My impression on meeting Hitler for the first time on 22 July 1944 was not of a "powerful and feared man" with "fascinating" or even "hypnotic" personality. The impression he made on me was of a prematurely old, almost depleted and exhausted man trying to keep going on the vestiges of his strength. I was not impressed very much by his allegedly penetrating eyes or his predicted masterful or even tyrannical personality which I had expected from the press, radio, personal accounts and the reports of others...

Because Hitler allowed me to contradict him quite often is no proof that he would allow others to do so. Additionally he was a much too powerful political figure and too firmly convinced of the absolute rightness of his opinions, and he would never have tolerated anybody almost equally clever or gifted near him. He had this simple belief that he understood most things better, and could do most things better, than other people. I watched how he controlled himself - and concentrated during our conversations when... differences of opinion occurred. Whoever... had the misfortune to bring bad news fell... into a certain discredit disadvantageous for his position and future. For that reason facts were often "tarted up" and events given a better slant. Hitler was convinced almost exclusively by statistics and he loved to have things advocated to him in percentages or by other figure work. From this there arose a way of falsely accounting for all manner of things which he could never verity himself or had not requested.

Hitler pushed back the bed covers and drew up his night shirt so that I could examine his body. He was generally somewhat emaciated and I detected a distinct meteorism (build up of intestinal gases). There was no sensitivity to touch in the stomach region. The right side of the upper abdomen and gall bladder regions were not painful when depressed. The peritoneal reflexes when tested with a needle seemed very responsive. I then requested Hitler to submit to a neurological control examination to which he agreed. I covered the abdomen with a night shirt and pulled away the bed clothing. I found no abnormalities of the genitals. Babinski, Gordon, Kossolimcau and Oppenheim reflexes negative. I did not carry out a Rombergs test ... but I would have expected this to have been negative bearing in mind the other results. I asked Hitler to take off his nightshirt, which he did with the help of Linge and myself. The pallid skin was fairly dry with no sweat in the armpits. The triceps and arm reflexes were very responsive either side, the spastic reflexes of the upper extremities negative. There was no adiadochokinesis or other cerebral symptoms: on examination of the facialis reflex by tapping before the salival gland I observed a Chvostek reflex: Kernig and Lasegne definitely negative, no trace of stiffness of the neck, free movement of the head in all directions. The musculature of the upper arm seemed to me to have a certain rigidity in quick movements, bending and stretching ... Hitler followed this neurological examination with great interest and then said to me: "Apart from nervous excitability I have a quite sound nervous system, and I hope that everything will be well again quite soon. Even the intestinal cramps are easing off. Yesterday and the day before Morell gave me a camomile enema to obtain stools and later he will do another ... I have been able to eat next to nothing over the last three days so that the intestine is practically empty ... and has had a good rest." Linge and I helped Hitler re-dress. Then he said: "Now for entertainment we must not forget the treatment. Please have a look in my nose and put in the cocaine stuff. My throat is a little better but I am still hoarse." I usually gave the ten per cent cocaine solution in the left nostril. Next I examined his ears and throat. After a few minutes Hitler said: "Now my head is clear and I feel so well that I could get up soon except that I am very thin which is the result of the intestinal cramps and not eating." A few moments later I noticed that he had closed his eyes and lost the facial flush he had had. I took his pulse, which was rapid and weak, about 90, the quality seemed to me significantly weaker than previously. I asked Hitler how he felt, but he made no reply. It was clear he had suffered a slight collapse in which one could not get through to him. Linge had gone to the door to answer a sharp knock... it must have been only a few moments that I was alone with Hitler, for when Linge came back I was still administering the cocaine in the left nostril . .. Linge stood at the foot of the bed and asked how much longer I would be I said: "I have finished". At this moment Hitler's face became paler, and there were some spasmodic facial contortions. He also drew up his legs. When Linge saw this, he said: "The Fuhrer's intestinal convulsions are returning, leave him in peace now. He will probably sleep. We collected up the instruments and quickly left his bedroom.

Hitler would often speak on human nutrition, principally at times when he felt either in the best or worst of health. When delivering a discourse on human eating habits, he enjoyed watching the reactions of the "carnivores", his ironical term for meat-eaters. Once, in the autumn of 1944 it looked for a while that Hitler might be thinking of abandoning vegetarianism under the influence of the ENT specialist Dr Erwin Giesing. The physician, no "yes-man", confronted Hitler with arguments which gave him cause to reflect. He told Hitler that human dentition, the stomach intestines and the digestive juices were constructed to be a cross between the pure herbivorous and pure carnivorous, which meant that by nature the human could in no way be considered vegetarian. Hitler, whose inclination was always to follow Nature, listened attentively. Giesing stated that Nature, "otherwise so practical, would quite certainly not produce digestive juices for animal albumin" in the human intestines if they were superfluous. This apparently seemed very plausible to Hitler, and he asked Giesing to provide him with the technical literature as soon as possible so that he could consider the question in depth. I am fairly sure that if Giesing had stayed longer with Hitler, or had come to him earlier, he would have convinced him to abandon some of his more unsound habits if he wanted to remain in control of his faculties over the longer term. Of course, Giesing would never have converted Hitler to smoking or regular alcohol intake. Wine tasted to him "so sour" that he thought it could be improved "with a spoonful of sugar". Beer, as he often informed us, he had liked very much when he was young, but now he found it "too bitter". As for nicotine, he agreed with Goethe that the odour of tobacco smoke was the vilest of all. Premature hardening of the veins and arteries of the heart and brain were considered by Hitler to be the consequence of smoking, and the cause of change to the heart muscle itself which could have fatal results. Tobacco was "the brown man's revenge" on the white man for having "brought him firewater" and thus damaging him. Anti-smoking zealots and Party members in high places lobbying for Hitler's affections proposed a ban on smoking in Party buildings and offices, but despite his basic opposition to smoking, which he considered to be as dangerous to health as eating meat, Hitler would not go so far as to impose the ban for fear of alienating or losing many of his supporters. For the same reasons he had decided - according to his own statement - not to marry or admit publicly his relationship with Eva Braun. This latter was kept strictly secret. At the beginning I was of course also unaware that the young blonde who always sat at table near his left was his secret love.

Ascetic and demagogic, a Roman-type tribune of the people and dictator, later madness of the Caesars and a tyrant. The success of the attempt of 20 July 1944 would only have had an advantage for Germany, Europe and the world if Hitler's political satellites Himmler and Bormann, Ribbentrop and Giesing, Keitel and Fegelein - and all the others - had become with him ... victims of the attempt, for in the case of his death the ensuing violent internal struggle and civil war would perhaps have plunged Germany into even greater misery than the senseless continuation of the war in the face of unavoidable military defeat has done.