Dictator of a nation devoted to splendid sausages, cigars, beer, and babies, Adolf Hitler is a vegetarian, teetotaller, nonsmoker, and celibate. He was a small-boned baby and was tubercular in his teens. He says that as a youth he was already considered an eccentric. In the war, he was wounded twice and almost blinded by mustard gas. Like many partial invalids, he has compensated for his debilities by developing a violent will and exercising strong opinions. Limited by physical temperament, trained in poverty, organically costive, he has become the dietetic survivor of his poor health. He swallows gruel for breakfast, is fond of oatmeal, digests milk and onion soup, declines meat, which even as an undernourished youth he avoided, never touches fish, has given up macaroni as fattening, eats one piece of bread at a meal, favors vegetables, greens, and salads, drinks lemonade, likes tea and cake, and loves a raw apple. Alcohol and nicotine are beyond him, since they heighten the exciting intoxication his faulty assimilation already assures.

As Reichsführer, Reichskanzler, und Höchstkommandierender der Armee of Germany, Herr Hitler, by reason of his high offices, occupies the building in the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin which was called the Reichskanzlerpalais until recently the Nazi government, to avoid any monarchical implications, renamed the Haus des Reichskanzlers. Devoid of appetite for luxury, he inhabits the palace in agitated simplicity. His physical wants are few; he dislikes servants, and maintains only a skeleton domestic staff of five. Four of them are friendly, political comrades of earlier days who now serve him as chauffeur, chef, major-domo, and aide-de-camp. Brigadier Schreck drives the Führer’s handsome black Mercedes touring cars for him. Hitler often borrows his friends’ motors. He likes automobiles generically, enjoys riding in anything so long as it’s fast and open, and has the German impatience with slow, stuffy limousines. He prefers to sit in front with the driver, except when he stands up in back, receiving the cheers of his public. His cooking and housekeeping are done for him by a couple named Kannenberg, who are old acquaintances. Kannenberg is a well-known, jovial character who used to run a smart, small, Behrenstrasse restaurant. Owing to Hitler’s diet, about all Kannenberg can do for him now is to act the court clown, play the accordion, and sing funny Bavarian songs, for which the Führer still has a taste. If Hitler goes on a cross-country tour, one of the cars is fitted with a kitchenette, and Kannenberg goes along as musical cook. Being a Bavarian, he knows the recipe for Hitler’s favorite South German gruel, or Brennsuppe—a kind of porridge soup made of browned flour, butter, and caraway seeds, seasoned with salt and a little vinegar. Hitler’s aide-de-camp is Oberleutnant Wilhelm Brückner, a former Wimbledon tennis star of military family; genealogically, he sets the tone for the establishment. Hitler has no valet. Adjutant Schaub, a large fellow who wears the black uniform of the S.S., or Schutzstaffel, acts as major-domo. Though he lays out Hitler’s clothes, neither he nor anyone around the palace has ever seen the Führer in slippers and dressing gown; Hitler’s modesty verges on the morbid. In the morning it takes him fifteen minutes, from the time he gets up, to get dressed and be ready for breakfast. He usually appears in his favorite costume—black trousers and a khaki coat cut in the pattern of what German officers call a Litevka—the traditional military lounge jacket without insignia. He never wears jewelry. He has always been frantically neat, clean, and of tidy habits; his clothes wear forever. Most of his wardrobe consists of uniforms, but there are a few civilian garments. He scrupulously chooses a second-rate tailor. Schaub orders most of his things. They are sent to the palace, where Hitler tries on and selects; he can’t go into a shop without its being mobbed by his Nazi admirers and hasn’t bought anything in the normal way for three years.

The Führer sensibly gets up in the morning according to the hour that he went to sleep the night before, which is irregular, depending on what he’s had to do or what’s on his mind. Being a sufferer from insomnia, he does a lot of his thinking in bed. He has no mania for fixed hours or early rising and is more flexible in his routine than is supposed. Though his day is limited by certain scheduled events, when he wakes he manages to select some shape for it, is liable to change his plans, usually secret in any case. For self-protection he always arrives deviously at a rendezvous, even with his public. When in Berlin, he lunches promptly at 2 P.M., as is the city’s custom, and at this palace meal entertains frequently in a modest way. Guests are usually Party colleagues, Gauleiter up from the provinces. They get a sturdy soup, a hearty meat, potatoes, second vegetable, and salad, served all at the same time, in German fashion; and for dessert, oftener than not, some South German sweet such as Schmarren with stewed fruit, the only course their host can join them in. On Sundays they get only a pot stew, since Hitler observes Topfsonntag or the fat-and-food-economy Sundays which he recently inaugurated. Because of his diet, Hitler hates banquets, doesn’t approve of them anyhow, as “emphasizing the immense disparity between riches and poverty” in a Spartan state; rarely accepts invitations to meals in private houses, because, like most Süddeutscher, he prefers to eat in public in some favorite spot.

When in Munich, he still goes to the quiet little Osteria-Bavaria Restaurant, which he has used for years, and occasionally he drops in for Jause at the Carlton tearoom, which is the nicest in town. When he eats a meal at the elegant Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel, it’s in the modest back room, not in its Walterspiel restaurant. The Walterspiel brothers, two of the greatest gourmets of Europe, are old friends of his, and concocted Hitler’s onion-soup recipe especially for him. When in Nürnberg, Hitler still stops at the second-rate Deutscher Hof, which was grandeur for him in the old days and which he thinks today is grand enough. He likes places he’s familiar with, where people know his habits and let him alone. With his shadows, the elegant Brückner and the lowly Schaub, he often goes in Berlin to the Kaiserhof in the afternoon for a glass of milk and his favorite Linzertorte, a walnut cake. He has a sweet tooth.