l’état, il était lui

“I saluted, and Hitler walked toward me. As he neared, I was shocked by his appearance. He was stooped, and his left arm was bent and shaking. Half of his face drooped, as if he’d had a stroke, and his facial muscles on that side no longer worked. Both of his hands shook, and one was swollen. He looked like a very old man, at least twenty years older than his fifty-six years. . . . I wondered how it was possible that in only six years this idol of my whole generation could have become such a human wreck. It occurred to me then that Hitler was still the living symbol of Germany—but Germany as it was now. In the same six years, the flourishing, aspiring country had become a flaming pile of debris and ruin.” – Siegfried Knappe, “The End in the Bunker” (emphasis in original)