Tests on a skull fragment thought to be from the body of Adolf Hitler, appear to show it is from a woman.

The fragment, complete with bullet hole, was dug up by the Russians in 1946 outside Hitler’s bunker.  Test results show the DNA is that of a woman. An examination of the fragment suggests she could have been no more than about 40 years of age.

The generally accepted story of Hitler’s death is that both he and Eva Braun took cyanide, and he then shot himself for good measure. Their bodies were then apparently carried outside the bunker, doused in petrol and burned.

But the evidence of what happened to Hitler is actually quite thin. So the test results raise a number of intriguing possibilities:

• the Russians simply dug up someone else’s remains, and mistakenly thought they were Hitler’s. No big deal. Some of his remains may still be in the area (though rumours have long circulated that the Russians found the still-smouldering remains in 1945 and send them back to Russia)
• Hitler escaped the bunker and died somewhere else, probably during the fall of Berlin
• Hitler escaped Berlin and died in cosy retirement in South America
• Hitler escaped Berlin and still lives in cosy retirement in South America (he’d be about 120 years old though, but the Lizard People might be keeping him alive with their secret technologies)
• Hitler was a woman and was much younger than everyone thought.

My own view is that there’s not enough evidence to doubt the accepted story of Hitler’s death. The fragment changes nothing. It would hardly be astonishing to find in Berlin in 1946 a skull fragment with a bullet hole in it.

But it might give Dan Brown a plot idea for his next book. An evil dictator living in secrecy in the bowels of Rosslyn Chapel, his lifeforce extended by drinking daily from the Holy Grail, and only one man can stop him etc etc…