He had an incredible escape from the Bunker along Berlin railway tracks, assisted by a slave girl from the Balkans. She had found him, injured and desperate, still wearing his SS officer’s uniform. Even though he was her natural enemy she helped him out of the uniform into civilian overalls and – when they were discovered by Russian soldiers – held his hand and told them he was her husband. The Russians embraced them as friends and gave them vodka and food. They parted when he was safely clear of the city. ‘Many men would do well to use that girl as a shining example of humanity,’ he wrote later. He was eventually taken prisoner by the US Counter Intelligence Corps in southern Germany and was held until 1947. He testified at the main Nuremberg trial, but was not himself accused of war crimes. Yet he never really renounced his Nazi past and attended SS reunions for many years. He also made excuses for Hitler. ‘It is not my purpose to decide between right and wrong,’ he said in his memoir. ‘As a simple man, what mattered to me was how men proved their class. Almost without exception those around Hitler enjoyed only the best from him. Perhaps history will make this its greatest reproach of him, that he was too trusting of those around him.’ Kempka died in 1975, aged 64.

CHRISTA SCHROEDER

Hitler’s secretary

When she left the Bunker on April 21st 1945, Schroeder was given a cyanide capsule by Hitler, the man she had served faithfully for 12 years. As his secretary she had followed him from Munich to Berlin, then to his eastern headquarters, the Wolfsschanze, then back to Berlin and the Bunker. In 1938, she became engaged to a foreign diplomat, but Hitler forbade the match and she never married. Almost every day she had tea with Hitler, other secretaries and Eva Braun and watched his health deteriorating dramatically in the final weeks. She said that towards the end he talked only about dogs, which drove Eva to distraction. She told Schroeder: ‘I’m really fed up with Blondi (his Alsatian). Sometimes I give the beast a good kick under the table. That is my revenge.’ Schroeder had been ordered to leave the Bunker and Hitler said he would follow her and the others to southern Germany, but she didn’t see him again. She was arrested by the Americans a month later and was held until 1948. She kept the poison pill for a long time, but never took it. She later wrote her memoirs – He Was My Chief – and worked as a secretary for a Munich building firm, dying in 1984, aged 76.

BALDUR VON SCHIRACH

Founder of Hitler Youth