On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler and his longtime companion Eva Braun took their own lives in a Berlin bunker, as the Red Army approached within a few hundred meters of their position. The remaining Nazi leadership attempted to destroy their bodies, but thanks to the efforts of Soviet military counterintelligence, the Fuhrer's demise was confirmed.
Sunday marks the 77th anniversary of the creation of SMERSH, the umbrella organization of counter-intelligence bodies, a portmanteau of the Russian language phrase ‘SMERt Shpionam' (‘Death to Spies'), formed on April 19, 1943.
It was SMERSH's job in Berlin in the chaotic first few days of May 1945 to reliably establish that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had indeed killed himself and been cremated outside his Reich Chancellery bunker, and they accomplished their mission with flying colours, FSB Lt. Gen. (ret.) Alexander Zdanovich says.
In an interview, the retired intelligence officer recalled that SMERSH, which had helped to prepare for virtually all of the Red Army's offensive operations in the latter part of the war, played a major role in the Berlin offensive in the spring of 1945, and was given the unenviable task of searching for Nazi war criminals as they attempted to disguise themselves and flee west or abroad. The Fuhrer, naturally, was their biggest target.
“On May 2, our troops occupied the Reich Chancellery, and that evening, SMERSH officers found the corpses of Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph…
