THE IMPOSTOR SYNDROME 87vincing himself of the truth of what he was saying at the time he said
it ’ (p. 377).
This is the portrait of a man who managed to dramatize on a world
stage his fantasies of domination and force, the cult of the hero and racial
purity, the subordination of the individual and the supremacy of the
state, leaving a trail of unprecedented horror behind him:
In the Eyrie he had built ... above the Berghof ... he would elaborate his
fabulous schemes for a vast empire embracing the Eurasian Heartland of
the geopoliticians; his plans for breeding a new elite biologically pre -
selected; his design for reducing whole nations to slavery in the foundation
of his new empire. Such dreams had fascinated Hitler since he wrote Mein
Kampf. It was easy in the late 1920s and early 1930s to dismiss them as the
product of a disordered and over - heated imagination ... But these were
still the themes of Hitler ’ s table talk in 1941 – 2 and by then ... Hitler had
shown that he was capable of translating his fantasies into a terrible reality.
The invasion of Russia, the SS extermination squads, the planned elimina-
tion of the Jewish race; the treatment of the Poles and Russians, the Slav
Untermenschen — these, too, were the fruits of Hitler ’ s imagination. (pp.
374 – 375)The devastating success of Hitler ’ s imposture owed much to Hitler ’ s
cynical manipulation of his image, combined with his own growing
belief in his self - created myth. As World War II continued, he suc-
cumbed more and more to megalomania. He had presented himself as
Germany ’ s savior, the player of a world - historical role, and exempt from
the constraints that bound ordinary people, and gradually he began to
believe in his own infallibility.
When he began to look to the image he had created to work miracles of
its own accord — instead of exploiting it — his gifts deteriorated and his
intuition deluded him. Ironically, failure sprang from the same capacity
which brought him success, his power of self - dramatization, his ability to
convince himself ... No man was ever more surely destroyed by the image
he had created than Adolf Hitler. (p. 385)At a more profound level, far from being their longed - for savior, Hitler
was strongly aggressive towards his people. Making a fool of the audi-
ence and using lies and deceit can be seen as aggressive acts, a form of
retaliation — in Hitler ’ s case, against what? His ineffective and violent
parents? The sense of betrayal he felt at Germany ’ s capitulation at the
end of World War I and the end of the empire? He felt no scruples in
demanding the sacrifi ce of millions of lives for the cause of Germany
during World War II; equally, he was prepared to sacrifi ce Germany