For more than half a century, historians have wondered what the Nazis would have done had they won the second world war. Now the matter can be settled. A report, unread for 65 years, reveals the Nazis' top priority once they had destroyed the allies, exterminated the Jews and occupied Europe. They were going to build a big, flash nightspot in Berlin.

"It'll be the most beautiful, the most modern, the most elegant in Europe", enthused the report's author, Giuseppe Renzetti. "The project is said to have met with the ardent approval of the Führer."

Renzetti, Italy's consul in Berlin, told his superiors that already, in mid-1940, the Nazis were preparing their capital for the tourist boom they expected would follow victory. He understood "a manager has already been found for the nightclub and that it had been decided to restrict entry to foreigners, the diplomatic corps and the members of Berlin [high] society."

Extracts from the report, dated July 23 1940, were published in Corriere della Sera yesterday. Italy's former consul was as close as any foreigner to Hitler; Goebbels wrote that Renzetti could almost be seen as a Nazi. To compile his report the diplomat interviewed top officials including the SS leader, Heinrich Himmler.

But Renzetti found the Germans split over what to do with Britain. Some argued it should be "destroyed". Some wanted "an understanding". The Führer, he said, was with the doves. "Hitler has wanted to take into account the wishes of a large mass of the Germans who feel themselves to be related to the British [and] fear others could profit more than them from the British empire's destruction." He said Hitler also felt British and German industry could find a way to coexist.

Renzetti said the Nazis were anticipating a post-war Europe in which they would be "feared and respected".