1936: Adolf Hitler threw a Christmas party at his mountain retreat in the Alps. Among the guests was a doctor whom Hitler hoped could cure his eczema and gastrointestinal problems. Dr. Theodor Morell came highly-recommended by Hitler’s personal photographer who the doctor claimed to have cured of a venereal disease.
After that holiday meeting, Dr. Morell would become the Fuhrer’s personal physician - and at the dictator’s side - for the rest of Hitler’s life. Evidence suggests that Morell turned his infamous patient into an addict.
Morell received his medical license in 1913 at Munich and served as a medic in World War I. He married a wealthy actress in 1920 and then formed his own practice. Among his exotic patients were the King of Romania, the Shah of Persia, and many of Berlin’s elite citizens.
In 1933, when Germans suspected that Morell was Jewish, which he was not, he pledged allegiance to the Nazi Party.
Hitler was a hypochondriac. From childhood, he suffered stomach problems that gave him terrible gas. He worried he would die young like his father.
Hitler never smoked, never drank alcohol, and later in life became a vegetarian. Even so, a doctor accompanied him wherever he traveled.
Within a year of Morell’s treatment, Hitler’s eczema and intestinal discomfort cleared up. He considered the doctor a miracle worker.
Few in Hitler’s retinue liked Morell, however. Eva Braun, the Fuhrer’s secret mistress, found the overweight doctor to be a pig with bad breath and constantly flatulent. Hitler said, “I do not employ him for his fragrance but for his medical care of me.”
Morell had his patient on a daily regimen of over two dozen medications and vitamins as well as syringe injections.
For stomach ailments, Morell prescribed a barbiturate as well as a host of vitamins, bull testosterone, and strychnine, even though that poison was banned from pharmacies across the country.
In advance of any major public speeches, Morell gave Hitler an injection of glucose and methamphetamine. The latter drug was branded as Pervitin and was given to German soldiers. Today we call it crystal meth.
For sinus issues, Morell gave Hitler a mixture that included cocaine. As the problems steadily grew, Morell increased the dosage, despite objections from other medical professionals.
Essentially, for the last eight years of his life, Germany’s leader was routinely high on speed. He could easily have been addicted to the various drugs his doctor prescribed.
1943: Hitler’s posture and physical demeanor deteriorated, so Morell put him on a drug called Eukodol. It was oxycodone, a synthetic narcotic.
1944: A team of physicians told Hitler, with Morell present, that the doctor had been mistreating the Fuhrer for years. Their disapproval didn’t persuade Hitler. He remained loyal to his quack doctor.
When the tide of war turned against Germany and Hitler’s stress doubled, Morell prescribed even higher doses, but that might have been at his patient’s insistence.
A failed bombing attempt left Hitler injured but he was so high on oxycodone that he barely felt any pain.
1945: The German leader began showing the telltale signs of Parkinson’s disease. There was nothing more Morell could do for him. Hitler relieved him of duty.
The doctor fled Berlin as Russian troops closed in. Hitler then committed suicide in his bunker. American troops captured Morell and sentenced him to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Although he was eventually released, Theodor Morell’s personal health rapidly deteriorated and he died in 1948.
The drugs the quack doctor administered over the years didn’t kill Adolf Hitler. They may have only made him more of a madman.
For more information, read Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.
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