THE fascination with the Fhrer continues. German historian Joachim Fest recently brought us a new volume on the last days in the Berlin Bunker, now we can read the memoirs of a man who was close to Hitler from his days of triumph right up to that final nightmare.

Nicholas von Below was Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant - his air force liaison officer - from 1937 until 1945. He was with the Fhrer through the early successes of the Blitzkrieg, he was caught up in the blast of the abortive bomb plot against Hitler, and says he was the last of his close entourage to escape the Berlin Bunker alive.

Below's book, which first appeared in Germany in 1980 and has just been published in English, is a remarkably concise account of these momentous years, and is also remarkably matter of fact, with scarcely a hint of the gossip or lurid detail one might expect from an inside account of the Nazi "court".

This relative brevity and lack of juicy detail may be partly due to Below having his diaries burnt as the Reich crumbled. I suspect it is also a product of Below's personality.

He comes over as a serious man with a strong sense of duty, whose main interest was the air force, and who either did not know about the worst excesses of Nazism or disregarded them. His character traits may explain how he survived so long in his post, despite criticising such figures as his own Luftwaffe boss Gring in front of Hitler.

One of the genuinely shocking sides of reading this book is the realisation of how much a man like this, even writing years after the war, still admired Hitler, calling him a "great man", not perhaps morally, but as a "political revolutionary".

Despite its dry style, this is an enlightening read for anyone who wishes to understand more about the events that shaped our modern world, and how an entire country could be dominated by one man.

Updated: 10:12 Wednesday, August 25, 2004