What both Hitler and Churchill did have in common, however, was a terrific tenacity of purpose. This was forged in their 'wilderness' years - Hitler's in the 1920s, Churchill's in the 1930s - when they were out of office and generally derided by the political classes.
By not altering their message to suit their audience, but by carrying on insisting that they were right, they both garnered huge support when events finally seemed to confirm their view of the political situation. Thus, once economic circumstances changed in Germany in the depression years of the 1930s, and after the British view of appeasement changed when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, both men were in a position to capitalise on that most satisfying phrase in politics: 'I told you so.'
Hitler's legacy is today confined to the penumbra of politics - to Holocaust-revisionists, BNP thugs and teenage American gunmen. Churchill's legacy, by contrast, has probably never been stronger than today. After the Al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, Americans turned to the British war leader's words as to those of no other statesman.
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