Adolf Not Himself?

Adolf Hitler left his headquarters in Russia last week to make a Memorial Day speech in Berlin. Rarely since he became Fuehrer--perhaps never before in his life--had he shown so few Nazi and so many thoroughly German characteristics.

He showed respect for the enemy.

"Only today do we realize the full extent of the preparations of our enemies. . . . The German Army has attacked and annihilated again and again the ever renewed Russian forces, only to meet further fresh masses of men. . . ." (Later Hitler said the "annihilation" would be completed this summer.)

He minimized past successes in view of present problems:

"Whatever German Armies achieved in [the French, Lowlands, Norwegian and Balkan] . . . campaigns pales in comparison with the task [in Russia] . . . . "

He made excuses:

"Many weeks earlier than any experience or scientific prediction could let any one assume, winter enveloped our Armies, a winter which now gave our enemy four months to do his part to change this struggle. . . ."

He admitted the possibility of defeat:

"History within a few months will probably be in a position to state whether the sacrifice of hecatombs of Russian lives . . . was or was not the right thing to do from a military viewpoint."

He prayed:

"May God give us strength to continue to carry out what duty demands of us."

The only man who knew whether Hitler, at 52, had undergone a metamorphosis or was practicing--perhaps out of necessity--a new psychology on his people was Hitler himself. He was certainly not his old self. Perhaps he needed a vacation (see col. 2).

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