The Pittsburgh Press (April 29, 1945)
May not be true yet –
Hitler, high aides reported killed
Rumors from Naziland swirl fast and furious
Saturday, April 28, 1945
LONDON, England (UP) – U.S. troops captured Hans Goebbels today and reports from Switzerland said his notorious brother, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda chief, Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering all had been killed.
Hans, who held the rank of major general in the Nazi Party, was taken prisoner by U.S. First Army troops as he was preparing to flee from him home in a suburb of Duesseldorf. He had packed his luggage.
A high-ranking German diplomat reaching the Swiss border was quoted in a British dispatch from St. Margrethen that Hitler and Goebbels were shot last Wednesday. Another “high German personality” reaching that border post, said Goering had been killed at the same time. The diplomats did not say when or where or by whom the leading Nazis had been exterminated.
Another report, from the Exchange Telegraph’s Stockholm correspondent, said that according to reliable diplomatic circles there, Hitler is completely helpless and probably unconscious because of a brain hemorrhage.
Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler was said to have rushed to Berlin from Southern Germany by plane, accompanied by his right-hand man, a Gen. Schellenberg. The diplomat also said revolution had broken out in Munich, as reported from other sources.
A radio identified as the “German People’s” station reported that a group of German sailors had revolted in the Baltic seaport of Kiel, killing all the Nazis among them and wiping out the Nazi detachment sent to quell them. The rebels were said to have set up machine guns in their barracks yard.
Radio Oslo said Hitler was in Berlin and had decorated several officers and men including Col. Anton Eder, commander of the Berlin defense sector. Hitler was said to have conferred at his Berlin headquarters with Col. Gen, Ritter von Greim, new Luftwaffe chief.
A Zurich dispatch to the Exchange Telegraph Agency said it had been learned from a reliable Munich source that Himmler had ordered the arrest of Dr. Otto Meissner, Nazi undersecretary of state, but Meissner could not be found. The dispatch said that eight generals and other high officers had been executed by special SS Guards on the grounds that they had been involved in high treason with Goering before he was relieved as Air Force commander.
Swiss border reports quoted a diplomat’s chauffeur who said not a German soldier had been seen when they drove through Garmisch, 50 miles southwest of Munich.
Refugees reaching Switzerland from the German border city of Bregenz said big placards. “Kill Hitler,” were on many Bregenz houses. The road from Bregenz to St. Margrethen as crowded with an estimated 90,000 refugees.
The Moscow radio said many Nazi leaders were trying at Luebeck to find ways of escaping to Denmark and Norway. Some were said to have been found in the coal bunker of a steamer.