Posted: Oct 21, 2011 12:26 pm
jaygray wrote:Historical investigation requires methodical processes not conducive to journalism. If the current stories about the skull are correct, it is still quite an ambitious leap to conclude that Hitler did not commit suicide, still more that he went into exile elsewhere. Speculative history is fiction.
On the flip side, if the current stories about the skull are correct, then where does that leave us regards the testimony of witnesses who led the Soviets to the dead body of Hitler?
Journalists (and this is who we are dealing with re the History channel and alas, 'pop-history' / 'pop-investigation' books), love this stuff because it gets an audience. Reality in history tends to be far more boring as a rule.
That's an underhanded way of appealing to authority, I think - an authority which doesn't even appear to have any material evidence (a body).
The objections raised citing evidence against the main thrust of the book (i.e. contemporary witness testimony etc.) are very real ones, and wound the argument mortally IMHO.
Yes, there were witnesses. But it's naive to believe something just because somebody says that it is so, particularly on this issue. Issues of loyalty and fear abound.
As for the ‘Hitler’ skull evidence astonishing ‘scientists’, well either the astonished scientists (whoever they are) need to get out more maybe or accept that Soviet forensic science in the 1940s may have been open to error. Well duh. This doesn’t seem quite so earth-shattering to me, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
You don't appear to understand. If the skull isn't Hitlers, then the Soviets never found his body. If the Soviets never found his body, then those that led them to it were either lying or fooled = no material evidence + dodgy witnesses.