What Happened in the Bunker in April 1945
H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, New York: Macmillan Company, 1947, 254 pp., hardback, Source notes serve as a Bibliography, index.
Assessment: Trevor-Roper was an experienced historian and this book provides a good starting point. Very Reliable
Bezymenski, Lev, The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from the Soviet
Archives, originally published in Germany as Der Tod des Adolf Hitlers, Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1968; New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1968, New York: Pyramid Book, 1969, paperback, 142 pages, Foot Notes; no Bibliography; Appendix: Protocol Concerning the Discovery of the Goebbels Family; Autopsy Reports; no index.
Assessment :Bezymenski served as an interpreter in the Battle of Berlin under Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov. The book is useful, but some of his conclusions have been disproven. Never-the-less, his verbatim autopsy reports are enormously interesting and useful.
Assessment: Very useful, especially the autopsy reports, but only reliable up to a point.
James P. ODonnell, The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Group[/I], Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978, hardback, 399 pp. informational foot notes, no Bibliography, index.
ODonnell was an Army captain with a journalism background who entered Berlin with the American occupation troops on 4 July 1945. News Week secured his release from the Army and assigned him to organize a Berlin Bureau. His advantage was that he had the opportunity to interview several of the people who had been in the Bunker and were now in British and American custody. He also made several trips into the bunker.
Assessment: Generally reliable and useful
Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff, Voices from the Bunker, tr. Jan Dally, New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1989, 172 pp. no source notes, no Bibliography, index. Both authors are experienced researchers and writers. The importance of this book is that they were allowed to use Traudl Junges, Hitlers personal secretary, unpublished memoir of her time as Hitlers secretary. She was in the Bunker until the end. No source notes and no Bibliography. Index.
Assessment: Reliable in-so-far as Frau Junges memoirs are concerned, good first-person material.
Ada Petrova & Peter Watson, The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives, New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995, softback, 180 pp. Annotated Bibliography, Index. Assessment: Very reliable