In 1973 Mr Richard Hughes, who was working on the third novel of his trilogy on the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler, came to see me regarding a document, some 300 pages long, on the medical treatment given by Dr Theodore Morell to Hitler. The document had been obtained at the Nuremberg war trials. My original report to Hughes on the content of this document is reproduced here.
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References
1.
HughesP.Richard Hughes: Author, Father. Gloucester (now Stroud): Allan Sutton Publications, 1984. This perceptive memoir by his daughter describes Richard Hughes' great surges of creative fiction and the carefree productive days at Laugharne with his family in the 1930s, near his friend Dylan Thomas. After wartime service in the Admiralty in Bath, he lived in North Wales with his family at Mor Elvin, overlooking the estuary of Traeth Bach, opposite Portmeirion. There were also great sailing holidays in the eastern Mediterranean. Richard Hughes died in 1976.
2.
Theodore Gilbert Morell was born in 1886 in Trais-Munzenberg in Upper Hesse. He read medicine at Heidelberg and studied at Grenoble and Paris. In 1913 he was awarded a PhD for a study of the problems of delivering children with a transverse intrauterine lie. His licence as a medical practitioner was issued by the Bavarian state in May 1913 and he then served as a ship's medical officer for several German liner companies. In World War I he served first as a battalion medical officer on the Western Front and then as a medical officer in a prison camp in Thuringia. After the war he married Maria Johanna Moller, an actress, and established a practice in Bayreuth Strasse, Berlin. He converted a villa at Herrinsdorf on the Baltic coast into a private sanatorium. His was a “high society” practice with many patients from the world of theatre and films. The Crown Prince was a patient and he had offers of posts with the Shah of Persia and the King of Romania. In 1932 he had an income of 150,000 reichsmarks per annum and his prescription pad was headed “X-rays, High frequency diathermy, Radiation, Galvanic treatment, Urine analysis and Blood serology”. In the spring of 1936 Heinrich Hoffman, a professional photographer and an intimate of Herr Hitler, was ill with gonorrhoea and Hitler sent for Dr Morell to attend him in Munich. Over the next few months Morell became increasingly close to Hitler and soon after Christmas that year he was invited to become Hitler's private physician. He accepted this post and gave up his Berlin practice. There is no doubt that Hitler had a very high opinion of Dr Morell. Years later he told a colleague, “When Morell took over in 1936 he saved my life”. Dr Morell stayed as Hitler's physician until 1945. He was in the Berlin bunker until a few days before Hitler's suicide. Shortly afterwards he was picked up by the American Army and was Prisoner No. 21672 at the American Civilian Internment Camp, previously the Dachau concentration camp. He was eventually cleared of war crime charges, was ill, was discharged and shortly afterwards died. See IrvingD, Ed. Adolf Hitler: The Medical Diaries. The Private Diaries of Dr Theo Morell. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1983.
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When I wrote the report in 1973 I was wrong. Hitler did not get benzylpenicillin. Dr Morell owned the Hamma Pharmaceutical Factory, which produced an impure and often toxic vacuum-dried mould culture powder. He called it “penicillin”. It was this preparation that was used to treat Hitler. See HestonLHHestonR.The Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler. London: William Kimber and Co., 1979.
4.
Hitler was a vegetarian and he did pass a lot of bowel gas. There is an account of a visit he made to Mussolini. Immediately Hitler left the room, Mussolini ordered all windows to be opened.
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Professor Ernst Gunther Schenck was Nutrition Inspector for the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht. In 1943 he became suspicious about Dr Morell's gold-wrapped Vitamultin tablets, for vitamins were difficult to obtain and he thought the tablets might contain inert or diluted ingredients. He sent tablets to the Nutrition Inspector's office for analysis. The report he received was that the tablets contained the specified vitamins but also contained Pervitin, a proprietary form of methyl-amphetamine. Schenck would have known that methyl-amphetamine was a strictly controlled drug of addiction, which German troops had access to in certain situations, just as American troops had access to amphetamine preparations. Dr Schenck showed this report to Dr Leonardo Conti, the Reich's Health Leader. Dr Conti informed Heinrich Himmler about the matter but Himmler responded with instructions that Dr Schenck was to drop this matter immediately. Another doctor who was suspicious of the medicines that were given to Hitler was Dr Karl Brandt. He was a surgeon attached to Hitler's personal staff and he thought Dr Morell was too ready to use new medicines on his patient with enthusiasm and in high doses, before there was any wide experience of their use. Indeed, in 1944 he reported to Hermann Göring that he thought Morell was giving strychnine preparations to Hitler. Göring reported this to Hitler, but the only result was that Dr Brandt was immediately relieved of his appointment because he had intrigued against the incomparable Dr Morell! See Heston LH, Heston R (op. cit. note 3).
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Dr H Banister was University Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University from 1939 to 1949.
7.
Albert Speer, who was close to Hitler from 1938 onwards, states that after 1938 Hitler became increasingly rigid in outlook, suspicious and irritable. From 1942 onwards this was worse, and there were temper episodes in which he flushed deeply and shouted, often denouncing the General Staff of the Wehrmacht. See Speer A. Introduction. In: Helston LH, Heston R (op. cit. note 3). The Hestons knew nothing about Hitler's use of Dr Morell's gold-wrapped chocolate tablets, but it is clear that they were suspicious that Hitler was being given amphetamine-like drugs after 1942. They are quite definite, however, that Dr Morell never told the American authorities anything about the administration of Pervitin to Hitler.
