I’ll lend my two pfennigs here, though I may have covered some of this somewhere else awhile ago--- I see ‘Hitler’ as a brand. A character developed for a specific need and that multiple actors would be required should any of the players get sick, hurt or dead. One such ‘dead’ may have been Julius Schreck (a likely Intel alias) who is credited with the founding of the SA and the SS. He continues as Hitler’s personal bodyguard and then is retired by ‘dying’ from an assassination attempt on Hitler where Schreck was the mistaken target- they were lookalikes- or expiring from complications from an abscessed tooth, or a car accident. Legend has it that Hitler wept at the funeral, c. 1936(?), the only instance of anyone witnessing such an emotional outburst. (Why no consensus on his death suggests that it would be to easy to uncover the truth of his survival without a serious muddying of the waters.)
Another ‘dead’ was one of Hitler’s stenographers that was allegedly blown up real good in the Stauffenberg plot. This stenographer, I believe named Berger, was supposedly one of the decoys or occasional stand-ins for photo-ops. Study the Hitler faces closely and you can see multiple actors at work. Some of the portraits, if you shave the mustache and slick the hair back, look like proper British aristocrats.
Speaking of proper Brits...
I came across this concept of ‘branding’ while studying early pictures of the pre-fame Beatles, when they were touring the northlands relentlessly in the very early sixties. The schedule, which is extant somewhere on the nets, looks too formidable for a quasi-amateur group of penniless wiseacres. But it is in the photographs that you see differences in height, face and physical proportion, strongly indicating that multiple versions of the Beatles were being tested on live audiences, albeit mostly modest gatherings in crowded clubs or rickety stages.
The point, as I saw it, was that the Beatles concept was being developed as part of the larger (s)tragedy of the coming counter-culture wars and that there would be multiples of the four personalities available during this rigorous development stage. The project could not be interrupted or upended by illness or death.
Even as Beatlemania was starting to rev up, the final quartet features at least two Ringos and two Paul’s, though within the cast of A Hard Day’s Night, I would suggest there are three Paul’s onscreen at one time or another. The Paul on stage in the film is the cute, short Paul. The Paul in the commuter car and makeup chair is someone unknown but a holdover from the early touring days, and where Paul has to be of larger stature in long shots, that is Paul’s fraternal twin, Mike, who takes over as Paul by the middle of ‘65 as the ambidextrous, keyboard playing Paul. (The Paul that doesn’t look like Paul on the Sgt. Pepper album cover.) This is what the photos and films and TV appearances tell me.
I digress.
By ‘38-ish, the representative arm of the German government is effectively closed. From that point on, Hitler is only a character in newsreels or on paper. The Hitler we have for posterity, the actor at the podium, is, I suspect, Gustav Weler, a Bohemian actor who went all the way back to the early twenties when he was first coached by Prussian state theater maven, Dietrich Eckart, in the tradition of German Expressionist acting.
I sincerely doubt any German politician behaved that way in front of a crowd prior to Hitler/Weler’s histrionics.
To repeat, Hitler had no policies or vision. Weler, et al, read from scripts not of their own creation.
A side note: You read and hear about the occult trappings of the early Nazis- (BTW, “Nazi” has been sighted by Miles Mathis as a truncation from “Ashkenazi”, not a loose contortion/contraction for the NSDAP. I can entertain that possibility. ‘Nazi’ previously was a compression of Ignatius, further compressed to Ignatz, a derogatory term in Austria for a bumpkin.)
I see this occult exotica as mere cover for intelligence activity. The Thule Society, for one, may have allowed adherents to think they were part of some cryptocracy, but the people usually sighted in this milieu have CV’s that look like public relations specialists.
Such a group would be necessary to create a public persona like a Hitler.
Finally, given that access to der Fuerer was extremely difficult, the idea of one of these actors going rogue would be next to impossible. Any audience with a big wig who was not in on the ruse probably never happened. Any audience at all was probably for photo-ops that could not be created by the pre-photoshop technology of the time.
All of this is opinion and certainly not in indelible ink. Any spin or variation or compelling dismissal is appreciated. Thanks Jerry and Richard for responding. And Seeker, please extend to Charles Pope, should you continue your correspondence, my thanks for his efforts. His concepts have really expanded my thinking about those hideous powers that should have never been.
Heaven help us!!!