Small, smiley and tough as steel, she was endowed with astonishing skill and courage, breaking numerous records as a pilot of war planes, civilian aircraft and gliders – and even becoming the first woman to fly a helicopter. But she was also obsessed with Hitler and would never hear a word said against him. Perhaps her most remarkable feat was her flight in and out of central Berlin in the very last days of the war (as described elsewhere in this book). She was subjected to intensive interrogation when held prisoner at Oberursel because it was assumed by the Americans that she had flown Hitler out of Berlin and so must know where he was. When she was freed and permitted to fly again in 1952, she broke yet more records and travelled abroad to set up gliding schools, first in India, then in Ghana. Despite never renouncing Nazism, she was feted by world leaders including President Kennedy, Indian premier Nehru and Ghana’s president Nkrumah, with whom she may have had an affair. She never married and died in 1979, aged 67. Cause of death was given as heart attack – but some suspected she finally took the cyanide pill given to her by Hitler thirty-four years earlier.

HANS FRITZSCHE

Propagandist

He was the sole Russian-held defendant at the main Nuremberg trial, where he was charged with crimes against humanity – allegedly using his frequent radio broadcasts to incite the German people to commit atrocities. He broke down in tears on more than one occasion during the trial. He was clearly in emotional agony when terrible films of the suffering in concentration camps were shown in court. Prison psychologist Gustave Gilbert, who conducted extensive interviews with all the accused, recalled one lunchtime: ‘I saw Fritzsche struggling to avoid crying and he put on dark glasses to hide his eyes. I noticed him again during the afternoon intermission and he was still choking back tears.’ After one film of the atrocities, Gilbert visited Fritzsche in his cell. ‘He spoke haltingly, choking with every phrase – “I have the feeling I am drowning in filth. I am choking in it . . . I cannot go on. It is a daily execution”.’ No one really understood why he was on trial, because he was considered a very junior member of the Nazi regime compared to the other defendants. As a young man, Fritzsche studied history, languages and philosophy at university and became a newspaper journalist. In 1933, he joined the Propaganda Ministry under Goebbels. The Nuremberg court found him not guilty, but he was sentenced to eight years by a separate denazification court. He was freed early but died soon after, in 1953, of cancer. He was 53.

ERICH KEMPKA

Hitler’s driver