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For all of their breathless proclamations, for all of the money these "investigators" spent on state-of-the-art technology to help them in their pursuit they unearthed not one single shred of evidence that Hitler didn't die in his bunker as we have believed since the end of the war.
While making for decent TV, frantically jumping to conclusions isn't a good tactic for an investigation and these guys love jumping to conclusions on every hint of evidence in their search. These jumps at every turn should exhaust any rational adult. It's like finding toys under your Christmas tree and concluding that Santa brought them by sliding down your chimney. The crew definitely needs a devil's advocate among them, someone to say, "Let's calm down and wait until we have all the evidence we need to make an intelligent assumption?" It's hard to discern if they are all as stupid as they seem or if they are just playing the part of naïve dorks just because it may make better TV than having a skeptic on hand.
Could Hitler have gone on to enjoy a minor career as a dancer at Radio City Music Hall? It's possible and almost impossible to disprove but like all of the speculating in this series, it's not at all likely.
One thing the show does is to throw into some doubt the whole idea that Hitler died in that bunker in 1945
or you could doubt it. The fact that there was no forensic evidence, that the "eyewitness" accounts are dubious or inaccurate, and all of the evidence of a Nazi presence in Argentina don't add up to the conclusion that Hitler somehow made it out of Berlin and slipped into a jungle retreat in South America. Far from it. War is a messy business and the scene of the crime (Hitler's death) was just another spot in the hellish advance of Allied troops in 1945 Germany.
In episode #1 they find a basement in a rural home in Argentina and they immediately speculate that it was some sort of underground bunker which makes no sense. They are literally in the middle of nowhere in Argentina; why would you need an underground shelter? It's pretty obvious that this was a drying and curing cellar for hams.
Stomach medicines are found so, of course, they must have been for Hitler. When shown a drug vial one investigator shrieks, "I can't even believe I'm seeing this!" Dude, get a grip on yourself. Stomach ailments affect just about every adult human over 50 years old.
Episode #2 The skull the Russians have is thought to be that of a female. Could it be Eva Braun? One investigator makes this leap of logic: "That suggest strongly that Hitler was complicit in her death and she dies on the scene and he flees." No, it doesn't. There are an almost infinite amount of explanations: they have the wrong body, the Russians took the wrong bodies, or maybe the Russians screwed up and got the bones mixed up, and so on.
They tried to get a DNA sample from the last living relative of Eva Braun but she refused. A dead end? Just wait for her to get a haircut and then take the hair sample from the floor. Or take her garbage until you come up with something. They gave up on this important step way too easily. This has been the only real lead they have and they gave up so easily it's like they didn't really want to get a sample. I would have cut the person's hair while they weren't looking as the importance to this would completely justify bad behavior on their part. They could have found DNA elements in the trash, for example. They abandoned this one, solid bit of evidence so easily that you have to question everything they are doing.
They make a big deal out of the tunnels in Berlin and wildly speculate on Hitler's ability to escape via this bit of infrastructure. Simply getting out of the bunker and out of the city would have been extremely easy in any sort of vehicle and thousands fled with the advance of the Russians.
"There's no reason to commit suicide knowing the Russians were not going to come down there (in the tunnels). Why would he kill himself?" Because they war was lost. Hitler knew this for months. The Russians were days away from swarming into Berlin and Hitler would have risked capture had he not died.
Episode #4 was spent trying to find a tunnel from the metro to the airport, a distance of a couple hundred meters that they say Hitler needed to make his theoretical escape. He could have walked that distance, or ridden a bike, or he could have been ferried in a rickshaw. Who cares?
This is really bad investigation and even worse journalism. They spend all their time trying to decide if one of their crazy theories could have happened: could a German u-boat have landed in Argentina, could Hitler have escaped Berlin, and a dozen other silly notions. With every episode my rating is lowered.
to be continued
score 4/10
leftbanker-1 23 December 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3605082/ |
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1-4-2021 04:39:09