A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IT is too soon to assert equivocally Hider fuit, but that something unusual has happened to Hitler is manifest. Unfortunately, nothing more than that can be said to be manifest at all. There is ample choice of assumptions. Hitler may be dead. He may be mad-
• quite definitely enough mad to be withdrawn from circulation. He may be seriously ill. He may actually have undergone the throat operation reported from Switzerland on Wednesday. He may con- ceivably be in normal health at some headquarters behind some front, though the odds seem against that. But whatever is happening to him the effect is to leave the front place to Himmler, Goering being eliminated from public view as effectively as Hitler. Whether Himmler for Hitler would be a change for the better or the worse is a question on which anyone may cherish his own opinion. It is difficult, it is true, to imagine a depth of foulness deeper than the depth Hitler has touched, but there is a deliberate and relentless brutality about Himmler which makes him in some ways the most irretrievably revolting character on the German stage. That while Hitler is off the German stage Himmler is the most powerful per- sonality in Germany is incontestable. The question is whether Hitler is off the stage for ever. It would be rash to assume so.
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