AS HITLER BEGAN SPEAKING, Shirer, seated in the audience, was struck anew by his rhetorical skills: “So wonderful an actor,” Shirer wrote in his diary, “so magnificent a handler of the German mind.” He marveled at how Hitler managed to cast himself as both conqueror and humble supplicant for peace. He noticed, too, that Hitler spoke in a lower register than was typical, and without his usual histrionics. He used his body to underscore and amplify the thoughts he sought to convey, cocking his head to impart irony, moving with a cobra’s grace. What especially caught Shirer’s attention was the
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