The Suicide

Eva Braun, the young woman who had spent most of her life waiting for Hitler, would now be with him forever - she had agreed to share Adolf Hitler's fate. Shortly before his suicide, Hitler said of Eva: "Miss Braun is, besides my dog Blondi, the only one I can absolutely count on ..."

A local magistrate married them early on the morning of April 29, 1945, as a crowning award for her loyalty to the end.

The marriage document survived. Eva started to sign her name "Eva Braun" but stopped, crossed out the "B" and wrote "Eva Hitler, born Braun." Goebbels and Bormann signed as witnesses.

The next day shortly after 3 p.m. Hitler retired with Eva Braun to his private rooms. They bit into thin glass vials of cyanide. As he did so, Hitler also shot himself in the head with a 7.65 mm Walther pistol.

Those who entered Hitler's suite saw him lying on a blood-soaked sofa. Eva Braun lay on the sofa beside him, but she had made no use of the revolver at her side, preferring to take the poison instead. Hitler's body was wrapped in a blanket and carried, along with Eva Braun's, up four flights of steps and into the garden of the chancellery. Both bodies were doused with gasoline and burned.

On the evening of the following day Radio Hamburg announced that "our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler died for Germany in his command post in the Reich Chancellery this afternoon, fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism".

He had founded the Third Reich 12 years and three months before. It would survive him for one week.