‘Hitler willed, wanted, craved war and the destruction wrought by war. He did not want the war he got. Its origins lay through his own miscalculations and misperceptions, as much as through those of his eventual opponents, not least in their belief that he was bluffing, that he would recoil, that in Paul Claudel’s words, ‘Croque-mitaine se degonflera’ (the boogeyman will go away). … The only people who could have stopped him permanently were those least conditioned to do so, his Generals, and their soldiers, if they had been ready to obey, by coup d’etat, or an assassin capable of penetrating into the Reichs Chancellery from which, in the last days of peace, Hitler never emerged. History knows this did not happen.” (06/26/09)