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Adolf Hitler: 1943-1945
In 1943 Hitler's health deteriorated rapidly. He was constantly ill with stomach pains, headaches, nausea, shivering fits and diarrhoea and was now completely dependent on the treatment of Dr Theodor Morell. In September 1944, Hitler suffered a heart attack and was forced to spend several days in bed. He also showed signs of Parkinson's disease. Morell was now sent away and Hitler turned to Dr Karl Brandt.
Hitler was constantly tired. He rarely got out of bed before 11.00 a.m. At noon he was informed of the latest military developments. After quickly considering the news Hitler issued his orders to the relevant military personnel. After Germany's defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler was unwilling to discuss the war outside these conferences and refused to read reports that gave bad news. His secretaries, for example, were ordered not to mention the war in Hitler's presence.
Hitler would then have a long lunch followed by an afternoon nap. When Hitler was asleep no one was allowed to disturb him. Even when important events were taking place, such as the allied landing in Normandy, Hitler was left to carry on sleeping.
Whereas Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt made use of radio broadcasts to raise the morale of their people. Hitler remained virtually silent. After the German defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler only made two public speeches and five radio broadcasts. Nor did he make visits to bombed areas of Germany. Hitler also avoided contact with injured German soldiers and rarely visited the front.
By 1943, it became clear to many senior German officers that to continue fighting a war on two fronts was bound to end in failure. It was proposed that Germany should negotiate a peace with Britain and the United States, which would then allow them to concentrate their efforts on defeating the Soviet Union. Hitler rejected this idea. He knew that the allies would insist on his removal before agreeing to a deal with Germany. Some senior officers decided that the only solution was to assassinate Hitler. In 1943 seven assassination attempts were planned but none of them was successfully carried out.
Nicolai Jiscenko, Hitler's Ten Year's Jubilee (1943)
The most dramatic of these attempts was the July Plot. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who was attending one of Hitler's military conferences, placed a bomb in a briefcase under the table. When the bomb exploded it killed four people and seriously injured ten others, but Hitler only suffered minor cuts and burns.
Over the next few months most of those involved in plot to kill Hitler, including Wilhelm Canaris, Carl Goerdeler, Julius Leber, Ulrich Hassell, Hans Oster, Peter von Wartenburg, Henning von Tresckow, Ludwig Beck, Erwin von Witzleben and Erich Fromm were either executed or committed suicide.
It is estimated that around 4,980 Germans were executed after the July Plot. Hitler decided that the leaders should have a slow death. They were hung with piano wire from meat-hooks. Their executions were filmed and later shown to senior members of both the NSDAP and the armed forces.
Hitler believed that General Erwin Rommel, Germany's most famous military leader, was also involved in the July Plot. Rommel was so popular that Hitler was unwilling to have him executed for treason. Rommel was therefore forced to commit suicide and the public was told that he had died of a heart attack.
Kukrinisky, The big three will tie the enemy in knots (1943)
In January 1945, the Soviet troops entered Nazi Germany. Hitler was forced to leave his headquarters in East Prussia and moved south to Berlin. Soon afterwards he was joined by his mistress, Eva Braun. Hitler talked of the possibility that Britain and the United States would go to war with the Soviet Union and that Germany would be saved. He told one of his generals that "throughout history coalitions have always gone to pieces sooner or later." Hitler was right that the Soviet Union and the United States would eventually be in conflict, but unfortunately for him this did not happen until after the war had ended.
Hitler was now nearly fifty-five years old but looked much older. His hair had gone grey, his body was stooped, and he had difficulty in walking. His voice had become feeble and his eyesight was so poor that that he needed special lenses even to read documents from his 'Fuehrer typewriter'.
Hitler also developed a tremor in his left arm and leg. He had originally suffered from this during the First World War and also after the failure of the Munich Putsch in 1923. It was a nervous disorder that reappeared whenever Hitler felt he was in danger.
People who had not seen him for a few months were shocked by his appearance. One man remarked: "It was a ghastly physical image he presented. The upper part of his body was bowed and he dragged his feet as he made his way slowly and laboriously through the bunker from his living room... If anyone happened to stop him during this short walk (some fifty or sixty yards), he was forced either to sit down on one of the seats placed along the walls for the purpose, or to catch hold of the person he was speaking to... Often saliva would dribble from the comers of his mouth... presenting a hideous and pitiful spectacle."
Adolf Hitler awards the Iron Cross to a young defender of Berlin (March, 1945)
Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering both considered the possibility of overthrowing Hitler. One plan involved Himmler arresting Hitler and announcing to the German people that Hitler had retired due to ill-health. Their main concern was to do a deal with Britain and the United States that would prevent the Soviet Union occupying Germany. The German leaders were not only concerned about the imposition of communism, but also feared what Soviet soldiers anxious to gain revenge for the war crimes committed against their people by the SS might do. (Of the five million Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans an estimated three million were murdered or allowed to die of starvation.)
When the Soviet troops entered Germany it was suggested that Hitler should try to escape. Hitler rejected the idea as he feared the possibility of being captured. He had heard stories of how the Soviet troops planned to parade him through the streets of Germany in a cage. To prevent this humiliation Hitler decided to commit suicide.
Two days before his death Hitler married Eva Braun. That night he tested out a cyanide pill on his pet Alsatian dog, Blondi. Braun agreed to commit suicide with him. She could have become rich by writing her memoirs but she preferred not to live without Hitler.
The Soviet troops were now only 300 yards away from Hitler's underground bunker. Although defeat was inevitable, Hitler insisted his troops fight to the death. Instructions were constantly being sent out giving orders for the execution of any military commanders who retreated.
Hitler made a will leaving all his property to the Nazi Party. On 30th April, 1945, after saying their farewells, Hitler and Eva Braun went into a private room and took cyanide tablets. Hitler also shot himself in the head. His body was then cremated and his ashes were hidden in the Chancellery grounds. The place where he was buried is now under the shadow of the Berlin Wall. The man who tried to increase the size of Germany had in fact become responsible for dividing it into two.
As a direct result of Hitler's actions, communism, which he had attempted to destroy, covered the whole of Eastern Europe, including half of Germany. The Jewish race, which he had tried to eliminate, had formed their own state and became a powerful force in world politics.
Hitler left a devastated Europe and with it a warning for the future. His regime had illustrated the dangers of nationalism, the obscenity of racism and the importance of democracy. It was an expensive lesson, but it did provide the basis for a better future.
Daniel Fitzpatrick, St Louis Post-Dispatch (30th April, 1945)
Primary Sources
(1) Albert Speer was Minister for Armaments and War Production in Hitler's government. At his trial at Nuremberg in 1946 he discussed the dangers of modern dictatorship.
Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.
(2) Ulf Schmidt, Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor (2007)
For almost two years, until the arrival of Theodor Morell, Hitler's personal physician and a former ship's doctor, Brandt remained the unchallenged authority and first point of call in all questions relating to Hitler's health and well-being and that of his staff. In practical terms this had little meaning, because there was hardly anything to do in the early years of Brandt's assignment, except that Hitler became increasingly concerned with his own mortality. Hitler must have felt a sense of exhaustion after those frantic years in opposition, and the need to press on if he wanted to achieve his monumental goals. Despite an unhealthy diet and lack of physical exercise, his health remained relatively good, except for the stomach spasms which plagued him for years. In December 1934, Hitler poisoned himself with neo-Ballistol, a kind of oil hunters use to clean their rifle barrels. A medical variant of this oil existed, and Hitler must have been under the impression that it would help him to overcome his constant gastrointestinal troubles. His symptoms were headaches, double vision, dizziness and tinnitus. The SS physician, Ernst Robert Grawitz, who later became the President of the German Red Cross, diagnosed neo-Ballistol poisoning. In total secrecy, Hitler was rushed to the Westend Sanatorium, where he was X-rayed and his stomach was emptied. 133 It was one of the few instances where Hitler readily complied with his doctor's advice.
Hitler generally exhibited an extraordinary shyness when it came to undressing in front of physicians. To be examined by Brandt or any other of his doctors became a major undertaking; he, the man in charge of Germany's future, could hardly bear the idea of being the object of a medical examination. Whenever Hitler fell ill, Brandt and his colleagues needed all available diplomatic skills to rescue a situation which could easily develop into a national crisis. By 1942, the health of Hitler had reached such a level of strategic importance that every person who came into direct contact with the Fuhrer, or was working in his immediate vicinity, needed to prove themselves absolutely free of illnesses or disease-causing agents.
Hanni Morell, the wife of Theodor Morell, compared his eccentricities in all matters concerned with his body with those of an old virginal spinster. To conduct a thorough medical examination was almost impossible; X-ray pictures were out of the question. Morell had enormous difficulties in fulfilling his medical duties. Comprehensive neurological or internal examinations were never carried out. Hitler's lungs and abdomen were never examined. Until the last days of the Reich, Morell tried persistently, but unsuccessfully, to persuade Hitler to have a full X-ray of his body. Whenever Hitler was in pain, Morell would arrive with his doctor's bag in Hitler's sleeping quarters, the only place where examinations were permitted, and felt or touched the area of Hitler's body where it hurt. Further chemical and radiological tests could only be carried out after persistent persuasion. To a limited extent the measuring of blood pressure, pulse, heartbeat and temperature were possible, as were standard reflex tests. Yet Hitler disliked finding himself in a potentially compromising position, for example when he needed to vomit. The administration of drugs by injection (because parts of his body had to be exposed) needed great diplomatic skill. Even being measured by a tailor produced major problems because Hitler hated to be touched. All such eccentricities suddenly had no meaning when parts of his head or face were injured, especially those organs such as his voice or eyes which Hitler regarded as instrumental in controlling the people and the masses. He was hypersensitive to the slightest idea that these organs might be defective - and undermine the popular image and impact of the Fuhrer cult - so the best experts in the country would be ordered to treat him with all available skills. At these times Hitler made no fuss.
