Henlein had two sides of his personality, being on one hand a "sensitive soul" who loved to read poetry, take long walks in nature, play the piano, would cry for hours if somebody said something rude to him and was deeply concerned about the fate of his people, but on the other hand as a "Gauleiter", he showed himself devoted to Hitler and executed with verve the policies of the Third Reich, showing no compassion or mercy to the Czechs or the Jews. The German historian Ralf Gebel compared Henlein to Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Nazi who rejected the more thuggish elements of the Austrian Nazi Party and sought to preserve a distinctive Austrian identity within the "Großdeutschland" that Hitler was creating. Cornwall wrote that Henlein was a man who genuinely believed in "völkisch" ideology, but like many other Sudeten Germans wanted to keep a distinctive Sudeten identity alive even as he supported the "Großdeutschland" concept, making him something of an outsider in the NSDAP. Just as the lawyer and self-proclaimed "moderate" National Socialist Seyss-Inquart was repulsed by Captain Josef Leopold, so too was Henlein repulsed by SS "Obergruppenführer" Karl Hermann Frank whose views and methods were closer to Heydrich.