Foil

Character Role Analysis

Adolf Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt

Although Shirer doesn't bother to give Adolf Hitler a literary foil as he builds his characterization of the man, his records demonstrate that when propaganda purposes made it necessary, Hitler sometimes created a foil for himself.

For example, check out this passage from a speech that Hitler delivered in the Reichstag in December 1941, as he announced that Germany now considered itself at war with the U.S.A.:

Roosevelt comes from a rich family and belongs to the class whose path is smoothed in the democracies. I was only the child of a small, poor family and had to fight my way by work and industry. When the Great War came Roosevelt occupied a position where he got to know only its pleasant consequences, enjoyed by those who do business while others bleed. I was only one of those who carried out orders as an ordinary soldier, and naturally returned from the war just as poor as I was in the autumn of 1914. (4.25.144)

By juxtaposing himself against the president of the most powerful industrial nation in the Western world, and by comparing his own "up-by-the-bootstraps" upbringing to Roosevelt's inherited wealth, Hitler made it clear that he thought of himself as having more morals and mettle than his American counterpart.

Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill

The Prime Minister of Britain was just as passionate, uncompromising, and unyielding as his Nazi counterpart. Like Hitler, he refused to consider defeat even when Britain stood weak and alone in opposing Hitler; he was a brilliant orator who bucked up his nation with soaring speeches and references to his country's glorious history. He exhorted his countrymen to fight to the last.

These similarities make their differences even more striking. Hitler was a hateful, fanatical tyrant; Churchill headed a democratic government that wanted to liberate the Nazi-occupied countries. Hitler was mad with power; Churchill was sane and compassionate. Anti-Nazi from the first, Shirer describes Churchill as Hitler's most consistent opponent—the guy on the side of the angels.