In today’s New York Times, Michiko Kakutani reviewed volume one of Volker Ullrich’s new biography of Adolph Hitler, which focuses on his “Ascent.” In analyzing how this “self-obsessed ‘clown'” amassed power, Kakutani (and perhaps Ullrich) notes in order his “‘bottomless mendacity,'” his skills as an “orator and actor” to play to the “fears and resentments” of his “lower middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist” audience and offer “himself as he visionary leader who could restore law and order,” and to present the preset in terms of “decline and decay” and himself as the one person capable of leading it to “greatness.”

Sound familiar?