24 BBC Wynford Vaughn-Thomas

A month ago, we crossed the Rhine. I don't think that many of us who were in that crossing imagined that a month later, we would still be fighting hard on the elb, many hundreds of miles to the east.

Who would have imagined that the Nazis would force the German nation into what amounts to mass suicide. But standing here in the Nazi party meeting place in the little town of Buchholst, just south of Hamburg, you can easily see why the Nazis are acting as they are.

If ever there was a nursery of fanaticism, here it is. This, to give it its official title, is the Hall of Honor of the National Socialist Party of the District of East Hanover. It's the most fantastic place I've entered for a long time.

It's a modern building of neat red brick, standing back from the road in the middle of a small garden, and it's not large, it's about the size of a village hall. But the extraordinary thing about it is that it's not the normal party meeting place.

Rather, the whole thing has an almost blasphemous resemblance to a small church or a chapel. got stained glass windows, but the sun shines in through SS men and soldiers rather than saints. There's a pulpit here for the local party leader rather than for the minister, and the final blasphemy where the altar lies in a church, there stands the life-sized portrait

of Hitler flanked by none other than Himmler and Robert Leis. There's even a harmonium in the small gallery upstairs, although the sort of hymns that were played in it are hard to imagine. The whole place has the strained and furtive atmosphere of the meeting hall of a secret and fanatical cult. And you can easily imagine the local Gao-Liter, whose portrait