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Martin Bormann was among the most sinister and feared members of the Nazi high command.
A trusted member of Hitler's inner circle, and head of the chancellery, Bormann was the FÃŒhrer's right hand man.
He was regarded by the Nazis as a true believer, a zealot to the fascist cause, so completely committed to the Third Reich's odious aims of racial purification that he was above suspicion.
But as the Nazi regime crumbled, and the Soviet troops stormed Berlin, things rapidly changed for this pragmatic bureaucrat. It is suggested that Bormann may not be the dedicated, boot-licking Hitler devotee that he made himself out to be.
Conspiracy theorists believe Bormann was in fact a Russian spy, a murky contact known to Stalin's intelligence chiefs as "Werther".
There is little doubt that a high-ranking German had been turned by their communist foes, but Bormann was not just any member of the high command, he was the personification of the Nazi stooge, Hitler's personal secretary, and a fearsome ideologue.
If the Russians did turn Bormann, it must be regarded as the espionage coup of the century.
But could a rabid, FÃŒhrer-worshipping Nazi like Bormann really have fed information to Hitler's most hated foe, and if he did, how on earth did he manage to get away with it?

In 1999 Russia stood at a crossroads.
The newly capitalist nation was beset by internal unrest, torn apart by rivalries between billionaire oligarchs redrawing the map for their own commercial interests and constantly under threat of terrorism from Chechen rebels seeking an independent homeland.
Into this chaotic scene stepped Vladimir Putin, now familiar as the shirtless, hunting, fishing, Russian ironman who would rule his country like a modern day Tsar.
Back then he was a determined, ambitious, former commander in the FSB, the new secret service fast gaining a reputation as the KGB of the 21st century.
Putin's bid for power was based on his tough stance on Chechnya, his no-nonsense approach to terrorism, and his promise to rebuild a strong Russia from the ashes of its post-USSR breakdown.
As President Boris Yeltsin was facing the boot over corruption allegations, a string of apartment bombings rocked the cities of Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk - killing 300 people and injuring over a thousand.
The attacks would be the catalyst for a second war against the Chechen rebels, but more than that they precipitated a massive shift in the base of power, and coincided the emergence of the previously unheralded Putin as Russia's pre-eminent political force. Within a year Putin had amassed a huge base of voters, and was popularly elected President for his handling of the war.
But the story did not end there.
With the Putin regime firmly in place, dissident former spies, including Alexander Litvinenko, who died in agony from polonium poisoning in London in 2006, came forward to warn that the bombings were a covert FSB operation.
Litvinenko and others suggested that the secret service had carried out the attacks as part of a false flag conspiracy to paint the Chechen rebels as the culprits and launch the war which would bring Putin to power.
As the whistle blowers began to be silenced, the conspiracy theory only grew stronger.
The question is, could the FSB pull this off, and just how far up the chain of power does this theory go?

As a new decade dawns, we look back on the conspiracy theories that shocked, amazed and appalled us over the past 10 years.

The defining moment of the past decade has spawned the most controversial and hotly debated conspiracy theory of all time. Did the US government allow the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon to happen despite it's prior knowledge, or did the Bush administration plan and execute the attacks as a "false flag" operation to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the repressive anti-terror legislation that offers the US government unprecedented control over the public. A bitter argument between theorists and scientific journals still rages over whether the two planes that struck the twin towers were the cause of the World Trade Centre's collapse, or whether controlled explosions and thermite plasma were used to destroy the skyscrapers. The destruction of Tower 7, which was not hit by a plane, and questions over whether the Pentagon was struck by a cruise missile rather than a jumbo jet, have all lent weight to the conspiracists claims. Throw in the fact that the Air Force were on training missions on 11 September 2001, and that threat warnings about an Al Qaeda plot to use planes to attack the US were ignored, and theorists claim they have a damning case against their government. If the theory is true, it represents the most heinous act in modern history, a government either deliberately sacrificing or cold-bloodly murdering 3,000 people to further its own ends. However, the conspiracy theory, for all its millions of online devotees, remains unlikely, unproven, and unbelievably complex. Questions surrounding whether or not the government shot down the fourth plane, United 93, as it headed for Washington DC, are much more valid, and do point to a possible cover-up. That Al Qaeda planned and executed a daring, calculated act of malevolent violence remains the most likely explanation for the terror attack that changed the world as we know it. Despite the facts the 9/11 conspiracy theory, for all its failings and inaccuracies, remains the most powerful and widely debated theory of the past decade.

It's the disaster to end all disasters.
More dangerous than terrorism, scarier than a nuclear holocaust, and all your own fault, global warming is a man made apocalypse that threatens the future of humankind.
As the most powerful men on the planet prepare to meet in Copenhagen to discuss the climate change crisis and come up with a set of rules to save us all from the end of the world as we know it, we are told that when it comes to global warming the debate is over.
But there are still many respected climatologists, politicians and geologists who believe that the greatest threat facing our civilisation is not what it appears to be.
The conspiracy theorists fear that global warming, as with the war on terror and the fight against communism before it, represents a bid by the political and economic elites to curtail our freedoms, restrict the financial markets, and maintain their own authority.
Even those who accept that climate change is happening are split on whether or not man is the cause.
While the official line of most governments around the world is that man made climate change is a scientific fact, there is a vocal minority who argue that the shift in the earth's temperature would be happening regardless of our carbon output.
Bombarded with science and scared to death by predictions of an Armageddon that would make Roland Emmerich blush, the public are struggling to come to terms with the fact that carbon emissions and climate change will now become a guiding force in their daily lives.
Conspiracy theorists say these people are being duped in order to create a multibillion dollar "green economy" and impose controls on every aspect of our existence.
With academics on both sides of the debate approaching their research with an almost religious zealotry, the debate is getting nasty with accusations, smear campaigns and a scurrilous set of leaked emails creating a war the likes of which the scientific community hasn't seen since Galileo.
The forces that stand opposed to one another are strong.
An ex-Vice President of the USA, a legion of green economists looking to make a quick buck and a swarm of liberal activists are facing the entrenched values of a world that doesn't want to forego its creature comforts, a cabal of powerful oil producers eager to protect their profits and an up and coming superpower that needs carbon to fuel its development.
But who is right, who is conning who and what is the truth behind the "greatest challenge ever to face humanity"?
One thing is for sure the debate is not over yet.

At the height of the Cold War the US military was running out of ways to tackle the threat of communist Cuba.
Following the humiliating failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and just months before the Cuban Missile Crisis the desperate army elite came up with a dastardly new proposal.
Operation Northwoods ignored all rules of warfare, common humanity and moral decency.
It marked the first example of a False Flag plot, the concept that has informed conspiracy theories on everything from the 9/11 attacks to Pearl Harbour.
Under the controversial plan the CIA and the joint chiefs of staff recommended that civilians be targetted with real terror attacks, involving American casualties in order to justify an all out land invasion of Cuba.
Never before had a government countenanced the slaughter of its own citizens to warrant waging war against an enemy.
The plan was thrown out by President Kennedy, with many theorists speculating that this act of defiance against the military elite may have led to JFK's own untimely demise.
Shortly afterwards the US became embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Operation Northwoods was put back in the box it came in.
But when the most diabolical and devastating plot ever considered at the upper echelons of government was revealed in 2001, the distrustful US public had to accept that their leaders were now capable of anything.
Almost 50 years on the question remains, has a false flag terror act been committed by the US government and if not, how long will it be before Northwoods is put into operation?

December 2001, three months after terrorists have destroyed the Twin Towers and brought America to its knees.
The US is struggling to hold together a fragile coalition for its invasion of Afghanistan.
Questions are being raised about the strength of the evidence against their prime suspect for the 9/11 atrocities.
And the notoriously loudmouthed Al Qaeda chief still hasn't claimed responsibility.
Suddenly a video tape appears from a house in Jalalabad showing a barely recognisable Osama Bin Laden confessing all.
Could this be fortunate timing? Or is the video a fake recording of a man who is already dead?
Bin Laden has been the western world's most wanted man for the best part of a decade.
Well over 6ft tall, sporting a distinctive beard and with an instantly recognisable face the Saudi militant should stand out a mile.
But more than eight years after the 9/11 attacks he is said to have masterminded, Al Qaeda's commander in chief remains on the run.
He could still be sheltering in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan.
He may be hiding in the lawless tribal regions of North West Pakistan.
There is even a chance that he has sought refuge in a Middle Eastern state sympathetic to his fanatical cause.
Amid all of these possibilities there is one which is rarely covered in the mainstream media.
Osama Bin Laden, the Great Satan's staunchest foe, the devil incarnate himself, could well be dead.
With so much money, manpower and murder expended on attempts at capturing him, how can one man continue to elude the most powerful military in human history?
Surely with infinite resources, gadgets that would make James Bond's eyes pop out, and enough explosives to destroy the planet a thousand times over, the US would have found this elderly cleric with a serious kidney ailment by now?
Unless of course, he is no longer there to be found.
His death would certainly not have been announced by the Al Qaeda lieutenants who rely on his iconic status to recruit the deranged youths they need to wage their unholy war.
Nor would it have been trumpeted by the US had they caught wind of his demise.
With Bin Laden's life goes the human face of 9/11, the face that launched a hundred unmanned drones in Pakistan, a thousand F16s in Iraq, tens of thousands of soldiers in the Afghan badlands.
On the history pages Bin Laden's image is destined to sit next to those of Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler as a case study in evil.
But with conflicting reports about his health, question marks over the authenticity of his videos and rumours about a burial, has he been consigned to those pages already?