And now a little Godwin: Hitler couldn't drink a glass of water at the end either. [View all]

[NNadir]

For amusement in these tense times, I'm reading excerpts of Volker Ulrich's two volume biography of Hitler, where I came across, in the second volume ( "Downfall" ) a description of one of the dictator's last rallies, for the Reichleiters & Gauleitiers (Hitler's equivalent of the modern US Senate and House Republicans), in Berlin, on February 24, 1945, a little over two months before his suicide.

An excerpt, page 550, Volume 2, Hitler, Downfall, 1939-1945, Translation by Jefferson Chase, Knopf, New York, 2020:

...The sight of the frail dictator had brought tears to his eyes, recalled Wahl [Karl Wahl, the Gauleiter of Swabia] writing that for him it had been tantamount to the "end of the world."

Hitler seemed to sense how horrified the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters were and himself touched upon his poor health at the end of his speech. Only now did he truly understand Friedrich the Great, who had returned home from his military campaigns "a sick, broken man." Just as the Prussian king had been forced to spend the last years of his life "with a bent frame, plagued by gout and a whole gamut of other afflictions," Hitler explained, the war left deep marks on him. After trying and failing to raise a glass of water to his lips, he assured the listeners, "Today my hand trembles, and maybe my head will as well someday, but my heart will never tremble."

Hitler, in a final act of cowardice, swallowed cyanide and shot himself in the head on April 30, 1945, thus escaping justice.

The personalities of Hitler and Trump are striking for the similarities as described in this text, the lies, the megalomania, the narcissism, the laziness, the blame attached to subordinates, the failure to take responsibility for his own actions and the inability to perceive reality.

I asked for these books for my birthday, from my family, because of the reviews of the second volume of this biography, without naming Trump, listed all of these parallels.

Of course, Germany was destroyed by giving power to Hitler, and America has been badly damaged by giving power to Trump, but after much struggle, by the end of the 20th century, Germany had become a better nation than it ever was.

May America once more become as great as it was before 2017.