Thus says Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, who was a witness from the very beginning and accompanied Hitler. In his analysis of Hitler and the regime in the work Im Angesicht des Galgens (In the Face of the Gallows), Hans Frank recounts how, as a student, he went from one political event to another, and how Hitler’s speeches stood out far above the rest. It was not so much the content that attracted, but the way he spoke, which clearly distinguished him from others.

But not to forget that people mostly saw Hitler through propaganda. Psychologist Walter Langer points out Hitler’s unremarkable appearance. His looks were rather poor, small, unsportsmanlike, disproportionate—he was not the type of legendary hero from the Nibelungen saga, not a Siegfried or an Arminius, the great Hermann, the victor over the Romans, such as the one we can see at the Hermannsdenkmal monument in the Teutoburg Forest, which the Prussians erected in the mid-19th century to demonstrate their new power.