Heinz Linge: What Happened to Hitler’s Valet Who Burned His Body
Heinz Linge was the only person allowed to wake Hitler up and serve him breakfast in bed. The Führer trusted his valet completely, even after his death. It was not for nothing that Linge was one of those who cremated the bodies of the Führer and Eva Braun. Despite the unique role that Heinz Linge played in the life of the Nazi leader, he spent only 10 years behind bars.
The Führer’s personal servant
As Linge himself wrote in his book With Hitler to the End: Memoirs of Adolf Hitler’s Valet, at first his life was not much different from that of ordinary German citizens. He was born in 1913 in Bremen. After graduating from school, he worked for some time as a simple bricklayer. In 1933, however, he joined the SS, from which he was selected for the post of Hitler’s personal valet. From that moment on, Linge served the Führer when he was in the Berlin Reich Chancellery or at his headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, near Rastenburg.
For the years that followed, every day of Heinz Linge was the same as the day before. In the morning, writes the journalist Alexander Tavrovsky in his book Herr Wolff, the valet greeted the Führer, who was still in bed, with the words: “Good morning, my Führer! After that, Linge rolled a serving table into Hitler’s bedroom. Despite the fact that the duties of a personal servant were unpretentious, thanks to Heinz, some details of the life of the German leader became known. For example, Alexander Klinge, in his book 100 Myths About Hitler, mentions that, according to Linge, Hitler always read with glasses, although he never showed himself in public.
Suicide and cremation
It is not difficult to guess that the man whom Adolf Hitler saw first every morning must have enjoyed the special confidence of the Fuehrer. As Hitler’s adjutant, Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, later recounted, whose testimony is given in Grigory Kiselev’s book “The Inconvenient Truth About the Capture of the Reichstag. Search, Research, Reconstruction”, it was Heinz Linge who first announced the death of the Nazi leader. “The Führer is dead,” the valet said, after which Günsche relayed the news to his superiors. Shortly before, Hitler had announced his last will: he wanted his corpse to be burned after his suicide. The Führer was disgusted by the idea of his body being displayed as if it were on display.
It was Heinz Linge who took up the fulfillment of Hitler’s will. It was he, according to Vadim Ilyin, the author of the book “The Mysteries of the Death of Great Men”, who, along with several other Nazis, carried the body of Adolf Hitler, wrapped in an army blanket, out of the shelter through an emergency exit. Otto Günsche and Obersturmbannführer Kempka identified the Führer by his trousers and shoes. Then the corpses of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun were placed in a crater formed by the explosion of a shell, doused with gasoline and set on fire. In this peculiar cremation, Linge also took a direct part. It is not surprising that it was the testimony of the Führer’s servant that turned out to be one of the most important in clarifying the circumstances of the death of the main Nazi.
In captivity and at large
Heinz Linge shared information about what he saw in the bunker with investigators of the Soviet military intelligence Smersh in May 1945 after he was captured by the Red Army. Mikhail Leshchinsky and Ada Petrova, in their book “Where Hitler Disappeared, or Military Secrets of the 20th Century”, with reference to archival documents, say that Linge claimed that when he entered the Führer’s office, he was already dead, as was Eva Braun. Both were in a sitting position, and two pistols were lying on the floor. However, due to the fact that the corpses had been burned, the investigators remained convinced that Heinz Linge and Otto Günsche were missing something, and demanded that the Nazis confess where Adolf Hitler had actually disappeared. The investigation dragged on for 5 years.
It was not until 1950 that Linge’s sentence of 25 years in prison was read out. However, as one of the Führer’s secretaries, Traudl Junge, noted in her book Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary, Linge spent only a total of 10 years in places not so remote. In 1955, he was released and returned to his homeland. In the last years of his life, Hitler’s former valet wrote his memoirs, which were published in both German and English. However, this happened after the death of Heinz Linge, who died in Hamburg in 1980.