When the Führer made his Reichstag speech offering peace to England and France, early in October, the propaganda ministry set aside a large block of seats in the Kroll Opera House for foreign diplomats, and Pug took his son along. Living through the siege of Warsaw, and then reading Mein Kampf, Byron had come to think of Adolf Hitler as a historic monster—a Caligula, a Genghis Khan, an Ivan the Terrible—and Hitler standing at the podium surprised him: just a medium-size pudgy individual in a plain gray coat and black trousers, carrying a red portfolio. The man seemed to Byron a diminutive
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