Easter at The Sleaze

So, how was Easter for you? For me, it descended into one long orgy of chocolate eating, beer drinking and sitting up to four in the morning watching films I'd seen a million times before, but just couldn't stop myself from watching one more time. By Easter Day itself I was a sleep-deprived wreck and, after an afternoon of watching Big Jake and Flash Gordon back-to-back, for no other reason than I didn't have the energy to get up out of my arm chair and do something more constructive, I found myself listlessly looking at the Fortean Times message board. For some reason, I only seem to look at those boards when I find myself exhausted at the fag end of a religious festival. There's something strangely reassuring in the fact that, in the twenty first century, there are still cranks and crackpots out there who believe in all that supernatural schtick. However, unsatisfied by their tales of men in lion suits scaring children, evil stick men, whacked out conspiracies and lake monsters, I found myself following random links from Google Ads to try and get my fix of weird crap. (It's surprising how many of those Google small ads are placed by loons peddling their dubious wares).

Anyway, I eventually hit pay dirt when I stumbled upon Hitler's Fate: The Final Story , a web site plugging a book of the same title, in which one H D Baumann reveals what really happened to the Fuhrer at the end of World War Two. Pure unadulterated lunacy. Apparently Hitler didn't commit suicide - that was his double. Whilst the site obviously isn't revealing his true fate (you have to buy the book for that), I've a feeling it has to do with South American jungles. I love the list of important questions which are apparently begging for answers. These include "For what reason did three German submarines land off the coast of southern Argentina more than two months after the end of World War II in Europe?". Well, that's obvious - they were just stopping off to refuel before going on to that hole at the South Pole through which the hollow earth can be accessed. "Why were there no burned wood planks on the spot where Hitler and Eva Braun were supposedly be cremated?" Because it was a concrete surface?

Best of all, it assures us that: "The prospect that the officially sanctioned story of Hitler's suicide, based on the hurriedly written report of a former British MI 5 agent named Hugh Trevor-Roper, may not be true, will make some readers emotionally uneasy, to put it mildly." Now, there was me thinking that Hugh Trevor-Roper (later Lord Dacre) was, in fact, a distinguished Historian and author of many well-regarded books on the Second World War. How naive of me - he was clearly an MI 5 plant. Which, of course, begs the question of why MI 5, the British Security Service, which is primarily concerned with counter espionage operations within the UK, would have any interest in Hitler's suicide? Undeterred by such questions, the site continues: "Yet this official version of history was never accepted by the Russians, and it does not hold up to the facts since it was primarily based on the willfully misleading statements of Nazi witnesses in order to mislead the Allies. This book exposes these and other falsehoods based on years of research by the author and supported by the latest Russian publications from their archives." The fact that anybody would consider any documentary evidence originating in the Soviet Union as being more reliable than Western sources sets the seal on this book's lunacy. Really, coming across this site really restored my faith in the mental instability of mankind and gave me renewed hope for the future!