was not a member of the elite "inner circle" of valets and adjutants, but a sergeant in the Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD). In the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Berlin, he became perhaps the most significant witness in Soviet custody. While others provided the "drama" of the suicide, Mengershausen provided the "geometry"—pointing the SMERSH teams of the 3rd Shock Army toward the exact bomb crater where the charred remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were allegedly interred.
However, the "Grave Digger’s" account is far from a neutral forensic record. Captured while attempting to flee Berlin under a false identity, Mengershausen only broke his silence after being confronted with the testimony of fellow prisoners. What followed was a narrative that seemed perfectly tailored to corroborate the Soviet "discovery," yet was physically impossible upon closer inspection.
From his claim of identifying corpses from a distance of sixty meters to his "memory" of a burial detail featuring men who never existed, Mengershausen’s story is a masterclass in the contamination of eyewitness testimony. By deconstructing his role, we find a witness who served as the primary architect of the Soviet version of history—a version that relied more on a "pointed finger" than on forensic reality.
In Soviet Captivity
Harri Mengershausen asserted that he was an eyewitness to the burning of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun's corpses and participated directly in the burial of those charred bodies. Days after the Soviets had dug up human remains, they believed were Hitler and Braun's, they took Mengershausen to the Reich Chancellery Garden and asked him to show them where he had buried the bodies. He pointed to the correct empty bomb crater, and it was taken as a confirmation of the accuracy of Mengershausen's account. So, it's peculiar that he doesn’t appear in the official report prepared for Stalin. Mengershausen isn't even mentioned in The Hitler Book, whereas Bormann, Günsche, Goebbels, Axmann, Krebs, Naumann, Burgdorf, Linge, Kempka, Lindloff, Reisser and Schädle are all recorded as observing, supervising, or participating directly in the burning or burial of the remains.
While attempting to escape from Berlin on May 2, 1945, Harri Mengershausen was captured by the Soviets. Reconnaissance officers attached to Colonel Ivan Klimenko’s 3rd Shock Army had arrested him. Mengershausen was imprisoned and questioned but successfully concealed his role as an RSD guard at the Reich Chancellery until a fellow prisoner, Dr. Helmut Kunz , named Mengershausen as someone that might have significant information about Hitler’s death, burning and burial.
Mengershausen was then confronted by SMERSH interrogators with Dr. Kunz's written statements about Hitler's 'death'. Kunz named Mengershausen as an eyewitness to Hitler’s burning and burial, so Mengershausen broke down, revealed that he had been RSD, and gave an account of what he saw and did.
The Bystrow Interrogation
He was interrogated by “Major Bystrow” and Yelena Rzhevskaya. The following are the relevant portions of what Mengershausen told his SMERSH interrogators while he was a Soviet prisoner of war:
“On April 30” [1945], he had been on duty inside the New Reich Chancellery when he noticed some peculiar activity in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. He viewed this activity “from the last window” of the "Blue Dining-room", which was close to Hitler's office in the New Reich Chancellery. Mengershausen observed this from “a distance of 600 meters”.
Comments: The distance is approximately 60 meters, so this must be a transcription error or perhaps a typo.
“Suddenly [he] saw Hitler's personal adjutant, Sturmbannführer Günsche, and Hitler's valet, Linge, at the emergency exit of the bunker... They carried Hitler’s body out and [placed it on the ground in a depression] about two meters from the exit and then returned a few minutes later with Eva Braun’s dead body”.
Comments: All other eyewitness accounts have the corpses being taken out of the Führerbunker—at the same time, one right after the other.
How could Mengershausen recognize the corpses from this distance? He had only been working at the Reich Chancellery since April 20, 1945. By most accounts, Hitler’s corpse had been wrapped in a grey blanket which covered all or most of his face.
As will be shown later in this segment, once released from Soviet captivity, Mengershausen testified in a Bavarian court that the bodies had been wrapped in a carpet.
“At a distance from the corpses were two 20-Liter petrol cans. They gave the Hitler salute and then Linge poured gas on the corpses and lit them on fire”.
Comments: Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, did the pouring according to Mengershausen. Others claimed Günsche poured the petrol. Still others said that everyone there contributed to the pouring.
Hitler’s dogs had been killed and burned too. The dogs had been poisoned and shot by Hitler’s dog-keeper, "Paul Phenie".
Comments: The bunker witnesses that mentioned Hitler’s dog or dogs and their destruction said this “dog handler” or “dog trainer” was a man named “Fritz Tornow”.
The dogs had been buried in a bomb crater not far from where Hitler and Eva Braun’s corpses were burned. Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun’s charred corpses were put in the “same crater” with the dogs.
Comments: The Soviet reports about the discovery of the corpses they believed were Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun match Mengershausen’s description. But Mengershausen never specified what kind of dog (or dogs), or how many dogs he saw in this crater.
Mengershausen said the dogs were burned, which does not match up with the Soviet autopsy report and the picture of an Alsatian that has been shown and labelled “Hitler’s dog Blondi” for decades.
The Vadis Report
Soviet Army Lieutenant-General Aleksandr Vadis, head of SMERSH of 1st Byelorussian Front, sent this report to Moscow on May 3, 1945:
"On May 4 when Klimenko returned to the bunker one of his soldiers went down into a bomb crater strewn with scorched papers and noticed some legs and had them dug up. Two charred corpses...but nobody thought they were Hitler and Eva. Klimenko ordered them wrapped in blankets and reburied [them].
From the report of May 13, by Klimenko...a soldier Mengershausen of the Waffen-SS, who had been assigned to the Chancellery for personal protection of Hitler on April 20, to the Reich Chancellery defense zone. During his time on guard duty along the corridor, Mengershausen stopped in front of the external window of the Blue Lunch Room, which was very near the exit on the garden, and observed what was happening in the garden of the Chancellery. At that moment Günsche and Linge were bringing out of the emergency exit of the bunker the bodies of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. The fact aroused his curiosity, and he attentively followed what transpired.
The personal assistant of Hitler, Günsche, sprinkled petrol on the bodies and lit them on fire. Half an hour later the bodies of Hitler and his wife were burned. They were then buried in a grenade crater that was about a meter from the emergency exit.
Subsequently Mengershausen declared that on April 29 Hitler’s dog had also been buried in the aforesaid crater. The investigation on the spot pointed out by the witness, according to the Soviet report of May 13, that his declarations were true because two poisoned dogs were also found in the same crater...”
When Vadis wrote, “Half an hour later the bodies of Hitler and his wife were burned” he was summarizing Mengershausen. Vadis is repeating what he had heard from Mengershausen about how long it took for the corpses to be burned.
Obviously, a half-hour would have been insufficient to reduce the corpses to ash, and one might rightly complain the phrase is nebulous. Did Mengershausen mean completely or partially burned?
Since it’s impossible to know for sure what Mengershausen meant by “burned”, it’s necessary to compare what Mengershausen said about the same event but under different circumstances.
For example, once he was no longer prisoner of war in the USSR Mengershausen said on several occasions that Hitler’s corpse was barely damaged, and that Hitler was easily recognizable. However, while he was a POW at the Workurta camp in Siberia, Mengershausen described the final condition Hitler’s burned corpse differently.
After seven years as a Soviet POW, Dr. Fritz Echtmann was transferred to the Workuta camp in Siberia where he met two Germans. These men claimed first-hand knowledge of Hitler's death. In October of 1954 Echtmann testified in a Bavarian court that "one of Hitler's SS-bodyguards" named "Kurt Mengershausen" told him that he had "buried the singed bones in a crater caused by Soviet artillery shell impact in the Reich Chancellery Garden".
Echtmann has Mengershausen’s first name wrong, but the part about burying Hitler’s “singed bones” in a bomb crater seems to contradict Mengershausen’s most important claim: that he had easily identified the body of Adolf Hitler for the Soviets.
But there’s more to consider from the Vadis report that’s typically overlooked by historians. Vadis is clearly attempting to establish that Mengershausen had been useful by pointing out the spot in the Reich Chancellery Garden where he’d buried Hitler’s charred on May 13, 1945—or perhaps even before that date.
However, Mengershausen contradicted this timeline on his very first day of freedom in West Germany when he told reporters that—
“...several months after the Russians captured him; they took him back to the burial spot to identify the grave. He said the grave was empty, and that apparently the Russians wanted only to confirm the location".
Harri Mengershausen's account only became known in the West when he spoke to the press after his release by the Soviets, January 12, 1956.
Immediately it was obvious to everyone that his account differed substantially from what had been told by others, such as Karnau, Kempka, Baur and Linge. What Mengershausen was saying was so different that it necessitated a re-write of British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper’s famous book on Hitler’s last days. Yet Trevor-Roper pretended like nothing Mengershausen said was different or made any difference. No changes in his account were necessary, he quickly proclaimed. The famous British historian even publicly maintained that the new information gained from Mengershausen corroborated and reinforced his book.
Even the first newspaper stories featuring Mengershausen quotes contained new revelations which presented fundamental challenges to Trevor-Roper’s book. For example:
“Harry Mengershausen...claimed he was one of four men who burned Hitler's body. He said Hitler took poison and did not shoot himself, contradicting Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge”.
Whereas Trevor-Roper had always contended that the ‘evidence’ supported Hitler committing suicide by shooting himself in the head, Mengershausen said Hitler had not shot himself.
That’s not some small difference.
The Post-Captivity Testimony
Next, carefully consider the elements of Harri Mengershausen’s sworn testimony before Judge Heinrich Stephanus and lead investigator, Dr. Walter Specht, at Amtsgericht Berchtesgaden :
“I watched the preparations for the killing of Hitler in Stumpfegger’s doctor’s office. Dr. Stumpfegger went into Hitler's room with cyanide syringes in order to kill Hitler and his wife, at Hitler's request”.
Comments: Exactly why was an RSD guard in Dr. Stumpfegger’s doctor’s office. This office was directly across the hall from Hitler’s own rooms in the Führerbunker.
Mengershausen’s presence inside the Führerbunker is not corroborated by a single eyewitness, at this time or any time, during Hitler’s ‘last days’.
Keep in mind that Dr. Stumpfegger was not available to defend himself against this accusation. As far as can be known, Stumpfegger died attempting to escape Berlin.
"The bodies were rolled into a carpet when we carried them out of the bunker".
Comments: The corpses weren’t carried separately. This contradicts the accounts of Günsche, Linge, Axmann and others, as does the corpses having been “rolled into a carpet” rather than wrapped in grey blankets.
On the other hand, it approximates what Marshal Vasily Chuikov wrote in two Soviet magazines:
“The body, wrapped in a carpet was found May 2, 1945, in the basement of the burning chancellery”.
AND
“They [Soviet troops] found the body of Hitler wrapped in a still-smoldering rug”.
Mengershausen’s statement about the bodies being “rolled into a carpet” appears to be corroborated by fellow RSD man, Hans Hofbeck. Hofbeck was an eyewitness to the burning of a corpse which he presumed was Hitler. He had seen Hitler’s body being carried out of the Führerbunker emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery Garden “wrapped in a rug” and then set on fire with petrol.
On the other hand, Hofbeck admitted that positive ID was impossible. Unlike Mengershausen, who was able to see through carpet at a distance of 60 meters, Hofbeck stipulated that he had been unable to see Hitler’s face even though he had been only a few meters away from the burning. Furthermore, Hofbeck admitted that he knew it was Hitler because others told him so.
The statement of yet another Reich Chancellery guard, Werner Schwiedel, might help straighten out this carpet versus blankets mess. Schwiedel said that he and Heinz Krüger had been ordered by Heinz Linge to destroy the blood-stained carpet in Hitler’s private quarters in the Führerbunker. They rolled it up, carried it outside to the garden, and burned it. Hitler was no longer in the Führerbunker at that time, and they had learned of Hitler’s death from Linge although they had suspected it after learning about the killing of Hitler’s Alsatian the previous day.
"Hitler had a bullet hole in his right temple".
Comments: Here Mengershausen is contradicting himself! At first, he had told the press that Hitler had not shot himself but had merely taken poison. Later this story changed. Up to this point the accepted version of Hitler’s suicide was that he had shot himself through the mouth. It wouldn’t be long before other bunker witnesses changed their stories to more closely match Mengershausen’s.
Heinz Linge claimed that the bullet entrance wound was to Hitler’s left temple.
“Hitler had been shot through the left temple, his head was inclined to the right and blood was still dripping from the right temple onto the carpet. Linge concluded that his Führer had shot himself through the left temple”.
Comments: Whose version of Hitler’s suicidal gunshot makes more sense, Mengershausen’s or Linge’s?
If Mengershausen is correct, then Hitler should have expected any potential bloody blow-out from the opposite side of his head to spray all over Eva. On the other hand, it was Hitler’s left hand which reportedly shook. For these reasons it makes more sense for Hitler to have shot himself through the mouth.
“Eva Braun wore the same black silk gown in which she had been married earlier...and carried a bouquet of flowers”.
Comments: Not a single bunker witness placed Mengershausen in the Führerbunker at the time of the Hitler-Braun wedding ceremony. If he wasn’t at the wedding, it’s difficult to understand how he could have known this detail unless he’s passing these tidbits on second-hand. Of course, then the source for the color of Eva’s dress and the bouquet of flowers is absent.
"Hitler wore an SS-jacket not his own and was burned in it”.
Comments: Whose SS-jacket was Hitler wearing, and why? Of course, this contradicts the eyewitness testimony of Günsche, Linge, Axmann and Misch.
Perhaps, when Hitler shot himself, he had been wearing his grey tunic, but some unknown person stripped it from his dead body, put an SS-jacket on the corpse, and then wrapped Hitler and Eva’s dead bodies in a carpet for transfer to the Reich Chancellery Garden. This is ridiculous, and all by itself casts reasonable doubt on Mengershausen’s account.
Mengershausen “dug a hole about three feet deep and laid the remains on three boards before throwing dirt on top of the corpses”.
Comments: He dug the hole? Wasn’t ‘Hitler’ buried in a Soviet ‘shell crater’? Perhaps Mengershausen meant to say that he modified the shell crater by more digging. Who knows what he meant, because no follow-up question was asked by Dr. Specht or Judge Stephanus.
What’s the point of using these boards? Did he re-wrap the charred human remains in a carpet? Does this mean that the bodies had been rolled up in a rug, carried to the burning site in the Reich Chancellery Garden where the rug was then unrolled before the bodies were doused with petrol and set aflame? If so, that would mean that after the corpses were petrol-roasted the same carpet was used to roll them up again and Mengershausen dragged them over to the ditch he had dug for burial. This matches the Vasily Chuikov’s contention that Hitler and Eva’s corpses were found in a “still-smoldering rug”, but none of this matches anyone else’s account.
"We poured three jerry cans of petrol on the bodies and set fire to them".
Comments: “We”? It’s funny how nobody (Günsche, Linge, Kempka, Karnau, etc.) mentioned Mengershausen’s presence during, let alone his direct involvement in, dousing the corpses and setting them on fire. Considering that he said that he had viewed these actions from 60 meters away, Mengershausen’s use of the word “we” seems overly inclusive.
How many cans were used? Mengershausen said three, but the number changes from one eyewitness account to the next.
"I was surprised that the flames hardly seemed to do anything to the bodies. When the fire was out, Hitler's head was almost fully preserved and easily identifiable. Only his hair and uniform were destroyed".
Comments: Ah, at least we know the aforementioned “SS-jacket” was destroyed. This is where Mengershausen apparently, on his own, took over the destruction process and decided enough was enough and buried the corpses.
Mengershausen’s former boss, chief of the RSD Johann “Hans” Rattenhuber seems to (sort of) agree with Harri. The following was in Rattenhuber’s written statement to his Soviet jailers:
"The bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were not burning well, so I went down again to order more petrol. When I came up again Mengershausen had already disposed of the corpses. Sergeant Mengershausen told me that it was impossible to stand sentry due to the unbearable smell; at the same time, at the behest of Günsche, he [Mengershausen] and other SS men threw the corpses into the pit where Hitler's poisoned dog lay".
After being released by the Soviets, Rattenhuber changed his tune and insisted that he had absolutely nothing to do with the burning or burial of the corpses and hadn’t even been outside in the Reich Chancellery Garden at the time.
Mengershausen’s claim to have been the one to bury the Hitler’s remains is challenged by a fellow Reich Chancellery guard that was on duty at the same time. Hans Reisser contradicted Mengershausen, and doesn’t even mention Mengershausen’s involvement:
“Günsche then gave me the order to clean up the remains of the two corpses when it's all over, together with Obersturmführer Ewald Lindloff. One and a half hours later, Otto Günsche told me it was unnecessary, Lindloff had already taken care of it [approx. 6:30 PM]. As a result, I did not visit the burning location again”.
"At the end of June 1945, the Russians took me to Finow, about 30 miles northeast of Berlin, where I was led to the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun. The Russians asked me to identify them, which I did easily".
AND
“There [in Finow], they [Soviet SMERSH agents] asked me to identify the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun. Although the bodies were stored in wooden boxes and already partially decomposed, I could easily identify them”.
Comments: This is utter nonsense. Anyone with any concept of the decomposition of human remains knows this can’t be true. Mengershausen would have been viewing the corpses nearly two months after Hitler’s supposed death.
Hugh Trevor-Roper falsified Mengershausen’s testimony in the first edition of his famous book published after Mengershausen’s return from captivity, by assigning “at the end of May” to this event. But it doesn’t help! The remains would not have been “partially decomposed” after only twenty to thirty days.
Mengershausen claimed to have "clearly recognized" Hitler “by the shape of the head” and “the distinctive shape of the nose”.
Comments: Dr. Faust Shkaravski, the forensic pathologist who oversaw the Soviet autopsy of ‘Hitler’s’ remains contradicts Mengershausen’s bovine scatology, as does the text of the Soviet autopsy:
"On face and body the skin is completely missing".
Additionally, the woman that supposedly did the language translation for Mengershausen’s initial interrogation wrote the following:
“The charred faces of the man and the woman were unrecognizable”.
Of course, still other witnesses said that the corpses in question were reduced to “small bone shards and ash”.
Either way, Mengershauen’s story is bunkum.
When Mengershausen viewed the corpses in Finow "From the distance" he had been unable to see if Hitler's jaw was intact. The "viewing of the bodies" had “lasted for less than two minutes”.
Comments: In less than two minutes Mengershausen was able to easily identify the corpse as Hitler’s by the distinct shape of ‘Hitler’s’ head and nose.
What makes matters worse is the likelihood that whatever Mengershausen told the Bavarian court had been tainted by Hugh Trevor-Roper who interviewed Mengershausen prior to his testimony.
This is profoundly unprofessional and potentially prejudicial, considering that Trevor-Roper’s questions could have revealed to Mengershausen what others, like Linge, Karnau, Kempka and Axmann, had already said publicly during the years Mengershausen was a Soviet POW. Mengershausen’s testimony may have been contaminated by the expectations Trevor-Roper had built into the questions he asked Mengershausen.
Fortunately, Mengershausen was simply not parroting Trevor-Roper’s expectation—across the board. This is obvious from the eleven above-outlined statements, many of which contradicted Trevor-Roper’s account.
His Contributions to The Last Days of Hitler
Let’s consider the additions to the post-1956 editions of Trevor-Roper’s famous book because of Harry’s statements to the court.
Mengershausen told Trevor-Roper that a colleague by the name of “Glanzen” helped him bury the charred remains, but that Glanzen “died in the last days of the Battle of Berlin”.
Comments: Who was Glanzen? There is no record of this person. Trevor-Roper knew better, too. He had had access to the lists of Mengershausen’s known associates for a decade already. “SS-Unterscharführer Glanzer” was no more a real person than was “Paul Phenie”, Hitler’s “dog keeper”.
Trevor-Roper claimed that Mengershausen had told him, in private, "Hitler shot himself in the temple, not through the mouth”. Mengershausen even offered a reason why Hitler couldn’t have shot himself in the mouth, saying, "the air pressure would have broken the jaws; which were, however, intact!”
Comments: Was Mengershausen an expert in suicide by firearm? No. It’s just a presumption presented as fact that “air pressure would have broken the jaws”.
If Artur Axmann had been there to hear Mengershausen’s explanation, he may have chimed in about what he saw. After all, Axmann told Judge Michael Musmanno that he believed Hitler shot himself in the mouth because Hitler’s jaw looked as if it was "out of joint". Of course, this is yet another unwarranted assumption.
Anyone familiar with the story of the identification of ‘Hitler’s’ remains by the Soviet SMERSH team is aware that Harri Mengershausen is considered a star witness for the Soviets because he had been able to confirm where corpses, assumed to be Hitler and Braun, had been found. Because Mengershausen could identify the correct empty crater in the Reich Chancellery Garden, the SMERSH investigators took this as a confirmation that his story about being involved with the burning and burial of the corpses was true.
But even if Mengershausen hadn’t really seen or been involved in anything how likely would it have been for him to point out this “empty grave”? To know the odds, one would have to know how many other craters there were in the immediate area of Führerbunker emergency exit. How many craters were there in the immediate area?
There were two: one small depression and one trench-like crater. Photos taken from the ground and from the air demonstrate that anyone would have identified the deeper trench-like crater as the burial spot. There were two options, and only one of those options was clearly deep and long enough to contain charred human remains and a couple of dogs.
Conclusion
Harri Mengershausen has long been touted as the "star witness" who led the Soviets to the grave, yet his testimony remains the most unstable element of the bunker narrative. As we have seen, the "Grave Digger" was a man whose story was not only internally inconsistent but was actively reshaped by the expectations of his interrogators—and eventually by historians like Hugh Trevor-Roper.
The forensic absurdities of his account are insurmountable. Mengershausen claimed he could "easily identify" Hitler by the shape of his nose two months after the death—a biological impossibility for a corpse that the Soviet autopsy itself described as having "skin completely missing”. His narrative of the "carpet-wrapped" corpses contradicts the primary "blanket" accounts of the inner circle, and his reliance on "phantom" figures like "Glanzen" and "Paul Phenie" suggests a witness filling in the gaps with convenient fictions.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Mengershausen’s "helpfulness" was the statistical reality of the garden itself. In a landscape littered with only two viable craters near the bunker exit, his "successful" identification of the deeper trench was less a feat of memory and more a 50/50 guess reinforced by Soviet leading questions.
In the end, Harri Mengershausen didn’t just bury the remains; he buried the inconsistencies of the official story under a layer of fabricated certainty. By removing the soil from his testimony, we find that the man who pointed to the grave was often looking at a script rather than a memory.