TODAY IN BERLIN: THE FIRST TO GO – DOROTHY THOMPSON’S EXPULSION FROM BERLIN AND NAZI GERMANY

She described him as “formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the little man.” And later added, with more than just a touch of derision: “I bet he crooks his little finger when he drinks his tea.”

For Adolf Hitler, who had his real or perceived enemies – including former friends – tortured, slayed or sent to concentration camps, and who never forgot or forgave a slight, these words written by an US foreign correspondent in Berlin, Dorothy Thompson, could have sealed her fate. Luckily for her, being an American and a celebrity, for the time being she was out of Nazi henchmen’s reach.

But revenge had to be taken. Adolf Hitler despised this outspoken, self-assured woman who dared make a fool out of…