I'll have to check again...but IIRC there are questionmarks over a number of the witnesses' statements, and I think Guensche's was worst of all. Questionmarks in the sense that things they said were not corroborated by others', and those versions were in turn corroborated!Hi Phylo_Roadking...
Largely agree with you but for some details as under :
[*] It wasnt Hans Baur but Otto Gunsche who asked for 200 litres for petrol to be brought from the chancellery garage ( Erik Kempka was sent for this). He could fetch about 180 litres and not 50...
You are perhaps confusing this with the Goebbels' funeral? In the case of the Goebbels couple, a relatively small quantity ( maybe 50 lit) was brought.
Linge's statements for example; questioned SO many times 1945-6.....then AGAIN across a total of 18 months in 1947-8! And a lot of what we "know" depends on that material...including wrapping the body and IIRC him carrying it out of the Bunker (I'll have to check on that again)...
...and yet, in POW camp in 1945 between interrogations, he confided to another witness...the Wehrmacht surgeon-general, Major-General Walter Schreiber...that he "did not see Hitler, but toward the end noticed two bodies wrapped in carpet being carried out of the bunker" - referring to the removal of the body and the funeral! Yet HE was supposed to have carried Hitler's body, according to several witnesses!
IIRC the top two thirds of the two bodies traditionally regarded as Hitler's and Braun's were very badly burned...but were still broadly intact and whole when found...although IIRC one of the Fuhrer's legs fell off when the body was lifted!The Hitler couple's bodies were in fact burnt quite substantially, though not completely. The Goebbels' bodies were slightly burnt and the remains of Goebbels was easily identified by the shape of his head.
The point I was making that, given Hitler's previously-stated intentions about wanting his body NOT being found at all, the amount of damage done was far too little. His body was still substantially whole, and certainly enough remained to permit formal identification from his bridgework and jaw no more than 36-48 hours after the autopsy. Which was of course NOT what Der Fuhrer wanted at all!
For all their other preparations...noone had the wit to go out and destroy his jaw and teeth with a sledgehammer or anything else handy Obviously they thought that the seizing and destruction of his dental records and xrays would be enough...
The Nazis in the Bunker just didn't have the benefits of a modern Television Age education!