The Hitler I Knew

"Dietrich's book is a searing condemnation of the regime that he had so assiduously served and, throughout, he is critical both of the German people and of himself. But his real fire is clearly reserved for the person of Hilter: a man 'unparalleled in history', a 'schizophrenic... of unique intensity,' whose 'inhuman and instiable will shattered the edifice of contemporary life." -Roger Moorhouse" "Hitler was a demonic personality obsessed by racial delusions.

Physical disease is not the explanation for the weird tensions in his mind and the sudden freaks of his will. If any medical term applies to his mental state at all; it would undoubtedly be 'megalomania.' But he was in no sense mentally ill; rather he was mentally abnormal, a 'person who stood on the broad threshold between genius and madness. It is not the first time in world history that such a figure has come to the fore."

In mind and soul Hitler was a hybrid creature-double-faced. Ambivalence is often the concomitant of genius; inner stresses can strengthen the entire personality. But in Hitler the inner contradictions had got out of hand; the split in his nature had become the determinant of his whole being. For that reason his essential nature cannot be understood in simple and natural terms; It can be grasped only as a union of opposites." - Otto Dietrich.

Author : Otto Dietrich, Roger Moorhouse (Introduction)
 ISBN-13 : 9781602399723
Publisher : Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date : 01/06/2010

Meet the Author

Otto Dietrich was the Third Reich’s press chief from 1933 to 1945. He was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to seven years in prison, where he wrote his memoirs. He died in 1952 at the age of fifty-five.

Roger Moorhouse is a leading expert on the Third Reich and is the author of Killing Hitler: The Third Reich and the Plots against the Führer.