In 2007, University of Colorado psychologist Frederick Coolidge asked five historians to take diagnostic personality tests on behalf of Adolph Hitler.
More specifically, they showed der Führer was a schizophrenic who suffered from psychotic thinking and extreme paranoia.
Not only did he have delusions of grandeur, but Hitler was chronically anxious, angry, argumentative, aloof, patronizing, narcissistic, and sadistic.
Followers, nonetheless, excused him.
"Dangerous leaders typically have apologists who discount their destructive methods in favor of viewing their behavior as consonant with 'laudable' goals," Coolidge wrote.
Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, an American filmmaker and magazine correspondent, interviewed Hitler on March 5, 1933, the day he was elected Reich Chancellor. The interview took place in a backstage corridor of the Berlin Sports Palace, at the start of a Nazi rally.
Although he spent less than a minute with Hitler, Vanderbilt sensed he was in the presence of a madman.
“Tell the Americans that Adolf Hitler is the man of the hour," Hitler told him. "Tell them he was sent by the almighty to a nation that had been threatened with disintegration and loss of honor these last fifteen years.”
