The man who founded the Third Reich, who ruled it ruthlessly and often with uncommon shrewdness, who led it to such dizzy heights and to such a sorry end, was a person of undoubted, if evil, genius. It is true that he found in the German people, as a mysterious Providence and centuries of experience had molded them up to that time, a natural instrument which he was able to shape to his own sinister ends. But without Adolf Hitler, who was possessed of a demonic personality, a granite will, uncanny instincts, a cold ruthlessness, a remarkable intellect, a soaring imagination and-until toward the end, when, drunk with power and success, he overreached himself-an amazing capacity to size up people and situations, there almost certainly would never have been a Third Reich.
( William L. Shirer )
[ The Rise and Fall of the Third ]
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