At the end of the World War II, the defeated Nazi commanders in the Berlin bunker, surrounded by the trappings of their sybaritic lifestyle, are supposed calmly to have committed suicide. It is now accepted that the body of Martin Bormann was misidentified and that he escaped to South America. But using newly-released evidence from the Soviet archives, Hugh Thomas offers forensic proof that the identifications of the other corpses are invalid. Only one of those supposed to have died in the bunker can be said with any certainty to have done so. And even then, the cause of death remains a mystery. Thomas reappraises the final days of the war, throwing light on why the Allies' official historians needed to conclude it so neatly, and in the midst of the chaos emerges an elaborate deception concealing the escape of the architects of the Third Reich.