He said: “There has been a tendency to see in Hitler’s behaviour, between his joining the Nazi party and the mid-1920s, the erratic doings of a prima donna, who acted totally irrationally and who – besides being a gifted orator – did not have many talents as a political operator ... In my book, I show that this gets the story totally wrong. Hitler was, in fact, a skilful and conniving political operator who ... would never forgive anyone who had ever cold-shouldered him and turned him down – and kept a lifelong vengeance towards them.”