This dialogue perfectly illustrated how the mechanism of dissonance reduction functions. The speakers transfer blame for any doubts about the Führer and their own emotional investment in him onto external factors. Psychological circumstances or conspiratorial activities here are what caused the change in Hitler’s personality. The Führer, Wahler and Fröschel posit, is no longer figuratively or even, in the impersonator idea, literally himself. Interesting, too, is the fact that Fröschel himself acknowledges the possibility that psychological factors are preventing him from acknowledging the truth. In so doing, he describes the mechanism of dissonance reduction. But the final turn in the conversation offers a much more satisfying explanation, that the real Hitler has been replaced by an actor, allowing the two men to maintain their faith in the Führer even when they have lost all faith in his actions.
Private Költerhoff had a far less extravagant explanation for Hitler’s behavior: “The FÜHRER himself is not the worst. There are many things which simply never come to his ears.”512 The idea that Hitler was being kept in the dark was one of the most common German legends, especially as the war neared its end. Sergeant Gamper also proposed that the truth about the course of the war was being withheld from Hitler:
GAMPER: I spoke to a journalist who was at the FÜHRER’s headquarters and he told me some appalling things about the FÜHRER. KEITEL controls the FÜHRER’s headquarters. Before his “Generals” or anyone get to ADOLF to make a report they are given detailed instructions by KEITEL [as to] what they are to say, how they are to say it, and only then are they allowed into ADOLF’s presence. For example, if a “General” had to report that a withdrawal was necessary, at the time when the first withdrawals occurred, when people weren’t yet accustomed to the idea of Germans withdrawing, they had to say the following: “My FÜHRER, I considered it better not to hold that position but to move to here. That is to say, not that we are withdrawing, but because the positions there are more favourable.” Whereas that was entirely untrue, they had been flung out.513
Sergeant Müss used the same language. Hitler’s behavior, he posited, was becoming increasingly strange because he was hermetically sealed off from the truth:
MÜSS: I too have always had the impression that they have deceived the FÜHRER at every turn. For example, they say that ADOLF sometimes sits down at the table with a large position map in front of him and stares at it. Nobody is allowed to disturb him, even if reports of the utmost importance come in. Sometimes he sits at the table for six, seven or ten hours in an attitude of deep meditation. Sometimes matters of utmost importance come in and are all dealt with by KEITEL. But he sits there staring at his map and goes into a frenzy, more or less crazy. He shrieks and raves and socks people in the jaw and so on.514
Such theorizing usually held that Hitler was being systematically deceived. SS Hauptsturmführer Born and Sergeant Wolf von Helldorf, the son of the president of the Berlin police, named the guilty parties:
