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Messiah. Fundamental Hitler nature is Austrian—mild, appreciative of beauty and art, sentimental, loving display. But long ago his chief underlings went vigorously to work to build a higher and higher pedestal under him. His contacts with common life around him have become more and more remote so that he has come to accept himself as a Messiah. So surrounded is he by adoring millions that his occasional megalomaniac outbursts have become more frequent. He is more autocratic and noncommittal than ever even to his old party leaders. He will tolerate disagreement only on the tiniest of details. His deep guffaws are more frightening than ever to adults, although children still respond to them.
Meantime his decisions are based on the opinions of an ever-narrowing group of advisers. The adoring Nazi Deputy Leader Rudolf Hess, who follows his leader even in his moods, is still constantly at his side. But the Führer has become so inaccessible to most of his Cabinet that only Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Dr. Goebbels are now able to ask for and get private interviews. Five-sevenths along his Biblically allotted span of life, this strange man has at least the satisfaction of knowing that he has become the most formidable political tactician of his century. Where that will finally get him, neither he nor anyone else knows.