May 8, 2021 - Droog Magazine periodical for investigative journalism

Where is Hitler?

Book review

2021 | to Hitler Forgery Industry main page | Droog Magazine

From the sea of books on Hitler the work Where is Hitler? The false search for a missing Führer of the Belgian Tim Trachet surfaced. This book, published in 2020, recently became known to me via an interview with the author on Historiek.net, a Dutch online history periodical.

Now every year dozens, possibly even hundreds of books and documentaries are published about Hitler. To discuss or even mention them all is as nonsensical as many of the products themselves. But the author's name and logo on the cover inspired confidence. And people asked me questions about this book. So I decided to request a review copy.

The author, Tim Trachet, is a well-known Belgian skeptic and a member of SKEPP - the Belgian sister association of the Dutch Skepsis - organizations that are at the forefront of the never-ending fight against fake news and other disinformation. I began to read with high hopes.

However, the book is disappointing. And not just a little bit.

The first part consists of the story of how Hitler and Eva Braun died and what happened to their remains afterwards. Trachet devotes 40 pages to this. That in itself is very nice, were it not that this has happened many times before and, above all, better. To my great surprise, he focuses on Hitlers Ende (1995, revised reprint 2004; English version 1997, titled The last days of Hitler) by Anton Joachimsthaler - a very thorough book, but ... Joachimsthaler did not have access to the Russian archives when he wrote it. The Russian / British research duo Ada Petrova and Peter Watson did have so. Their 1995 book The death of Adolf Hitler. The full story with new evidence from secret Russian archives is therefore mandatory for anyone who wants to know what happened to Hitlers and Braun's remains. Trachet does not even mention this work!

Book based on plagiarism used as source

To make it even crazier: he does refer extensively to the 2018 published La mort du Hitler (2018) by Jean-Christophe Brisard and lana Parshina (published in English under the title The death of Hitler: the final word). A work that is not only largely based on research plagiarism based on The death of Adolf Hitler, but in which the French charlatan researcher Philippe Charlier is also presented as a reliable expert.

Not withstanding the piratical nature of La mort du Hitler the work has been translated in at least sixteen (!) languages - read the full story on 'The deceit in The death of Hitler; the final word'.


Quack as source

Trachet writes about this Charlier: "the French physician and palaeopathologist (...) who became known through his research on the remains of historical figures such as Richard the Lionheart and Louis the Saint." Which is quite a euphemistic description for the pseudo-scientific research this quack carried out, and which real scientists seriously question.

Charlier claims to have examined numerous mortal remains of famous historical personalities. But anyone who takes a critical look at his research quickly realises that the only thing that is true is that he has indeed made these claims. But in everything he claims to have examined, it is highly doubtful whether they were the remains of any historical figure at all. The clearest example of his deception is his claim to have studied the remains of Joan of Arc. For those who do not know: this French woman was burned at the stake in 1431, after which her crushed ashes were thrown into the Seine. I rest my case.

Or almost - because the fraudulent nature of the work of Jean-Christophe Brisard, lana Parshina and Philippe Charlier has already been demonstrated extensively in two articles in the Dutch language, The death of Hitler - Or: how publishers and agencies mislead the public (The Post Online, 2018) and Hitlers Ende / The death of Hitler (Droog Magazine, 2018; English translation: The deceit in The death of Hitler, 2021) - and as Trachet writes in Dutch, he should have been be aware of the content of these articles from 2018.

Studies ignored

But that's not all: Trachet also writes, on page 20, about Eva Braun: "Hitler's mistress, who was known only to a very limited circle." Oh? If you check the Australian and Netherlands's digital newspaper archives, you will see that Eva Braun, as Hitler's girlfriend/fiancée/mistress, was already world news from 1937 onwards; even her failed suicide attempt (in 1932) was widely reported in 1940.

Part of History Channels viewers have nostalgic feelings for Nazi regime?

Also surprising, on page 9: "The History channel (...) is sometimes called the 'Hitler Channel'. Unfortunately, part of that interest also comes from people who have nostalgic feelings for the Nazi regime."

Apart from the fact that since 1992 both Discovery and the History Channel have been called "Hitler Channels", the suggestion that some viewers of documentaries about the Nazi era have nostalgic feelings for the Nazi regime is unfounded. There is no evidence to support this claim. Something that seems to be the red line in this booklet: something is so because the author thinks so, and then there is no need for further explanation.

Wikipedia, the unmentioned source...

As on page 15, where Trachet writes: "Hugh Thomas - author 'of a very controversial work'", with the accompanying note: "Not to be confused with the famous British historian of the same name!" What? There is a W.[alter] Hugh Thomas, born in 1935, physician and author of the pseudo-historical book The murder of Adolf Hitler. The truth about the bodies in the Berlin Bunker (1996).

But why would anyone confuse this crackpot with the clearly differently-named British historian Hugh Thomas (1931-2017)? Because this is what (Dutch) Wikipedia says: "He should not be confused with W. Hugh Thomas, the author of a controversial theory about Nazi leader Rudolf Hess."

The Wikipedia passage about the confusion ("niet worden verward")

A skeptic who picks passages from Wikipedia without mentioning the source.... Insanity rules the waves.

The escape theories

So I better remain silent about the second part of the book, about the escape theories. Trachet says: "It is not my intention to discuss or even to list all the escape theories and all the claims of Hitler's survival, but to give an idea of what people with a critical mind may think about them.

Grey Wolf and Hunting Hitler

But Trachet barely does so either. Although he talks extensively about the churning book Grey Wolf (2012) and the nonsense series Hunting Hitler (2015-2018), which is partly based on that book, there are no references to the most important earlier critical articles. Almost nothing about 'The big read: carry on Hunting Hitler' (2016), by BBC documentary maker Roger Clark; nothing about 'History as hoax: why the TV series 'Hunting Hitler' is fiction, not fact' by Dr Steven Woodbridge of Kingston University; nothing on 'Pseudo history - Hitler escape fantasy' (2017) by Wieland Giebel, director of the Berlin Story Museum, which houses an impressive permanent exhibition on the Nazi era.

Sigh.

On the positive side

Is there nothing positive to mention? Yes - the cover is a nice variation on the designs in which Hitler's face is depicted as stylised as possible.

Tim Trachet. Waar is Hitler? De valse speurtocht naar een verdwenen Führer. SKEPP 6.  ASP, 2020. 112 blz. €14.

© Bart FM Droog, 2021.

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