ADOLF HITLER, preparing to die with his companion Eva Braun, ordered his loyal butler to obtain petrol to pour over their bodies. The improvised cremation outside the besieged Berlin bunker was supposed to prevent his corpse becoming a waxwork entertainment in Moscow.

Hitler’s last instructions to Heinz Linge, the butler, are contained in a newly discovered secret dossier that paints an astonishingly intimate portrait of the dictator. The dossier, called simply the Hitler Book, is being serialised in the mass circulation Bild newspaper and is holding Germany in its thrall.

Although much is now known about the last days of the Nazi leader, the authentic voice of his butler has never been heard. He and Otto Günsche, Hitler’s assistant, were captured by Soviet forces and returned to Germany long after the war. Linge died in 1980; Günsche in 2003.

The Hitler Book was compiled by the Soviet Secret Service on the basis of the long interrogation of the two prisoners. It was presented to Josef Stalin, who wanted to know the psychological profile of his arch enemy and needed to be certain that Hitler really was dead.

Günsche was in charge of burning Hitler’s body after he killed himself in his Berlin bunker in April 1945. Hitler’s instructions to the butler were explicit: “Get hold of the petrol, pour it over our bodies and set them on fire. You must never allow my corpse to fall in the hands of the Russians. They would make a spectacle in Moscow out of my body and put it in a waxworks.”

The discovery of the so-called Hitler Book marks the end of a remarkable hunt through Soviet archives. The 413-page original is a Kremlin treasure and is said to be in President Putin’s safe. One copy was made on the orders of Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1959. This was eventually deposited in Moscow Party archives under the code number 462A. It was there that Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl, two German historians, discovered it.

The book is giving Germans a rare glimpse of the dictator, who is still presented in schools and public discussion as either mad or bad or both. Perhaps the most disconcerting revelation of the extracts in Bild is that Hitler had a sense of humour, albeit a particularly cold one. After an evening of small-talk and wise-cracking, Hitler told his guests: “The English believe that I’m sitting or cowering in the Chancellery, guarded by a fierce bulldog.” The truth, he said, was that he was having a good time. “It’s good that they can’t see me now. The Chancellery should be renamed the Happy Chancellor Restaurant.”

The comments, reported by Günsche, came after an evening of concentration camp jokes that had his guests rolling with laughter. Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s court photographer, had turned up drunk. The photographer, Hitler said, should not stand too close to the stove lest the alcoholic fumes from his breath catch fire.

On another occasion, Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, told Hitler the latest scurrilous rumour: that the immensely vain Hermann Goering, head of the air force, went to bed wearing medals on his pyjamas. “Hitler liked the story so much,” one Bild extract says, “that he ordered Hoffmann to make some medals out of gold and silver foil as well as a bombastic citation for bravery to be presented to Goering.”

Hitler agreed that German soldiers stationed in occupied countries could marry local women, but only after he had seen pictures of the would-be wives. Most were plain. Hitler joked that when the soldiers sobered up, they would end up cursing him, according to the book, which is to be published in Britain by John Murray.

The atmosphere in his court was often poisonous. Linge told his interrogators that Martin Bormann, Hitler’s right-hand man, pretended to be a vegetarian while dining with him. Once he was in his own villa, he gobbled kilos of sausages.

The butler’s testimony shows that Hitler was unable to form proper emotional relationships. His closest companion was his dog. They ate together frequently. When Blondi fell ill, Hitler had a special ration of eggs, lean meat and dripping sent. He received regular medical bulletins about the dog. “It was easier for him to sign a death warrant for an officer on the front than to swallow bad news about the health of his dog,” Linge said.

The war and the isolation took their toll on his health. In the last days, his right eye began to hurt intensely. The butler had to administer cocaine drops to kill the pain. Hitler compared himself with Frederick the Great who lost his teeth because of the stress of fighting the Seven Years War.

AN ACT OF STATE

Hitler decided to mate his beloved Alsatian dog, Blondi, and summoned a breeder to bring a pedigree male. Hitler asked his butler, after emerging from a briefing about the Eastern front, whether his dog had copulated. “Yes, my Führer, the Act of State has been completed,” Heinz Linge said with heavy humour.

“How did Blondi take it?”

“They both behaved like beginners.”

“How do you mean?” Hitler was genuinely curious.

“They both fell down.” Hitler burst into laughter

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