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WAHLER: Now one begins to doubt him.

FRÖSCHEL: I simply can’t understand how it could have happened.

WAHLER: It’s perfectly clear—he tricks everyone and takes over everything himself. He investigated everything himself, he supervises everything personally, he knows everything. And with time he must imagine that he’s indispensable, and that we couldn’t continue to exist without him. It is of course possible that this has become a disease with him.

FRÖSCHEL: I always have the feeling that he has been forced into it, that he is no longer a free agent. That would, to a great extent, exonerate him.

WAHLER: No, it wouldn’t because he is the FÜHRER, and is therefore perfectly free. What we’re coming to in GERMANY is not National Socialism, but tyranny. For he is the FÜHRER. In every one of his speeches he stresses that he is the man. Very well then, he has a free hand and needn’t hesitate to get rid of people like HIMMLER and GOEBBELS. And if he’s afraid of these people, then he’s no FÜHRER. If he can’t rid himself of them, and says: “I must keep the people who were with me on the 9th of November” [date of the Munich putsch], he must nevertheless understand that he is the FÜHRER. He gets rid of everybody else, so why doesn’t he get rid of men whom everybody hates?

FRÖSCHEL: Perhaps he really is suffering from overwork.

WAHLER: I think, too, that his nerves are in a pretty bad state.

FRÖSCHEL: And that he is no longer master of the situation. Without realising it, he lets other people direct his notions. I really cannot understand—and he used to be my ideal. To think that he should suddenly be found wanting in this way! Perhaps it is due to egotism.

WAHLER: His actions don’t support that theory. His last speech—the one about the German legal systems—contradicts the idea.

FRÖSCHEL: It’s just possible that egotism and self-importance enter into it on my side and prevent me from acknowledging that I have been so mistaken in a man.

WAHLER: Anyway it is clear that he has changed to an enormous degree.

FRÖSCHEL: Yes, and I still believe that it is not his real self.

WAHLER: Perhaps it is an impersonator; perhaps he himself died long ago.⁵¹¹