[Image: thePipeLine]
‘ …the world now realizes that Adolf Hitler did not kill himself in the bunker, that I was right all along…‘
Harry Cooper commenting on the TV Series “Hunting Hitler”
by Roger Clark
In Part Two of his major investigation into American author and publisher Harry Cooper’s activities in the pseudohistory industry, Roger Clark examines Cooper’s magnum opus, Hitler in Argentina. The book is probably not available in any good bookstore – certainly not in the ‘History’ section – but it is easily available on Amazon.
[NOTE: thePipeLine actively opposes all forms of racism and intolerance. Some of the images and links in this series of article carry racist, offensive and anti-Semitic content. They are included purely to provide evidence of the abhorrent views of Harry Cooper’s associates, and the pseudohistory and conspiracy theories of the Far Right.]
Harry hunts Hitler in Argentina
In January 2014 Cooper published Hitler in Argentina – The Documented Truth of Hitler’s Escape from Berlin. Cooper himself describes his book as ‘history smashing’. However, the crudity of the expression tells you much about the quality of the work. Ever since the 1980s Harry Cooper has been obsessed with the idea that Hitler survived WW2:
‘Forget the fairy tales you were taught in school and in today’s media,’ he says. ‘Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not commit suicide.’
Instead, Cooper argues Hitler and Eva Braun were ‘forcibly drugged’ and smuggled out of the Berlin bunker to safety.
“Forcibly drugged’?” … Is this man serious? I’m afraid he is. Here is Cooper explaining to Jeff Rense of Rense Radio, on 18 December 2015 what he thinks happened to Hitler in 1945 at the end of WW2:
‘There is no doubt that he did not commit suicide in the bunker. He and Eva Braun got out … It wasn’t his decision. If you read the book Hitler in Argentina you see that our guy Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco saw Hitler with his own eyes forcibly drugged under orders of Martin Bormann and removed from the bunker. So whether Hitler wanted to commit suicide or not it was no longer his decision. Bormann wanted to keep the Reich alive – or at least the movement – and he needed a figurehead. So Hitler and Eva were forcibly drugged and removed … He didn’t have a choice. He was overpowered and taken out.’
Then, with American help, Cooper argues, Hitler and Eva were whisked off to South America. There, once more according to Cooper, Hitler; ‘settled in a plush estate in a faraway corner of Argentina some 700 miles southwest of Buenos Aires.’
None of his loyal support staff – such as the indispensable Martin Bormann, or his adjutant Otto Günsche – escaped with them. The most hunted man in the world – a man who by May 1945 was human wreck who needed constant medical care – had no back-up team when he fled.
So far so unbelievable. Then we come to the claim that Hitler and Eva sired two children and many other claims related in this book.
Where did Cooper get these crazy and unsupported ideas? Once again it seems ‘Our guy Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco’ was responsible.
In 1984 Cooper received a 114-page letter from Senor Velasco – a former Spanish-German double agent, Nazi spy, anti-Semite, conspiracy theorist – and according to experts a Walter Mitty figure given to extravagant fantasies. Velasco claimed he spent the final three months of the war in the Führerbunker and made a daily report to Adolf Hitler in person – although there is no independent evidence he was ever there. Velasco also claimed he later smuggled Martin Bormann out of the Berlin bunker and got him safely to South America.
Cooper believed him. ‘His story was quite plausible,’ he writes.
But wait a moment … In his broadcast Cooper claimed: ‘Velasco saw Hitler with his own eyes forcibly drugged under orders of Martin Bormann and removed from the bunker.’
This gives the impression the spy actually saw Hitler being drugged and – as Cooper put it in an earlier radio interview – saw Hitler being ‘hauled out of the Führerbunker.’
Careful scrutiny of the text, however, shows Velasco made no claim that he personally witnessed this event. He provided no eye-witness details. All Velasco claims is that he said farewell to a dozy-looking Hitler who then shuffled away, but even that is untrue. Velasco says other people told him later – hearsay – that Hitler was drugged and removed under Bormann orders. By careful wording Cooper embellishes this invented story to make it sound more dramatic when he’s selling the book.
The book is full of other equally incredible tales. For example, on page 260 Cooper claims there was a nuclear research laboratory on an island at the village where Adolf Hitler and many Nazi exiles lived – Heumel Island on Lake Nahuel Huapi at the town of San Carlos di Bariloche in Argentina. In fact, as the reputable magazine New Scientist described on 3 February 1983, the laboratory was a £25 million con trick perpetrated on the regime of General Juan Peron by Austrian born Scientist Ronald Richter. Richter had persuaded the Argentinian dictator that he could produce cheap power by nuclear fusion.
Harry Cooper’s genre is pseudohistory
To be clear; Cooper wants us to believe the world’s most dangerous man, Adolf Hitler, was allowed to live for years near a nuclear research laboratory! Nobody monitored or interviewed him. Nobody checked who was visiting him. Hitler was just left alone with Eva and Bormann to enjoy a quiet retirement. Nobody had any qualms. Nobody thought Hitler was a risk. Nobody thought he should be arrested and put on trial like the other surviving senior Nazis were at Nuremberg. No discussion took place among the allies, or among Hitler’s victims. No Mossad hit team or kidnap squad disturbed Dolfie and Eva’s peaceful retirement.
Cooper had first published Velasco’s fraudulent claims in his Sharkhunters newsletter. Then he worked them up into a book entitled Escape From the Bunker which was published in 2006 by the appropriately named Poisoned Pen Press; it was the first of three Hitler survival books Cooper has produced, each seemingly worse than the last. The second book– an extended version of the first – appeared in 2010 and an even longer version – the chaotic mess of a book called Hitler in Argentina – was published in January 2014. Taken together what we are talking about is the wholesale falsification of history. Cooper publishes information that is either untrue or unsupported by evidence – in short his genre is pseudohistory.
One third of Hitler in Argentina is taken up with Velasco’s bogus claims. Other parts of the book include misleading reports of post-war sightings of Hitler. These were discovered in FBI files and elsewhere and Cooper consistently misinterprets them. The sightings were bogus and led nowhere.
Crammed with false information Hitler in Argentina also contains constant plugs for Cooper’s Sharkhunters organisation, plus 27 pages of adverts for Nazi memorabilia which Harry sells – books, photos, CDs and Nazi propaganda films which he calls ‘Pure History Available Nowhere Else’. Also ‘Great DVDs of History – So real you hear the guns; smell the powder.’
Of course, if Harry Cooper, or anyone else, could produce some hard, checkable evidence that Adolf Hitler escaped Berlin and ended up living in Juan Peron’s Argentina historians would have to take notice and seventy years of rumours would be vindicated. Checkable evidence like, for example, a photograph of Hitler taken after May 1945.
Hitler, or rather, sanity, takes forty winks
21 February 2014 … That was the programme where Far Right internet radio host Jeff Rense and guest Harry Cooper made a colossal blunder. During the programme they waxed lyrical over David Dees ‘wonderful’ cover design for Hitler in Argentina – ‘Beautiful’, Harry sighed. And they were carried away by a photo on the back cover showing an old man with a handkerchief over his face who bore a passing resemblance to a certain well known Nazi leader. The only problem was that the picture, which the cover claimed had surfaced online’, was just that. A picture of someone who bore a passing resemblance to Hitler, which may or may not have surfaced on the web. Harry Cooper claimed it had been passed onto him by one of his associates in Argentina. Unfortunately for Harry, Jeff and the Hitler in Argentina theory, the photo had also surfaced in an earlier book, published by the man who took the picture and it was not taken in Argentina.
However, Rense and Cooper were convinced this picture, which also appears on page 115 of Hitler in Argentina, showed Hitler in the 1960s. Rense talked through the photo in detail describing the shape of ‘Hitler’s’ nostrils, his nose, chin, mouth, lips, ear, a scruff of a moustache, a dimple. Perhaps, he suggested, a plastic surgeon had been at work. And look at the eye – ‘here is an ancient echo of fire and passion … It’s a very hypnotic eye…’ Rense eulogised.
Cooper agreed – and to cap it all added he believed that Eva Braun died in South America a few years ago. Unfortunately for the fantasy history of Mr Rense and Mr Cooper a brief Internet search reveals the picture of the old man is NOT a photo of Adolf Hitler taken in the 1960s. In fact it shows a pensioner living in the Bishopswood old people’s home in Highgate in wartime London. The picture was taken in 1943 by photographer Kurt Hutton for Picture Post magazine and anyone can buy a copy of the photo from Getty Images, who own the copyright. You can check out Hutton’s picture of the old man, plus a caption, on the Getty Images website.
The back cover of Harry Cooper’s “Hitler in Argentina” with the misidentified photograph of an aged “Hitler”. It also appears on page 115
[Dees/Cooper: Fair use for the purpose of criticism]
The photo – one of Kurt Hutton’s favourites – also appears in an album of his pictures published by the Focal Press in 1947. The book is called Speaking Likeness. The wartime pensioner appears on page 38, where Hutton called the image ‘Forty Winks’ and published details about how it was taken.
‘“‘Forty Winks”,’ Hutton says, ‘was caught as I strolled round an old people’s home in search of local colour.’
Hutton tells us he took the picture with a Leica camera using an 9 cm f4 Elmar lens. The aperture was f.4.5. and the shutter speed 1/8 second. And the picture was taken with a combination of daylight and a photoflood hanging from the ceiling. To be clear: there is absolute proof the person whose photograph appears as a central pillar of evidence in Hitler in Argentina was not Adolf Hitler.
It’s a key piece of evidence…Destroy its credibility and photographic proof of Hitler’s survival vanishes.
Why does this matter? Because this photo of an aged London pensioner is one of the few – I’m tempted to write the only picture – Hitler survivalists have ever produced that seemed to resemble Hitler in old age. It is a key piece of evidence – so important that Cooper put it on the cover of Hitler in Argentina as well as inside on page 115. Destroy its credibility and the only photographic proof of Hitler’s survival vanishes.
I posted this information on Amazon on 13 March 2015 in a comment column where Cooper could see it. So how did he and Rense react to the photo disaster when all was revealed? Did they apologise and admit they were wrong? Did Cooper withdraw the book and remove the picture? Did they banish the photo from their websites, YouTube videos and Amazon adverts? Quite the opposite! The shattering news spurred them to greater excesses. They went berserk, and threatened and defamed their critics.
The incident tells us a lot about the psychology of Harry Cooper – how he is incapable of assessing evidence and distinguishing truth from falsehood. Nearly two years later Cooper still broadcast on his Sharkhunters website the program where he and Rense made the fraudulent claims about the picture. And the broadcast could be found on YouTube and other websites. Pictures of that back cover with the fake Hitler picture are still appearing on Amazon – including their German website – and elsewhere where he is selling the book. Cooper refused to back down and correct his blunder.
Indeed earlier – on 16 April 2015 – he lashed out in his Sharkhunters newsletter. Besides accusing me of publishing false information Cooper called for me and other critics to be jailed:
‘Perhaps Roger whatshisname who publishes idiotic and false hate reviews of our book Hitler in Argentina … some say for pay – may find himself in a jam shortly. Amazon has announced that they will begin vigorously prosecuting anyone who posts false reviews, good or bad, for any kind of payment. Let’s hope that Amazon looks closely to what he constantly carps on over our book, and he is totally wrong and maybe even deliberately false … Maybe Larry, Moe and Curly … will think twice before they bring forth any FALSE attack for which they will be paid … Jail them all and let God sort them out!’
To misidentify one photo is a misfortune, to misidentify two looks very much like carelessness…
The London pensioner, whom Cooper mistook for Hitler, isn’t Harry Cooper’s only photo blunder. In fact, when it comes to proper analysis Cooper is hopeless when it comes to photographs. There is not one photo – not one – in the entire book that shows Hitler, Eva or Martin Bormann alive after their reported deaths in Berlin in 1945, let alone in Argentina. The picture of Hitler and Eva on the cover is misleading. It was taken at the Eagle’s Nest at Obersalzberg in the late 1930s, or 1940, not in South America after the war.
What about the picture on page 61 where we see Hitler at his last known photo call in Berlin in April 1945? That was clearly doctored. Cooper falsely claimed it showed a double instead of the Nazi leader. But the member of the Hitler Youth to whom Hitler was speaking had his head replaced with an image of the German novelist Gunter Grass.
In fact the image appears to have been created by the blog site Davids Medienkritik and was published on August 29 2006. The intention was to satirize Grass’s admission, late in life, that he had fought with Division Fundsberg of the Waffen SS. Although a crudely photoshopped version of a well-known original image, Cooper either never noticed the picture was falsified, or he did not care, and used it in his book regardless.
Above: One of the last known photographs of Adolf Hitler taken on 10 April 1945 which conspiracy theorists claim shows a body double.
Below: The crudely photoshopped satirical version showing Gunter Grass used by Harry Cooper on page 61 of Hitler in Argentina
[Harry Cooper, Alexander/Davids Medienkritik used in the public interest for the purpose of criticism and reporting]
Predictably the more Cooper’s faults are exposed the more his acolytes defend him. The bulk of reviewers on Amazon’s US site suggest Hitler in Argentina is a great book. Some are written by paid-up members of Sharkhunters, including one who went into raptures over Hitler in Argentina, but failed to tell customers he had this conflict of interest. James Bauernschmidt is one of Cooper’s most ardent supporters and a member of his organisation. On 18 April, 2014 he posted a five star review entitled ‘Fascinating, simple fascinating!’ It’s garnered more positive hits than any other review.
Another member used his review to urge customers to join Cooper’s Sharkhunters. In his five-star plug called ‘Time to Rewrite History’, published on 30 April 2015, Jay Gillespieon encouraged readers to enrol:
‘Anyone with an interest should consider joining,’ he declared. ‘I was privileged to join in 1987. Sharkhunters is a neutral organization, unlike many others, run by a man who values history…’
Harry Cooper becomes a Professor – or does he?
With devil-may-care insolence Harry is selling Hitler in Argentina on Amazon’s German site – Amazon.de. There he is called ‘Professor Harry Cooper’. The term ‘Professor’ started appearing in the summer of 2015. However, there is no evidence anyone has awarded Cooper an honorary, or genuine, professorship. Like his book, the title is bogus, something he cheerfully admits.
James Bauernschmidt, queried the honour in an email to Cooper:-
‘Harry … Any chance you were given an honorary professorship to allow you to use the title of “doctor”? Roger Clark is making new comments:’
Cooper replied:
‘Hi James … Professor Cooper? First I’ve heard of it. I do not waste my time reading what that jackass Clark writes and I wonder why anyone else does. As to “Professor”… first I’ve heard of it and have no idea …’
So why is Cooper called ‘Professor’ on Amazon.de? Why has he taken no steps to remove this fraudulent accolade?
Unperturbed, Cooper continues to sell Hitler in Argentina and other Nazi books – exploiting Amazon’s good name. His Hitler survival books are now found on all Amazon sites except in China – that’s Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The potential damage to historical understanding is worldwide. People, such as Cooper, have used the unwitting Amazon as one of the greatest disseminators of conspiracy theories on the planet.
The critics react
No recognised authority has backed Cooper since he began peddling his Hitler escape stories. His claims are ridiculed by serious historians and institutions. Why – asked one critic – is Cooper not highly regarded or cited anywhere by leading authorities if he has made astonishing discoveries?
On Coopers main retail outlet, Amazon, customers, who know about WW2, mock Cooper’s ignorance. These are just a few comments from customer reviews;
‘The boobs are legion’ … ‘gross falsehoods … I returned the book for a refund’ … ‘a poorly written, self-promoting adventure in heresy’ … ‘Poorly Written Garbage … There are too many mistakes … numerous typos, grammar flaws … His conclusions are questionable because the “facts” leading up to them are unsubstantiated. Cooper began with a premise based on wishful thinking and went downhill from there’… ‘Boring and far fetched’ … ‘badly written, and apparently unedited’… ‘Complete nonsense masquerading as fact … extremely amateurish … relies on conjecture and hearsay’ … ‘Cooper is laughing all the way to the bank with this garbage.’
And the reviews any author would dread go on:
‘The poorly written book is an embarrassment … one of the worst purchases and investments that I have ever made’ … ‘replete with bogus facts’… ‘hogwash … Riddled with lies, bad assumptions, and ridiculous jumped to conclusions … the junk this author puts out is a shameful disgrace and a theft of the readers’ money … This book is a disorganized pile of junk filled with illegible Xeroxed supposed copies of wartime paperwork’ … ‘a septic tank’ … ‘a completely amateurish product, scatterbrained, full of unsupported opinion and irrelevant “evidence” … ‘The book jumps all over the place, has wacky fonts meant to sensationalize, and presents no real evidence of Hitler in Argentina … a complete waste of money’.. ‘Cooper’s “evidence” is spotty at best and the queasy undertone of Third Reich adulation is unmistakable’ … ‘a gross disappointment’ … ‘There is nothing original in this book. All that Cooper says has been said by others. Cooper is a Naziphile’ … ‘This author should be locked up for fraud’ … ‘Pure fantasy’ … ‘Harry doesn’t have the scholarship nor the intelligence to know how poorly written and produced his book is…’
Hitler in Argentina appears so intellectually tenth-rate and childish that it’s difficult to believe anyone could take this book seriously. Nonetheless, Cooper has fooled thousands of gullible people and played to conspiracy paranoia, as a glance at the five-star reviews on Amazon, including this example posted by Scott Mitchell makes clear;
‘Since the end of WW2 many people have been wondering when the lies of the allies would surface and the real truth emerge. This book reveals the major deceptions and smoke screen created by the allies to help Hitler vanish to his hideaway. Much more logical and believable than the fairy story told to the public by Big Brother.’
In fact Cooper’s supporters on Amazon and elsewhere far outnumber the critics. His books are also advertised all over the Internet and sell worldwide, partly due to Mr Cooper’s ability to exploit unregulated internet broadcasting.
During the 2015 Christmas edition of his program internet radio host Jeff Rense urged listeners to buy into Cooper’s fantasy:
‘Harry Cooper’s book Hitler in Argentina is already an historical classic,’ he assured them.
Earlier in the same year – on 15 May – Cooper had told the Rense program:
‘I guess I’d be considered a conspiracy theorist – or something like that because I absolutely flat-out say Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not commit suicide in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. It’s not a theory. It’s fact.’
Harry even knows who helped his fugitive heroes escape the clutches of the Allies, the Vatican, but only after their unorthodox relationship was sanctified by marriage.
Did the Pope help Hitler and Eva escape?
Harry Cooper is a sucker for weird Hitler stories. The day after the German court jailed the Nazi Auschwitz guard Oskar Gröning – on 16 July 2015 – Harry Cooper appeared on yet another radio program, taking up a 45-minute slot on The Kate Dalley Show, broadcast by the Alt Right’s favourite network, Fox News.
During the interview Cooper repeated his fantasies – letting his imagination run riot about ‘What Really Happened To Hitler’ – and plugging his bogus book.
‘Just because we’re told Hitler committed suicide doesn’t make it true,’ he said. ‘Hitler in Argentina tells all about his escape and living in South America with proof – hardcore proof – it ain’t a theory. It ain’t a theory. It’s proof.’
Unfortunately, Kate Dalley was badly briefed and lacked historical knowledge and so failed to expose Cooper’s falsehoods. Instead ‘That letter from Angel is pretty explosive,’ she gushed, referring to the fraudulent letter written by the Nazi spy, Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco, which lies at the heart of Cooper’s book. No serious historian regards Velasco as a credible witness. But here was Kate Dalley endorsing him on what purports to be a serious news network.
During the interview Cooper denied yet again that Eva Braun had committed suicide with Hitler in the Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945:
‘Eva was still alive in 2002 aged 90,’ he said. ‘We think maybe she was alive in 2012 in a nursing home. But I’m going down there in another few months and we’ll find out.’
Cooper’s latest fantasy also involved the Vatican. An ‘agent’, he told Kate, had sent him new information about why Hitler married Eva Braun.
‘The story goes,’ he said, ‘that they got married just before the alleged suicide because it would make her feel better … No! … They got out with the help of the Vatican. And the Vatican said, “We’re not helping a couple that are living in sin. If you’re not married tough bananas.” Every day the stuff keeps coming in. We’ve got good agents in the field.’
‘Good agents in the field’? … Really? … This papal ‘tough bananas’ nonsense provides a text-book example of what’s wrong with Harry Cooper – the way he latches onto chronically unreliable sources and uses them to bolster his fraudulent claims.
‘Oh my gosh!’ exclaimed Kate as Cooper told her about the Vatican.
‘That’s a story I like to hear!’ enthused her co-host.
By the time the show came to an end Kate Dalley had described Hitler in Argentina as ‘a great book’ and urged listeners to buy a copy. Crackpot theorising endorsed and promoted by Fox News. No mention of those anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda broadcasts Cooper takes part in with Jeff Rense, or of David Dees, the Holocaust denying artist who designs his covers, or of celebrating Hitler’s birthday, or of Cooper’s other dubious activities visiting Nazi sites in Europe. This was Cooper sanitised, repackaged, normalised and promoted as a genial Uncle Harry who would offend no one. Kate Dalley and Fox News need to do better when dealing with this conspiracy theorist. They should scrutinise him closely – very closely. Disturbing things are happening that need investigation.
Instead, Cooper was invited back to the program on 11 March 2016. Again Kate showed her lack of knowledge when it came to Hitler:
‘He was not for suicide,’ she said. ‘Hitler was not a man that believed in suicide, right?’
‘Exactly’, Cooper replied. ‘Exactly.’
So Cooper got away with it again. And at the end of the show Kate said she hoped he would return for yet another program.
Sharkhunters [not] welcome: Harry Cooper faces allegations of trespassing
During his first appearance on the Kate Dalley Show Cooper boasted of how he trespassed on other people’s property and picked the locks so he could enter their houses. In January 2008 he visited the Inalco estate in Argentina where he claims Hitler and Eva lived for 10 years after the war. Cooper then wrote that without permission he broke into the house and guest cottages and published photos on his website to prove it. He then repeated the admission on Fox News adding that he had once been coached in the necessary skills for breaking and entering in the cause of pseuodohistorical research.
‘You can see all round that estate – even inside the estate – because in one of my earlier jobs I learned how to pick locks and took a lot of photos,’ he told Kate Dalley 37 minutes and 30 seconds into the program.
Writing in the third person Cooper makes light of the unlawful entry on his website, where one of the pictures shows him standing in front of a door of the Inalco House:
‘Knock! Knock! Nobody answers the door. Of course not – the estate is abandoned. We cannot reveal how HARRY got into the house, but he said that picking those old fashioned locks was difficult. Don’t know what he meant by that…’
Then he publishes photos taken inside the building showing the stairs, a bedroom, dining-room and living-room. Although the property is deserted the rooms look clean – no dust in sight. And well-watered, neatly-trimmed potted plants are visible. Somebody owns this house. So what do they think about a stranger invading their property, picking the locks while they are away and wandering around and taking photos inside without permission?
Cooper returned the following year with a group of ten people who wandered about the grounds. And what he does in South America Cooper does in Europe – especially in Germany. Monday 12 September 2012 found him outside the ‘Love Nest’ of Dr. Josef Goebbels – a 70-room lakeside villa on the outskirts of Berlin. ‘What,’ he mused, ‘is beyond this gate with that nasty sign that says “Eingang Verboten” – “Entrance forbidden”. As we know, that translates to “Sharkhunters are Welcome Here!” Walk through this gate with us and see history not available to others.’
And walk through the gate he does, snapping away as he wanders around the estate where Hitler’s infamous propaganda minister seduced his would-be starlets. The Haus am Bogensee villa is overgrown and empty, but survives intact 24 miles north of the capital. Cooper notes the house is empty but everything is in working order, including three windows that can be lowered through the floor to create a large open-air space.
Again unauthorised entry. Cooper constantly brags on his website and in his radio programs that Sharkhunters enjoys unprecedented access to many areas considered ‘off limits‘ to the rest of the public: ‘We are in the OFF LIMITS ‘Gold Room’ where Hitler held his receptions before his speeches AND we’re INSIDE his private office! Bring the cameras,’ he wrote in his itinerary about his visit to Nuremberg in 2015.
There are many other examples.
When Cooper does have permission to tour controversial sites he claims the visits are arranged through his connections with apparent Nazi sympathizers.
Harry Cooper shoots at the messenger – and misses
Although Cooper continues to con the gullible with what he calls his ‘history smashing’ books he is now under siege. His expulsion from the Chicago International Press Club, which was described in Part One of this series, came as a shock, demonstrating that the critics are after him. Reality keeps breaking in, eroding his credibility.
And a massive new Hitler biography by Volker Ullrich – the first volume is nearly a thousand pages long – will bring him no comfort. The book, which draws on a wealth of previously neglected or unavailable sources, is getting good reviews from people who matter.
And guess what? … Like every other serious scholar who has studied Hitler before him, Ullrich makes clear in the first volume that Hitler committed suicide in Berlin in 1945. On page 105 the author says:
‘Hitler would cling to his conviction that his battle with the Jews was a matter of life or death right up until his suicide in his bunker in Berlin in late April 1945.’
Ullrich says Hitler contemplated killing himself a number of times during his life when the going got rough. In addition to mentioning Hitler’s suicide on page 105 Ullrich writes about Hitler’s ‘suicidal tendencies’ on pages 157-8, 163, 344 and 411. The second volume is on its way, but there is no likelihood that Ullrich will support the conspiracy theorists who still cling to the foolish notion that Hitler survived. Hitler finally pulled the trigger in May 1945 and that’s it.
Then there was the Smithsonian Channel documentary confirming Hitler’s suicide in Berlin in 1945. This rubbished the Hitler’s escape fantasies. The program – called The Day Hitler Died – carried filmed interviews recorded in 1948 with members of Hitler’s inner circle – civilian and military – who were with Hitler in Berlin to the end.
But what about the History Channel’s series Hunting Hitler – 8 hour-long programs claiming Hitler did escape in 1945? Surely this boosted the credibility of the Hitler survival lobby?
For one moment Cooper thought these TV shows, broadcast to over 180 countries, would prove he was right and he could trounce his critics. Attacking me personally in his newsletter he wrote:
‘That worthless hack Roger Clark must be foaming at the mouth now that international TV is claiming that Adolf Hitler did indeed live out his life in South America. Clark sent so many negative comments to Amazon bad-mouthing our book Hitler in Argentina which, incidentally, has become a BEST SELLER recently and poor Clark has to eat crow with egg on his face. Chances are, he will claim that the TV programs are all wrong too and only he is correct.’
Well, at least he got one thing right. I did attack the series and you can read my critique here on PipeLine as well as thePipeLine’s own independently written review of the series. I also stand by my carefully researched Amazon reviews. Meanwhile, the Hunting Hitler programs encouraged Cooper to launch a second attack upon me:
‘Bad enough,’ he chortled, ‘that the world now realizes that Adolf Hitler did not kill himself in the bunker, that I was right all along and you were wrong and looking foolish … Are you that ashamed? Or that afraid? Doesn’t make you look good Roger…’
Then reality dawned. The “Hunting Hitler” TV series was a fiasco.
Using the same misleading FBI files that fooled Cooper when writing his own book, the Hunting Hitler team failed predictably to find the Nazi leader. Cooper’s Nazi spy, Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco, was never even mentioned. There was no mention of Hitler and Eva being forcibly drugged. And there worst of all for the most vocal proponent of the Hitler escaped Berlin theory, there was no mention of Harry Cooper’s “history smashing” research.
The final disaster as far as Harry Cooper was concerned was the prominent featuring of Cooper’s deadliest rival, former BBC and Sky journalist Gerrard Williams. He was the man who co-authored another bogus book GREY WOLF – the Escape of Adolf Hitler and who directed an equally nonsensical straight to DVD drama documentary based upon it. Cooper was boycotted. Cooper was nowhere to be seen in the History Channel’s series. No one consulted him. He was ignored – kept out in the cold, while Hunting Hitler made the whole Hitler survival industry look ridiculous. Enraged, Cooper promptly reversed his support for the series and set up a special website – hitlerinargentina.com – where he now rails against the programs and his rivals.
Alarm! – Time to panic
Panic set in. Cooper was upstaged. He had to tell the world that he was the man who really knew the truth about Hitler’s fate. In his newsletter he told his fans he was taking drastic action. He wanted everyone to know about his radio broadcasts:
‘We passed on the information about the radio show with COOPER on RENSE Radio to about 3,700 media outlets, inviting them to tune in and learn. About 24 hours after we sent the invitation – NOT ONE responded that they are interested. Are we to assume that all these news agencies are interested only in re-releasing the sanitized news they are handed by the “approved” sources that invent the news? Who knows – but such silence screams a lot, don’t you think? Actually, half a dozen eventually did respond – only to tell us not to send them any more emails … and they are news professionals?’
Emails to 3,700 media outlets! … No immediate response from the majority … A hostage to fortune if ever there was one.
Perhaps some of those 3,700 journalists will start investigating Cooper’s activities and write more articles like the one you are now reading. Imagine, 3,700 ticking time bombs, any one of which might explode at any moment. There is something for Cooper to contemplate as he goes to bed each night.
And there is certainly plenty for journalists to investigate because the phoney claims keep coming.
Returning from his South American patrol at the beginning of 2016 Cooper was still convinced he was right when it comes to Hitler: ‘We know that the story of Hitler’s suicide is false,’ he repeated for the umpteenth time. ‘There is absolutely no doubt that he did not kill himself but lived out his life in safety and comfort in Argentina.’
And if Hitler and other Nazis survived why not Dr Goebbels’s wife Magda and one of their daughters Holdine? Although all the evidence cited by mainstream historians shows Goebbels and his wife committed suicide after murdering their six children in the Führerbunker in 1945 Cooper is convinced he has found evidence that proves otherwise. He spoke to various people in South America – including two doctors whose names he refuses to reveal for fear rivals might track them down and steal his information.
‘Doctor F and Doctor C,’ he writes on his website, ‘have so much hard evidence that Magda and Holdine lived long after the end of the war in South America that the story of their survival can be accepted on its face. They have checked, cross-checked and checked again and it all comes up believable. They knew Holdine in her advanced years and as doctors, they treated her medically.’
Serious historians tell us Holdine was eight years old when she was murdered in the Berlin bunker. That’s wrong says Cooper. On 30 March 2016 he was at it again on the Jeff Rense show. According to him Holdine survived and lived in Bolivia. Attempts were made to marry her off in her late teens but, said Cooper, that failed:
‘She was a very ugly person and very masculine and, yes, she was a lesbian … I’ve seen a pictures of her as an older women and you wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with that woman.’
Indeed, Cooper wondered whether Holdine was Dr Goebbels’s daughter. He was told some people believed ‘the father of Holdine was Hitler,’ and she lived out the rest of her life in a Bolivian shack. Jeff Rense was fascinated by Cooper’s lurid and titillating tale. More discerning listeners might think he had lost his grip on reality, something critics argue, he does frequently .
For example, in the violent reality of Berlin in May 1945, how did Magda Goebbel’s escape from the city, and why did she take only one daughter and leave her remaining five children behind? Cooper is threatening to reveal all in yet another book.
Better make it convincing Harry.
In Part Three of his special investigation for thePipeLine Roger Clark looks in more detail at perhaps the most disturbing part of the bizarre story of Harry Cooper and the pseudohistory of Adolf Hitler’s escape and post war retirement in Argentina. Harry Cooper’s links with Far Right hate radio.
Meanwhile Harry Cooper and Sharkhunters International publish this statement on their website.
‘Sharkhunters is not now and never was a hate group; and Cooper is not now and never was a Nazi.’
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