Braun spent hours every day in the small cinema room watching old newsreel footage of the Nuremberg rallies, showing Hitler in his prime. She had always been obsessed with his charisma as a public speaker and had fallen in love with the Führer, rather than the man. However, she felt intellectually inferior to her husband and never really understood what he saw in her. Their relationship had been hidden from the German people as Hitler believed a public girlfriend would be a disaster for his image, so only a few people in his inner circle knew of their affair. When they began their new lives in South America, Braun had hoped their relationship would blossom, but nothing really changed. She often went days, sometimes even weeks, without seeing him, waiting to be summoned to his side. Nevertheless, she continued to idolise him and felt honoured he had chosen her to be the only woman in his life. She had also borne him a son, ensuring his bloodline would live on, long after the death of the Third Reich.

Their son, Richard Franklin, who was now twenty-two, was living and working in San Francisco. As a child, Bormann had insisted he be home tutored in English as well as Spanish and German, so he was fluent in all three languages. A few months earlier, the Franklin Corporation had opened its first office and laboratory base in the United States as, under Bormann’s stewardship, it continued to expand at an exponential rate. Bormann commuted regularly to and from Argentina although, since Richard had moved there, he spent the majority of his time in San Francisco, building the business and grooming Richard in his new role as a company director.

Richard was in the boardroom, holding a meeting with a couple of his new colleagues when he was summoned to his uncle’s office. As he arrived, Bormann was completing a phone call but signalled for him to take a seat. He quickly finished up and turned to Richard.

“I’ve just booked us on the night flight home. It’s a matter of days.”

* * *

Hitler’s last few hours were spent in a medically-induced coma. Bormann, Richard and Braun kept vigil in the bedroom and, every few minutes, she would check to see if he was still breathing. At ten minutes to midnight, the Führer drew his final breath and was gone.

The following few days were spent planning the funeral. Bormann insisted the body should be cremated and the ashes safely hidden until the day they could be scattered in his birthplace of Braunau am Inn, a small riverside town that lay on the Austria–Germany border.