It was indeed a surprising gesture from a dictator who generally avoided direct contact with the soldiers and later on the civilians who bore the scars of his war. Hitler had immured himself all winter far from both the front and Berlin, in the windowless room of his field headquarters in the woodland outside Rastenburg in East Prussia, drinking herbal tea to relieve his stress and insomnia. Now, on the radio, in his conversations with the wounded, Hitler came across as a ‘man and a comrade
