Adolf Hitler’s ignominious death proves the self-defeating, destructive nature of dictatorship, writes Richard Evans
The historian says attempts to restrain tyrants are often futile: for them it’s all or nothing
AT AROUND 2.30 in the afternoon on April 30th 1945, Adolf Hitler sat on the sofa in his private study in the air-raid bunker below the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, put a loaded pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Entering the room around ten minutes later, his personal valet, Heinz Linge, accompanied by his private secretary and head of the Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann, found Hitler slumped, blood dripping from his face onto the sofa and the floor. The corpse of the Nazi leader’s long-time companion, the much younger Eva Braun, lay slumped next to him, giving off a strong smell of bitter almonds, a sure sign that she had taken a fatal dose of prussic acid.
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