Adolf Hitler - Private Testament

Berlin, April 29, 1945

My Private Testament Although I believed in the years of fighting that I could not take the responsibility of entering into a marriage, now, before the end of my life, I decided to take as my wife the lady who, after many years of true friendship, came into this all but besieged city of her own free will in order to share my fate. At her own wish, she will go into death with me as my wife. This will compensate us both for what my work in the service of my Volk took from us.

Insofar as they are of any value, my possessions are the property of the party and, should it no longer exist, of the state. Should the state be destroyed, then any further directives by me would be superfluous.

The paintings in the collections that I bought over the years I never intended for private purposes, but for the establishment of a gallery in my home town of Linz on the Danube.

It is my most heartfelt wish that this bequest be executed.

As the executor of my testament, I appoint my dearest party comrade Martin Bormann. He will be entitled to make all decisions final and legal. He will be allowed to give everything of personal value as a remembrance or necessary to maintain a modest bourgeois living standard for my siblings, likewise especially to my wife’s mother,214 and my secretaries, whom he knows well, Mrs. Winter,215 and others who supported me for many years in my work.

My wife and I choose to die in order to escape the disgrace of a deposition or surrender. It is our wish to be cremated immediately at the site where I did the larger part of my daily work in the course of a twelve-year-long service to my Volk.

Given at Berlin, April 29, 1945, four o’clock                                                                                                                                                                               Adolf Hitler

As witnesses:

Martin Bormann

Dr. Goebbels

Nicolaus von Below