The Long Death of Adolf Hitler

Historian Caroline Sharples investigates the circumstances and expectations surrounding the demise of Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die within the popular imagination, only officially being declared dead in 2018.

In part, this owes much to the circumstances of his demise – a private suicide that produced a decades-long search for identifiable, physical remains. But it also speaks to the cultural expectations that had built up during the Second World War as to what a ‘fitting end’ would look like for the Nazi dictator.

In this talk, Dr Caroline Sharples highlights the public discourse that had been constructed around the prospect of Hitler’s death. She also traces the responses that news of his passing eventually engendered across Britain and the Commonwealth in Spring 1945, including songs, jokes, games and public rituals.

About the speaker

Dr Caroline Sharples is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Roehampton. Her research interests concern memories of National Socialism, war crimes trials and representations of the Holocaust.

She is the author of 'West Germans and the Nazi Legacy' (2012), 'Postwar Germany and the Holocaust' (2015) and co-editor of 'Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide' (2013). Her latest publication is 'The Long Death of Adolf Hitler' (Yale University Press, 2026).