What caused Adolf Hitler's physical and mental health to collapse at the end of World War II? Sure, he was losing the war - and it certainly had a lot to do with it. But for more than 60 years, historians have wondered if there was something more to it than that.
The leader
On April 21, 1945, an SS internist named Ernst Guenther Scheinke was summoned to Adolf Hitler's bunker in Berlin and ordered to stockpile food there. By then, Germany was hopelessly losing the war, and much of the country was in the hands of the Allies. Soviet troops had almost completely surrounded Berlin and were fighting their way into the city center. Instead of fleeing, Hitler decided to make his final stand at the führerbunker, in the heart of the Nazi capital. He would stay until the end, which for him was only nine days.
Like all Germans, Dr. Schenker has been eating his way through an abundance of photographs, films and propaganda posters since Hitler came to power in 1933. But the man he saw in the bunker didn't look anything like those photos. In a 1985 interview, Schenker recalled that the 56-year-old Hitler "was a living corpse, a dead soul." "His spine was curved, his shoulder blades protruded from his curved back, and his shoulders were like a turtle ...... I was looking into the eye of death."
The old man
is even more shocking than the way Hitler walked around the bunker. He walked like a man 30 years older, dragging his left leg and shuffling his slow feet. He took only a few steps before grabbing something for support.
Hitler's head, arms, and entire left side shook uncontrollably. He could no longer write his name and signed important documents with a rubber stamp. He had insisted on shaving himself, the murderer of millions who couldn't resist the thought of another man with a razor to his throat, but his trembling hands made that impossible, too. He couldn't bring the food to his mouth without spilling it on the front of his uniform, and as he dragged his feet to the table, an aide pushed a chair behind him and he flopped down.
Hitler's mental state deteriorated as well. His mind was confused, his memory was failing, and his mood fluctuated back and forth between prolonged periods of irrational euphoria (especially considering how close Germany was going to come to defeat) and bouts of screaming, uncontrollable rage that lasted for hours.
Schenker, who was diagnosed
with the disease, remained in Berlin until the end. on April 29, Hitler married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, and the two committed suicide in the Führer's capital the next day. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 7th.
After the war, Schenker spent a decade in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. He never forgot what he saw at the Führer's Conference, and after his release, he spent years scrutinizing Hitler's medical records, trying to figure out what caused the dictator's health to decline so rapidly in the last years and months of his life.
He wasn't the only one in this endeavor for more than 60 years during a war in which many historians, doctors, and World War II buffs did the same thing. Parkinson's disease as the cause of Hitler's collapse? Tertiary syphilis? Giant cell arteritis? Countless theories have been put forward to explain Hitler's physical and mental decline, and after all this time, experts are no closer to reaching ****ing knowledge than they were on the day he died.
The cure
One of the strangest theories for the disease was put forward in July 1944 by some of Hitler's own doctors. The diagnosis was accidental, after an ear, nose, and throat specialist named Dr. Erwin Giesing happened to notice six small black tablets, "Dr. Koester's anti-gas tablets," sitting on Freire's breakfast tray next to his porridge, dry bread, and orange juice. Upon discovering the pills, Gissing does what Hitler's own personal physician, an eccentric charlatan named Dr. Theodore Morell, apparently never bothered to do: he examines the tin can in which the pills came in and actually reads the label to see what's inside. Gissing is stunned by what he reads. Could it be? Was the Führer poisoned by the pills he took to control the meteors, a powerful attack of farting he couldn't control?"
Visceral sensations
Hitler suffered from digestive problems throughout his life. From childhood, he was prone to limp, painful stomach cramps when he was depressed. When he was in his early 40s, the cramps became more frequent, often accompanied by violent episodes of farting and alternating episodes of constipation and diarrhea.
The farting episodes were one of the reasons Hitler ostensibly became a vegetarian in the early 1930s: he didn't trust doctors, so instead of seeking professional help for his condition, he tried to treat it by eliminating meat, rich foods, milk, and butter from his diet, and instead eating raw and cooked vegetables and whole grains.
Still farting,
Increasing the fiber in his diet didn't improve Hitler's condition; if anything, it made him even more gassy than before. (But vegetarianism might have made his farts less smelly, and he might have been willing to accept that.) By the mid-1930s, Hitler was the ruler of Germany ...... and still farted like a horse. His attacks were at their worst after meals; it was not uncommon for him to suddenly jump up from the table at a banquet and disappear into his private room, leaving shocked guests wondering why the Führer was gone and when he might return. On many nights, he did not return at all.In 1936, Hitler happened to meet Dr. Morel at a Christmas party. After pulling the doctor aside, Hitler poured out his problems, describing his gastrointestinal distress and eczema: itchy, inflamed skin on his calves that was so painful he couldn't put on his boots. Now Hitler had given up on his own treatment and allowed the best doctors in Germany to examine him. They put him on a diet of tea and dry toast, but it only made him feel weak and tired. Morell listened intently ...... then promised to solve both problems within a year. Hitler decided to give it a try,
Was it the stupid farting pharmacology that got you down? Well, let's start with the man behind the medicine.
Strange bedfellows
By the mid-1930s, the Nazis had begun to destroy one of the most advanced medical communities in the world before their rise to power. As they undermined the scientific foundations of the German medical establishment with wild racial theories and insane pseudo-science, the Nazis drove German Jews, as well as any "Aryan" Germans who opposed Nazism, out of the profession. However, despite all the damage done to German medicine by the Nazis, there were still many skilled and competent physicians from which Hitler could choose his personal physician. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that he chose one as eccentric and incompetent as Dr. Theodore Morell.
M.D. Ritchie
Morell's resume leaves much to be desired. He was a doctor on a battleship, served as a military doctor during World War I, and after the war opened a polyclinic on Berlin's trendy Kurfendammstrasse, where he counted among his patients a host of social figures politicians, actors, artists, and nightclub singers. Reluctant to treat people who were genuinely ill except for the occasional bad skin, impotence, or venereal disease, Morel passed these cases on to other doctors while he built up a clientele of fashionable, spendthrift patients, mostly psychosomatic in nature, who responded well to his close attention, flattery, and ineffective quackery.
Morell's skill in caring for his patients was superb, but his ability as an internist, ies clearly flawed to the point of jeopardizing their health. In fact, he was occasionally careless," writes biographer John Toland in his book Adolf Hitler. "It is well known that Morel wrapped a patient's arm with a bandage he had just used to wipe a table and injected two patients with the same needle without sterilizing them."
"MADE" in Bulgaria,
In addition to overseeing his practice, Morel serves on the board of directors of Blackfield, a pharmaceutical company that produces a strange drug called Mutaflor, whose active ingredient is cultivated from the manure of "Bulgaria's most energetic peasantry "the most energetic peasant in Bulgaria" with live bacteria cultured from his feces.
The theory behind Mutaflor, which is designed to treat digestive disorders, is that digestive problems are caused by healthy bacteria, which live in the intestines and are essential for good digestion, being killed or crowded out by unhealthy bacteria. The theory is that ingesting cultured feces from an energetic, clean-living Bulgarian farmer will allow the beneficial bacteria to re-enter the unhealthy digestive tract and restore normal function.
It was this theory, and because Dr. Morrell had a financial interest in the company that made Mutaflo, he prescribed it to almost all of his patients, whether they had digestive problems or not. Hitler, of course, did suffer from digestive problems, and Morell soon had Freire taking Mutaflor ...... on a regular basis plus two of Dr. Kost's anti-gas pills with every meal.
Attending physician
Hitler's intestinal ailments were intermittent, as they had been during his childhood, and there was still a considerable psychological component: he suffered spasms and farting attacks in times of stress, and then when things calmed down, his symptoms abated. It was only a matter of time before he got better after he put himself in Morel's care, and relief finally came a few months later, when his eczema began to improve, and Hitler naturally attributed his relief to Morel.
The "cure" was only temporary, but the Führer eventually found a doctor he could trust. Hitler told his chief architect, Albert Speer, "No one has ever before told me so clearly and precisely what is wrong with me." . "His treatment is sound and I have the greatest confidence in him. I'm going to follow his prescription. "Morel will stay by Hettler's side until the end." Hertler immediately took
"Smells like heaven"
to Morel, but the Führer's inner circle despised the doctor from the start, not only because he was an obvious quack, but he was also a very unpleasant person to have around. The morbidly obese Morel did not bathe often: his skin and hair were greasy, his nails were often dirty, and his habit of burping and farting in polite company usually did the trick when his strong body odor and halitosis were not enough to clean the room. His appetite was as big as his stomach, not only visible but audible, and even Eva Braun found Morel annoying, but Hitler didn't care," Spear said. When she and others complained about his unpleasant body odor, the Führer ignored them. "I didn't hire him because of his scent, but to look after my health," he would say. (Who knows? Maybe Hitler liked to have another fart in the room so that the person who "smelled" it couldn't be sure who "took care of it.")
Take this ...... this ...... and this
In the early days, Morell's influence on Hitler was rather mild; the stinky doctor only gave him dietary advice and, of course, prescribed Mutaflor and Dr. Koester's anti-gas. Dr. Koester's anti-gas medicine. But as time went on and he became more and more in control of Hitler's diet, the number and strength of the drugs he prescribed increased dramatically. In the years to come, he would prescribe enzymes, liver extracts, stimulants, hormones, painkillers tranquilizers, sedatives, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, morphine derivatives (to cause constipation), laxatives (to relieve it), and other medications to fight.
By the early 1940s, according to one estimate, Hitler was taking 92 different drugs, including 63 different pills and skin lotions. Some drugs were taken only when specific complaints arose, but others were taken daily. By the summer of 1941, Hitler was taking an average of 120 to 150 pills a week. On top of that, Morel injected as many as 10 pills a day, sometimes more. In fact, so many people, even Hitler's heir apparent, Hermann G?ring, himself a morphine addict, was so taken aback by their frequency that he began calling Morell "the Reich's master injector,"
No one knew what Morell was giving Hitler. There were other doctors in the Führer's service, two surgeons, Dr. Carl Brandt and Dr. Hanskar von Hasselbach, who traveled with Hitler in case he needed emergency surgery, and other specialists, such as visiting ear, nose, and throat doctor Erwin Gissing, who from time to time was called upon to treat specific complaints. But no one knew exactly what Morel was doing. Any competent doctor would have been horrified by all the stuff Morel was injecting. But whenever Brandt or others asked him what he injected and why Hitler needed so much of it, he dismissively injected them as vitamins or glucose (sugar) or answered vaguely, "I gave him what he needed."
One Two Punch
Considering all the drugs Morell gave Hitler, why was it Dr. Koster's anti-gas pills that finally prompted the other doctors to act? Probably because they came in a can. Most of the pills and tablets Hitler took were unknown and mysterious, but Dr. Koster's anti-gas pills came in a small metal container (like Otelos gum or straw throat lozenges) that identified them by name and even listed the active ingredients: gentian, belladonna, and an extract called strychnine,
The gentian was harmless. But the presence of the other two ingredients in the pills, coupled with the fact that Hitler popped as many as 20 anti-gas pills a day on top of all the other medications, is alarming. Even if Dr. Morrell had read the labels on the cans, he might not have known that strychnine is a seed containing large amounts of strychnine, which is commonly used as the active ingredient in rat poisons. Belladonna, also known as Deadly Night, contains atropine, a toxic substance that causes euphoria, confusion, hallucinations, coma and death if taken in large quantities.
This is what shocked Dr. Gissing when he saw the six black pills on Hitler's breakfast tray that morning in July 1944: he didn't even realize that Hitler's personal physician was reportedly giving him large quantities of not one, but two lethal poisons every day.
and guinea pig
, by which time it was clear to everyone around him that Hitler's physical and mental state was deteriorating. His tremors were becoming quite pronounced, his memory was slipping, he was having trouble following conversations, and his mood swings were intensifying. Gissing wondered if the rat toxin in the fart pills was responsible for some or all of these symptoms. He prescribed a few pills himself...and when he began to experience some of the same symptoms, including irritability and abdominal cramps, he shared his theories with Hitler's surgeons, Dr. Brandt and Dr. von Hasselbach.
The plot deepens
Brandt and von Hasselbach never liked Dr. Morel or believed in his abilities, and like Dr. Gissing, they were concerned about Hitler's health. Now, they thought, they had a chance to get rid of Morell once and for all and give him the proper medical care he obviously needed. But if they thought it would be easy to get rid of Morel once his incompetence was exposed, they would soon realize they had acted wrongly. By the end of 1944, the doctor had given so many injections that he was having trouble finding new injection sites in Hitler's needle-hole arm.
And as Morell revealed to his aides, Hitler's tolerance to the injections increased dramatically over time, and Morell had to increase the dosage from 2 cubic centimeters to 4 cubic centimeters to 10 cubic centimeters and finally 16 cubic centimeters per injection, increasing the chances that the injections would have the desired effect by 700 percent,
, as Dr. Leonard Huston and Renate Huston pointed out in their book, Adolf Hitler's Medical Casebook, human tolerance to vitamins and glucose does not change over time. The fact that Hitler was building up a tolerance to injected drugs is further evidence that they contained a certain drug.
Drug Cultivation
When you compare this evidence with eyewitness accounts of Hitler's immediate reaction to the drugs, it's likely that the drugs he was taking began to show up. "The effects described," Heston writes, "are characteristic of injections of amphetamine-type stimulants or cocaine, and are incompatible with any other drug." Of the two possibilities, "amphetamine ...... is more likely because it is readily available in injectable form, whereas injecting cocaine is illegal." Drugs ...... Moreover, the effects of amphetamines lasted for two or three hours, whereas the effects of cocaine ended quickly. The effects on Hitler were relatively long-lasting.
Side effects
Amphetamines give users a surge of energy and improved mood, as described by witnesses to Hitler's injections. But they are now illegal, and for good reason: they are highly addictive and have many debilitating side effects that outweigh the few desirable effects.
Even in moderate doses, amphetamines caused Hitler insomnia and loss of appetite. The number and intensity of side effects increased as the dose increased. Psychological side effects associated with amphetamine toxicity include ***, irritability, paranoia, impulsivity, emotional outbursts, and rigid thinking, which tends to be characterized by obsessing over secondary, unimportant details at the expense of the big picture. Because these symptoms diminish the user's ability to rationally perceive events and their surroundings, decision-making suffers.
No Surrender
Hitler suffered from all of these symptoms, at least as far as his generals were concerned, and his thinking did suffer, especially his ability to make intelligent, rational decisions. Many of the generals assigned to Hitler's command believed that Hitler was losing his mind.
One of the reasons it was the end of the war in Europe in the spring of 1945, and less than a few months or even a few years later, was that even as the tide of the war turned toward Germany, Hitler unreasonably demanded that his battlefield commanders seize every inch of ground they conquered, even as their situation became hopeless. In late 1942, for example, General Friedrich von Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army, requested permission to withdraw from the Russian city of Stalingrad to avoid being surrounded by the superior forces of the Russian army. Hitler, who was now being shot at on a daily basis, replied that the Sixth Army could be withdrawn from Stalingrad "provided it could still occupy Stalingrad", that he could not think of a way to abandon his position while holding it, and that von Paulus dutifully remained in the city. A few weeks later, Stalingrad was surrounded, and in January 1943, the Sixth Army surrendered. As many as 800,000 Axis troops were killed in the Battle of Stalingrad, and at the end of the war, the surviving 90,000 soldiers marched to Siberia. All but 6,000 died.
Hitler allowed von Paulus to retreat to a defensive position when called upon, and hundreds of thousands sang bathroom readers. The 22nd edition of this popular Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series is jam-packed with their trademark mix of humor and fun facts. Where else can you learn about the world's first detective, the Misty Man of Peru, and the history of surfing?"
Since 1987, the Bathroom Readers Association has led a campaign to stand up for those who sit in the bathroom and read books (and everywhere else). Uncle John's Bathroom Reader is the longest-running and most popular series of readers in the world, with more than 15 million copies in print.
If you like what I found today, I guarantee you'll love the Bathroom Readers Institute books, so go check them out
Company