Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has published the KGB’s top secret investigative file of Adolf Hitler’s personal pilot, including his mugshot, it announced Friday.
“Documents from Hans Baur’s investigation file are being published for the first time,” the FSB said, adding that his case file was held in the FSB’s Novgorod region branch in northwestern Russia.
Lieutenant General Hans Baur was the Nazi German leader’s pilot for more than a decade and remained in his bunker until the final days of World War II in April 1945.
Soviet soldiers captured Baur on May 2, 1945, and brought him to Moscow to face trial for crimes against civilians and prisoners of war. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1950 but was released in 1955. Baur returned to West Germany in 1957 and died there in 1993.
The FSB’s declassified archive includes Baur’s arrest file dated Dec. 13, 1945 and his handwritten autobiography dated Oct. 1, 1945, as well as his 12-page testimony provided on Dec. 19-22, 1945.
“Having been at Hitler’s disposal at all times, I was aware of the main events that took place until the ultimate collapse and full capitulation of Germany,” Baur said in his testimony.
He detailed Hitler’s 21-hour work schedule from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. and his initially optimistic demeanor among close associates as Allied forces advanced toward Berlin from the east and west.
Bauer said he kept a fleet of several aircraft “in case Hitler changed his mind and agreed to leave Berlin.”
“Hitler let us know in the first days of April that he would remain in Berlin for a decisive battle there. We didn’t like that,” Baur’s testimony read.
It included accounts of senior officers and ministers fleeing in the ensuing days, being executed on accusations of betrayal and the remaining officials in the bunker after Hitler’s suicide there on April 30, 1945.
“Baur, I want to say farewell to you and thank you for all your years of service,” the pilot recounted Hitler as saying that day. “Try to get out of here.”