Hitler and women - Ian Sayer

Historians and psychologists still struggle to understand the emotional and psychological make-up of the man who has become a byword for evil. Hitler himself famously declared, 'My love is Germany' and liked to portray himself as married to all the women of the Fatherland. He never intended the world to know much about how and whom he loved. Anyone who got too close and was deemed untrustworthy was either summarily disposed of or careful to disappear from view.

Yet aside from his generals and ministers, there were individuals who were close to Hitler. For his valet, maid and adjutant, personal secretary and special advisor, psychoanalyst and personal physician, and above all for the women who surrounded him - Mimi, Geli, Eva Braun and the rest - being with Hitler was 'like sitting next to the sun'. These few came nearer to the edge of the abyss that was Hitler's soul than anyone.

Accessing a multitude of sources, including original documents, eye-witness accounts, interrogation reports, personal confessions, contemporary film footage, even US intelligence files and hitherto unknown private papers, Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, acknowledged experts of Nazi history, present an extraordinary account of Hitler's most intimate and personal biography. The portrait of the Fhrer's love life, with all its complexities and inadequacies, its alternating tenderness and aberrations, reveals something of the heart of this tormented psychopath. In a ground-breaking work, the authors shed fresh light on one of the most hated figures of the twentieth century.

By the authors of Nazi Gold: The Story of the World's Greatest Robbery.

Includes rare photos by Hitler's colour cameraman Hugo Jaeger.