Translated across the world, Ian Kershaw's award-winning two-volume Penguin biography of Hitler is widely regarded as the definitive work on the Nazi leader. Death in the Bunker offers a compel-ling account of the final hours of Germany's Third Reich: the oaths and betrayals of the Führer's henchmen, and his ultimate suicide in an underground chamber alongside his new wife, Eva Braun.

After breakfasting, playing with his Alsatian puppy for a while, and having Linge administer his cocaine eyedrops, he slowly climbed the steps into the Reich Chancellery park. Waiting with raised arms in the Nazi salute were delegations from the Courland army, from the SS-Division 'Berlin', and twenty boys from the Hitler Youth who had distinguished themselves in combat. Was this what Berlin's defence relied upon? one of Hitler's secretaries wondered. Hitler muttered a few words to them, patted one or two on the cheek, and within minutes left them to carry on the fight against the Russian tanks.

Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels, Reich Youth Leader Artur Axmann, and Dr Morell were among those in a further line waiting to be received at the door of the Chancellery's Winter Garden. Looking drained and listless, his face ashen, his stoop pronounced, Hitler went through the motions of a brief address. Not surprisingly, he was by now incapable of raising spirits. Lunch with Christa Schroeder and senior secretary Johanna Wolf was a depressing affair. Afterwards, he retraced his steps down into the bowels of the earth for the late afternoon briefing. He would not leave the bunker again alive.

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