LONDON: Adolf Hitler had a “messiah complex” and became
increasingly obsessed with the perceived Jewish “enemy within”
as World War II turned against Germany, according to a secret
1942 assessment unveiled Friday. The British intelligence
report, which lay apparently unread from the war until its
recent rediscovery, found that the Nazi dictator turned to “Jew-
phobia” as the likelihood of defeat increased. The wartime
analysis, now made public by the University of Cambridge, was
commissioned by social scientist Mark Abrams and written by his
colleague Joseph MacCurdy, a Cambridge academic. Abrams, a
world-renowned pioneer of market research and opinion polling,
worked with the BBC’s Overseas Propaganda Analysis Unit and the
Psychological Warfare Board during World War II. “At the time
that it was written, the tide was starting to turn against
Germany,” said Cambridge historian Scott Anthony, who led
research into Abrams which resulted in the paper being unearthed
in a family collection. “In response, Hitler be