On 22 May 1945, a trio of odd-looking men was spotted by a patrol near a checkpoint in Bremervörde, northern Germany.

It was just a few weeks after World War Two had ended but many Nazis were still at large and there were fears some might try to regroup or escape.

Two of the men, wearing smart long green overcoats, were walking ahead of a third man. The trailing figure, sporting an eye patch, looked broken and dishevelled. The pair in front kept glancing back as if to make sure he was still there.

They were taken to a checkpoint where British soldiers asked to see their papers. They handed over the A4-sized identity document German soldiers were given at the end of the conflict which listed their name, rank, date of birth and other information. The third man's papers said he was a sergeant named Heinrich Hizinger.

He must have hoped that the document and his lowly rank would mean he would pass through checkpoints. He was wrong.

On the document was an official stamp and British military intelligence had seen the same stamp and unit details being used by members of the SS who had been trying to flee. And so word had gone out that anyone else with those details was to be detained.

Next morning, the three men were taken to a detention camp.

Once there, Hizinger asked to see a senior officer. Although his cover was still intact, he must have feared it would not last long and perhaps hoped he could bargain his way out of the situation. So he took off his eye patch and calmly revealed who he really was.

He was Heinrich Himmler, the man who had been head of the SS and a key architect of the Holocaust.

After Hitler's death in his bunker, this made him one of the most-wanted Nazis still alive and a man responsible for many of the worst crimes of the Third Reich.

The British team began to question him to confirm he was who he said.

A few hours later a medical officer, Capt Wells, was told to check Himmler. As he came to look inside his mouth he saw a small blue-tipped object hidden in his cheek.

As Capt Wells tried to pull it out, Himmler struggled with the doctor, pulled his head away and crushed the object between his teeth. It was a cyanide capsule. He was dead within minutes.

Himmler had been given away by a fake stamp that his own people had placed in a document.

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