NECROPSY OF A TYRANT

 

1941--Drs. Federov (l) and Volkov (r)

If you were to ask certain people about what happened to Adolf Hitler, you might be bombarded with bizarre theories involving trips to Argentina, brain transplants, or, my personal favorite, an article in a grocery store tabloid revealing that he had been discovered alive in Antarctica in 1999 in suspended animation on a rowboat. However, most historians concur that he committed suicide with his bride Eva Braun in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. Per Hitler’s prior instructions, the SS attempted to burn the corpses beyond recognition but only partially succeeded.

 

Berlin fell to the Russians on May 2, 1945. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was obsessed with the fate of Hitler, and he dispatched several forensic teams to confirm whether or not the German dictator was really dead. At the head of the investigation were two of the Soviet Union’s top pathologists—67-year-old Dr. Petyr Volkov and 45-year-old Dr. Iosif Federov. Federov was a protege of Volkov and had studied under him at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The two men were good friends, had often worked together, and were fierce rivals on the chessboard. Volkov was actually a Grandmaster at the game, but Federov was almost as good.

 

Their task in Berlin was complicated by the fact that battlefields are messy and that many of Hitler’s myrmidons as well as ordinary troops and citizens had died violently in the vicinity of the bunker as a result of bombings, shellings, suicide, vigilante action, enemy small-arms fire, and the like. There were a lot of burned corpses and fragmented bodies for the forensic teams to parse.

 

Volkov and Federov were grimly aware that should they report that Hitler had shuffled off this mortal coil, Stalin would be incensed because his archenemy would then be beyond Stalin’s ability to inflict retribution. Stalin would thereafter be likely to turn his wrath towards those who had provided him with the bad news. On the other hand, the doctors also realized that lying to Stalin could provoke an even more extreme and creative reaction on his part should the ruse be discovered. Therefore, even though the pathologists early on had a pretty good idea on which charred cadaver was Hitler’s, they bought some time by intentionally saving him for last and instead first evaluated all of the generous supply of other bodies and body parts. Due to the volume of raw material and the fact that the NKVD (the predecessor agency to the KGB) was breathing down the doctors’ necks, they worked 20-hour days to the point of exhaustion.

 

Finally, the day they dreaded had arrived. Hitler’s remains were the only ones left. Volkov made the usual Y-shaped incision and started to reveal the contents of the German dictator’s body cavity. Federov then stopped Volkov with a restraining hand, placed a chess board on the end of the autopsy table, pulled up a couple of high stools, uncorked a bottle of vodka, and suggested to his friend that they play one final game before completing what could well be their last autopsy. After a few moves on the board, both men succumbed to the alcohol and fatigue and nodded off to sleep with their heads on the corpse.

 

One of the NKVD agents, concerned that no one had heard from the doctors for a couple of hours, entered the autopsy room and then reported back to his comrades. They asked him what he saw, and he responded,

 

  

 

 

 

“Chess nuts resting on an open Führer.”

MERRY CHRISTMAS!