Description: Millions of words have been written about the fate of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s indispensable private secretary, and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, who vanished at the end of the Second World War. In October 1946 the most-wanted Nazi war criminal was condemned to death in absentia at Nuremberg, but he was never found or brought to justice.

Some historians claim he never died near the Weidendamm Bridge, in the ruins of Berlin on the night of the 1-2 May 1945. Others believe he escaped from Germany to South America, where he lived and died. In 1973 a court in Frankfurt pronounced him officially dead.

The truth is far more extraordinary. The author now reveals that in the final night and day of the war, as the Soviet armies closed in on the capital of the Third Reich. Bormann was lifted from Berlin by a Commando raiding party, led by Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and himself. The team spirited their captive down the waterways to meet the Allies on the river Elbe, and by mid-May 1945 Bormann was safe in England, where he assumed a new identity.

Ooperation James Bond was ordered by Major Desmond Morton, head of the ultra-secret M Section of naval Intelligence. Its ulterior motive was to recover the immense fortune appropriated by the Nazis and salted away in numbered Swiss bank accounts, to which Bormann alone had access.

It was approved not only by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, but also by both King George VI and President Roosevelt; yet it was so highly classified that even other government intelligence and security organisations knew nothing of it. After the war, thanks to the British capture of Bormann, 95 per cent of Nazi funds were recovered and restored to their former owners.

In a most secret letter dated October 1954, Churchill gave the author permission to produce a full account of his wartime operations. ‘When I die,’ he wrote, ‘then, if your conscience so allows, tell your story for you have given and suffered so much for England. Do not seek to protect me for I am content to be judged by history. But do, I pray you, seek to protect those who did their duty honestly in the hope of a future world with freedom and justice for all.’