‘Make the most of it,’ I said. ‘It’s not often that fellows like you and me get to play the Party bigshot. And if Hitler gets his war, we may have to live on this little memory for quite a while.’

A lot of bars in Nuremberg had the look of places which might have been the headquarters of smaller trade guilds. These were filled with militaria and other relics of the past, and the walls were often adorned with old pictures and curious souvenirs collected by generations of proprietors, which were of no more interest to us than a set of logarithm tables. But at least the beer was good, you could always say that about Bavaria, and at the Blaue Flasche on Hall Platz, where we ended up for dinner, the food was even better.

Back at the Deutscher Hof we called in at the hotel’s café restaurant for a brandy and were met by an astonishing sight. Sitting at a corner table, loudly drunk, was a party of three that included a couple of brainless-looking blondes and, wearing the single-breasted light-brown tunic of an NSDAP political leader, the Gauleiter of Franconia, Julius Streicher himself.

The waiter returning with our drinks smiled nervously when we asked him to confirm that it was indeed Julius Streicher sitting in the corner of the café. He said that it was, and quickly left as Streicher started to shout for another bottle of champagne.

It wasn’t difficult to see why Streicher was feared. Apart from his rank, which was powerful enough, the man was built like a bare-fist fighter. With hardly any neck at all, his bald head, small ears, solid-looking chin and almost invisible eyebrows, Streicher was a paler version of Benito Mussolini. His apparent belligerence was given greater force by an enormous rhino-whip which lay on the table before him like some long black snake.

He thumped the table with his fist so that all the glasses and cutlery rattled loudly.

‘What the fuck does a man have to do to get some fucking service around here?’ he yelled at the waiter. ‘We’re dying of thirst.’ He pointed at another waiter. ‘You, I told you to keep a fucking eye on us, you little cunt, and the minute you saw an empty bottle to bring us another. What, are you stupid or something?’ Once again he banged the table with his fist, much to the amusement of his two companions, who squealed with delight, and persuaded Streicher to laugh at his own ill-temper.

‘Who does he remind you of?’ said Korsch.

‘Al Capone,’ I said without thinking, and then added: ‘Actually, they all remind me of Al Capone.’ Korsch laughed.