Hitler’s grand ideas about his future invariably envisaged his playing roles in which he would be admired and celebrated. The almost manic efforts which Hitler put into his plans to reconstruct first Linz and then Vienna – his later places of residence, Munich and Berlin, would also be subjected to his mania for reconstruction – demonstrate an extreme determination completely to reshape his immediate surroundings in accordance with his ideas. But all this, the eccentric plans and roles, was not just playing around; it formed the actual content of his life.
