In an age which should be accustomed to madmen and murderers, the personality of Adolf Hitler still provokes terrified attention. Last week, an able post-mortem of that personality was published in the New York Times Magazine by Major H. R. Trevor-Roper, a British intelligence officer who had investigated the Führer's reported death.
Hitler had fancied himself in a dual role: as an artist destined to remake the world, and as an Attila or Genghis Khan destined to destroy it. Yet in his private life he always remained a drab petty bourgeois, who chose drab Eva Braun for his mistress, and somewhat...