Not surprisingly, given his terrible shadow over twentieth-century history, Hitler is a central character in many, many comic books. But while most feature the rise of the dictator or his atrocious acts, this is arguably the first time a series has questioned his death.
Where is the Führer?
In this three-volume series published by Glénat, screenwriter Jean-Christophe Brisard and cartoonist Alberto Pagliaro present a little-known part of the war. In 1945, the war ended when the Soviets took Berlin. A few days before, the Führer, his girlfriend and some relatives would have committed suicide rather than witness the end of their racist dreams. Yet Hitler's corpse is nowhere to be found. Is he dead? Did he flee?
An expressionist drawing
What immediately marks the reader are the bold choices of the cartoonist Alberto Pagliaro. Refusing the agreed choice of a realistic drawing, he opted for an atmosphere close to German expressionist painting, with very elongated faces cut with a penknife. The head of a corpse seems to be traversed by black rivers. The colorization by blocks of colors does not aim to bring relief or to play on an impression of material. Indeed, the movement is brought by the composition of the box and by the framing often diagonally.
Find the corpse
Once the visual shock has passed, it is only then that the story seduces the reader. Indeed, today, it must have been difficult to understand why a corpse can be so important. The USSR, the victorious country, certainly wants to find the person responsible for the war, the guilty of several war crimes and genocide, but it goes much further. Stalin, although still valiant by his thunderous anger, dreams of being declared the successor. The discovery of the body of the sworn enemy of communism would mean glory and perhaps the position of president upon Stalin's death. Failure would result in a much less pleasant trip to the gulags of Siberia. Being sidelined can indeed mean imminent death. A chase between the Soviet spy services thus begins with the search for Hitler's corpse. The NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, wants to succeed before the Smersh, the rising Soviet counterintelligence service. 
A story with a strong historical purpose
We follow a woman, team leader of the Smersh in the ruined capital in the middle of hungry Germans. The scenario does not only remain in Berlin. He also went to Moscow to show the instructions and hopes of the heads of these spy services. It is through this research that the reader also enriches his historical culture. Especially on facts little put forward. When the death of their Führer was announced, hundreds of Germans committed suicide out of desperation. Another example: a large part of the population was listed in racial conformity cards… Violence is constant and reaches the level of a people when we forget the individuals. Hilter is dead is a surprising series both on the historical period and by the artistic choices. Each spy group advances on a different track. At the end of this first volume, the research seems to have advanced but doubts are still numerous: have we really identified the right corpse?
