Hitler in Adversity
The eve of the anniversary of the 1923 Putsch when Hitler was addressing his party members at Munich was also the day of the American landings in French Africa—an event quickly following the decisive rout of the enemy forces in Egypt. It was not a happy occasion for a party celebration, and it is not surprising that it taxed the oratorical resources of the leader. It is a sorry figure that Hitler cuts when he is faced with reverses. In the past Mr. Churchill has had to face critical audiences when things were going badly. Wh't a difference in attitude and character. On such occasions the British Prime Minister has frankly admitted the gravity of the situation, and steeled his audience to the necessity of repairing it. Hitler, on the contrary, resorts to unconvincing lies. The defeat of Rommel's army in Africa is spoken of as if it had been no more than one of the backward and forward movements of Libyan warfare, instead of an unexampled rout. He excuses the failure at Stalingrad as if he had never seriously contemplated the city's capture. He gives the total of the German dead as 350,000, a figure grotesquely below the lowest reliable estimate. Hitler has often professed his
belief in the use of masterly lies, but his lies last Sunday were not masterly. They showed him at his weakest, and under the influence of fear—a fear which revealed itself in his repeated assertion that he would never capitulate. So it has come to that. Hitler not only begins to see the possibility of disaster before him, but he shouts about it deliriously like Macbeth confronted with the ghost of Banquo. It is hard to believe that either soldiers or civilians can have gained reassurance from this high-pitched, hysterical outpour- ing, or that it has not disturbed soldiers who are under his supreme command. The most rational part of his speech was that in which he made a virtue of necessity, saying there would be no more peace offers, no compromise.
