an enigma

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:25:49 +0100 

    I don't want to extend this too much - I can hardly 
    imagine a less natural place to discuss someone like 
    Hitler than the Salinger list.  But, Jim, since you did ask ...

    I'm intrigued by the way this almost laughably typical 
    petit bourgeois gent (cream buns for tea; endless, boring 
    monologues at the dinner table; a taste for romantic movies; 
    leaden taste in painting; chivalry towards his staff, & so on) 
    had such a powerful effect - in personal, face-to-face encounters 
    - upon some of the most sophisticated, intelligent, & self 
    possessed of people.  Time & again, one reads of men 
    of the world - all types: intellectuals from privileged backgrounds 
    like Speer or the cynical, confident satraps of the High Command 
    - going into his presence determined to press a particular 
    point of view & emerging like pussy cats converted to its opposite 
    - either by charm, or suggestion or what they themselves 
    more often spoke of without apology as the extraordinary 
    potency of his personality.

    I'm also, believe it or not, taken by some of his humour: when, 
    for example, after endless hours of fruitless negotiation 
    with Franco, he commented to Goering he would rather 
    have his teeth out than go through all that again, 
    or having delivered a bloodcurdling tirade at some foreign 
    dignitary, he could turn aside - almost like a Chaplin - 
    to his secretaries & give them a secret wink.
 
    But, of course, what really intrigues me is where he could 
    have derived that awsome ego strength: the kind of 
    unquestioning self confidence that could hold him 
    in his chosen route to hell in the face of the whole 
    world's hostility, taking with him one of the most highly 
    developed peoples that have ever existed & retaining 
    their pretty well unswerving loyalty - up to & almost past 
    midnight.

    I'm not a Nazi.  Two or three of my closest friends 
    were people who, one way or another, put their lives 
    on the line beating the bastards.  I hope if I'd been 
    the age I'd have done the same.  But I can't deny 
    my endless curiosity.

    Scottie B.