"I didn't like him. Nobody liked him. There were always people who hung around him, of course, relatives and so on, but they were only there because they wanted to help their careers. There were also lots of women there who were young and pretty. They used to hang 'round his ministry. They had an easier time of it than the rest of us, for whom things were more difficult."

She said Magda Goebbels did not say anything about her husband's numerous affairs.

The Goebbels' children, Flegel said, were favorites with Hitler, who drank hot chocolate with them and allowed them to use his bathtub.

Flegel described how Hitler said goodbye to his medical staff on April 29, 1945, the evening before his suicide.

"He came out of the side room, shook everyone's hand, and said a few friendly words. And that was it. There were a few people who then heard it (the shot, when Hitler killed himself the next afternoon) and there were others who didn't. The Fuhrer suddenly wasn't there any more," she recalled.

"I knew that the Fuhrer was dead. Suddenly there were more doctors in the bunker ... I didn't see Hitler's body. It was taken up to the garden. The Fuhrer had such an authority that when he was there you knew it. It felt so extraordinary," she said. The Guardian said Flegel remained in the Bunker until the Russians arrived.

Asked why she had remained silent for 60 years about her experiences, Flegel said they were simply too controversial.

"It was because after 1945 people started pointing fingers at each other and suggested that so and so was infected (a Nazi)," she said.

Flegel evaded the question of whether she regretted her role in the Third Reich. "Everyone has their own opinion," she said.