Influenced no doubt by Hitler's polite reception of him, he continued to see him in a favourable light. It is evident too that this interpretation was coloured by King's beliefs and experience. He wrote on 27 March 1938:
I am convinced he is a spiritualist -- that he has a vision to which he is being true...his devotion to his mother -- that Mother's spirit is I am certain his guide....I believe the world will yet come to see a very great man -- mystic, in Hitler....[M]uch I cannot abide in Nazism -- the regimentation -- cruelty -- oppression of Jews...but Hitler him[self], the peasant -- will rank some day with Joan of Arc among the deliverers of his people, & if he is only careful may yet be the deliverer of Europe....
It all seems extraordinarily naive today. But in fairness to King it seems in order to quote the comment of a recent German biographer of Hitler: "If Hitler had succumbed to an assassination or an accident at the end of 1938, few would hesitate to call him one of the greatest of German statesmen, the consummator of Germany's history."
C.P. Stacey, A Very Double Life: The Private World of Mackenzie King (Macmillan of Canada: 1976), p. 187.
