Escorted by the men attending me—my SS guard, presumably—I left the dazzling banquet hall behind and returned to the Reich Chancellery.
On the ride back, I caught my reflection in the car window.
The little mustache staring back at me made the reality sink in all over again.
“So long, my Fuhrer.
Rest well.”
“You’ve done your duty.”
After exchanging a few words with the guards who had escorted me to my quarters, the door finally closed.
For the first time all evening, I was alone.
So this is what it’s like to be the most powerful man in the country.
Not a single moment of privacy.
With the guards shadowing me every step of the way, I hadn’t had so much as a minute to sort through my thoughts.
I may have done Goebbels a bit of a disservice…
The thought crossed my mind, and I grimaced—for more than one reason.
The celebration had been organized personally by Propaganda Minister Goebbels to commemorate the success of the Berlin Olympics, and I’d slipped out almost as soon as it began.
Tomorrow’s cabinet meeting was going to be awkward.
He was bound to complain about it.
…
And the fact that I was even thinking like this was bizarre.
I had Hitler’s memories.
His emotions.
His instincts.
Yet I also remained Nakajima Masaru, an ordinary Japanese man.
It wasn’t like having split personalities.
It was more as though the gap between my public self and private self had been amplified to an absurd degree.
Everyone acts differently depending on where they are.
The person who bows politely at work may become an unquestioned tyrant at home.
It was something like that.
At my core, my values and common sense were still Nakajima Masaru’s.
But at the same time, I instinctively knew how Adolf Hitler was expected to act toward the Party and the German people.
It was an indescribably strange sensation.
Of all people…
why did it have to be Hitler?
When I’d been on the verge of death, I’d confronted the deepest wish in my heart.
I’d wanted to accomplish something that history would never forget.
I didn’t mean becoming history’s greatest villain!
Famous?
Without question.
There were few names on Earth more widely known.
But whether history judged him infamous or not wasn’t the issue anymore.
That was something future generations would decide.
My problem was much simpler.
I was Hitler.
If history unfolded as I remembered it, I would plunge humanity into one of the bloodiest wars it had ever seen.
In the end, I would poison my beloved dog…
Then, on the very first day of my marriage, I would commit suicide beside my new wife.
A future couldn’t get much worse than that.
The obvious answer would seem to be simple:
Then don’t start the war.
Except…
Now that I possessed Hitler’s memories, I understood something I never could have before.
Germany no longer had the luxury of choosing peace.
There were several reasons.
The first was economic.
Since the Party took power and launched the Four-Year Plan, Germany’s economy had expanded dramatically.
Unemployment had plummeted, and the public believed the nation had recovered.
They weren’t wrong.
But they weren’t entirely right either.
The recovery had been financed by MEFO bills—hidden government debt disguised through clever accounting.
Because the spending never officially appeared on the government’s books, inflation had remained under control.
For the moment.
Debt, however, doesn’t simply disappear.
Whether acknowledged or not, the burden still existed.
And eventually, the bill would come due.
When that day arrived, Germany would face only two options.
Print money and unleash inflation…
Or raise taxes and strangle the economy.
Either path ended in disaster.
Nothing angers people more than having prosperity ripped away after they’ve finally tasted it.
The German people had enjoyed a spectacular recovery.
If everything suddenly collapsed, their fury would be overwhelming.
People in this era were quick to violence.
They might very well kill me.
The second problem was the Party itself—and the German people.
Germany still lived in the shadow of the First World War.
The harsh terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles were part of it.
But more than anything, the nation had never truly accepted defeat.
They longed to restore Germany’s prestige.
Naturally, the Nazi Party pushed an aggressive foreign policy.
The public wanted it too.
Unlike people today, those living in the 1930s had no idea what another world war would really look like.
They had never witnessed industrialized total war in its full horror.
If I suddenly began preaching restraint now…
There was a good chance my own supporters would decide I’d become a traitor.
And kill me.
The third reason was something only Nakajima Masaru could know.
There was another great power that wanted war.
Across the ocean lay a nation whose enormous industrial capacity had been left idle by the Great Depression.
Its leader wanted a war to put that machine back to work.
Both sets of memories—Hitler’s and my own—pointed toward the same conclusion.
A major war in the near future was unavoidable.
Most people would probably despair at a realization like that…
Maybe it was because I’d faced death once already.
Maybe it was because Hitler’s memories had seeped into me.
Either way…
Running away never even crossed my mind.
A war may be inevitable…
But that doesn’t mean history itself can’t be changed.
If the conflict couldn’t be prevented, then I would make sure it unfolded differently.
I would do everything in my power to lessen the devastation.
To leave the twentieth century—and the century after it—a better world than the one I remembered.
This war…
I would make certain it ended in a completely different way.