Envy accompanied me when in 1935, to my surprise, the choice tell on me to join Hitler's household. Surprised, for I saw nothing special in myself which would justify such a distinction. I had got my certificate of secondary education, had worked in the construction industry and taken mining training in the hope later of becoming a mining engineer. I joined the Waffen-SS in my home town Bremen in 1933 and after a one-year spell with the unit at Berlin-Lichterfelde, in July or August 1934 with about two dozen comrades I was detached from my unit to the 'Berg' as No. I Guard: to Obersalzberg, the country seat of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Hitler appeared on the Berghof terrain, shook everybody by the hand and asked questions about our private lives. He asked me where I came from and my age. This meeting with Hitler, an idol for us young soldiers, made a deep impression on me.

At the end of 1934 it was arranged that two men from the platoon would be selected for the Reich Chancellery. The selection procedure lasted several days, and finally Otto Meyer and I were chosen from a list of fifty. We reported to SA-Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Brückner, Hitler's chief adjutant, who revealed that we were to be attached to the Führer's personal staff.

I used the time to get to know the people around Hitler better. First there were his valets Heinz Linge and Hans Junge, who relieved each other on duty every other day. They had both been chosen from Hitler's personal bodyguard, the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, and theirs was a busy and responsible position.

To say valet doesn't really cover it - the post was more like that of household manager, travelling companion, butler and maid-of-all-work combined. The valet on duty had to wake Hitler in the morning, that is to say knock at his bedroom door, announce the precise time, and give him the morning news. He also had to decide on the menu for the day, fix mealtimes, pass instructions on to the kitchen, and serve the Führer when he ate. He was in charge of a whole staff of orderlies who looked after Hitler's wardrobe and had to clean the rooms and run the establishment, and he made appointments with the dentist and barber and supervised the care of the dog.

Nobody knew the Führer's personal qualities and habits, or his moods and whims, as well as Linge, who was an extraordinarily clever, able man. He also had the calm disposition he needed, never lost his temper and had a good sense of humour, which quite often came in very useful. No wonder even Hitler's most distinguished colleagues would ask Linge, out in the ante-room, whether this was a good time to give Hitler bad news, and sometimes the valet advised them to wait until the Führer had taken a refreshing afternoon nap and was in a better mood.

I did not see Hitler's face closely, and I was unable to say what damage the bullet had inflicted to his head. My main aim was to finish and get away. Eva Hitler was carried out first. Erich Kempka lifted her up but then replaced her on the floor so that Gunsche could take over because he found it awkward to carry her alone. Bormann picked her up in his arms and brought the body out of the room where Kempka took over again because he did not like the idea of the man she had despised in life carrying her now to the grave.

I reached below Hitler's head, two officers from his SS bodyguard lifted the body, wrapped in a grey blanket, and we carried him out. Immediately in front of the bunker door, in the Reich Chancellery garden, his body was laid next to Eva's in a small depression where gasoline was poured over the cadavers and an attempt was made to set light to them. At first this proved impossible. As a result of the various fires in the parkland there was a fierce wind circulating which smothered our attempts to set the bodies alight from a few metres' distance. Because of the relentless Russian artillery fire we could not approach the bodies and ignite the petrol with a match. I returned to the bunker and made a thick spill from some signal papers. Bormann lit it and I threw it onto Hitler's petrol-soaked body which caught fire immediately. Standing at the bunker entrance we, the last witnesses - Bormann, Goebbels, Stumpfegger, Gunsche, Kempka and I - raised our hands for a last Hitler salute. Then we withdrew into the bunker.

I teamed up with SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Erich Kempka. In full uniform we climbed through a window of the New Reich Chancellery cellar. Under a hail of shell and mortar fire we crossed Friedrich-Strasse to the railway station where a couple of our panzers were standing and still offering the Russians battle. Towards midnight on the Weidendamm bridge we came upon Stumpfegger, Baur and Bormann who had lost their hearings, arrived by a roundabout route and were now separated from the Russians by an anti-tank barrier. As three of our panzers and three armoured vehicles rolled up, Bormann decided to break through the Russian lines using a panzer. Kempka jumped up, stopped the vehicles and told the leading panzer commander what was required. Under the protection of this panzer heading for the tank barrier, Bormann, Naumann and Stumpfegger doubled forward while I watched. The panzer was hit by a projectile from a Panzerfaust. The people alongside it were tossed into the air like dolls by the explosion. I could no longer see Stumpfegger nor Bormann. I presumed they were dead, as I told the Russians repeatedly in numerous interrogations later.

Now fifteen to twenty strong, once we realised we could not save our skins in this manner, we decided to go through the tramway tunnel. We reached See-Strasse, but only with great effort, losing people on the way. For a moment or so I had been alone with a member of the SS bodyguard when I heard the sound of tanks and voices through a shaft leading up to the street. I stopped and listened. From above I heard the call: "German panzers are advancing. Come up, comrades!" I leaned out of the shaft and saw a German soldier. He looked towards me and beckoned. Scarcely had I left our hiding place than I saw all the Soviet tanks around me. The German soldier belonged to the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland formed after the Battle of Stalingrad to vvork for the communists. I was captured, but that was all. Although in full "war paint" and not resembling a war-worn soldier, nobody was interested in me.

German civilians passed by and talked to us, so far as was possible under the circumstances. I smuggled a gold watch which Hitler had given me with a personal inscription to a woman who spoke to me. She promised that since she had my name, which was also engraved on the watch, she would return it as soon as it was all over. An illusion. I never saw her again. A Russian sergeant approached me and said: "Nichts gut, kamarad, uniform carry bird on arm. Nichts gut. Take off". I understood: the silver eagle and swastika on the left upper sleeve of my uniform indicated that I was SS. I took his advice and ripped off the rank insignia and the offending "bird on my arm", and tossed them away.

The Führer always portrayed the Russians as bad, I thought, but they do not seem to be. On the contrary they offered me cigarettes and tobacco and even let me retain my two pistols, something that I found remarkable, since I was carrying one openly in my SS belt.

Under guard we walked for some days until we reached Posen. On the way we rested up once in an open field and on another occasion in a ruined church, and were treated as "a classless society". Everybody was equal to everybody else. Nobody enjoyed any advantage, nobody any unnecessary or unjustified disadvantage. That changed at Posen. Without warning I was locked in a potato cellar. The Russians had noticed the good-quality uniform I wore, as they told me later. In their opinion I must be somebody from Hitler's immediate staff. I was interrogated and had to write out who I was, my rank and what military posts I had had, and where I had served. I put down that I had been with an army unit in charge of catering. My real identity and what I had actually been doing since 1933 I kept secret, but it did not help me much, for one day I was brought back for interrogation and confronted with my past. Hans Baur, who had been in the military hospital and had stated truthfully that although a Luffwaffe general he had been Hitler's personal pilot, which the Russians refused to believe, had named me as a witness, and said I was in the camp. My disguise was blown. I had to write down the answers to all their questions which I had answered falsely before, but this time honestly...

One day two Russian officers appeared and escorted me by train to Moscow where I was thrown into the notorious Lubljanka Prison. There in a filthy bug-infested cell I waited, expecting the worst. It came in the form of a large GPU Lieutenant-Colonel who spoke good, cultivated German. He interrogated me with a monotonous patience which brought me to a state of sheer despair. Over and over he asked the same questions, trying to extract from me an admission that Hitler had survived. My unemotional assertion that I had carried Hitler's corpse from his room, had poured petrol over it and set it alight in front of the bunker was considered a cover story. In order to lull me into a false sense of security, he occasionally told me that before the war he had been in Germany, and he chatted with me as though he were an old war comrade. I remained as alert as I could, no easy task for the bed-bugs gave me no respite and only rarely did I sleep. Finally the bugs were even too much for the officer who had to watch me constantly. "Tell the commissar", he advised me. When I replied with a cynical grin that if I did that they would increase the bug population, he countered: "Tell him!" I did so, and could scarcely believe the result. I was moved to a "lavish cell" with parquet flooring. Slowly it dawned on me why. It had been expected that I would complain.

Now came the carrot-and-stick treatment. Since I would not confirm what the commissar wanted to hear I had to strip naked and bend over a trestle after being warned that I would be thrashed if - I did not finally "cough up". Naked and humiliated I persisted with my account... I kept to the facts. He changed the procedure only inasmuch as he had me brought to a sound-proofed room - dressed again - where seven or eight commissars were waiting. The ceremony began once more. While somebody roared monotonously: "Hitler is alive, Hitler is alive, tell the truth!" I was whipped until I bled. Near madness I yelled until my voice failed. Still bellowing the torturers in officers' uniform stopped for a rest. I was allowed to dress and returned to my cell where I collapsed. That was the beginning of an intensive interrogation strategy which even today gives me nightmares.

About a year after the end of the war I was thrust into a barred railway wagon and transported like some wild animal back to Berlin. My daily rations were a salted herring, 450 grams of damp bread and two cubes of sugar. In Berlin I was put into a jail. What the Russians wanted was to be shown was where - according to me - Hitler had shot himself I was taken to the ruins of the New Reich Chancellery where a number of commissars and Marshal Sokolovski awaited. I showed them the sofa on which Hitler had shot himself, still where we had left it, but meanwhile ripped by "souvenir hunters". After this local visit, for which the Russians seemed to have little enthusiasm, I was returned to the prison for more interrogations.

These Berlin interrogations were carried out in a different way to those in Moscow. A female interpreter asked politely, I responded in like manner. The only thing certain was that the Russians did not believe me. In 1950 they were still doubtful that Hitler was dead. Accordingly the question-and-answer game in Berlin went round in monotonous circles. "How much blood sprayed on the carpet" "How far from Hitler's foot did the pool of blood extend," "Where was his pistol exactly?" "Which pistol did he use?" and "How and where was he sitting exactly". These were some of the stereotype, endlessly repeated questions I was obliged to answer. The interpreter was hearing these details for the first time and they interested her, but even so it was not hard to see that she would have preferred to be doing something else. The questioning usually went on without interruption until the bread trolley was heard.

One day when I had had just about enough of the same stupid questions I reacted stubbornly as the trolley passed. "That is the end of it", I said, "I am hungry and cannot go on." The interpreter reacted with a friendly smile and the observation that she was from Leningrad and knew "what hunger really was". "When you tried to starve us out", she went on with a blush, "we ate mice and rats." I was ashamed of my outburst and fell silent. The interrogation ended.