My first impression is there are some really interesting observations in there like this:
> At the end of the war, Hitler said, ‘Well the Germans lost, that just shows the Russians are stronger. So be it. That’s the verdict of nature.’ I don’t think a nationalist would say that.
While the bombings had some doctrines/ideas (even if flawed - The Bomber Will Always Get Through), stopping th steamroll of Red Army in the middle of nowhere, with looming winter was just suicidal. If Moscow fell, CCCP could have folded - the evacuated industry would not have a strong transport system to enable it, and, the Wehrmacht wouldn't freeze to death in the fields.
It's hard to retroactively explain it as a vision. It was megalomania.
My takeaway is that Hitler's vision may not have been one of German nationalism but of racial anarchy. Fascism is often associated with the desire to return to an imagined "golden age". But Hitler's golden age wasn't one of an imagined pure Germany, but of an imagined reality much further ago in the past, of people fighting like "pure" animals for racial superiority.
I think that's a very interesting interpretation.
No, but a fatalist would. And failure makes fatalists of us all. When we succeed, it's because we're brilliant and terrific. When we fail, it's fate.
Few people in history have ever failed quite as spectacularly as Hitler did by the end of the war, so it's not surprising that he was, by this stage, an angry fatalist.
>"He presents himself precisely as a German nationalist who is going to get the German economy going, who is going to bring Germans inside the borders of Germany. That’s how he presents himself, but that is a lie."
He was able to inspire so many people to do such crazy things. I just have a hard time seeing how he could tell a story that convincing if it was really a lie.
>‘Well if the Soviet Union didn’t collapse, it’s because of Jews beyond the Soviet Union in the rest of the world. The rest of the conspiracy around the world is supporting them and propping them up, and therefore we have to expand our war against the Jews.’