April 30, 1945: The Death of Adolf Hitler

April 30, 1945: With the Soviet Union's Red Army having reduced his "Thousand-Year Reich" from most of Europe to the size of his bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, shoots himself in the head. It was 3:30 PM, Central European Time, 9:30 AM U.S. Eastern Time. It was not announced by the remaining Nazi government until the next day. He was 56 years old.

His wife, Eva Braun, had also committed suicide, with a cyanide pill. She was 33. The Nazi regime came to an end with the rump government's surrender 8 days later.

He knew the Red Army was closing in from the east. He knew the other Allies, America and Britain, were closing in from the west.

On April 22, he ordered General Felix Steiner to attack the Soviet troops attempting to encircle Berlin. Steiner could not raise enough troops to do so. Pretty much the only available fighters in Germany who weren't already in the Army were old men and children.

Steiner was no hero. He was arrested for war crimes, but after 3 years, he was released due to an inability to get enough evidence against him. He lived until 1966, still trying to rehabilitate the image of the German army, and in particular the SS.

In his Bunker, Hitler was told of Steiner's inability to raise troops, and he lost his composure. He now knew that defeat in World War II was inevitable. This event was dramatized in the 2004 German film Der Untergang, known as Downfall in the English-speaking world. Hitler was played by Austrian actor Bruno Ganz, and, since the scene was filmed in German, a language most non-Germans don't understand, it became the basis for the "Hitler Rants Parodies" video series, with fake subtitles put on to match whatever joke the author wants to tell.

Hitler knew Berlin was surrounded. He had hoped to hold out until May 5, the anniversary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, his role model, who had come closer to conquering Russia than he had, actually reaching Moscow, but finding it burned and useless to him before returning.

But the reports that Hitler was getting suggested that the Soviets would get there sooner. And when he found out how his former Axis partner, Benito Mussolini, had been treated after his capture, and especially after his execution, by Communists in his country, Hitler was determined to not fall into the hands of any of the Allied nations, especially the Soviets.

As the saying goes, the one service Hitler ever performed for humanity was to kill Hitler. But the regime he began on January 30, 1933, 12 years earlier -- including the war he started on September 3, 1939 -- had led to the deaths of 75 million people, military and civilian combined, including over 400,000 Americans.

The true depths of his depravity had already begun to reach the civilized world before word of his death had, as American, British and Soviet troops found the concentration camps where the Holocaust was carried out. In these camps, 11 million people died, some from murder, some from disease. And 6 million of those people who died, and many others who survived, were put there for no crime other than being Jewish.

So the death of Hitler could not be a wholly joyous occasion, because it was a reminder of all that he did, and all that he could have done had he won.

If you ever wonder which is worse, Fascism or Communism, consider this: The Soviets had the atomic bomb for 40 years, and never used it; the Chinese have had it for nearly 60 years, and have never used it; but if the Nazis had ever gotten it, there is no doubt that Hitler would have ordered its use.

His propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, and his wife, Magda, remained in the Bunker. On May 1, they fed their children poison, and then took their own lives. On May 2, Generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf, both among those that Hitler asked to remain in the Bunker in the Downfall scene, committed suicide. The same day, Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann, who had fled the Bunker, realized capture by the Soviets was inevitable, and committed suicide. SS leader Heinrich Himmler escaped until he was captured by British troops, and committed suicide in their custody on May 23.

Most of the remaining Nazi high command was captured alive. They were tried in Nuremburg, site of some of the Party's infamous rallies, and convicted. These included Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister; Julius Streicher, the Nazis' top propaganda publisher; Hans Frank, Governor-General of occupied Poland; and the other 2 military leaders that Hitler had asked to stay in the Downfall scene, General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Armed Forces, who had signed the surrender papers on V-E Day, and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.

Not among the condemned, but scheduled to be so, was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the highest-ranking Nazi official to have survived V-E Day. He had made an appeal, asking to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused. So he committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged. 

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April 30, 1945 was a Monday. The Hockey Hall of Fame held its 1st election the same day. I have a separate entry for that event.

The National Football League was in its off-season. The National Hockey League had already completed its season, with the Toronto Maple Leafs having won the Stanley Cup. And the National Basketball Association wouldn't begin play for another year and a half. And it was a Monday, a travel day in Major League Baseball. No games were played.

Hitler's death wasn't announced by the Nazi government until the next day. But even on Tuesday, May 1, 1945, there were only 2 MLB games played:

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 5-4 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* And the Chicago White Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-0 at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.