# Luke Daly-Groves

Luke Daly-Groves FRHistS is an English historian and author who wrote the 2019 book Hitler's Death: The Case Against Conspiracy. He has lectured at the University of Manchester and the University of Central Lancashire.

## Early life

Daly-Groves graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in History from the University of Central Lancashire in 2015 and received the Sydney Lee Prize. He went on to complete a Master of Arts (MA) and a PhD at the University of Leeds.

## Hitler's Death (2019)

Daly-Groves became fascinated with Hitler's death during his teenage years, eventually leading to his 2015 dissertation, providing the basis of his 2019 book, Hitler's Death: The Case Against Conspiracy. It sets out to re-affirm that Hitler died in 1945 and refutes claims of his surviving the end of World War II in Europe. Daly-Groves cites recently declassified (and thus previously unexplored) British intelligence documents, which demonstrate that Hugh Trevor-Roper did not work in isolation in coming to the initial British conclusion that Hitler indeed died on 30 April 1945. Daly-Groves takes a similar viewpoint as Michael Musmanno, Anton Joachimsthaler, Joachim Fest and Ian Kershaw that Hitler's body was not discovered due to its being burnt to near ashes, with an alleged Soviet autopsy of his remains apparently being fraudulent and only his dental remains known to have been found. (Contrarily, Trevor-Roper and Alan Bullock argue, in line with certain scientific studies, that bone withstands even indoor cremation.) Daly-Groves also acknowledges 2009 DNA analysis which revealed that a skull fragment with gunshot damage, long claimed by Russian officials to belong to Hitler, actually belonged to a woman. Further, Daly-Groves argues in favor of debunking conspiracy theories via objective analysis as opposed to dismissing their specific claims outright, saying the latter approach has weakened refutations of such theories, some of which cite exceptional documentary evidence.
The book includes novelly published diagrams showing where Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD) guard Hermann Karnau claimed he saw Hitler's remains buried in the Reich Chancellery garden, as if it were adjacent to the bunker itself, as well a diagram based on the testimony of RSD guard Erich Mansfeld, who said he was in the guard tower when he saw two bodies burning several metres to the north-northwest and that he thought the bodies were later buried in a bomb crater a few metres further northwest. Daly-Groves claims Karnau's map "closely matches" Soviet diagrams and cites a diagram by Chancellery guard Hilco Poppen which he says supports Karnau's scheme; however, both uniquely lack specificity as to the Chancellery layout, with Karnau also omitting the burning site. In 1945, an excavation team led by United States intelligence officer William F. Heimlich referenced Karnau's "rather sketchy map" in an unsuccessful hunt for evidence of Hitler's remains. Citing declassified U.S. Army intelligence files, Daly-Groves points that some information about investigations of Hitler's death was withheld from Heimlich "because higher-ranking American intelligence officers were aware that he was attempting to capitalise on sensational rumours" of Hitler's survival.
Daly-Groves notes that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's motivations in claiming Hitler's survival remain unclear, with most commentators asserting that he intended to secure disputed areas of West Germany on the basis that they would be safer under Soviet control if, somehow, Hitler returned. Alternatively, Stalin may have wished to override political underlings such as Marshal Georgy Zhukov (who had said that Hitler was dead) or motivate his totalitarian Communist forces (as claimed 72 years earlier in the U.S. book Who Killed Hitler?), with the possibility of even leveraging attacks on nations ostensibly harboring Hitler. Daly-Groves concludes that the 2009 DNA analysis (showing the skull fragment to be from a female) supports the interpretation that the Soviets were unhappy with the quality of their investigations. He believes that documentation likely remains unexplored in both the Stalin secretariat files and the British National Archives which could clarify investigations of past survival rumours and disprove more recent claims. He also argues that known documents demonstrate that Western powers could not have staged a cover-up regarding purported knowledge of Hitler's alleged survival. Daly-Groves suggests that although the evidence points to Hitler having shot himself, it should not be considered the "definitive answer", citing Fest's 2002 argument that eyewitness discrepancies had rendered Hitler's death "impossible to reconstruct". However, Daly-Groves declares that a death by some kind of gunshot no longer carries "ideological baggage" and states his hope that his book would lay to rest various conspiracy theories, especially those surfacing since 2009.
Additionally, the book includes over 20 images, including cleaned, high-resolution scans of the Soviet photographs of Hitler and Braun's alleged burnt corpses.