5871bc3d   
   XPost: alt.fan.adolf-hitler, alt.christnet.second-coming.real-soon-now,   
   alt.religion.christian.last-days   
   From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
   The Enigma of Hitler   
   by Leon Degrelle   
   The mountains of Hitler books based on blind hatred and ignorance do   
   little to describe or explain the most powerful man the world has ever   
   seen. How, I ponder, do these thousands of disparate portraits of   
   Hitler in any way resemble the man I knew? The Hitler seated beside   
   me, standing up, talking, listening. It has become impossible to   
   explain to people fed fantastic tales for decades that what they have   
   read or heard on television just does not correspond to the truth.   
   People have come to accept fiction, repeated a thousand times over, as   
   reality. Yet they have never seen Hitler, never spoken to him, never   
   heard a word from his mouth. The very name of Hitler immediately   
   conjures up a grimacing devil, the fount of all of one's negative   
   emotions. Like Pavlov's bell, the mention of Hitler is meant to   
   dispense with substance and reality. In time, however, history will   
   demand more than these summary judgments.   
   Hitler is always present before my eyes: as a man of peace in 1936, as   
   a man of war in 1944. It is not possible to have been a personal   
   witness to the life of such an extraordinary man without being marked   
   by it forever. Not a day goes by but Hitler rises again in my memory,   
   not as a man long dead, but as a real being who paces his office   
   floor, seats himself in his chair, pokes the burning logs in the   
   fireplace.   
   The first thing anyone noticed when he came into view was his small   
   mustache. Countless times he had been advised to shave it off, but he   
   always refused: people were used to him the way he was.   
   He was not tall -- no more than was Napoleon or Alexander the Great.   
   Hitler had deep blue eyes that many found bewitching, although I did   
   not find them so. Nor did I detect the electric current his hands were   
   said to give off. I gripped them quite a few times and was never   
   struck by his lightening.   
   His face showed emotion or indifference according to the passion or   
   apathy of the moment. At times he was as though benumbed, saying not a   
   word, while his jaws moved in the meanwhile as if they were grinding   
   an obstacle to smithereens in the void. Then he would come suddenly   
   alive and launch into a speech directed at you alone, as though he   
   were addressing a crowd of hundreds of thousands at Berlin's Tempelhof   
   airfield. Then he became as if transfigured. Even his complexion,   
   otherwise dull, lit up as he spoke. And at such times, to be sure,   
   Hitler was strangely attractive and as if possessed of magic powers.   
   Anything that might have seemed too solemn in his remarks, he quickly   
   tempered with a touch of humour. The picturesque world, the biting   
   phrase were at his command. In a flash he would paint a word-picture   
   that brought a smile, or come up with an unexpected and disarming   
   comparison. He could be harsh and even implacable in his judgments and   
   yet almost at the same time be surprisingly conciliatory, sensitive   
   and warm.   
   After 1945 Hitler was accused of every cruelty, but it was not in his   
   nature to be cruel. He loved children. It was an entirely natural   
   thing for him to stop his car and share his food with young cyclists   
   along the road. Once he gave his raincoat to a derelict plodding in   
   the rain. At midnight he would interrupt his work and prepare the food   
   for his dog Blondi.   
   He could not bear to eat meat, because it meant the death of a living   
   creature. He refused to have so much as a rabbit or a trout sacrificed   
   to provide his food. He would allow only eggs on his table, because   
   egg-laying meant that the hen had been spared rather than killed.   
   Hitler's eating habits were a constant source of amazement to me. How   
   could someone on such a rigorous schedule, who had taken part in tens   
   of thousands of exhausting mass meetings from which he emerged bathed   
   with sweat, often losing two to four pounds in the process; who slept   
   only three to four hours a night; and who, from 1940 to 1945, carried   
   the whole world on his shoulders while ruling over 380 million   
   Europeans: how, I wondered, could he physically survive on just a   
   boiled egg, a few tomatoes, two or three pancakes, and a plate of   
   noodles? But he actually gained weight!   
   He drank only water. He did not smoke and would not tolerate smoking   
   in his presence. At one or two o'clock in the morning he would still   
   be talking, untroubled, close to his fireplace, lively, often amusing.   
   He never showed any sign of weariness. Dead tired his audience might   
   be, but not Hitler.   
   He was depicted as a tired old man. Nothing was further from the   
   truth. In September 1944, when he was reported to be fairly doddering,   
   I spent a week with him. His mental and physical vigor were still   
   exceptional. The attempt made on his life on July 20th had, if   
   anything, recharged him. He took tea in his quarters as tranquilly as   
   if we had been in his small private apartment at the chancellery   
   before the war, or enjoying the view of snow and bright blue sky   
   through his great bay window at Berchtesgaden.   
   At the very end of his life, to be sure, his back had become bent, but   
   his mind remained as clear as a flash of lightening. The testament he   
   dictated with extraordinary composure on the eve of his death, at   
   three in the morning of April 29, 1945, provides us a lasting   
   testimony. Napoleon at Fontainebleau was not without his moments of   
   panic before his abdication. Hitler simply shook hands with his   
   associates in silence, breakfasted as on any other day, then went to   
   his death as if he were going on a stroll. When has history ever   
   witnessed so enormous a tragedy brought to its end with such iron self   
   control?   
   Hitler's most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most   
   complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic   
   principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could   
   be understood by anyone. The laborer from Essen, the isolated farmer,   
   the Ruhr industrialist, and the university professor could all easily   
   follow his line of thought. The very clarity of his reasoning made   
   everything obvious.   
   His behaviour and his life style never changed even when he became the   
   ruler of Germany. He dressed and lived frugally. During his early days   
   in Munich, he spent no more than a mark per day for food. At no stage   
   in his life did he spend anything on himself. Throughout his 13 years   
   in the chancellery he never carried a wallet or ever had money of his   
   own.   
   Hitler was self-taught and made no attempt to hide the fact. The smug   
   conceit of intellectuals, their shiny ideas packaged like so many   
   flashlight batteries, irritated him at times. His own knowledge he had   
   acquired through selective and unremitting study, and he knew far more   
   than thousands of diploma-decorated academics.   
   I don't think anyone ever read as much as he did. He normally read one   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)