A tiny town in Eastern Germany. A small bridge over which drivers speed, unaware of what happened here 50 years ago. It was the end of a bizarre hunt for the German leader Adolf Hitler. Here lies Germany's biggest secret: Hitler's hidden gravesite.
The Pig Bridge
When the guns in Europe fell silent, a bizarre hunt for the dead Adolf Hitler began - a hunt that only ended a quarter of a century later, under a bridge near Magdeburg. Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Soviet soldiers scattered Hitler’s remains at the Schweinebrücke near Biederitz, close to Magdeburg.
Looks like a paradise
His final end
It was April 5, 1970, when the self-proclaimed leader of the German Reich met his final end. Colonel Kowalenko, Major Shirokov, and Lieutenant Vladimir Gumeniuk drove a GAZ-69 jeep along the K1010 road near Biederitz, close to Magdeburg, and turned onto a dirt path.
The river Ehle is very small
The three men stopped less than 20 meters from the road at a watercourse called the Umflutehle. In sight of the Schweinebrücke, the truck stopped, and Vladimir Gumeniuk scattered ashes from a sack into the water.
Codename Archives
Hitlers remains, picture made by soviet soldiers
This marked the end of a secret operation codenamed “The Archives,” ordered by KGB chief Yuri Andropov with the approval of state and party leader Leonid Brezhnev. That morning, the three members of the KGB special task force from the 3rd Army of Soviet Forces in East Germany began digging in the yard of Westendstraße 36 (now Klausenerstraße 23), shielded by a tent.
The CIA is hunting Hitler
The official reason was “gas mask fumigation,” but in reality, they were exhuming five ammunition crates containing the remains of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler, and the Goebbels family.
The nature eats Hitler away
Half-decayed after a quarter-century in the ground, the skeletons were repacked into boxes meant for submachine guns. On the tank troop training ground at Biederitzer Busch—or possibly, as one report claims, on “undeveloped terrain near Schönebeck, eleven kilometers from Magdeburg”—the men stacked the crates.
Wild nature around the bridge
20 liters of Gas
Gumeniuk then poured 20 liters of gasoline over them and set what was left of the Third Reich’s leadership ablaze. The three special forces later wrote, “The destruction of the remains was carried out by burning them in a campfire.” The Soviet leadership had decided nothing should remain, fearing Hitler’s grave could become a Nazi pilgrimage site.
The area where Hitlers body was hidden until 1970
After burning, Gumeniuk swept the ashes into a sack. The three soldiers then drove to the Schweinebrücke on Magdeburger Straße, west of Biederitz, and dumped the ashes into the Ehle River.
Concrete buildings at the former grave site
A log Odyssey
Hitler’s body had gone on a long odyssey: discovered by Soviet soldiers near the Führerbunker in Berlin, exhumed and reburied multiple times, and finally spending 24 years buried in Magdeburg. The Soviets took great care to ensure nothing remained that could become a relic or symbol.
The is the "river" who took Hitlers ash away
Today, the site is just a small stream and a sandy riverbank—the spot where, in April 1970, Soviet soldiers disposed of the remains of Hitler, Braun, and the Goebbels family. From the bridge over the Ehle, which now marks the border between Magdeburg and Jerichower Land, the ashes of those burned near Schönebeck were scattered into the stream, which widens into the Biederitzer See a few hundred meters downstream.
You can't go in
The bridge from which Hitler’s ashes were scattered has long been known as the Schweinebrücke – Pig Bridge.
The bike way crossed the unknown grave site
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