Lassner also notes Christie's view on Nazism in general. The Fourth Reich of the novel is depicted as relying on a culture of drug users, sadism, lust for power, and hatred. The potential rise of this Reich to power is depicted as a downfall for the ideals of Individuality and democracy, along with the associated social and political order. Aunt Matilda serves as the proverbial "fount of wisdom" of the novel, observing that the Reich is not based on new ideas, but on an old, and recurring one: that everybody must follow "the young hero", the "golden superman", "the young Siegfried". Nye dismisses his aunt's warnings about Nazism as mere fancies. Matilda notes that people said the same thing in the interwar period about Adolf Hitler and about the Hitler Youth; but at that time, Nazism was planning its rise to power through planting fifth columns in different countries, people passionately believing in the Nazi creed. Matilda argues that the same methods could work again in the Cold War era, if the Nazi message is "offered cleverly enough".