finally the german unleashed a jaw-breaking carved-out-of-rock string of ten minutes worth of consonants with only an occasional vowel thrown in and accompanied with hand gestures and a rise in temperament that mixed fervor with scorn and one could see how hitler would have figured out how to push his buttons , and when he finished he was almost winded and he looked pridefully and challengingly at my father like a professor who had decided to play a game of `` gotcha '' at some poor student 's thesis defense , but my dad just shrugged his shoulders .