Hitler dead

This headline story sums up a classic newspaper dilemma – if you have no witnesses and only one source for a story, do you run it?

News Chronicle, 2 May 1945
The British Library gratefully acknowledges the John Frost Newspaper Archive for permission to reproduce this front page.

The News Chronicle took the risk owing to the enormity of the breaking story, and used Admiral Doenitz’s speech as the basis for the report. However the press published the next day that Hitler was not killed in action, as Doenitz claimed, but committed suicide in a bunker under the Chancellery in Berlin when defeat became apparent.