Five skeletons missing limbs found beneath Goering’s floor

SKELETONS missing their hands and feet, including that of a baby, have been discovered beneath the home of Hermann Goering.

German and Polish archaeologists made the grim discovery while digging in the Wolf ’s Lair, in Poland, a complex of bunkers and ruins that once served as a forest headquarters for Adolf Hitler’s inner circle.

Under a wooden floor in Goering’s house, about 10 centimetres below ground, the group first found the remains of a human skull. Further digging revealed five skeletons: three adults, a teenager and a baby.

All five bodies were missing hands and feet, prompting Polish prosecutors to launch an inquiry into whether they were the victims of Nazi war crimes.

Excavators found no traces of clothing or jewellery, suggesting the victims’ bodies were looted and stripped before they were buried.

Oktavian Bartoszewski, one of the researchers, suspects the bodies were buried after the house was built as the remains were located under some pipes. “Those who laid the pipes should have discovered the human remains,” he told Der Spiegel magazine. “We were completely shocked.”

Police said they found no evidence of a recent crime, adding to suspicions that the case dates back to the Second World War and may involve Goering, who was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party and the chief of the Luftwaffe during the war.

He killed himself with a smuggled cyanide capsule in October 1946, the day before he was due to be hanged after his conviction for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

The Wolf ’s Lair complex was built in 1940. It was also the scene of the famous July 20 1944 botched attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb planted by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a top Nazi officer.

Over the years, amateur sleuths have dug up all manner of relics from the site but Goering’s house was considered to have given up all its secrets before this latest discovery.