I was Hitler's bunker bodyguard

As Rochus Misch warmly shakes hands and invites me into his neat, suburban Berlin home, it is hard to imagine him at the centre of one of history’s most murderous regimes.

But as he spreads his black-and-white photos of Nazi Germany over the tablecloth in his living room, his brown eyes flash and his wrinkled face lights up with pride.

For the frail pensioner was once known as Oberscharfuhrer Misch — personal bodyguard of Adolf Hitler and proud SS man.

Now 91, he was at Hitler’s side from the Blitzkrieg conquests of 1940 right through until the last, paranoid days in the Berlin bunker as the Third Reich crumbled in 1945.

He even saw Hitler’s body shortly after the Fuhrer blasted a bullet into his own head. And he is the last survivor of the bunker.

His knowledge of Hitler’s private world was tapped by makers of the new movie Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise, which had its premiere in London’s West End yesterday and opens across the UK tomorrow.

Cruise plays the coup’s real-life ringleader, the aristocratic Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who failed to assassinate the Fuhrer in 1944.

While the thriller’s scriptwriter talked to Misch, Cruise said: “I didn’t want to meet him. Evil is still evil. I don’t care how old you are.”

Misch’s protective housekeeper Christina, 62, breaks from cooking a bratwurst lunch and says: “Cruise doesn’t know anything about Rochus, but already knows that he is evil.

“He should first ask Rochus if he wants to meet him.”

Holding up a print of Hitler — the man he called “the boss” — Misch is more interested in talking about the old days. Born in Opole, Poland, Misch joined a combat division of the fanatical SS elite guard aged 20 in 1937.

Wounded during the conquest of Poland in 1939, he was transferred to Hitler’s elite personal bodyguard, the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

He tells me: “I was an orphan and brought up by my grandparents. I thought by joining the SS I could become a civil servant.

“Hitler was my Fuhrer like everyone else’s, and I was in awe of him. I found him correct — charming even.”

By 1944 Germany was losing badly in the Second World War and plotters inside the country’s army planned to kill Hitler to spare the Fatherland the full onslaught of the Allies.

On July 20 that year one-armed Stauffenberg placed a bomb in a wooden briefing hut at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair hideaway in Poland.

Stauffenberg excused himself and left the room before the explosion tore through the hut.

Four people were killed but Hitler was shielded from the blast by an oak conference table and was only slightly wounded.

Today, Stauffenberg, who was executed by firing squad, is a hero to many Germans — but not Misch. He says: “I knew Stauffenberg. He was not a Hitler assassin. He was an assassin, yes, but a comrade assassin.

“He killed comrades. It’s the worst thing a soldier can do. It was not the actions of an officer. He was not even there when the bomb went off. He placed the bag and ran away. That’s no Hitler assassin.”

Misch was on duties in Berlin when the bomb went off.

Staring at a snap of himself in his SS uniform on guard at the Wolf’s Lair in 1944, he adds: “When I got back it was business as usual. There were six of us bodyguards and Hitler seemed the same as ever.

“We had to expect something like that happening. When Hitler was at the Front there were only two or three guards. You could have got him easily.”

Misch stayed loyal to the Fuhrer as the Third Reich crumbled. By January 1945 Hitler had retreated to a cluster of small rooms 40ft underground in Berlin.

The bodyguard says: “We were the only witnesses. We were in the bunker, it was small. Not like the media show it.”

Misch, a telephonist in the bunker, adds: “On April 22, 1945, Hitler said, ‘The war is lost. No one is obliged to do anything any more’’.

The Fuhrer married girlfriend Eva Braun inside the bunker on April 29.

The following day, shortly after 3pm, Hitler left his final followers and entered a private room with Braun. Misch said they waited around 45 minutes “for the shot”.

Alongside other soldiers left in the bunker, he then opened the door.

He says: “I saw Hitler slumped by the table. I did not see any blood on his head. And I saw Eva with her knees drawn up, lying next to him on the sofa.

“Hitler was wrapped in a blanket as I watched. He was then taken outside to be burnt. It was over.”

Misch was captured by the Red Army and sent to Moscow, where he was questioned and tortured.

After eight years in prison camps he returned to Berlin in 1953.

Plot to kill ... Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg

Today, Misch, who was never indicted for war crimes, lives in the same two-storey detached house where he moved with his late wife Gerda in 1942.

On Hitler’s orders a crate of vintage 1927 champagne was delivered there as a wedding gift.

He ran a painting business until his retirement and wrote a book, The Last Survivor. With millions perishing in the Holocaust, does he regret joining the SS?

Misch says: “Nein. I would join again straight away. It was the best troop that ever existed.”

He is estranged from only daughter Birgitta because of his past. She says: “I didn’t want to talk to him or be near him. Never.”

Housekeeper Christina adds: “He only lives in the past. He can’t live without it. People keep writing. It’s because he is the last one, the last witness.”