"I think that he is primarily a dreamer, a visionary... He is so transparently honest when he is weaving visions of his own creation that nobody can doubt him. He is ready, like a medieval saint, to go through fire and water for his beliefs. I am not certain that he would not actually like being tortured; he would love playing the martyr, if only for his own mental delectation. He sees himself as a crusader; he thinks the whole time of saving mankind. That is why he reaches such a stage of mystical exaltation when he talks about saving the world from Bolshevism. It is the old Siegfried complex once again. Just as the young German knight of old went out into the dim, dark forests to kill dragons, so he goes out to exterminate Bolshevism. He is simply living again the romantic frescoes which mad King Ludwig painted round his castles to express the Wagnerian operas, and Hitler's spectacles are nothing more than an enlargement of this Wagnerian drop-scene, with the improvements offered by modern science. That accounts for his popular appeal, and it also makes him dangerous."
Adolf Hitler

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

Sources

pp. 7-9

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler