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"Judging by present appearances, it does not seem likely that Adolf Hitler will go down in German history as a martyred leader. All last week the radio was propagandizing him as the nation's military and spiritual leader fighting at the head of his troops in Berlin. Nobody I met was in any way impressed. But when rumors circulated that the Fiihrer had been killed iri Berlin, Germans began to stop Allied soldiers on the streets to ask them if it was true. What they were concerned about, however, was not whether Hitler was alive or dead. What they said was: 'If it is true, then finally perhaps the war will end.'"
For the German people, as for the rest of the world, the end of World War II would bring—had already brought—one tremendous, if negative, good: the end of the monstrous historical lie embodied in Naziism and its perverted practices. Hitler, if he were still able to wonder what his historical function had been as everything crumbled, might say with Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust: I am Ein Teil -von jener Kraft, Die stets das Base will und stets das Gute schafft.
(Part of that force, That is forever willing evil, continually produces good.)