HOW HITLER LIVES

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22823, 23 September 1939, Page 17

HOW HITLER LIVES

Personal Traits

(SPECIALIST •WHITTEN FOR THE PRESS.) [By RONALD McINTOSH.]

IT is not usual for a leader to nominate his successor “if anything should happen to me in this struggle.” But Hitler did so, and his successes successor also, in his. fateful proclamation at the outbreak of war. Hitler’s retreat at Berchtesgaden is at once an illustration of his love for solitude and the melodramatic, for it was designed by the Fuehrer himself. Entrance is gained to it through an indirectly-lighted grotto, where the visitor is carried up 650 feet in an elevator, to emerge in a glass house which is Hitler’s sanctuary. The mansion, on the edge of a precipice 6500 feet high, can be seen only from the air. There must be a good deal of animal magnetism in the Fuehrer’s personality to enable the son of the Austrian shoemaker to comport himself as the equal or superior of men infinitely superior to him in origin and education. The Basle “NationalZeitung” tells a typical story of Hitler’s prowess in making people feel uncomfortable. At a diplomatic reception, for instance, the Fuehrer is said to gaze into an Ambassador’s eyes until he has become completely rattled. Then he will say something like this: “I hope that your Excellency finds the climate in Berlin agreeable.” And while the unfortunate Ambassador is stammering a reply, and wondering what Hitler really means, the Chancellor has passed on to the next guest. Like all practical jokers, however, the Fuehrer is himself extremely sensitive, He is easily annoyed by a foreign cartoon which makes him look like a house-painter, although he does not object to being portrayed as a villain or a god of war. Confidence Recent events in Europe have given Hitler a very high opinion of himself. So often he has backed his intuitions against the advice of his staff and won that he has come to regard himself as a prophet and a demi-god against whom no nation can stand and win, As he drove into Sudeteniand after the September crisis last year he is reported to have turned around in his car and shouted to bis companions; “Yea, gentlemen, the world waits on me, and not I on the world.” In the ill-fated Nazi putsch of November, 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff led, the heavily-armed rioters against the police. The police, however, fired the first shot, and before the fusillade had died away Hitler was missing from his place in the vanguard. The explanation later isued was that, at the risk of his life, the future Fuehrer had gone to save the life of a boy who was in the line of fire.

The private life of the supreme

Premonitions, Melodrama,

ruler of the German nation is a lonely one. It is necessarily so, for with so many quarrels and intrigues taking place among his satellites in their struggle far power it would be dangerous for him to have intimate friends. Constantly surrounded by a bodyguard who have pledged themselves to take their lives in the event of Hitler’s assassination, and consequently known as the “suicide corps,” the Fuehrer lives a life apart, mostly in his mountain home. And Women? There are only two women in Hitler’s life—his sisters. He is contemptuous of men who show any inclination for dalliance with the fair sex, although it seems that he has overlooked much among his immediate followers. In the presence of women the Fuehrer shows his only signs of timidity. They soon bore him, for he has nothing in common with with them, When Renate Muller, the German actress who was so successful In the British film “Sunshine Susie,” was granted an audience with him, she received the surprise of her life. The Leader stalked in, magnificent in his uniform. After a few banalities had been passed, he sprang stiffly to attention and raised his arm in the Nazi salute. “See that,” he cried. “I can hold my arm like that for an hour. None of the others can do that.” And without another word, he turned on his heel and left her,

In a constant state of physical and mental tension, Hitler neglects his body. AH forms of sport are repugnant to him, and he tries to combat an undesired increase in weight hy massage and a diet of nuts and raw fruit. During his triumphal entry into Czechoslovakia, it is said, all the pockets of his military overcoat were stuffed with nuts, of which he frequently partook. Hia living habits are highly irregu-' lar. At times he goes to bed as early as II o'clock, but at other times he is awake until dawn, and the members of his household are compelled to stay up with him, for it is their task to entertain and amuse him. As host at Berchtesgaden, his guests drink beer and wine, but Hitler takes either a cup of cocoa or peppermint tea, varied occasionally by a glass of beer specially brewed for nim at Munich and containing only I per cent, of alcohol. Such evenings generally begin with the screening of a film and end with musid and dancing. v Quite incapable of systematic work and contemptuous of official reports or expert advice, Hitler prefers to follow bis own presentiments, encouraged, no doubt, by the success that has so far followed his bluffs.