Hitler
© Screen Capture/YouTubeAdolf Hitler in the 1930s, as seen in 'Hitler's Reign of Terror.'
Adolf Hitler didn't commit suicide in a Berlin bunker in 1945. He escaped to South America, where he lived with his black lover to the age of 95 as a treasure hunter. That's the risible claim in a new book by a Brazilian Jewish journalism student.

The conspiracy theory premise of Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias's book Hitler in Brazil - His Life and His Death has grabbed international headlines in recent days, and never mind the fact that it's ridiculous.

Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, as the Red Army was advancing into the German capital. His body and that of his mistress, Eva Braun, were placed in a bomb crater outside the Reich Chancellory and doused with petrol.

The way Dias tells it, however, Hitler fled to Brazil and lived under the name Adolf Leipzig until he died in 1984. She claims Hitler lived in the small town of Nossa Senhora do Livramento, 30 miles from the Brazilian state capital Cuiaba, and hunted for buried Jesuit gold.

Her "proof"? A blurry photograph of the man she claims is Hitler with his black girlfriend - with whom he shacked up to allay suspicions that he might be the propagator of a racist ideology.

The Irish Mirror reported that Guerreiro Dias said "her suspicions about Adolf Leipzig increased after she photoshopped a moustache onto the grainy picture she obtained of him and compared it to photos of the Nazi leader."

She also points to the supposed pseudonym he took, Leipzig, as further evidence: Leipzig was the German hometown of Hitler's favorite musician, Johann Sebastian Bach.

Historian Guy Walters was quoted by the Mirror as saying that Guerreiro Dias's claim was "2,000 per cent rubbish" and that it had "no substance to it at all."

"It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research," he said.

Her claims have been reported in newspapers from England to India over the weekend, and in some cases taken seriously. Britain's Daily Express, for instance, ran the story under the headline: The INCREDIBLE picture that 'proves' Adolf Hitler lived to 95 with his Brazilian lover.

Local papers have reported Simoni is now planning DNA tests using a relative of Hitler living in Israel after been given permission to exhume Adolf Leipzig's remains from his final resting place.

Incidentally, and rather more plausibly, according to a Guardian article five years ago, Adolf Hitler's half brother's great-grandson lives in Israel and is "a professor at the Jewish studies faculty at one of the universities."