Adolf the Sadist

Hitler was a sadist. He enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering. After the failed major plot (Operation Valkyrie, July 1944) on his life he would sit and view videos of the plotters being strangled with piano wire. Whatever you can think about Hitler in a negative sense is often surpassed on the bad side by historical reality! Hitler wanted the Jews to suffer. So did many Germans. Hitler in general considered cruelty in its own right to be a praiseworthy attribute. He was allegedly kind to some animals and liked Nordic-looking children but he was also cruel and pleased with his cruelty. It gave him a physiological and egotistic thrill. When Hitler heard that Himmler had ordered a minor temporary let-up in the rate of killing Jews he exploded with anger. All the people around him were like him. If faced with the choice of achieving an end by force and inflicting suffering or by some other means then they would prefer the most violent option.

Hitler told Himmler that it was not enough for the Jews simply to die; they must die in agony. What was the best way to prolong their agony? Himmler turned the problem over to his advisers, who concluded that a slow, agonizing death could be brought about by placing Jewish prisoners in freight cars in which the floors were coated with...quicklime...which produced excruciating burns. The advisers estimated that it would take four days for the prisoners to die, and for that whole time the freight cars could be left standing on some forgotten siding.... Finally it was decided that the freight cars should be used in addition to the extermination camps. 
----Robert Payne,  'The Life and Death of Adolf.' Source: Hitler,  NAZI GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER

# I am sure that Hitler would not have hesitated for a moment to employ atom bombs against England. I remember his reaction to the final scene of a newsreel on the bombing of Warsaw in the autumn of 1939...Hitler was fascinated. The film ended with a montage showing a plane diving toward the outlines of the British Isles. A burst of flames followed and the island flew into the air in tatters. Hitler's enthusiasm was unbounded. "This is what will happen to them!" he cried out, carried away. "That is how we will annihilate them!" # Albert Speer, "Inside The Third Reich", New York, 1971, p.303.