Hitler Bunker Eyewitness Von Loringhoven Dies

Baron Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, who as a young officer in Adolf Hitler's bunker gave the Nazi dictator final bulletins of the Red Army's advance, has died aged 93, his publisher said on Monday.

A decorated tank commander who had a ringside seat to history as an adjutant to army generals in the Berlin bunker as well as Stalingrad, Freytag von Loringhoven died of natural causes in Munich on Feb. 27, publisher Wolf Jobst Siedler Jr. said.

His death was initially unreported in German media as his family wanted to keep it private.

A friendly man whose razor sharp memory and precise recollections found their way into German and English history books, Freytag von Loringhoven spent the final months of the war observing Hitler at close range in the bunker.

"Hitler had many different faces," Freytag von Loringhoven said in a 2005 interview with Reuters. "He could be kind. The Austrian charm would sometimes come through. He was always asking people about their health.

"But he was mostly ice cold and deeply distrustful of everyone," he said, recalling the daily full-body searches he was subjected to. "He was especially cruel to army officers. He blamed them for everything."

A tall and elegant man, Freytag von Loringhoven held top posts in the West German Bundeswehr from 1956 as a three-star general after spending two years in a British prisoner of war camp and working in the publishing industry in Munich.

Freytag von Loringhoven was an articulate witness of life with Hitler and his accounts were often included in post-war documentaries. He served as an adviser for the film "Der Untergang" (Downfall).

He also co-authored a best-selling book about his experiences in the bunker that was first published in France as "Dans le bunker de Hitler" and later as "Mit Hitler im Bunker" (2006) in Germany by Wolf Jobst Siedler Jr. Verlag in Berlin.

"There were times I thought I wouldn't get out of the bunker alive," he said. "I've had a lot of good fortune in my life."

He told Reuters that Hitler had unwittingly to rely on "enemy" news in the end.

He had to improvise to keep Hitler informed after the army's 400-man communications battalion fled the bunker en masse. With the Soviets nearing he began using bulletins from Reuters and the BBC to piece together his briefings.

"The deputy press attache in the bunker monitored Reuters on the BBC. He started giving me their news reports. They contained useful information that we no longer had about the geographical locations of Allied advances.

"I had to know what was happening and the Reuters dispatches were useful," he added. "I found I could trust them ... There was also some propaganda, but that was easy enough to ignore."

With the Soviets just a few hundred metres (yards) away on April 29, Freytag von Loringhoven escaped through western Berlin.

He got Hitler's permission for a plan to get through the Soviet encirclement to reach generals west of Berlin.