A German Red Cross nurse who shook hands with Hitler on the evening before his suicide yesterday gave a gripping and extraordinary account of the final, desperate days in the Führer's Berlin Bunker.

In an interview with the Guardian, Erna Flegel, who has not spoken previously about her role in the Third Reich, describes how she tried to persuade Magda Goebbels, the wife of the Nazi propaganda minister, to spare her six children.

Instead, she recalls, Mrs Goebbels told her: "The children belong to me", poisoning them after Hitler's death.

Ms Flegel, now 93, also describes how an ageing Hitler "sank into himself", as the Russians fought their way into the centre of Berlin, and it became clear that Germany had lost the second world war.

She dismisses Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun, as a "young girl" who "had no meaning" and says that the death of Hitler's dog Blondi "affected us more than Braun's suicide".

She told the Guardian: "The circle got increasingly small. People were pushed together. Everyone became more unassuming."

Ms Flegel is one of only two survivors from the bunker who are still alive. Her existence only emerged after a transcript of an interview she gave to American interrogators immediately after the war surfaced in a CIA archive.

In the interview Ms Flegel, who worked as a nurse in the Reichschancellery in Berlin from January 1943, described the moment when Hitler said goodbye to his medical staff. It was the early hours of April 30 1945.

"He came out of the side-room, shook everyone's hand, and said a few friendly words. And that was it," she said. Hitler shot himself that afternoon.

After Hitler's death, SS officers staged a largely doomed attempt to break out of the bunker. Ms Flegel stayed behind. She was one of six or seven people still there when the Russians arrived on May 2 1945, 60 years ago today.