The Seventh Secret
The Seventh Secret is a 1986 novel by Irving Wallace using an alternate history of Adolf Hitler having survived World War II.
Plot summary
One Oxford historian Harrison Ashcroft, when preparing to publish his book of biography of Adolf Hitler called "Herr Hitler" along with his daughter Emily Ashcroft receives a letter from a stranger in West Berlin telling that the book could be wrong if published with the popular version of suicide of Hitler as its end. He even writes that he can prove that the corpse shown in the 1945, April 30 photos of fuhrerbunker suicide plot were not of Hitler and his bride Eva Braun.
Intrigued by this information, Harrison travels to West Berlin and finds the stranger. Soon after a short meeting with the informant, Harrison calls a press conference and reveals that he doubts Hitler would've escaped the war and would be hiding under a false name and that he would excavate the graves of Hitler and Eva on the Russian side of Berlin.
Only seconds after this press conference, he would be killed in the crazy truck accident which will be witnessed by a press reporter. This press reporter writes to Ashcroft's daughter telling her that it was murder not an accident.
With the intention of finding why her father was killed, Emily comes to West Berlin and starts investigating. At the same time due to their own initiatives to resolve the mystery of Hitler's death 3 more people join her in the investigation. One Rex Foster - an architect from America, Neil Kirvov - a curator from a Russian museum and Tovah Levine from Jerusalem. Rex would be publishing a book of surviving buildings of Third Reich and he would be missing the 7 mystery buildings built during the final days of the war in Germany. To find those buildings and to get their plans, he comes to Berlin and finds Emily. Neil Kirvov is a would be collector of Hitler's art and possesses a valid Hitler oil painting which he wants to display in his museum's exhibition. He want someone to validate the oil as Hitler's and also to find the provenance of the painting. Tovah is a Mossad agent with the identity of a press reporter to Jerusalem post and she wants to trace surviving Nazis of second world war.
Emily along with Kirvov, Foster and Levine all used their combined power which leads them to the unbelievable truth. Kirvov finds out about the painting that is supposed to be an authentic painting by Hitler that the real Adolf Hitler might still be alive. The painting that depicted a Nazi building shows the image of a renovated building that had an additional element that would be constructed in 1952. How could this supposedly authentic Hitler painting show the building as it was in 1952 7 years after his supposed death?
Levine helps the four of them by discovering that Hitler and Eva Braun (his wife) had legitimate duplicates who normally attended functions in their place and who resembled Hitler very closely. Could the Hitler and Eva doubles have been the one who really died in the bunker?
Rex discovers through a former Nazi bunker architect that Hitler had seven bunkers even though only six were known to other people. He discovers that the seventh Bunker is right next to the bunker that Hitler supposedly died in and he goes and investigates to find a secret passage that leads from the Hitler and Eva's personal bedroom to a seventh bunker in a hidden passage route which was previously build by Jewish slaves (who were later killed to silence by Hitler himself). As Foster goes through this passage he find out that it certainly leads to another unknown bunker where he find that his love, Emily Ashcroft, is hidden after her sudden disappearance in the Cafe Wolf (this bunker happens to be right beneath this cafe which Eva Braun first used as her photo studio and later turned into a cafe to not attract too much attention).
He also finds that Eva Braun is still alive and sleeping is the adjacent room! He will ask Emily to escape and he later drugs Eva(who goes by the name Evelyn Hoffman to not attract too much attention)with the truth drug which will make her spit out the facts! Braun admits that she and Hitler used their doubles when they claimed their death and were alive and living in this bunker the entire time which completely escaped the eyes of the Soviets when they raided the bunker. She claims that the real Hitler died in 1963 and ever since that, she has been at the head of the Nazis. She says that over fifty Nazis were in the secret bunker at the moment and that they would rise once more when Nazis were strong enough and when the Americans and Soviets destroyed each other with their missiles. Eva Braun also reveals one of the most ghastly secrets that she and Hitler had a child before he died!
The daughter that they had was kept a secret from the rest of the world. Hitler did not want his daughter to rot in the bunker so he bribed their previous maid to take care of the daughter as her own. The daughter's name is Klara Feigbig who is already married and pregnant with Hitler's grandchild but she has no idea about her actual parentage and she lives a peaceful life. Eva also reveals that the police chief, Wolfgang Schmidt, who the whole town trusted as an anti-Nazi was actually one of Hitler secret SS guards and was to takeover as leader when the new Nazi Germany was established once again!
After these revelations, Foster goes to Levine who orders her subordinates to poison the bunker with Xyklon-B (the very gas the Nazis used at Auschwitz to kill Jews, Poles, etc); Eva overhears this and escapes to the Fiebig's flat and reveals the unpleasant truths to Klara (who hangs herself rather than run away with her evil mother), while Schmidt (and the Nazis from Argentina) are killed by the gas.