In his heavy boots, dark suit and leather waistcoat, semi-stiff white collar and odd little moustache, he really did not look very impressive - like a waiter in a railway-station restaurant. However, when Drexler introduced him to a roar of applause, Hitler straightened up and walked past the press table with a swift, controlled step, the unmistakable soldier in mufti.

The atmosphere in the hall was electric. Apparently this was his first public appearance after serving a short prison-sentence for breaking up a meeting addressed by a Bavarian separatist named Ballerstedt, so he had to be reasonably careful what he said in case the police should arrest him again as a disturber of the peace.

Perhaps this is what gave such a brilliant quality to his speech, which for innuendo and irony I have never heard matched, even by him. No one who judges his capacity as a speaker from the performances of his later years can have any true insight into his gifts. As time went on he became drunk with his own oratory before vast crowds and his voice lost its former character through the intervention of microphone and loud-speaker.

In his questions Hitler revealed to me that his ideas about America were wildly superficial. He wanted to hear all about the skyscrapers and was fascinated by details of technical progress, but failed utterly to draw logical conclusions from this information. The only American figure for whom he had time for was Henry Ford, and then not so much as an industrial wonder-worker but rather as a reputed anti-Semite and a possible source of funds. Hitler was also passionately interested in the Ku Klux Klan, then at the height of its questionable reputation. He seemed to think it was a political movement similar to his own, with which it might be possible to make some pact, and I was never able to put its relative importance in proper prospective for him.

A towering 6-foot, 4-inch giant with an enormous head, a pugnacious jaw, and thick hair. Hanfstaengel endured the nickname Putzi throughout his career. He was a gifted pianist who used his huge hands to pound out the more flamboyant passages of Liszt and Wagner.... Hanfstaengel, the only literary member of Hitler's inner circle, introduced the coarse Austrian to the Munich milieu of art and culture and attempted to make him socially acceptable.... The tall Bavarian was a gay and amusing companion on political campaigns. With his practical jokes and broad sense of humour, he was regarded as a kind of Shakespearean jester whose main task was to provide relaxation for the harried leader.

An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind, Hanfstaengel was a virtuoso at the piano and on many an evening, even after his friend came to power in Berlin, he would excuse himself from the company of those of us who might be with him to answer a hasty summons from the Fuehrer. It was said that his piano-playing - he pounded the instrument furiously - and his clowning soothed Hitler and even cheered him up after a tiring day. Later this strange but genial Harvard man, like some other early cronies of Hitler, would have to flee the country for his life.

Two years after the Volkischer Beobachter had been bought for him, Hitler made it into a daily. This required money. Some of it was provided by Frau Gertrud von Seidlitz, a Baltic lady who had shares in Finnish paper mills, while Putzi Hanfstaengel, a son of the rich Munich family of art publishers, advanced a loan of a thousand dollars. Hanfstaengel, who had been educated at Harvard, not only took Hitler into his own home - where he delighted him by his piano-playing, especially of Wagner - but introduced him to a number of other well-to-do Munich families, including the Bruckmanns, another firm of Munich publishers.

Like the Bechsteins, the Bruckmanns were charmed and made into friends for life. But Hitler could be highly disconcerting in company. Ill at ease on any formal social occasion, he cleverly exploited his own awkwardness. He deliberately behaved in an exaggerated and eccentric fashion, arriving late and leaving unexpectedly, either sitting in ostentatious silence or forcing everyone to listen to him by shouting and making a speech.

The Brown House, fronting the Briennerstrasse, was the headquarters of the Nazi movement, a showcase example of pseudo-classical pomposity, ornate with bronze eagles, flags and such-like heraldry. Access to it, to Dr Bartel and Max and others, was through Dr Ernst Hanfstaengel, Putzi for short, whose name cannot be thrown into the narrative without more ado, though he will be found speaking for himself in due course.... Harvard-educated, proud of his place in the world and of his talents, well off thanks to the family firm of art publishers, Putzi looked a gentleman, and was a firecracker, unstable, larger than life, of another stamp to the dulled gangsters in Hitler's immediate entourage. His office was upstairs in the Brown House, after its completion in 1931. He was entrusted with foreign press relations. For one thing, he had travelled abroad. He had met Diana and Unity in London; he had indeed met everybody worth meeting in London. At the Nuremberg Party Rally of 1934, the Year of Power, as it was christened, alternatively the Year of Unity (a coincidence which was made much of), Unity and Diana had a letter of recommendation to Putzi from Prince Otto von Bismarck, secretary in the German Embassy in London. Unity just squeezed the rally in before the autumn term at Laroche's. "They were very attractive," Hanfstaengel goes on in The Missing Years, "but made-up to the eyebrows in a manner which conflicted directly with the newly proclaimed Nazi ideal of German womanhood. Their set purpose was to meet Hitler, and on the way to the Deutscher Hof Hotel, where he was staying, there were so many frank comments from passers-by that I had to duck behind a building with them. I picked out my large, clean handkerchief and said, "My dears, it is no good, but to stand any hope of meeting him you will have to wipe some of that stuff off your faces," which they did ... Goering and Goebbels expressed mock horror at the idea of my trying to present such painted hussies to Hitler," and the girls had to make do with the rally, and the mere vision of the loved one from afar. (Incidentally, photographs of Diana at the 1934 Rally, with a black beret on the back of her head, and an unusual puddingy blankness of face, have been published several times, but mistakenly identified as Unity, notably in Nerin E. Gun's Eva Braun and Fritz Wiedemann's memoirs.) Pretty women were acceptable to Putzi, and there is pique in his remark that when the girls "paid the proper respects to the Hess and Rosenberg cliques, they were, of course, welcomed as outstanding Nordic beauties. I am afraid they listened to my opponents in the party far more than they did to me, although I subsequently saw quite a lot of Unity in Munich, and even helped her to find the little villa near the English Garden where she rented an apartment."

Anton Drexler, the original founder of the Party, was there most evenings, but by this time he was only its honorary president and had been pushed more or less to one side. A blacksmith by trade, he had a trade union background and although it was he who had thought up the original idea of appealing to the workers with a patriotic programme, he disapproved strongly of the street fighting and violence which was slowly becoming a factor in the Party's activities and wanted to build up as a working-class movement in an orderly fashion.

He had a pale, round, expressionless face, almost Mongolian, and a completely inoffensive air. Nor in his early years did I ever hear him advocate the race theories of what he was to become the most notorious executive.

He studied to become a veterinary surgeon, although I doubt if he had ever become fully qualified. It was probably only part of the course he had taken as an agricultural administrator, but, for all I know, treating defenceless animals may have tended to develop that indifference to suffering which was to become his most frightening characteristic.

Kahr was sending us off to sleep. He had just said the words "and now I come to the consideration" which, for all I know, was to be the high spot of his speech, when the door behind us which we had come through flew open and in burst Goering with about twenty-five brownshirts with pistols and machine-guns.

Hitler began to plough his way towards the platform and the rest of us surged forward behind him. Tables overturned with their jugs of beer. On the way we passed a major named Mucksel, one of the heads of the intelligence section at Army headquarters, who started to draw his pistol as soon as he saw Hitler approach, but the bodyguard had covered him with theirs and there was no shooting.

Hitler clambered on a chair and fired a round at the ceiling. It is always maintained that he did this to terrify the gathering into submission, but I swear he did it to wake people up. Anyway, on home ground at last, Hitler barked an impromptu proclamation: "The national revolution has broken out. The Reichswehr is with us. Our flag is flying on their barracks."

Geli Raubal was an empty-headed little slut, with the course bloom of a servant-girl, without either brains or character. She was perfectly content to preen in her fine clothes, and certainly never gave any impression of reciprocating Hitler's twisted tenderness. I only got the story at third hand, it was not the sort of thing you could expect a young woman to talk to a man about, but she is supposed to have remarked to a girl friend, who passed it on to one of the wives in the Party, that her uncle was a "monster. You would never believe the things he makes me do."

I received a telephone call from my friend 'Putzi' Hanfstaengel, who was at that time Hitler's personal private secretary and court jester. He told me that the Führer had been reading my speeches with interest, and would like to see me at his headquarters in the Esplanade Hotel.

It is true that when I walked across the long room to a corner in which he was sitting writing, in a brown shirt with a swastika on his arm, he waited without looking up until I had reached his side, then sprang to his feet, lifted his right arm, and shouted 'Hitler!'; and that I responded by clicking my heels together, raising my right arm, and shouting back: 'Boothby!'

I talked with Hitler for over an hour; and it was not long before I detected the unmistakable glint of madness in his eyes. I was much impressed by his grasp of Keynesian economics at that time. He said that I was quite right about economic expansion, and the means by which it could be achieved. But he added that this was now a political crisis, and that political forces would bring him to power. "After that," he said, "I shall bend economics to my will; and I have in my hands the necessary instrument, a man called Schacht." He had no sense of humour. He asked me how I would feel if Germany had beaten us in the last war, and driven a corridor between England and Scotland. I said: "You forget, Herr Hitler, that I come from Scotland. We should have been delighted." He did not smile. Instead he brought his fist down with a crash on the table and said: "So! I had no idea that the hatred between the two peoples was so great." Perhaps this was one of the reasons why he sent Hess to Scotland in 1940, for I am sure that he did; and why he never bombed Edinburgh. I then asked him, point-blank, what he was going to do to the Jews. I thought Hanfstaengel was going to faint, but only a flicker of irritation crossed his face. After a moment he said: "There will be no pogroms." I think that, at the time, he probably meant it. He had already planned to take over the whole of central and eastern Europe, and intended to deport all German Jews to those countries. What I cannot bring myself to believe is that he was unaware of what Himmler ultimately did to them.

That night I thought long and earnestly about the interview. I came to the conclusion that his plans were far more advanced than I had thought. He did not then wish to attack Britain and the British Empire, or even France. What he was determined to do was to bring the whole of central and eastern Europe under German control; and for this purpose Austria, and above all Czechoslovakia, were the key points.

Sefton Delmer of the Daily Express took a great interest in our campaign and became very much persona grata with the nazi leadership. He was really very partial to Delmer and, when he became Chancellor, willingly agreed that the Daily Express man should be given the first exclusive interview.

Hitler was deeply jealous of Gregor Strasser. He was the one potential indeed actual rival within the party. He had made the Rhineland his fief. I remember during one tour through the Ruhr towns seeing Strasser's name plastered up against the wall of every railway underpass. He was obviously quite a figure in the land. Hitler looked away. There was no comment about "Strasser seems to be doing well", or any approving sign.

November brought Reichstag elections again, but in spite of a frenzied campaign, the Nazis lost ground. Their representation was reduced to 196, and it was at this point that Schleicher became Chancellor, to exercise the power he had so long controlled from the wings. His plan was to split off the Strasser wing of the Nazi Party in a final effort to find a majority with the Weimar Socialists and Centre. The idea was by no means so ill-conceived and amidst the momentary demoralization and monetary confusion in the Nazi ranks, very nearly came off. With the failure came the final break between Hitler and Strasser, who, two years later, paid for this disloyalty with his head.

It was the experience of power which turned Hitler into an irreconcilable fanatic. It took me most of 1933 to realize that the demon had entered into him. Even then many of us did not believe that the point of no return had been reached. Whenever I saw Neurath, Schacht, Gurtner or General von Reichenau, which was frequently, we talked in the same tone. None of them had the entree to Hitler which I still had and in spite of my growing distaste, they begged me to remain where I was. Hitler had still not reached the point where he no longer talked over matters with those who enjoyed his confidence.

The evil genius of the second half of Hitler's career was Goebbels. I always likened this mocking, jealous, vicious, satanically gifted dwarf to the pilot-fish of the Hitler shark. It was he who finally turned Hitler fanatically against all established institutions and forms of authority. He was not only schizophrenic but schizopedic, and that was what made him so sinister.

Even Magda, whom he led a dog's life, was not spared his complexes. He had a private cinema-show in his house one time, and just as he was on his way out, up some highly polished wooden steps, to stand and greet his guests as they left, he slipped on his club foot and all but fell down. Magna managed to save him and pull him up beside her. After a moment to recover and before the whole company, he gripped her by the back of the neck and forced her right down to his knee and said, with that sort of mad laughter, "So, you saved my life that time. That seems to please you a lot." Anyone who did not witness the scene would never believe it, but those who did caught their breath at the depth of character depravity it revealed.

Instead of regenerating Germany, we had brought to power a bunch of dangerous gangsters who could now only survive by maintaining the momentum of their ceaseless radical agitation. what on earth were people like me to do? I was a German. My family and my whole thread of life was bound up in its future fate. did the solution lie in exile or must I still stick with this thing and see if there was any way of applying the brakes?

Carter realized that he would need Roosevelt's personal intervention to spring Hanfstaengel from captivity in Canada. On June 24, FDR, with Churchill's reluctant acquiescence, authorized an Army plane secretly to fly Hanfstaengel to Washington. His presence in the country was not to be known. He was to be quartered at Fort Belvoir near the capital under twenty-four-hour guard. Putzi was to be treated as a paroled captured officer and known as Ernst Sedgwick.

Though admitted to the country, Putzi had one more test to pass. As Carter put it, the British "warned me that Hanfstaengel was a homosexual," a compromising condition particularly for someone engaged in intelligence work. After all, the huge German had sung falsetto soprano in a Hasty Pudding show at Harvard. Carter went to New York to seek the advice of Clare Boothe Luce, the playwright and wife of Time magazine's publisher, Henry Luce. The beautiful Mrs. Luce suggested using Gerald Haxton, Somerset Maugham's beau, as bait. Haxton, then in America, could speak good German to the lonely Putzi, since he had spent two years as a POW in Germany in World War II Carter arranged for Haxton to visit Hanfstaengel at Fort Belvoir. As Maugham's wife once said of Haxton, "If he thought it would be of the faintest advantage, he'd jump into bed with a hyena." The day after Haxton's visit, Carter went to see Putzi. The German's first remark was, "I wish you'd get rid of this man. One of the things I couldn't stand about Hitler was all the fairies he had around him. I don't like fairies." Putzi's sexual orthodoxy was confirmed.

Putzi soon appeared to demonstrate his use to his new keepers. During a visit to an Army base, he and Carter were studying a wall map when Hanfstaengel suddenly put his finger on Casablanca. "Of course, there's where you ought to land," he said. Army officials were stunned. He had pinpointed a major target of Operation Torch, the pending invasion of North Africa, which was to be America's first campaign on the Atlantic side of the war. Army officials feared there had to have been a leak. An investigation was ordered. The investigators concluded that the closely guarded German could not have learned of Torch. "It was just Hanfstaengel using his brain," Carter assured the Army. All the effort and trust the President had invested in bringing Hanfstaengel to America, Carter was now convinced, had been justified. This man would earn his way.