The historian spoke about the role of Smersh in the discovery of the remains of Hitler and Eva Braun.

Thanks to the care of the soldiers of the security platoon of the Smersh counterintelligence department, the remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were discovered in May 1945. Oleg Matveev, a historian of the special services and an expert at the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of Russia, told about this on April 19.

"The remains of Hitler and Eva Braun were discovered thanks to the vigilance of the soldiers of the security platoon of the Smersh counterintelligence department of the 79th Infantry Corps of the 3rd Shock Army of the 1st Belorussian Front, who examined the courtyard of the captured Reich Chancellery in early May 1945," he said in an interview with TASS.

According to Matveev, during subsequent excavations at the site, the charred bodies of a man and a woman were found. The historian clarified that further work to establish their identity, as well as the identification of the previously found bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, was carried out by Smersh counterintelligence officers of the 1st Belorussian Front with the participation of the head of the department, Lieutenant General Alexander Vadis.

On March 23, the Federal Security Service (FSB) published archival documents dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Soviet military counterintelligence officer Alexander Vadis. It was noted that from the very first days he participated in the Great Patriotic War. In March 1943, he was appointed head of the Smersh counterintelligence Directorate of the Central Front.