*

                    CHAMBERLAIN AT GODESBERG: SEPTEMBER 22-23 [1938]

I was having breakfast on the terrace of the Hotel Dreesen, where the talks were to take place, when Hitler strode past on his way down to the riverbank to inspect his yacht. He seemed to have a peculiar tic. Every few steps he cocked his right shoulder nervously, his left leg snapping up as he did so. He had ugly, black patches under his eyes. He seemed to be, as I noted in my diary that evening, on the edge of a nervous breakdown. "Teppichfresser!" ("carpet eater") muttered my German companion, an editor who secretly despised the Nazis. And he explained that Hitler had been in such a maniacal mood over the Czechs the last few days that on more than one occasion he had lost control of himself completely, hurling himself to the floor and chewing the edge of the carpet...The evening before, while talking with some of the party hacks at the Dreesen, I had heard the expression applied to the Fuehrer--in whispers, of course.👀

Shirer, The Rise and Fall (391)

*I have to update this with more reaction than surprise eyes. Have you ever heard the like of that? I must not have read this book all the way through previously, for there is no way I would have forgotten that. 

You know, we, myself included, throw around loosely the words "devil," "Satan" or their opposites, "God-like," "Christ-like", or "insane"--all of those extremes. Everyone who knows me, everyone who reads this blog, knows that I am irreligious, I do not believe in God, Satan, Heaven, Hell, etc. But how to understand this without recourse to the supernatural, or otherworldly? Does it not sound like "possession"? It is similar in kind to the fictional behavior of Regan in The Exorcist, no? Just so horrifyingly bizarre and unhuman. I mean, get the fuck outta here, throwing himself on the floor and gnawing on the carpet?! "On more than one occasion"!? Nervous breakdown, shmervous breakdown, medical or scientific terminology does not work as explanation for me. Now, drugs would! But there is no evidence Hitler experimented with or was on drugs. So to me there is no rational explanation. And when reason fails us where do we humans turn? To the heavens, to the other place, to the stars, to animism; Hitler was mortal, clearly, he's fucking dead! Bud nothing in my knowledge of humans prepared me for, or helps me comprehend, this.