Truman Smith, who thirteen years earlier had been the first American official to interview Hitler, was now military attaché at the US Embassy. He believed that ‘Germany is still not of one mind’, but agreed with Kirkpatrick that popular criticism was directed against the Party – not the Führer. Hitler’s biggest problem, in his view, was the wretchedly poor quality of the Nazi leaders who had emerged out of the ‘desperadoes and riffraff’ flung to the surface after the Great War. Although these semi-thugs, now parading as Gauleiters [heads of regional branches of the Nazi Party] and government
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Nazis unpopular but Hitler adored.
