Hitler, the comedian, targeted his henchmen

LONDON: Adolf Hitler regaled himself amid the bloody war campaigns by cracking jokes at his henchmen, particularly the dreaded Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering.
 
Revealing a different side to the Fuhrer's personality, a book, 'The Last Witness' by the Nazi dictator's bodyguard Rochus Misch, 90, claims that Hitler would often "pull the legs" of his entourage of generals and hangers on.
 
Hitler, the comedian, "had a small fund of jokes", recalled Misch, the telephonist in the Berlin Bunker where the Fuhrer spent his last days before killing himself in April 1945.
 
"The boss was said to be particularly fond of a couple jokes and told the best ones over and over," he was quoted as saying by Britain's The Daily Telegraph.
 
Goering, who was notoriously fond of awarding himself new medals and decorations, was a special target of the dictator.
 
According to the book by the last surviving member of his bunker, Hitler recounted how Mrs Goering found her husband waving his Field Marshall's baton over his underwear in the bedroom and asked him what he was doing.
 
"'Hermann, darling, what are you doing?' she enquired.
 
"He replied: "I am promoting my underpants to  from gold and silver paper for Goering to wear on his pyjamas.
 
On another occasion he noticed that his photographer Heinrich Hoffman had drunk too much. "Don't stand too near the fire Heini - you might burst into flames," the dictator told him.
 
The Fuhrer's humour also included disturbing jokes about concentration camp victims. The book, which is to be published in Britain later this year, also depicts the scene in the bunker after the dictator committed suicide.