Dungeon dad: I've know for 24 years I must be insane... Hitler made me that way

Josef Fritzl has spoken in extraordinary detail of what led him to imprison and abuse his own daughter for 24 years.

He broke his silence to blame everyone from his domineering mother, to Adolf Hitler, to daughter Elisabeth.

He admitted to fantasising about having sex with his mother. And, displaying little remorse, he tried to justify the sickening sexual urges which led to the repeated rape of his own child.

Fritzl, 73, said: "The urge to finally be able to taste the forbidden fruit was too strong. It was like an addiction."

Unbelievably, the Austrian even spoke of the pride he felt in fathering seven incestuous children, and said it was "great to have a second proper family in the cellar".

Some readers may be shocked by the depravity revealed in this prison cell interview, organised by lawyer Rudolph Mayer, but Fritzl's glib justifications shine some light on a saga of appalling evil that has shocked the world.

THE LOVED MOTHER, THE DESPISED FATHER

Fritzl was raised by a domineering, some say violent, mother. He described his father as "somebody who was a waster, he never took responsibility and was just a loser who always cheated on my mother.

"When I was four she quite rightly threw him out...Suddenly there was only us two." Despite her controlling manner that would often leave her son in tears, he said she was "the best woman in the world".

Although he denied an incestuous relationship, he paused before answering whether he fantasised about having sex with his mother, admitting: "Yes, probably."

He added: "I suppose you could describe me as her man, sort of. She was the boss at home and I was the only man in the house. I loved her over across all boundaries. I was in totally in awe of her. Completely and totally in awe."

THE HITLER LEGACY

Born in 1935 in the shadow of Nazi Germany and 90 miles from the childhood home of Adolf Hitler, much has been speculated about the influence of the Third Reich on Fritzl. He was three when Hitler paraded through Amstetten days after the Nazis annexed the country, to the delight of many Austrians.

During the war, an extension of the notorious Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp was built in the town. Fritzl admitted: "I grew up in the Nazi times, and that meant the need for people to be controlled and to have respect for authority.

"I suppose I took on some of these old values in. It was all subconscious, of course. Yet despite that I am not the monster that I am portrayed as in the media."

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ROSEMARIE AND HIS FIRST FAMILY

Having grown up as an only child, Fritzl developed a driving desire to create a large family. He married Rosemarie when she was 17 and he five years older. Despite his conviction for rape in 1967, the couple stayed together and two years ago celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

But friends have told how Rosemarie too was a victim of her husband's tyrannical personality. He said he picked her because of his need to become a father.

"Rosemarie was a wonderful woman, is a wonderful woman. She is just a lot more shy and weaker than my mother. I chose her because I had a strong desire then to have lots of children."

He added: "Rosemarie seemed to be the perfect mother to realise that dream. This is not a good reason to marry, but it is also true to say that I loved her and I still love her."

A SECOND FAMILY IN THE CELLAR

Elisabeth was one of five girls and two boys born to Fritzl and his wife. As a child, she dared not disobey him.

But as she grew older, according to Fritzl, he began to lose his grip. And, beneath the surface, dark desires were growing. Elisabeth has said the sexual abuse began before she was in her teens but – claiming to be insulted at the suggestion – Fritzl said: "I am not the kind of man who has sex with children."

"Ever since she entered puberty Elisabeth stopped doing what she was told, she just did not follow any of my rules any more. She would go out all night in local bars, and come back stinking of alcohol and smoke.

"I tried to rescue her from the swamp and I organised her a trainee job as a waitress, but sometimes there were days when she would not go to work. She even ran away twice and hung around with persons of questionable moral standards, who were certainly not a good influence on her.

"I always had to bring her home, but she always ran away again. That is why I had to arrange a place where I gave her the chance – by force – to keep away from the bad influences of the outside world."

So in August 1984 when she was 18, he locked her in a tiny cellar room. In sickening detail, he spoke of what he claims was his first sexual encounter with his daughter, then 19.

He said: "My desire to have sex with Elisabeth also got much stronger as time went by. We first had sex in spring 1985. I could not control myself any more."

He said she did not fight back but that she cried quietly, making small whimpering noises. "I knew that Elisabeth did not want it, what I did with her. The urge to taste forbidden fruit was just too strong."

Following months and years of repeated rapes, Elisabeth became pregnant in 1988. Fritzl said: "The truth was, I wanted children with Elisabeth. Elisabeth was of course very worried about the delivery, but I brought her medical books in the cellar, so she would know when the day came what she had to do, and I arranged towels and disinfectants and nappies."

She gave birth to Kerstin alone in the cellar, and likewise Stefan was also born alone and unaided in 1990.

The next three children, Lisa, now 16, Monika, 14 and Alexander, 12, were all taken by their father to live "upstairs".

One child – Alexander's twin – died just a few days after being born. Fritzl burned the body in an incinerator. He told his wife that their missing daughter had dumped the children on their doorstep.

Elisabeth was, he said, "just as good a housewife and mother" as Rosemarie. He added: "After the birth of Felix at the end of 2002 I even gave Elisabeth a washing machine as a present."

He said: "I was delighted about the children. It was great for me to have a second proper family in the cellar, with a wife, and a few children. When I went there I bought my daughter flowers and the children books and cuddly toys.

"We celebrated birthdays and Christmas in the cellar, I even bought a Christmas tree secretly into the cellar, and cakes and presents."

Fritzl added: "Elisabeth stayed strong, she caused me almost no problems, she never ever complained, even when her teeth slowly went rotten and fell out of her mouth one after the other, and she suffered day and night with unbearable pain and could not sleep. She stayed strong for the children, but the children – I saw they were constantly getting weaker."

DUNGEON KINGDOM

The retired electrical engineer began planning his lair years before imprisoning Elisabeth. He told planning officers he wanted permission for a nuclear bunker – a common request in Austria in the early 1980s.

"I guess it must have been around 1981 or 1982 when I began to build a room in my cellar as the cell for her," he said. "I got a really heavy concrete and steel door, that worked with an electric motor and a remote control that I used to get into the cellar."

Asked what had happened if he had been killed in a car accident he said: "Every time I left the bunker I switched on a timer that would definitely have opened the door to the cellar after a set time. If I had died Elisabeth and the children would have been free."

He denied reports he had rigged up gas to fill the cellar if they tried to escape, but admitted: "I am sorry to say that I did tell them that they would never get past the door because they would be electrocuted and they would die."

He added: "Perhaps some people did notice what I was doing, but they really did not care, why should they? The cellar of my house at the end of the day is my house, it belongs to me, it is my kingdom only I can enter.

"That includes my wife, my children, and my tenants, and none of them ever managed to force their way into my kingdom or asked me what I did there. Everybody obeyed my rules."

THE END
Fritzl claimed he had always planned to free Elisabeth but that the situation spiralled out of control.

His elaborate cover story to Rosemarie that their daughter had run off and joined a cult, began to fall apart last month. "I guess after the kidnap I got myself in a vicious circle, a vicious circle not just for Elisabeth but also for me from which there was no way out," he said.

"I was scared of being arrested, and that my family and everybody that knew me would know my crime."

But as the health of Kerstin, Stefan, and five-year-old Felix worsened from a lifetime in the windowless cell, he had to act.

Felix and Kerstin seemed to have suffered the most, the little boy shaking for hours all over his body and the girl sometimes screaming uncontrollably.

Elisabeth finally persuaded him he had to act. Last Christmas he began planning for her release, intending to use a story that she had finally wanted to return from the sect.

He hoped they would go along with his story. "Sure, that was my hope, however unbelievable at that time. There was always the risk that Elisabeth and the children would betray me."

Last month, as Kerstin grew worse, her mother begged Fritzl to take her to hospital to seek treatment.

Suspicious doctors called in police and within days the secret lair was uncovered and Stefan and Felix saw the outside world for the first time.