Did Hitler kill himself by a gunshot to the head, or poison?

Here are the facts, documented from respected printed sources (books):

April 30, 1945: Hitler sends for Bormann at noon and informs him that the end is near. He then attends one last lunch with his secretaries and his cook, who prepares spaghetti with a light sauce. Eva is not present, but she joins him after the lunch to shake hands and say sad farewells to the staff. Eva embraces Traudl Junge: 'Please try to get out of here,' she pleads. 'You might make it. Give my love to Bavaria.' Hitler and Eva then enter Hitler's private quarters and close the door behind them. SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Otto Guensche takes up his post at the door, with orders that the couple not be disturbed. (Read, Payne)

April 30, 1945: After the Hitlers retire to their room, Traudl Junge suddenly realizes that, in the excitement, no one had thought to feed the Goebbels' children. She rounds them up, leads them to the tiny dining room, and scrounges up some fruit and sandwich ingredients. Junge will later relate that she 'heard the shot' while making sandwiches and for them. Rochus Misch will later tell Oliver Harvey:

I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I did not see any blood on his head. And I saw Eva with her knees drawn up, lying next to him on the sofa. Hitler was wrapped in a blanket as I watched. He was then taken outside to be burnt. It was over.

Note: There is some dispute in the historical record concerning some of the events of this day. One is the contention that a distraught Magda Goebbels had actually burst in on Hitler and Eva in the privacy of their room, making one last tearful plea to Hitler that he allow himself and the rest of them to escape Berlin and make a last stand at Obersalzberg. However, other eyewitnesses have denied that any such scene actually occurred, and it is quite doubtful that it ever did. Another area of dispute is whether or not the shot that killed Hitler was actually heard by any of the Bunker witnesses. Some say they heard the shot, but others will testify that they did not, and that the door was too soundproof to have allowed the sound to escape. Definitive answers are difficult when eyewitnesses disagree. (Read)

From Women of the Third Reich by Anna Maria Sigmund: On April 30, 1945, when Hitler and Eva Braun, now married, took their leave in order to commit suicide, Magda Goebbels cried out in shock, 'My Fuehrer, do not leave us; we will perish miserably without you!' Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary, was just giving food to the Goebbels children when she heard a shot coming from Hitler's den. With regard to Magda Goebbels' intentions, there are conflicting reports. Albert Speer believed that, '... she found the idea that her children had to die unbearable, but she submitted, it seemed, to her husband's decision.' Two close co-workers of the propaganda minister, however, claimed they had overheard Goebbels suggest to his wife that she flee to the West since they had nothing to fear from the British.

April 30, 1945 Death: At 3:30 PM, Adolf Hitler and his new wife, Eva Braun, commit suicide in their private quarters under the Chancellery. Their bodies are taken above ground by Hitler's aides, burned with difficulty due to the conditions and the limited supply of gasoline, and buried in a shallow grave formed from a bomb crater. Kempka, Goebbels, Bormann, Krebs, Linge, and Burgdorf give one last Nazi salute to their Fuehrer, before an exploding Soviet shell sends them scurrying back down into the Bunker. (Read)

From Napoleon and Hitler: A Comparative Biography by Desmond Seward:During the Emperor's flight from Russia in 1812 he speculated as to what the Allies would do if they caught him. 'Can you picture to yourself, Caulaincourt, the figure you would cut in an iron cage, in the main square of London?' He then had a fit of hysteria. Hitler had no illusions. He knew that he would be put on show and then executed...in the one chivalrous gesture of his entire life, he married Eva Braun. Next day both retired to their bedroom to die. Clutching a photograph of his mother, the Fuehrer shot himself, while Eva took poison. Amid his own ruin in 1814 Napoleon confided in a loyal supporter 'My dear fellow, if the Cossacks reach the gates of Paris it's the end of Emperor and Empire.' As it was, Tsar Alexander's Cossacks stabled their horses in Paris. In 1945 Stalin's Cossacks rode into Berlin. Neither capital need have entertained them had it not been for their rulers' madness. Determined to escape from a war on two fronts, both had been destroyed by such a war.

That is the story. The entire tale of Hitler's Last Days can be found on the site below.

http://ldfb.tripod.com/index.htm

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He shot himself, I don't know if he also took poison, but probably died of a self inflicted gunshot wound. His wife, Eva Braun may have swallowed poison and some of his people, including their families and children took poison. I don't know if the men took poison or shot themselves.

His body was burned by his guards to make it hard to identify him. But this led to speculation for a long time that he was alive and the corpse was somebody else's (It's not like burned up corpses would be hard to find in Berlin in April, 1945). But the "Hitler is alive" rumors were replaced in the late 70's by "Elvis is alive" and by the time he would have been 80 or 90 or 100 the rumors were less frequent.(Hitler was born in 1889)

No one really knows for sure. We are taught in school that he committed suicide in his bunker with Ava Braun. Gun shot and poison. But in 2009 a DNA autopsy was done on the Skull fragment that the Russians had from the left over charred corpse that was supposed to be Hitler's. It turned out to be the DNA of a women in her mid 30's.

If some one had an insurance policy on his body, the Company would not pay out.

Ava Braun took cyanide, Adolph took a bullet.

He had a cyanide capsule in his mouth as a back up, but never bit into it as he died instantly from the gunshot to the head. He could NOT have did both as cyanide is instantaneous, and if he had bitten into the capsule, he would have never had time to pull the trigger.

The Walther was the same pistol that his niece, Geli Raubal had used in her suicide. (Creepy!)

Officially.....

(On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself in the temple with a Walther PPK.)

Hit bit down on a cyanide capsule then shot himself instantly after, Cyanide takes a second or two to actually work, so once he'd bitten on it, he shot himself. That's the correct answer in short.

Watch Downfall, it shows in a better light how he did it.

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He poisoned himself with cyanide but he thought it wasn't working so he shot himself. His guards burned his body, as well as Eva Braun's, to stop them being captured. Hitler thought that if he was captured alive, he would be held in Moscow as a zoo exhibit.

Both.

I always thought he shot himself, but according to wikipedia: "On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself in the temple with a Walther PPK while simultaneously biting into a cyanide capsule."

I'm guessing it was the bullet that killed him. I'm not sure how long cyanide takes...

He did not want any chance that he might fail in his attempt at suicide, and get captured alive by the Russians; so he did both. He swallowed poison and then shot himself.

The autopsy has not been released. There were no witnesses of the death moment. The people who took the bodies out for burning left no record. A shot was heard but that is the limit of the data.

So they went into their private room, a shot was heard, two bodies came out. No-one knows or will ever know the precise facts.

He shot himself in the head. It was his newly married wife who poisoned herself just before he shot himself.