Dear Adolf,

Who were you?

Truly?

A man fueled by passion, justice, and patriotism?

A man turned to hatred, brutality, and dictatorship,

A man plagued by demons.

Images of brushstrokes, colors brazen, colors primary, colors blended,

Swirled through your blood and painted your heart?

A man who let the darkness of evil consume you?

A blank canvas wrought with potential,

Splattered red, by the millions of lives you blotted out.

Embittered by rejection, jailed for your beliefs,

Lives tarnished, millions slaughtered by your indifference.

You painted a detailed unforgettable legacy,

But there was no beauty in it.

A man who could have painted the stars,

Chose to dim them instead.

Your canvas bleeds red saturated with suffering,

What pain hid behind the cunning words of a man driven to madness,

On a rampage of genocide.

A brilliant orator,

Who compelled nations, and drove others to insanity,

What did you mean when yous said, the day of individual happiness has passed?

Were you speaking from experience?

You shaded out the lives of millions on your canvas,

And attempted to paint yourself in color,

You sold it,

A whole nation bought it.

The true colors, you chose not to paint,

They were but a distant memory,

Flickering,

Fading,

Fast.

Smothered with tones of black and blue, by your hand,

Hands that could create, that stole instead.

The potential of human cruelty, merely a paintbrushes stroke

Out of the suffering of millions emerged one cry,

Loud.

Torturous.

Berating.

It was you, drowning in the weight of all the colors

The guilt, the pain of being smothered by your eternal damnation.

You shaded out those colors, with your charcoal words,

You even shaded out those lives you left ‘’untouched’’

Mere art enthusiasts who will never know the sheer magnitude of what you've truly painted,

Something few will ever encompass in one painting,

Death.

From your rejection from art school,

To the man who spared your life,

To the final shot by your hand that ended it all.

A coward’s death.

And with that act, you get your last stroke.

Not the final stroke, that should summarize an artist’s entire life’s work,

Instead it’s empty, devoid of feeling, indifferent.

There is an old saying that goes:‘’The stars compel us, but do not bind us’’

Today your painting remains, immortalized in the museum of human existence.

Your painting of horror,

Ingrained into our memory.

When we visit your painting and reflect on your reign of terror,

We remember, all the colors you erased from the Earth.

And even though your legacy compels us,

It does not bind us.

Sincerely,

A mere art enthusiast